Microsoft's Early Talks XBLA Competitors, Lag Fixes Options

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Microsoft's Early Talks XBLA Competitors, Lag Fixes Posted by XanTium | June 26 21:28 EST | News Category: Xbox360

From gamasutra.com: [QUOTE] As part of today's in-depth Gamasutra interview, Microsoft exec Chris Early has discussed the swift rise of the company's Xbox Live Arcade, discussing 'appropriation' tactics by competing console download services, and commenting on multiplayer lag issues on XBLA. Firstly, when asked by Gamasutra whether there are "...things within the PlayStation Network and the Wii's Virtual Console that have alerted you to gaps within the service", Early was understated in his comment on competing digital download services, explaining: "Well, I know that we do our best to keep track of what's going on, though I think we're operating on a slightly different road-map - we know where we're heading with the Live service, and we have a vision for what we're delivering to customers and so far we're staying pretty true to that. I think in some areas, we're actually seeing reinforcement from some of what's happening on the other services." In another part of the interview, the issue of lag in multiplayer XBLA games such as Contra was raised, and Early commented in detail on what Microsoft was doing about this particular issue: "Lag occurs in many cases and in many games, whether it be an Arcade game or a retail game because of the way the game is developed and so forth. We do test fairly extensively and that's why we're not happy when something like that does happen. In Contra's case, we're actually working on fix, and there's other games that have had lag problems at one stage or another that we're working on fixes for." He continued: "We try to find as many of those as possible before they get out to the consumer, but developers aren't always happy when we pull the game out of cert on something because, in many cases, looking to launch as quickly as possible. Still, we want to deliver the best quality games that we can." [/QUOTE] Full Story: gamasutra.com