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Casual Play on 360 Live Arcade
twoallbeefpatties writes "Columnist Chris Suellentrop writes an article for Slate describing how his desire for casual gaming is fulfilled more by the 360 than the Wii due to the presence of simpler games available over Live Arcade. The availability of oldschool Nintendo games on the Wii network fulfills his nostalgic hardcore gaming side, but when he really wants to just relax, he'd rather be trying to top his Live high score on Root Beer Tapper. Says Suellentrop: 'The Nintendo Wii will transform the way we play games at home. But the Xbox 360, through its Xbox Live service, is building something equally compelling: a celestial arcade, where casual and hard-core gamers alike can connect over the Internet and find like-minded souls. For an old-timer like me, the celestial arcade also lets me feel like I still have some of my old gaming mojo.'"
Microsof actually has about 10 years of prior experience in this field, not just the one year head start for the XBOX360. Microsoft purchased a company with a single product, The Internet Game Zone, and turned it into a web-based game site. Initially there were a few card games (hearts, spades, bridge), backgammon, chess and checkers, or something like that. They started adding games like Luxor, Zuma, and Bejewelled not long after that. zone.msn.com now has hundreds of games, some flash based, some java based. A number of these are ripe for inclusion on XBOX Live Arcade and hopefully Zune 2.0.