What is happening with Xbox Live Arcade?
Bryan Trussel sat down with Computer and Video Games for an interview where he ran off the current state of Xbox Live Arcade. With out further ado, I give you the state of the arcade address. Important parts are given strong emphasis.
With everything we do we try to stay true to the philosophy of giving broad access to developers at a great value to consumers for these pick up and play experiences, and every thing that we do will be with that basic premise in mind.
Specifically some of the things we're doing are increasing the size limit and doing some specialised games that are actually more European-centric like board games.
We're trying to bump up the pipeline quite a bit; we have these Wednesdays where we release our games and they come out not every week but most weeks. We're increasing that pipeline. We want to do a couple of things; we want to have more games come out so that it becomes a new game every Wednesday, and occasionally more than one game coming out every week.
We want to make those Wednesdays an actual destination time so you come there both for new games, new download content, community, tournaments, competitions and really make it a destination site.
And then the other thing that we're doing across the board is making sure that we really tie into the Live service - we really think that's a competitive advantage for us and we think it's something that the end users really want. Make sure we have multiplayer, make sure we have online play, play-up the achievements aspect and play up the gamerscore aspect.
One of the changes we're also making is through download content allow developers to get more gamerscore, so you'll have 50 more gamerscore you can give away with every premium download and you'll also be able to add three achievements.
I'm sure there are
I'm sure there are exceptions to the rule, but really multiplayer is what keeps these games going for a long time. Have you played Wik Fable of Souls anytime in the past 6-12 months?
I agree with Zeewolf.First
I agree with Zeewolf.
First I'll say that I'm glad they delayed Mad Tracks for online support, and I'm glad they added multiplayer to Heavy Weapon. I hope MS continues to encourage multiplayer for games where it makes sense.
My concern is that great single player games will have difficulty getting green-lit if they don't have a viable multiplayer concept. I'm sure there will be exceptions, but it just sounds like another thing that's going to limit the kinds of games that get approved.
Good news, but...
Mostly good news, it seems Microsoft are understanding that they need to change a few things now that Sony and Nintendo are moving into the online distribution space as well. But:
"...something that the end users really want. Make sure we have multiplayer"
I don't actually want that. I like multiplayer, but I also love good singleplayer games, and certain games just don't need multiplayer to be fun. Some, like adventures, don't work well with multiplayer at all. I would be very interested in seeing an adventure or two on XBLA.