XBLA's Review-Based Delisting? The Developer Perspective Options

[Xbox-Scene]

XBLA's Review-Based Delisting? The Developer Perspective Posted by XanTium | June 14 23:32 EST | News Category: Xbox360

From gamasutra.com: [QUOTE] Following Microsoft's announcement that it would be delisting Xbox Live Arcade games with a MetaCritic score lower than 65%, if other conversion rate and age criteria were met, newly launched Gamasutra sister site Gamerbytes asked XBLA developers exactly what they thought. Both Mare Sheppard and Raigan Burns, the two members of N+ developer Metanet Software, were more outwardly frustrated by the announcement. Mare Sheppard: "Wow, that seems so extreme! It seems very unfair that the offending titles would be pulled entirely, regardless of their sales. Sure, they may be rated/reviewed poorly, but isn't that, realistically, entirely subjective? And, a conversion rate of 6% is still admirable, isn't it?" Raigan Burns: "It really doesn't make any sense that they wouldn't just bump them to a lower-profile category... deleting them outright is INSANE. Amazon stocks books with single-digit annual sales, and they have to deal with physical inventory! You'd think digital would be even cheaper to manage. We both believe that a rating system would be a better solution to this problem. The system implemented on the Wii is working very well, for example, especially since it requires players to have played the game for a certain amount of time before they get to rate it. It's fair, and such an important feature. Cutting down the catalog is not an effective way to manage complexity; user ratings are." [/QUOTE] Full Story: gamasutra.com

[devilstrider]

Why not just make them free. Damn MS is so greedy.

[Dark Seraph]

Well yea its m$ i just dont understand why they just dont put them in a off section or something.Stupidness to the max i swear.

[AmyGrrl]

I wonder if MS knows that sometimes people don't pay for the game after trying the demo is not because we don't like the game. It's because a lot of us are broke and can't afford them. I can only afford to get 1 new game every 2-3 months and even then it would be a cheap used game or I might get some ms points instead for some extra game content. I would love to get a bunch of arcade games, but with limited funds I have to be sure I buy something I really like. If MS lowered the price of the ones that aren't selling that well, then I, like others would be inclined to spend money on those games as I can get 2 games for the price of 1. If you can't do that then at least give them out free for a limit time before removing them completely. Give something back to the XBOX Community for all the support they have given you.

[Martinchris23]

It's interesting to see that some of the developers are just as frustrated over this than us.

This isn't even a storage management issue, since you can still download the games if you get a 'tell a friend' message from someone else, or if you're redownloading it.

As already said, a 6% conversion rate is actually still not that bad considering an audience of 15 million Xbox Live users could have all possibly downloaded it.

[death trap]

Well if xbla dev didnt keep remakeing old acrcade games perhaps they would sell more. Who the fuck wants to play fucking pacman again and again. Half of the time the devs havnt even bothered updateing the game in anyway, they just build an emulator and run the old code.

If they done away with all that bullshit and conectrated on makeing original games or doing a proper update to classic games (like bomberman) then they would get better reviews and more people would buy the games.

As it is now Im not going to spend money for a game I was playing when I was 10. Certainly not when I can play them on my pc for very very cheap or free in most cases.

[bucko]

Well I've got them all on my HDD as demos so I hope they don't remove the buying feature, who knows maybe ill have some games that none of you will have

[stevenalvarado]

Why not just make them free. Damn MS is so greedy

Why not just make them good? Damn these "developers" are so greedy

[AcidPenguiN]

I think there are plenty of criteria for an xbla game to meet before it gets removed, the only xbla games that will be affected by this are the really terrible ones that if I were the developer for them I would be ashamed of and would want to go missing from xbla.

based on their quoted reactions I would guess there was a little bit of sneaky journalism abound since we have no idea what the journalist asked them. The journalist could have blown the whole thing out of proportion just to get those reactions from the N+ developers.

Do we really want an xbla elephant graveyard? A place where all the xbla games that no one wants to buy are supposed to sit and rot?

If people aren't downloading those games now, when they're in the main list, why the hell do they think people are going to go into the dungeon to dig them out?

[hyfall381]

i like this. i agree. if an arcade game sucks, cut it! if its been out for a while, and hasnt gotten good reviews, just do away with it. this will drive developers to come out with better games. look at how many awful xbla games there are.
if a game gets poor reviews and not too many people buy it, it should be discontinued. just like many stores do when a product isnt selling.

[WermX]

This is just going to push more developers away to wiiware and the playstation store. It appears Microsoft are doing everything in their power to sabotage their own console. I've never seen so many stupid moves from a video game company except for maybe sega. Keep it up MS, you'll soon be number 1 in no time!

This post has been edited by WermX: Jun 15 2008, 06:20 PM

[trentdadi]

If you have some meat that is bad in a grocery store, you dont put it in the bad meat section, you throw that stuff out and put some good meat out there instead.

[pinkerton]

If you have some meat that is bad in a grocery store, you dont put it in the bad meat section, you throw that stuff out and put some good meat out there instead.

Thats because its bad for your health!

If your left with the ugly slag at the end of the night, you'd still have a play after having a few beers.

[Martinchris23]

If you have some meat that is bad in a grocery store, you dont put it in the bad meat section, you throw that stuff out and put some good meat out there instead.

Worst. Analogy. Ever.

[jimjom]

Maybe not worst, but pretty bad.

I still feel the reasoning is shitty. Must be some money loss associated with keeping these up or something.

Cluttered? Hardly difficult to find anything or browse, its alphabetical.


In any case, I got a 120 so I am downloading EVERY arcade game. I'm up to Hardwoods as of last night. Kinda fun, in a stupid way.