Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft Explains the Lumines Live! Mess
1up has up a discussion with Microsoft's Greg Canessa, Group Manager for Xbox Live Arcade. There, he attempts to explain what's the deal with Lumines Live!. Specifically, why are they charging us an arm and a leg for a rerelease of an already well-sold portable title? "That's actually done by the developer. As a platform, we provide a list of available price tiers. And we work very closely, of course, with the developer. We provide suggestions and it is a consultation between the two companies, but ultimately it is up to the developer to set the price." I'm looking at you, Q!.
CRAP I put a "less than" sign in there and cut off half of my post... here is how it should have been:
Yeah I agree. When I first saw Lumines on the PSP I really wanted the title but I wasn't about to buy a PSP just for it. when I heard it was coming to the XBLA I was excited because I already own an Xbox 360. The really dirty tactics here have made me avoid this title.
I can understand splitting up the game into a couple of chunks. IIRC one of the "rules" for selling an Arcade game on Xbox live is that it must be _less than_ 50MB and if you look at the Lumines downloads they're both at the 50MB mark... leaving one to surmise that the whole game wouldn't have fit into a single download anyway. I think it's pretty crappy of them to sell it at $15 with the other half at $7.50 and apparently even with that bit it's not yet the whole game. Sure they've added new "skins" but I've made skins complete with sounds before, from a consumer perspective this would be a peace offering from making them wait so long after the PSP release, not really worth bumping up the price 2.50... add to that the fact that they don't have any distribution costs, no need to print manuals and mold plastic cases, or pay Sony to press it to a UMD, or ship around the world. I'm sure MS takes some "distribution fees" for hosting in the Arcade but I would imagine they're minimal compared to putting the content into a disc, putting the disc in a case with a manual and then physically distributing world wide.
While I really want to play this game, and I would be more then happy to pay $20 for this title complete. The way they've executed this just really rubs me the wrong way, for now I'm "voting with my feet" and not purchasing this title based on principal. I may buy it in the future if they remedy this situation by either lowering the price or offering the complete package at some kind of reasonable "bundle" rate.
I've even sent a hand written letter to Q about it voicing my concerns... unfortunately I received a package back with my letter torn to shreds and a note claiming that they "don't read unsolicited mail"... ahh, another company that really cares.
Collector's Edition
Ha ha, what? I distinctly recall some Halo patching going on with the first Xbox, so their policy wasn't exactly solid before the 360.
There were also patches for Splinter Cell, WrestleMania 21, Unreal Championship, Stacked, and Rainbow Six 3.
Mind you, that's not very many patched titles considering the number of releases for the Xbox, but it does suggest that patching Xbox games was not verboten.