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[JonathanEx]

Step 1: redesign the Marketplace, make it easier to navigate, have the focus on the best content.
Step 2: stick old/crappy stuff in to an archive bit, which isn't exactly hidden, but it's like, the last option, with maybe 100/200 point price cuts (for 400/800 point games respectively) so they still sell, are there if people want them, but don't give the impression that the service is full of crap.

 

[DarkJC]

If MS wants to increase sales why not have a virtual bargain bin of sorts where they give you big discounts on old games that have a bad conversion rate? Not only will the developer at least make some money on the title, MS gets more too, and consumers who might not have been willing to spend 400/800 points on a title might be willing (on impulse perhaps) to spend 200 points on it (or something similar).

 

[soldat7]

Another notch in the stupid belt for Microsoft. In my opinion this move could go a long way in preventing certain innovative yet niche games from ever appearing on XBLA.

Redesign the UI but don't remove the titles.

 

[FightyF]

Why does it seem strange? In light of recent revelations by developers, this is the best move that MS could have done.

It seems strange because those "developers" turned out to be retarded people who know
nothing about running a business.

Rlan, thanks for the article!

I proposed a solution long ago on GAF, but I think there could be an even better one if they look at a better GUI overall, rather than sticking to the "Blades" setup when browsing games. I basically copied the post into my blog (which I've got to start working on, basically just converting my genius GAF posts into blog entries):

http://videogamegenius.blogspot.com/2008/03/how-to-improve-games-tab-on-xbox-360.html

But that was based on the assumption that you would use the "blade" interface. As we have seen with the XBox Originals interface, they could effectively make their own unique interface.

What MS should do is implement Silverlight compatibility on the 360, and when you go online, it simply downloads a Silverlight app that is your Marketplace.

Which means you can have very sexy interfaces for things like XBLA, or Marketplace, or anywhere you need to browse a large quantity of items.

I saw this one skin for Media Portal that looked awesome, and I wondered why you couldn't have an interface like that for Marketplace...

 

[MrNyarlathotep]

ala Kung Fu Chaos/Little Big Planet?

Do you mean Ragdoll Kung Fu?
Kung Fu Chaos -> Heavenly Sword
Ragdoll Kung Fu -> Little Big Planet.

Spoiler

Off Topic, I went to school with Alex Evans from Media Molecule

 

[chicken_ramen]

There was a good article recently, I think it was on gamasutra, about the DD space not having something similar to constructed scarcity. The example the article used was Disney. With Disney they don't just keep reprinting DVDs of their movies, they do it in limited runs with several years between repeats. The point is that as long as purchasers know that they've got a limited time to access something they might be more likely to buy just so they don't miss out. Its artificially creating a situation of rarity.

I'm sure the economists have looked at the existing 'long tail' of some of these less successful products and decided to see if it's not more profitable to have a cut off point for availability. Maybe it won't be, who knows.

edit: http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=18692

 

[FightyF]

There was a good article recently, I think it was on gamasutra, about the DD space not having something similar to constructed scarcity. The example the article used was Disney. With Disney they don't just keep reprinting DVDs of their movies, they do it in limited runs with several years between repeats. The point is that as long as purchasers know that they've got a limited time to access something they might be more likely to buy just so they don't miss out. Its artificially creating a situation of rarity.

I'm sure the economists have looked at the existing 'long tail' of some of these less successful products and decided to see if it's not more profitable to have a cut off point for availability. Maybe it won't be, who knows.

edit: http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=18692

That article was already discussed and we came to the conclusion that the writer was retarded in the head.

Seriously though, it was a poor argument and many others summed up my thoughts in that thread...search for it. Simply put, the retail space and DD space are very different, and thus the tactics employed should be different. Rather than looking at Disney, I say MS should look at Apple's iTunes, which boasts a million times the content of XBLA, yet doesn't have an issue with "over-crowding".

Besides, there are other retail tactics that have yet to be employed, such as decreasing prices (THAT could be done for a limited time). How about for the next month, 2 XBLA games go on for half price. Sure, slap on LIMITED TIME OFFER on those games. Some games are simply at the wrong price in my mind...and due to the slow sales of some of these titles, others probably agree. I'd buy Roboblitz for 800pts, I'd go for Astropop at 400pts...retail games get price drops...I think this is a far more logical solution than what that Gamasutra article proposes.

 

[Durante]

This article: http://www.attackofthepowerbrick.com/2008/05/25/cleaning-up-xbla/
is actually a good read.

I fully agree with what it identifies as the main problem:

I feel that the sorting and presentation of XBLA is a major problem factoring in to this. In fact I would say it’s the main problem and the one that should be addressed first. As mentioned previously, XBLA titles can be sorted alphabetically and by genre. The Marketplace also displays recent releases and “featured” releases, but these are both buried a couple of layers deep into the menus.

There’s no option to sort by release date. If Metacritic is so important, how about giving us an option to sort by that average as well? How about allowing us to do a textual search with our Chatpads or USB keyboards? How about a decent sized list sorted by popularity? How about allowing us to view by letter instead of just presenting one massive list?

All of these improvements are so trivial to implement that I seriously have no idea why MS bothers with non-solutions like this one. Once they have these standard options, they can get into more interesting stuff like recommendations based on buying behaviour, user-rating of games and sorting by ratings of users with similar taste, and all the other awesome stuff systems like amazon or anidb had for years. With a sane and capable system supporting libraries of thousands, not just hundreds, of actively sold titles at a time wouldn't be a problem at all.

 

[charlequin]

leaving shit games out that could possibly turn people off from their service is not in MS best interest.

There is no possible way that removing titles from the service can affect people's perception of XBLA as full of mediocre games. Only acquiring, releasing, and hyping extremely good games can do that. There are far more execrable albums on iTunes than a person could even hope to catalog, but you'll never see them unless you go looking and you'll never think about them because all the good albums you want are already there.

 

[radjago]

No joke, Aaron and whatever other brainchildren came up with this scheme need to go read The Long Tail immediately. This is one of the worst ideas I've heard in ages. What if my likes and dislikes don't align with those of the reviewers that make up metacritic?

They're completely missing the point of electronic distribution and this whole situation is clearly an outcropping of their inability to design an intuitive, useful interface to showcase more than 100 pieces of content within a category.

What if Amazon or iTunes or Rhapsody operated in this fashion, instead of having other sorts of means of sorting and searching content, to allow people to find things they would not have otherwise bought? I suppose keeping this content is "another" way to search for content, but it's a bassackwards way.

What if they had a system for suggesting content for people based upon their purchase history?

The mind boggles at the thought process here. Who exactly do they think they're helping? The consumer, who gets to try every game before they buy it and make an educated purchase decision? Future content creators, who now run the risk of having less than a year on "shelf" thereby making other platforms more attractive options for the risks they take?

This guy.

Fix it, filter it, make it searchable, tag it, rate it, recommend it based on my ratings and purchases, but for the love of all things halo, don't do away with it.

 

[voltron]

lol @ thread title change. MS really need to jump on a reverse bike and do some back-pedalling on this one.

 

[pswii60]

Spoiler

Off Topic, I went to school with Alex Evans from Media Molecule

Spoiler

I live on the same planet as Miyamoto. Do I win a medal?

 

[Ding]

But if every new owner turns on auto-downloads and downloads every single game on there, it can't cost that little... can it?

That isn't how auto-download works. It only auto downloads new titles as they are released. Nothing in the back catalog is touched. People complained about this "limitation" when the feature was first introduced.