Though it's a feat that's becoming harder to achieve, one of the appeals of digital marketplaces like the App Store used to be the ability for start ups to come out of nowhere and score a smash.

On Windows Phone, however, studios have frequently complained that, without Xbox Live support, games go unnoticed on the platform's marketplace.

It's a frustrating facet of life on the OS, if only because Microsoft appears especially picky about which games can and cannot tap into the service.

Angry indies

Evidence of this is displayed in the list of the top 20 most popular Xbox Live titles during 2011, based on their unique users, as revealed by Microsoft's director of programming Lawrence Hryb (better known as Major Nelson).

Coming out on top – predictably – is Rovio's Angry Birds, with Halfbrick's Fruit Ninja and PopCap's Plants vs. Zombies taking the second and third spots on the countdown.

Other top twenty titles include PopCap's other major franchise Bejeweled, EA licenses such as Monopoly, Tetris and Need for Speed: Undercover, and Windows Phone exclusives like The Harvest, Fable: Coin Golf and Tentacles.

Indeed, of the 20 games on offer, Microsoft is the publisher of half of them, with only EA, its newly owned subsidiary PopCap, Gameloft, Sega and GameHouse (thanks to its licensing of Doodle Jump) breaking its stranglehold on the platform.

[source: Microsoft]