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New Xbox Live Game Every Week
Eurogamer reports that, with Xbox Live Wednesdays already a hit, Microsoft intends to continue releasing a new XBLA title every week for the near future. The company has announced their intention to have 160 titles for their next-gen console available by the end of the year, and some 30 of those may be Xbox Live Arcade titles. From the article: "The idea is to allow Xbox 360 owners who do not own hard disks to store downloaded Live Arcade games on memory units, which allow for 64MB of data. However, with PlayStation 3 in particular likely to allow for much larger downloadable games, Microsoft runs the risk of losing out on bigger releases despite the impressive momentum Live Arcade has already built up. Erickson admits that the company is already considering the possibilities of larger memory units, but there's no word on hard-disk-only Live Arcade games or other digitally distributed titles - although it's important to note that the latter, which Microsoft is certainly considering, would fall outside his remit."
Very good way to spend your money is to spend the $60 saved up for a new 360 game and buy a whole slew of XBL games. They are a great compliment to the major 360 titles.
360 games are selling like crazy in the US. Few weeks ago 7 of the top 10 games sold in America were 360 games (PS2 had the #10 spot with Kingdom Hearts, New Super Mario Bros #1, DDR for Gamecube somewhere in the middle).
360 also has the highest games sold/console ratio of any major console. Have to chuckle at the people who say the system has a limited library.
Haven't you heard? this is part of slashdot's new dupe each article once a week program.
Other than the lack of playing games online, you have access to the XBL Arcade which has a bunch of games that you can buy and play. Some of these are classics (frogger, galaga, uno, etc) others are more independent (cloning clyde, outpost keoki X)...Also, you get the XBox live marketplace which has videos, music, demos, trailers, themes, background images, avatar images, etc.
So unless you like playing against others online, you can get by with just the free silver account.
The gold account is cheap anyway, less than $8 a month or less than $5 a month if you pay for the whole year. I used to pay more than that per day when I smoked cigarettes.
The only thing the free version cannot do is play on-line games against others. Live arcade, along with evertyhing else is available with the free version.
"reality has a well-known liberal bias" - Steven Colbert
Actually the free version of XBL serves its purpose. . . You cannot play games online, but the market place is still wide open to you.
As far as I'm concerned, the market place is much more valuable than people would have you believe.
I have yet to buy an X360 game, but I've probably spent about twice the value of a new game just on XBLA games, map packs and car packs for games that friends/family own.
Currently I have the pay-for package, but I hardly spend any time playing online what with all the lamers, flamers, and greifers.
disclaimer: I've been known to store numbers in my ass for which to dig out when quantities are required.
I thought one of the biggest factors towards the Xbox Live success has been the fact that developers could quickly and easily make a low budget game, throw it up on Xbox Live for cheap and see where the market takes it. With larger budget, larger sized and larger 'content' (read: prettier graphics) in game demos, what makes them stand out from PC demos? (Which have arguably become oversized given their short length.)
I can understand the desire to allow folks the ability to transport their Arcade game(s) on a memory unit .... but *force* developers to adhere to that? Why?
.... *especially* if no one is transporting their games via memory card.
I mean, is it a "consistent user experience" thing? Personally, no one I know that has a 360 transports their Arcade games, except by HDD, and would rather have larger, richer Arcade games instead.
64 meg games will be a HUGE disadvantage eventually
Just let developers make the Arcade games they want, and let the buying public decide how big is too big.