I have held strong! I really want that new GR:AW content too. Damn Ubisoft and its greed, damn me and my principles!
I’ll be seriously stunned if Sony can pull it off, based on my use of some of their online products (their verison of itunes, ugh) I don’t have too much hope. Nintendo is a bit of a wildcard.
I wonder what MS considers to be a lot of Arcade content coming too? I think how they define it and how we as gamers define it is a bit different.
Heh, yeah, Although I’ll admit it. I boot up Hexic at least once a day at times… of course, I haven’t lately, as I haven’t been playing much, other than hitman, and listening to music.
But then again, I’ve been waiting [u]Patiently[/i] for the promised LotR:BFME2 demo, as well as the Street Fighter Arcade game, which has been taunting me with its dollar 25 gamer pics and dollar and a half theme…
I’ve also not bought the GR:AW maps, and don’t plan on it until it becomes either free, or less than 1000 points… because honestly, I should be able to buy any amount of points I want…
Once again, I must reiterate what someone else has said:
Indeed.
And as for the arcade titles ‘getting a facelift ala gauntlet’ or whatever. BULLSHIT. Gauntlet looks like it’s cleaned up a tiny bit (it looks fine for gautnlet) but if that is 9 months of artists working they need to fire someone, there just are not that many sprites in the fucking game, evne if they were 1024x1024 with full detail down to veins and armhair thats not 9 months of art.
It’d be one thing if they were the classic version and a remix version like many arcade game updates are on consoles, but they arent so far at least. They dont even make some of 'em widescreen for fucks sake…
I think the goal is to have a major new Arcade release (meaning: not premium content for an existing Arcade game) every 2 weeks, so a couple dozen a year.
Announced but not yet released are:
SF2 Hyper Fighting
Texas Hold 'Em (free)
Frogger
Galaga
Pac-Man
Ms. Pac-Man (bundled with Pac-Man?)
Lumines Live!
Cloning Clyde
HoopWorld
RoboBlitz
Mad Tracks
Novadrome
Paperboy
Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3
Rally-X
Dig Dug
Heavy Weapon
Sonic the Hedgehog
Contra
Time Pilot
Scramble
Tack & Field
Small Arms
Darwinia
See, and that’s just dumb. Put the stuff up there and let the market sort it out. Don’t try to tell us what we want and when we want it. If games are complete, they should be sold.
Microsoft is just so darn good at CONTROL anymore that I think it’s hamstrung this obviously unique and excellent new service that they introduced.
I’m so happy to see classic games embraced, but everyone’s gotta mess with this shit. WTF?! Robotron is a great example. It’s just not right.
This software stuff?
Takes time to write and test.
Funny, that.
Listen to Major Nelson’s podcast from last week. Interesting interview on the demands they’re making on Live Arcade games. If they were willing to accept shovelware ports, there would already be games coming out every week week. But they’re doing stuff like the frickin awesome-sounding “quarter” mode in Street Fighter 2, etc.
I’m sure it’s just the “new system” sluggishness as devs get up to speed, techniques for ensuring good multiplayer performance on Live are perfected, etc. They’re be enough Arcade stuff this time next year that people will be bitching that a 120GB drive isn’t out yet.
We’ve already been bitching about the tiny ass expensive hard drive, thanks.
Yeah, that started the second we heard the words “twenty gigabyte”.
My complaint is that the “twenty gigabyte” drive shows up as 14GB when you go look at it in system properties on Xbox 360. That’s almost 30% smaller than advertised.
All I know is that a dev posted on the Team17 forums that they were in negotiations to get one of the 2D Worms games on LA. If that ever comes out, I might not ever buy another 360 game.
I would KILL for an old Worms 2D game.
…Will to hold off…on 360 purchase…crumbling…
I still have Worms Armageddon installed, but it’s not exactly a vibrant community.
I think you misunderstand. I don’t think they are just sitting on a bunch of finished games waiting to put them on Arcade. The games aren’t done, and for the most part they go up when they are.
Believe it or not, the developers and publishers want some small degree of control over releases. If you just up and put 30 games on the arcade one day, some good games will get lost in the mix - bad ports of popular sounding titles and retro games will get snapped up, and quality new games (especially indie games that people haven’t heard of) will be ignored.
I mean, people already bitch about how there are too many games that are essentially Robotron on the service. That would be fine if all those games weren’t the first ones released, but if we got them spread out over the first year, and other games like Uno in place of Crystal Quest.
So at least now in the formative times, there’s an effort to set a few bars for which games get on arcade:
No direct ports of old arcade games. Play Gauntlet with the “original graphics” mode and look how god-awful that is on your HDTV. There needs to be a graphical bar in place.
Games are heavily encouraged to take advantage of live features. Global leaderboards, online play where applicable, downloadable add-on content, voice, camera support. Adding that stuff isn’t just flipping a switch, of course.
They’re trying to spread out the genres a bit, so that we don’t have 40 classic arcade Galaga-like games and two card games and no word puzzlers.
They’re trying to strike a balance between retro classics and new indie games. People have fond memories for the retro classics and if you overwhelm the service with them, a lot of people might not even try an indie game they never heard of like “Cloning Clyde.” And we all want the indies to succeed.
I can see why people agree or disagree with the policies, but at least there’s a logic there. As for myself, I’d like more releases faster, too. But I’d also hate it if Gauntlet was just ported on there and was local play only instead of online. So I’d rather them take a little time to get it right.
It’s worth mentioning that the 360 is about half a year old, and the original Xbox didn’t even have Live at all until it was a year old.
Arcade will have a healthy helping of good stuff by the holiday season. I imagine that when 80% of the world buys a 360 (during it’s 2nd-4th year of availability), they’ll get on Live and find Arcade to be almost overwhelming.
From a post on Major Nelson’s blog today:
That Nelson post just sounds like a bunch of mealymouthing.
It is Microsoft’s responsibility to get games through that channel regularly and efficiently. They are not doing that. Therefore, they are screwing up.
Sure, they may have some latitude to screw up (due to Sony being later), but that doesn’t change the fact that they are screwing up.
It’s a PR blog for the 360. I expect nothing less than more bullshit PR work that people like to believe is “the inside info”.
Yes, but I have stupid money NOW. By the holidays, I’ll be buying presents for my new Wii.
see and this is the stuff I really don’t get. What exactly are you expecting fro m the blog? Obviously, in your opinion microsoft is screwing up by not getting more content out faster. what exactly did you expect to read on a blog, that would somehow replace not getting out content faster?
this is the problem with corporate blogging, you have people who, when they don’t get the answer they want, say “ohhhh, this blog is BULLSHIT” e.g. the 1500 WHERE IS TEH PREY DEMO comments.
majornelson ain’t the “microsoft comes clean about screwing up” blog, it’s majornelson, dude posts when stuff goes up, he’s said it before, don’t believe anything you here until it is actually posted because its a complicated process. I dunno, maybe i’m the only one who actually reads it.
I think the thing is that Larry Hyrb (Major Nelson) is not PR. He’s the Director of Programming for Xbox Live. The MS games PR blog is gamerscoreblog.com.
He’s got a job where he didn’t deal with the public a lot. He started a blog and podcast that got really REALLY popular, and now he hears from and deals with the public all the time. He’s just not equipped to deal with thousands of angry gamers shouting about where the Prey demo, SF2, or Texas Hold 'em are. And further, he’s not paid to deal with that - he does the blog and podcast in his spare time.
So I think he just snapped, and wrote a kind of bitchy post telling the fanboys to leave him the F alone already.
Now, he kinda brought this on himself. I mean if he doesn’t know what the holdup is, who would? He’s Director of Programming after all - he SHOULD know. If it’s complicated, then he needs more people working for him to make it simpler. If he doesn’t know what the holdup is, he SHOULD. Maybe he can’t always say, but then tell us than and not “well I don’t know.”