Lumines Live! Creator Defends Content Downloads

Eurogamer reports that Lumines Live! creator Tetsuya Mizuguchi is defending the extra content downloads required to play the entire game on the 360. From the article: "Mizuguchi told IGN that one reason for the download/pricing strategy was technical ('We have to include everything in 50MB') but that the other reason was the desire to let people customise Lumines. 'We want people to look at Lumines and, depending on the artist, or the season, or the music, we want to give them different reasons to consider buying the game,' he explained." Relatedly, the Live service hit 4 Million users, Microsoft has announced. "Microsoft reckons it's on track for six million users by June 2007. 'We openly welcome other console platforms to join us in [the online] space,' [they say], a bit mockingly."

Comments

It's too simple to begin with.

[cableshaft]

Part of the problem is that there's not much to the game to begin with. You place blocks down to make squares and try to sneak more in before the line moves across and clears everything. It's similar to Bejeweled or Zuma as far as complexity is concerned, and those games are fully featured and only cost $10 on XBLA, wheras Lumines STARTS at $15, without all the content.

They've got a bit more of an argument with the 50 MB limit, but really, we're seeing some amazing games being made chock full of content that are sneaking in at under that limit (Roboblitz made with the Unreal 3 engine with hi-res textures, the upcoming sprite-animation-heavy Alien Hominid and Castle Crashers)... I doubt that's as big of an issue as they claim it is (although, to be fair, music tends to be the big size hog for casual games, and Lumines is big on the music).