Man, things are getting pretty heated in this thread. Strange.
Honestly, the thing this all reminds me of is when I took a brief job working for a music magazine in Boston. They'd send me out to do interviews and write articles on some of the local independent artists, and I used to come back and remark that there were only two types of interviews.
The first set would just blame everything. The local audience just didn't "understand" them, or their tastes were bad, or the conditions were shitty, or the press wasn't doing it's job. How much better things would be for them if they could relocate to NYC or the West Coast, or wherever. Anywhere but here. It's Boston. There aren't enough "_____"-genre nightclubs. There aren't enough "_____"-genre fans here. The pay-percentage of door-charge sucked. "I mean, it's different elsewhere, man! Seriously!"
"You have no idea how impossible it is to sell a record these days!" It was all about the sheer impossibility of making their little mac-pressed indy album sell in the sea of tens of thousands of discs in the local Tower Records. The big record labels were just putting them out of business, shutting them out. They couldn't get shelf space. They couldn't get ear-time. They didn't stand a chance. It was buried on a sea of shit. ALl people wanted was the Rolling Stones Greatest Hits! Life was unfair. On and on and on.
And, honestly, a lot of times the interview was really convincing even. They'd been saying these things for so long, building up their key phrases and points - believing it so earnestly that you began to really buy into their explanation. Maybe it was really unfair. Maybe we did need a change.
But, you know...there was another type of interview. And that other set of musicians, they would just talk to me about how much they loved to make music. How much they enjoyed the opportunity to perform. How this band they heard the other day was awesome, how the music scene in Boston was better than it had ever been. How they would give their left leg to work on a project with so-and-so. How much they enjoyed the classic, popular acts in their field. How much they respected them for what they had done. They'd pick up their guitar in the middle of the interview and just start playing it out. "Like THIS, man! Yeah! They were amazing!"
And, you know...what's funny is that when I look at all of those people now, the only ones I know of who have broken out, or "made it" to any real degree all belonged to the latter set.
So...this isn't the first time I've read an article like this about XBLA, but I never really have a sympathetic reaction anymore. Instead, all I hear is excuses.
"Oh man, you don't get it. All the games on XBLA are shit, and people are too stupid so they just end up buying them." Yeah, maybe. Or maybe those old games are selling well because they're really good. Maybe the reason that "classic games" have a market is because they are, you know....actually "classic."
"Oh man, if I was just on WiiWare, you'd see. There's so much less competition on WiiWare. If I was one of five different people on this service, we'd sell boatloads." Sure, "everyone makes money at launch." I've heard that before.
But here's the thing. Give it a year, and I bet we hear the same things from WiiWare. "Oh man, there's 100 different games, and they're all shit. Everyone's buying Mario 2 on the VC side, and my game isn't selling shit!" "Nintendo put out the fucking Pokemon Farmer game and all the morons are just buying that crap and ignoring my brilliance!"
Excuses, excuses. It will never change.
Maybe they deserve to sell more, maybe they don't. But, honestly, I don't really think that the "problems" they are identifying are what is really holding them back. We'll see.
