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Casual Play on 360 Live Arcade

Posted by Zonk on from the uno-and-fish-and-geometry-oh-my dept.

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.'"

3 of 48 comments (clear)

  1. Xbox Online Becoming A Bit Of A Joke by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    Sony is leading the way with free online play and dedicated servers. And the indy game market on PSN is already starting to boom for independent developers with games like GripShift,Flow,Calling All Cars,Tekken and other smaller games just in the first few months. And then there are all of the huge library of existing PS1 and PSP games starting to be made available for download.

    Nintendo's online efforts have been marred by their fumbling of online Wii gaming and friend codes, but their huge library of Nintendo classic games available for download is very cool since it is a free service just like Sony has.

    Microsoft is the odd company out with the huge 50 dollar a year fee. You can buy yourself a Wii with the money you will spend just to have access to Microsoft's online service and the ability to play games. The independent developer game library has been very weak although the demos from developers is good compared to the other two companies.

    Sony is rapidly adding features to their online service with each update. Hopefully Nintendo will get moving on getting developers going with online support for games. But gamers are increasingly asking Microsoft what exactly are we paying all this money for if we can't even have something so fundamental to an online service as dedicated servers.

    1. Re:Xbox Online Becoming A Bit Of A Joke by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

      I didn't think dedicated servers were that big of a deal until I finally played some Resistance deathmatches at a friend's house recently. It only took a couple matches to be blown away by how good it was. Neither H2 or Gears are just not in the same league when it comes to network performance - and that includes the levels where I was playing against 30-40 other people. The game never once drops a frame or any lag. Ever. It was shocking. I am seeing more and more 360 owners starting to demand dedicated servers from Microsoft. Hopefully Microsoft will listen. Unfortunately H3 sounds like it is not going to have dedicated servers. I'm not sure I can go back now. It's kind of like watching 1080p movies for the first time and then going back to your old 480i TV.

  2. Re:for the record by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    Nope.

    But that is something you hear from people who were stuck with a 400 dollar Xbox 360 and nothing worth buying or playing.