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Underperforming XBLA titles to be removed
- Thread starter jvm
- Start date
CrapSandwich
former Navy SEAL
This is the kind of thing that happens when you have stiff men in stiff-collared suits making all the decisions. Notice that any execs who spoke with any kind of passion about gaming are no longer working for Xbox: Ed Fries, Seamus Blackley, Peter Moore, and J Allard. Now they've got who? Jeff Bell, Shane Kim, and Don Mattrick. None of these guys seem like they have a clue about or give a fuck about gaming.
TwoForFlinching said:
I think they could fix this easily by allowing delisted games to be redownloaded for people who have already purchased it, and simply removing those games from being available for purchase through the store.
The only complication comes in when someone takes the game around to somebody else's house on a memory card and the download reverts to being a demo again under the other person's login.
Rhazer Fusion
Member
Why not put the games in a separate section and discount them? They could sale a little better at half price or even less. Better some money than none, right?
harSon said:
Funny you should mention that. I've been cranking through some numbers.
Out of the 128 XBLA games I could find on Metacritic:
55 are below 65%.
As it turns out, there are also 55 remakes. ("remakes" meaning a port of an existing classic game, not something like Marble Blast or Alien Hominid).
30 games span both of these groups (remakes under 65%)
I don't think 54.5% is an overwhelming majority.
Willy Wanka
my god this avatar owns
Good news about the DRM fix but what the heck are they thinking about with this game removal bollocks? Not only that but they are using a crappy aggregate review site to work out the cut off point
Even though I might not own many or even any of these games, this kind of thing defeats the point of digital downloads and puts me off buying any more.
Even though I might not own many or even any of these games, this kind of thing defeats the point of digital downloads and puts me off buying any more.
Uno Ill Nino
Banned
Seriously. My love for the Xbox360 has been dying a slow death since I RROD'd back before X-Mas. Now this. I buy games to own, not rent. This news pisses me off. I guess it goes to show that if you want to have a game, get a physical copy. Still though, I'm done buying shit off XBLA.
You know the worst part of this?
We're all aware of this now. We know that buying a game that rates under 65% is a somewhat risky proposition. So we're less likely to buy games under 65%, which means the conversion rate will be harder for developers to achieve.
And then we'll get to a point where we're going to feel afraid to purchase XBLA titles that don't have ratings posted on Metacritic yet. One bad review can spike a score down hard.
This has the potential to snowball in the worst possible fashion. I don't know what Marc Whitten was thinking when giving this interview - this policy should have never been made public.
Mario, did you know this was coming? Another developer I talked to today had no idea and felt fairly blindsided by the whole thing.
We're all aware of this now. We know that buying a game that rates under 65% is a somewhat risky proposition. So we're less likely to buy games under 65%, which means the conversion rate will be harder for developers to achieve.
And then we'll get to a point where we're going to feel afraid to purchase XBLA titles that don't have ratings posted on Metacritic yet. One bad review can spike a score down hard.
This has the potential to snowball in the worst possible fashion. I don't know what Marc Whitten was thinking when giving this interview - this policy should have never been made public.
Mario, did you know this was coming? Another developer I talked to today had no idea and felt fairly blindsided by the whole thing.
AlphaTwo00
Member
This.firehawk12 said:
Guess I'm going to put a rush buy on this over RB songs.
Not surprised by this. The current game list is pretty cluttered, though it could be made better by improved organization. If you're a new Xbox 360 owner and looking for something to grab, and you have a brain the size of a pea, you'll just be overwhelmed. Also, people who don't watch scores have a chance of buying games that turn out to be crap, complain to MS, and now MS looks bad for approving crap in the first place, even thuogh they probably only saw a rough work up during the approval process, and didn't expect it to turn out to be such crap. At least they're protecting us from Cave shooters!
Kai Dracon
Writing a dinosaur space opera symphony
Going along with what others have suggested, this has got to be the idea dreamed up by suits who are concerned only with polishing the image of XBLA by eliminating titles that will drag the collective scores of the service catalog down. Behold the power of meta-critic numbers over the Tin Men.
It is indeed just retarded and undermines the entire point of the digital distribution age and the concept of the Long Tail.
On the other hand, the (justified) bitching and protesting of the end user HAS gotten a fix for DRM, so.... if there was ever anything to raise a sh*tstorm over boys, here it is.
"In the neverending battle between good and evil, this one counts."
It is indeed just retarded and undermines the entire point of the digital distribution age and the concept of the Long Tail.
On the other hand, the (justified) bitching and protesting of the end user HAS gotten a fix for DRM, so.... if there was ever anything to raise a sh*tstorm over boys, here it is.
"In the neverending battle between good and evil, this one counts."
SapientWolf
Trucker Sexologist
It sucks when the only game you get for a week is without any redeeming features, but there's no point in pulling the plug on it after the fact. The people who don't want it won't care, but the people that may want to buy it will be upset. It only causes more harm than good. XBLA just needs a better interface. No one wants to scroll down a giant list anymore, and yanking games from the queue isn't going to change that.FFChris said:
AlphaTwo00
Member
No one knows. But one thing is for certain.Rhindle said:
Paid content that has been removed are no longer recoverable right now.
If they removed Galaga, then it's due to license rights having expired, the publisher wanting it removed, or something along those lines. If they're going to remove games for poor sales, they're not going to start with freaking Galaga.Mrbob said:
If they move to a policy of cycling games out of the store to reduce clutter, they're not going just wipe the code of their servers no reason.
But I guess people need a new strawman to play Chicken Little over, now that you can't cry about DRM any more.
KINGOFNOOBS
Banned
:lol Microsoft.
They are smart
1.) Delete XBLA Games
2.) RROD
3.) Cannot redownload games
4.) ??????
5.) AHHHH!
6.) PROFIT!
They are smart
1.) Delete XBLA Games
2.) RROD
3.) Cannot redownload games
4.) ??????
5.) AHHHH!
6.) PROFIT!
Iced_Eagle
Member
FFChris said:
No, that's not what was meant.
The problem is in what gets accepted to get put onto XBLA in the first place! There are so many remakes and other crap that just gets shoveled there with no thought put into it. XBLA should have gone for an approach of not just being ports of arcade games, and that would help.
We realized this fact AFTER they've all been on XBLA. If they would have not made so many stupid decisions on what to put on XBLA, then we wouldn't be in this place now.
Rhindle said:
Or maybe I'd rather not pay $160 for a largewr hard-drive, but I also want to continue purchasing future XBLA games. Currently, I have a gig and a half of space left after just a year' worth of use. If the larger HDD does drop in price drastically, my only other option is deleting the games I rarely play anymore.
This isn't even based on what the ACTUAL sales rate of the game is compared to the cost of storage, but compared to the attatch rate of demos and metacritic review scores. How does that even begin to make sense?
Edit: as for XBLA needing the crap cleaned out; what I personally think is crap and what another gaffer thinks is crap are likely to be different, and myself and said random gaffer are FAR more similar in taste, to begin with, than any two random 360 owners.
There's a bunch of bad games. Your view is that prior to these games being placed on XBLA, it would have been better not to have them on XBLA. Therefore having them on XBLA was a "stupid decision."Iced_Eagle said:
Now that these games are on XBLA, your view is that it is suddenly better to have them on XBLA. Therefore not having them from XBLA is a "stupid decision."
You're going to have to help me with the logic here.
HallucinatingElvis
Banned
how so? why call them lazy when our updates are action packed bags of goodies....so we arent getting one for the spring OH NOES!Pelydr said:
Dragona Akehi
Retired
One step forward. Two steps back.
MS really don't want me to ever buy a 360, do they?
MS really don't want me to ever buy a 360, do they?
EverSoTrendy
Banned
Dragona Akehi said:
Maybe not, they don't have that many cliche JRPGS that would suit your taste.
Bearillusion
Banned
MS should just refund the points if you can't redownload it.
Dragona Akehi
Retired
EverSoTrendy said:
On the contrary! The 360 has more RPGs than PS3!
PS: cute with the "cliché" bit.
Xenon
Member
I think this just highlights the fact that the people who designed XBLA simple layout didn't take into account how it would work with a much larger library. I hate searching through all my XBLA titles and am shocked that there is no way to separate owned vs demo titles. What I really want is something akin to IE favorites where I can create my own folders and organize it myself.
Ok thats a little off topic. If MS does this its going to be a major talking point against digital distribution. If they want to pull the games to keep XBLA from becoming bloated with junk thats fine, but my recommendation would be some way for each user to pull up their XBLA purchases and be able to re-download from that menu. This would also save a lot of time for people who have had a drive crash.
Ok thats a little off topic. If MS does this its going to be a major talking point against digital distribution. If they want to pull the games to keep XBLA from becoming bloated with junk thats fine, but my recommendation would be some way for each user to pull up their XBLA purchases and be able to re-download from that menu. This would also save a lot of time for people who have had a drive crash.
The Faceless Master
Member
i guess i was right along in my stance of not putting up my cash money to lease anything on Xbox Live. there were times when i really was tempted to lease some software, but the terms just weren't good enough, and now, this...
Rhindle said:
Maybe I wasn't clear enough.
It's not the availability of games for purchase that concerns me, it's the availablitiy of games for download.
If I reach a point where I have to start deleting purchased games, I want to know that I can redownload them again in the future.
I'm assuming here that delisted games will no longer be available for re-downloading, because if that were the case then delisting them would be a LOSS of money, since they'd still be paying to store them, but unable to sell them.