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The Xbox Live Arcade - One Year Later
Via Joystiq, an article at GamePro asking is Live Arcade worth it? One year after its launch, the service has been transformed by lots of retro classics, some brand new games, and the addition of the (now working) movie and television download service. What parts are good, what parts are bad, and ultimately, is it worth it? From the article: "Many of XBLA's original games draw their inspirations from classic video games, and the poster child for XBLA originals is Bizarre Creations' Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved. Released with the launch of Xbox 360, Geometry Wars showed a skeptical world just how cool original yet classically styled downloadable games could be. It plays like a crazed combination of all-time classics Asteroids and Robotron: 2084, with your lone, triangular spaceship pitted against literally endless hordes of nasty geometric shapes. The level of onscreen carnage is legendary; never has a game had more spectacular or over-the-top particle effects, showing that even simple games can be flashy."
Via Joystiq, an article at GamePro asking is Live Arcade worth it?
Worth what? The nothing extra you have to pay if you hve a 360 and a broadband connection? Acquiring a broadband connection if you don't already have one? Acquiring a 360 if you don't already have one? (The answers are yes, maybe, and no, incidentally).
I don't really know what question the article is trying to answer.
Reality has a conservative bias: it conserves mass, energy, momentum...
... is what comes out when you put Space Duel, Tempest and Robotron 2084 in a blender and press the 'Puree' button. And there's still a (discontinued,banninated) Win32 version floating out there on the InterTubes
I do love the Live Arcade and I love many games on it, but for my taste the release of arcade games is too slow, MS struggle to hit their target of one a week, whilst Nintendo is throwing out 5 - 10 a week. Some may argue that Nintendo has a bigger library but I don't think that's the case - MS has a massive library of PC games as has been demonstrated by the release of Doom and the upcoming release of Worms and such, there's plenty more PC classics they could throw out there, I can't beleive getting the IP holders to allow and follow through with this is the bottleneck here.
The other issue regarding content is the fact they've tried to shove a patch for Texas hold 'em and a set of Kameo Uno card decks on us as the supposed weekly game, that really does sound like they're clutching at straws some weeks to get any content at all out (some weeks have missed any kind of release entirely). From what I've read and what I've gathered the bottleneck seems to be MS' certification process if anything, god only knows what it involves but the speed it takes almost makes me wonder if they do a full source code audit of every submission couple with rigorous beta testing - that's no bad thing if you have the resources on the task to get it done rapidly.
I'm hoping with XNA people will start churning out stuff that MS will see and say "Hey, we need to get this onto the arcade ASAP", but even XNA is bottlenecked right now in that the only distribution method is to zip up your XNA project source and assets and e-mail them or whatever to whoever you're distributing to so that they can compile them using their copy of VC# and deploy it to their 360 themselves but if I've got a game I want to sell on the arcade, I don't want to be handing out source so I'm not entirely sure how MS expects anyone to get a game to be popular enough whilst at the same time not handing out your source when that's the only distribution method. You could use XNA and deploy a commercial version of your project for Windows but that's hardly an option if you're designing around the 360 controller, the 360 controller does work on Windows but I doubt many people would buy one to play games on their Windows machine.
MS is getting there and they're well ahead of Sony, but only just up with Nintendo on the whole downloadable games thing - XNA has potential though so let's hope they can convince the MS execs that XNA is good so that the XNA team is given permission to make a proper process for game distribution as well as permission to add networking support to XNA - something that it sorely needs!
First off let me start by explaining who owns the Xbox Live Marketplace. Microsoft. Period. This is like someone drawing a comic (the developer) and I own a shop. If I think you're charging too much, not giving enough, or not being nice, you're not in my shop. PERIOD. So all the fault with the problems come back to Microsoft in that Microsoft allowed them to happen.
Now let's get into the Xbox Live Arcade. There's a large amount of good games on it. Let's start with Geometry wars, Marble blast, and Mutant storm. These are three excellent games that came out almost at launch. Each of them are great in different ways.
But not all games were great at launch, the biggest problem child is Bankshot Billards 2, which they gave away for free with the 12 month live boxes. That's a 15 dollar value! Except it's not. Backshot billards 2 is a below average game for anyone who doesn't REALLLLY like pool. And this brings us to the big problem, the value of the games are skewed.
Can someone tell me why I'm paying 5 dollars for Contra, or Defender? I can shell that out for sinstar easily, but when you don't even know if the co-op online is going to work. Why am I paying 15 dollars for Small Arms (though fun, isn't worth that much single player)? There's a great many games that are overpriced, and the biggest problem is that those prices will NOT go down, why should they? Microsoft has a monopoly on the market.
In addition Microsoft has allowed really shady customers (sharks) into the kiddie pool. Lumines Live for instance is stated as being a full game. However when you pay 15 dollars for it you find out "It's not a full game". You miss out on mission/Puzzle/ Vs. Cpu, and other modes. So really all you get is base mode and skin mode. Nice. Then you shell out even more for Advanced mode (Btw if you paid for Lumines, that's actually worth it). A better system would have been to give away the entire engine for free, but only allow full play if you buy the base pack or advance pack or another pack (which hasn't even been released yet). Microsoft should have just said no to that idea. All told a consumer will have to pay almost 40 bucks for what they can get on the PS2 for 20 or the PSP for 20? Not a good move.
And to make matters more complicated, Microsoft has screwed the developer by placing rules in place to make sure your Arcade game is no bigger then 50 megs. Which results in Developers screwing consumers by charging more for the second download so they can get around that rule (See Lumines again). Many good games won't be able to exist on the Arcade, but easily will exist on PS3's marketplace style stuff. How they will do Symphony of the Night on the Arcade will be interesting.
This isn't to say Microsoft doesn't have good choices. The limit in price for a Xbox Live game is 1200 points I believe (might be 1600 but I don't think so). They only give out a certain amount of tickets so no matter how much people want to flood the arcade with retro crap they can't just do it. But still Microsoft has a huge boone and they need to focus their energies on new games.
That being said there has been a turn around recently from a week marketplace to a good one. Small Arms while over priced is interesting, Assault heroes this week is a great buy, and Roboblitz is a really interesting game. However right around any corner is a pile of Retro games waiting to junk up the month.
The biggest boone out of all the rubble is demos. Wii needs to get something like that. Ps3 should already have it. The marketplace demos are good, but the Arcade demos sell more games then anything. And that's the core of the solution. Try before you buy and enjoy what's worth money. Geometry wars and mutant storm, yes. Retro games, probably not.
There's a lot of other Microsoft flaws with marketplace operations (microsoft points, themes and pictures for sale even though you buy the game, overcharging for themes and pictures) but that's the core of the marketplace, not the arcade itself.
I just bought a 360 a couple months ago after getting an HDTV. I really enjoy the games on Live. Recently the Wed releases have been really good originals. Small Arms, Roboblitz, and the excellent Assault Heroes released this morning have all been good. $10 for Small Arms and Assault Heroes isn't bad at all. Roboblitz for $15 is pushing it. I also like being able to play Defender, Galaga, etc. without using discs or having a hacked Xbox running MAME. Marble Blast is pretty much liked by everybody that plays it. With board games like Carcassonne and Settlers of Catan coming to the Live arcade it's getting more diverse. And that's not even talking about all the other games on there.
They sort of have that with XNA Creators Club, but the barrier to entry is high ($49 for 4 months, $99 for a year) and there's no easy download solution just yet (you have to download from a 3rd party and run it yourself). Still, it gives you native access to develop on the console and use the full power of the hardware. Not the top priority for casual games, but the option is still there.
Yeah, though the problem is that you have to learn yet another technology/software package to participate, and most likely anything you produce can't be distributed to other users outside of the club.
With Flash or Java, you'd simply have to code once and export straight onto the web for any user that wishes to play the game within a browser that's formatted specifically for their TV. Niintendo hopefuls would only have to export to NTSC, while 360 or PS3 hopefuls could support a wide range of displays as needed.
Also, Microsoft/Nintendo/Sony could add a meta tag code parser to assign certain characteristics/buttons on their controller to computer keys/mouse movements as properties the flash/java player understands, so the developers can focus on design and testing on their computer using the keyboard and mouse that would carry over accurately to their console playable versions.
8==8 Bones 8==8
Right now, your xbox can access xbox live, a closed system whos content is controlled and regulated by Microsost. Everything on it can be verified to be safe, and to work on your xbox. Opening up this secure, closed network to the hostilities of the public internet can't be something they're in a hurry to do. A web browser, especially if its Internet Explorer (and it certainly would be on the xbox) opens up the possibility of arbitrary content and code to be viewed and downloaded. I imagine there are people on this very website who would love to be able to exploit a browser bug and attack a Microsoft console.
I'm guessing that Microsoft has enough web browser experience to know not to include one.