Official Xbox Live Arcade Thread

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mosaic said:
You guys are crazy.

See, what I like most about XBLA is that it's not constantly sucking down my Microsoft Points. If I buy 1600 MS points, they last me two or three months, because Microsoft is carefully limiting the number of titles that come out.

Nintendo, on the other hand, is putting out 3 or 4 games per week on Virtual Console, and my wallet has been suffering immensely because of that output. I've gone through about 6,000 Wii points in the last two months. Ouch!

Microsoft is just trying to help consumers be fiscally responsible. I appreciate that.
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you just gave me an idea for the press release the next time something slips
 
mosaic said:
You guys are crazy.

See, what I like most about XBLA is that it's not constantly sucking down my Microsoft Points. If I buy 1600 MS points, they last me two or three months, because Microsoft is carefully limiting the number of titles that come out.

Nintendo, on the other hand, is putting out 3 or 4 games per week on Virtual Console, and my wallet has been suffering immensely because of that output. I've gone through about 6,000 Wii points in the last two months. Ouch!

Microsoft is just trying to help consumers be fiscally responsible. I appreciate that.
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That.... had me chuckle.

"Guys, I like that Microsoft's online service isn't putting out anything that interests me. That way, I can spend my dollars for content on their competitor's service! 15 bucks last me almost a quarter of a year on XBLA, meanwhile, I've spent 50+ dollars on Nintendo's service in 2 months alone! Zowie!"
 
"Xbox Live Arcade for the week of 2/19

What’s up with Arcade this week? Well I am glad you ask (or about to) so I’ll give you the straight deal-eo:

There will be no Xbox Live Arcade release this Wednesday, as the scheduled title was delayed. We have a very high bar that each title must pass over in order to be released on Xbox Live Arcade and unfortunately, no titles were ready in time.

There is not much more to say then that (or is there?) As soon as I have news about next week, I’ll fire up the video camera post about it."
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Why are there released games with bugs then like Doom with the leaderboard problem? Why hasn't it been patched? Why are you continuing to sell a product with a known bug?
 
Bearillusion said:
Why are there released games with bugs then like Doom with the leaderboard problem? Why hasn't it been patched? Why are you continuing to sell a product with a known bug?
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Or Contra?
 
New Castle Crashers trailer. Looks great!


http://www.gametrailers.com/player.php?r=1&type=wmv&id=17190

Direct links (save as)
QuickTime (MOV)
Windows Media (WMV)

015.jpg
 
arne said:
major nelson doesn't read gaf?
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But people from the XBLA team do and my comment was directed at them. Sorry if that wasn't clear but they came in here to defend a video when they should be addressing problems like the one I and others have outlined. I don't mind if a bug slips through, though it's not ideal, just fix it and stop pretending it doesn't exist.
 
Bearillusion said:
But people from the XBLA team do and my comment was directed at them. Sorry if that wasn't clear but they came in here to defend a video when they should be addressing problems like the one I and others have outlined. I don't mind if a bug slips through, though it's not ideal, just fix it and stop pretending it doesn't exist.
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there's two folks (that I know of) from the actual XBLA team on here, one started this thread and the other i haven't seen in ages.

the rest of us, like cpaladino, we can try to get answers, but that doesn't mean we have a reply.
 
arne said:
there's two folks (that I know of) from the actual XBLA team on here, one started this thread and the other i haven't seen in ages.

the rest of us, like cpaladino, we can try to get answers, but that doesn't mean we have a reply.
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Ok fair enough. It's just frustrating the reasoning for no games being released is because of strict quality control etc when there are games already released with bugs that the team appear to have no intention of fixing.

For the record I love the concept of XBLA and I want to see it grow.

PS more arcade classics please. :)
 
So here's how I see it:

Microsoft is really that absentee, uncaring father you hopefully never had. XBLA Wednesday is Christmas, and you get alternating gifts of a broken Slinky or a chance to work half the day down at the pencil eraser factory.
 
Castle Crashers looks great...I'll probably get it I guess. I just got 1000 free points from some XBLA trivia thing so why not
 
crap, the mood in here is bleak.
 
Wow, when has this thread turned into a bitchfest? And comparing XBLA to VC is not fair, since VC is just emulated old games (i.e. rom dump place). You can criticize MS decision to require all old games to be 'remade', however comparing VC with XBLA is apples to oranges.

There's a lot of great content on XBLA and even more coming, however obviously a new game isn't going to appear every day on the service.

The only mistake they did was to mishandle the PR side of things. I wonder how things will change when new management takes place, though..
 
thorns said:
Wow, when has this thread turned into a bitchfest? And comparing XBLA to VC is not fair, since VC is just emulated old games (i.e. rom dump place). You can criticize MS decision to require all old games to be 'remade', however comparing VC with XBLA is apples to oranges.

There's a lot of great content on XBLA and even more coming, however obviously a new game isn't going to appear every day on the service.

The only mistake they did was to mishandle the PR side of things. I wonder how things will change when new management takes place, though..
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How did they remake Ms Pacman? Do you think it really takes more than a week to get a game like that ready for XBLA? I'm not talking about online games.

I'll stop now. :)
 
ChrisAllenFiz said:
Yes. A lot more.
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I don't mean through certification and what other hurdles they have to jump throught I simply mean from the time they start working on it to the time they submit it to MS. How long would it take to add acheivements and a leaderboard? Oh and a border.
 
Bearillusion said:
I don't mean through certification and what other hurdles they have to jump throught I simply mean from the time they start working on it to the time they submit it to MS. How long would it take to add acheivements and a leaderboard? Oh and a border.
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I asked this before in this thread, but do you really think it's that easy?

To somehow run a game on the 360 they have to emulate it or convert the code to something the 360 can understand. I don't think it could take a week to do either one of those things. I mean, it's not like they can just cut and paste code from 20 years ago and have it run on the 360.

And it's not like they can write 1 emulator to run every game on Xbox Live Arcade. To run perfectly, I'd guess they would have to write specific code to emulate each game.

Then, they have to integrate achievements in that code. They have to know when you've got to a certain point in a level, or got X points, so they can give you the achievement. Again, they have to change or atleast get some output from the actual game code. Not just cut and paste.

The online leaderboards would be a similar process...

I'm not a game designer, and I've never written an emulator, but I am a programmer, and my intuition tells me something like what I said should be necessary. Someone correct me if I'm wrong.

Anyway, if it works remotely like I have described, I'm not saying it would take lots of months, but it would certainly not take a week.
 
Bearillusion said:
They should have used something like MAME. It's free. :D
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Ah yes, the emulator that has been under development for 10 years!

Adding hooks into code for achievements when they weren`t there in the first place, and the code is non native. Now that's a bitch. you probably have to monitor memory addresses for changes and such. Trust me, it's not a weeks job.
 
Bearillusion said:
I don't mean through certification and what other hurdles they have to jump throught I simply mean from the time they start working on it to the time they submit it to MS. How long would it take to add acheivements and a leaderboard? Oh and a border.
Click to expand...

If you really think it takes a week then you're in for a rude awakening.
 
The bottom line, regardless of the hows and whys, is "the games." More to the point, the availability. People want to play games. People want to spend points to play games. You can't spend points if there's very little to spend them on. The complaining in this thread isn't because of Nintendo fanboys coming in to troll. It's from XBLA fanboys that desperately need their fix.

I enjoy playing classic games. I enjoy playing original games too.

At a couple games per month on average, XBLA can't satiate me... especially when you factor-in that I (like most people) only download and pay for games that I find enjoyable. In the past three months, I've spent points on Assault Heroes and Pac-Man. That's it. I have points sitting there, waiting to be spent. And an unused 1600pts card waiting to be scratched and entered. I love the concept of XBLA... I want to be its biggest fan... but I can't do that when weeks go by with nada.

Call it a "rom dump," if you will, but Nintendo is dropping at least 3 games per week on VC so far. With that output, I'm spending points and playing games like crazy. No, they don't code achievements or graphical upgrades (apart from framerate fixes in some games). They just release the games as they were. I'm fine with that. Why? Because in the end, I play games to play games. I also like having a legitimate way to play them, as opposed to skirting the law to do so.

In the end, it comes down to games.

Anyone can defend the XBLA team until the cows come home, but the bottom line is they aren't meeting the needs of their hungry customers that want to buy and spend MS points. Really, there's no reason why Microsoft can't satisfy that need... and there's no good reason why output is so low. It's Microsoft for goodness' sake -- they make BILLIONS of dollars a year.
 
Mosaic speaks the truth - and as the months go by if MS this dripfeed then more and more people will use the other marketplaces regardless of these additions. I'm not downplaying these additions because most are really cool - like multiplayer and achievements but at the end of the day its the games.
 
thorns said:
Wow, when has this thread turned into a bitchfest? And comparing XBLA to VC is not fair, since VC is just emulated old games (i.e. rom dump place). You can criticize MS decision to require all old games to be 'remade', however comparing VC with XBLA is apples to oranges.

There's a lot of great content on XBLA and even more coming, however obviously a new game isn't going to appear every day on the service.

The only mistake they did was to mishandle the PR side of things. I wonder how things will change when new management takes place, though..
Click to expand...

My hunch is that they'll just stop releasing press releases alltogether due to the backlash they are getting. Just as they stopped giving timetables for game releases after Street Fighter kept getting delayed.

mosaic you hit the nail on the head. People are begging them to spend money. I have a bunch of unused points on my account and would buy more and more, but there is nothing worth spending them on. The last game I bought was Assault Heroes and the Lumines packs. They next original game that comes out I'll be glad to buy another points card to buy it. I am not a Wii (don't own one) fan trolling the XBLA service, I am a decent money spending 360 supporter (check my gamertag) who feels completley burned by this service and it annoys me to see consumers of other consoles getting a better alternative.

I'll say it again. Would I rather spend points on Streets of Rage, Donkey Kong Country, or Super Mario World than spend them on Root Beer Tapper, Paperboy, or Ms Pacman? I'll spend them on the classic SNES and Genesis games any day of the week.

Ask me the same question and replace the XBLA arcade shovelware with Alien Homind, Castle Crashers, Worms, Castlevania and Assualt Heroes and my money would go to Microsoft.
 
mosaic said:
The bottom line, regardless of the hows and whys, is "the games." More to the point, the availability. People want to play games. People want to spend points to play games. You can't spend points if there's very little to spend them on. The complaining in this thread isn't because of Nintendo fanboys coming in to troll. It's from XBLA fanboys that desperately need their fix.

I enjoy playing classic games. I enjoy playing original games too.

At a couple games per month on average, XBLA can't satiate me... especially when you factor-in that I (like most people) only download and pay for games that I find enjoyable. In the past three months, I've spent points on Assault Heroes and Pac-Man. That's it. I have points sitting there, waiting to be spent. And an unused 1600pts card waiting to be scratched and entered. I love the concept of XBLA... I want to be its biggest fan... but I can't do that when weeks go by with nada.

Call it a "rom dump," if you will, but Nintendo is dropping at least 3 games per week on VC so far. With that output, I'm spending points and playing games like crazy. No, they don't code achievements or graphical upgrades (apart from framerate fixes in some games). They just release the games as they were. I'm fine with that. Why? Because in the end, I play games to play games. I also like having a legitimate way to play them, as opposed to skirting the law to do so.

In the end, it comes down to games.

Anyone can defend the XBLA team until the cows come home, but the bottom line is they aren't meeting the needs of their hungry customers that want to buy and spend MS points. Really, there's no reason why Microsoft can't satisfy that need... and there's no good reason why output is so low. It's Microsoft for goodness' sake -- they make BILLIONS of dollars a year.
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I think what happened was just a miscalculation on MS's part. Maybe from their knowledge of PC emulation (which I'd assume was much better than Nintendo's), they thought that ROM dumps just wouldn't be able to sell; and I think it's probably true that a ROM dump is better suited to the average Wii user than the average 360 user. So they weighed the costs and benefits of Achievements, etc. vs. pure dumps and decided in favor of the former. I'm sure one of the costs they considered was longer release times (and some games not being on XBLA at all due to developer unwillingness to do anything but dump). The problem now is that it seems clear that execution-wise, they've probably performed worse than their nightmare scenario w/r/t getting games out on XBLA, which is likely part of the reason why we're seeing people leaving.

On its face, I actually quite prefer the path MS has taken, but their poor execution is already starting to cost them dearly. Their model may have built-in the fact that Nintendo would outpace them getting games up, but getting outpaced this much means that they start to lose that image of being the best provider in this arena, and it also risks irrelevance in the long-term. Things move quickly, and you can only ride on XBLA being a great idea for so long.
 
Slate article from old guy (his characterization, not mine) basically praising the hell out of XBLA:

After more than two months with a "Wii60"—gamer slang for owning both a Nintendo Wii and an Xbox 360—I've been surprised to discover that the 360 is the console I turn to when I want a quick gaming fix. The Wii is a "party console"—a go-to system to impress guests, and a guaranteed good time when more than one (physically present) person wants to play. But the allegedly hard-core 360, and not the family-friendly Wii, appeals to the casual gamer in me—the guy who loves to play addictive and familiar mini-games.

....

It may not be clear at first glance, but card games, mahjong, and arcade classics scratch the same gaming itch. They are all, in the lingo of Danish game theorist Jesper Juul, "emergence" games, not so different in their underlying structure from every game humans have played for 5,000 years. The addictive play of Pac-Man, and that of checkers and solitaire, emerges from a simple set of rules that compels players to engage with level after repetitive level. What Juul calls the "progression" game, the newer video-game variant that combines narrative with game-play, has won the hearts of hard-core gamers. But the 20 million downloads from the Xbox Live Arcade indicate that the emergence video game still has life, even on expensive next-generation consoles. (Which isn't to say that every game on the system is a delight. Gauntlet, for example, is much lamer than I recall.)

....


The Virtual Console and the Xbox Live Arcade both exploit nostalgia. Nintendo's Virtual Console games, however, have more in common with the games that dominate today's marketplace: They come from the era when consoles abandoned emergence games like Pac-Man and Tetris and groped toward the progression style that today's gamers know and love. The Xbox Live Arcade games—the retro classics, the conventional card games, and the original titles such as the free game Hexic HD—reach back to an earlier time, one that appeals both to people who find today's games too complex and time-consuming and to those who just want to steal a few minutes of gaming time in between sessions of Oblivion and Gears of War.

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. A few weeks ago, as I stumbled my way through an online Gears of War match, one of the other players scoffed, "I don't think this kid has ever played video games before." Oh yeah? Check out the Root Beer Tapper leaderboard, where my high score marks me as the 688th best player on the entire system.
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http://www.slate.com/id/2160643?nav=tap3
 
Now that Alien Hominid HD and Worms are coming soon, I'm gonna need more MS points. I won 500 points from the Lumines tournament, but haven't heard a peep from Microsoft. Does anyone know what is going on with the tournament?
 
Rocky_Balboa said:
Now that Alien Hominid HD and Worms are coming soon, I'm gonna need more MS points. I won 500 points from the Lumines tournament, but haven't heard a peep from Microsoft. Does anyone know what is going on with the tournament?
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That's what I would like to know. I'm getting shafted in all these Microsoft promotions. First the Old Spice challenge gives me Level 2 rewards when I have over 10k points. No 500 pts from the Lumines contest and I didnt get my free XBLA games with purchase of a new X360.

I know someone selling 3200 points for $20 around my area, I think I'll stock up. I already have 4300 points though but what the hell. More points doesn't hurt. Too bad I hardly spend them :lol

I guess I'll get Alien Hominid tomorrow
 
Spent a good 45mins on Alien Homnid so far, first impressions are great (maybe teh waits made it sweeter), the Hand Drawn Graphic style is Superb, the controls feel solid and tight & the characters and just great.

One thing tho this game is hard, no cakewalk and you really have to learn how to play, its been 45mins and I'm not past 1-2 yet.

The thing is I'm loving it tho, great for 800 points thing this is gona be alot of fun for alot of people this week.
 
I'm surprised that Alien Hominid isn't being discussed more. I thought a lot of people were looking forward to this one.
pswii60 said:
It's so good it got its own thread.
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doh! That's what I get for spending most of the day working and not on GAF.
 
I went to order some more points from the marketplace..and pressed a on the 7.99 one, but hit B before buying it. I wasn't given the points for it and went with the 24.99 dollar points and just got them. I am wondering why the 7.99 is showing up on my banks website?
 
Anyone know what ever happened to the Lumines Artist Pack promised back at last E3?

Lumines II is already out for the PSP, so i was wondering when will this be out.
 
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