“Arcade becomes [for us] the ability to bring in a new set of audiences. They’re probably a little bit more casually focused, they’re looking for a new family experience or they’re more price focused,” Robbie Bach, head of Microsoft’s Entertainment and Devices division, told the Financial Times.
The $279 Arcade will include a wireless controller and casual games including Pac-Man, Uno and Luxor 2.
I'm sure we'll probably get the official announcement Monday morning if the Oct. 23 street date is correct. With that said I'm still pretty concerned about the full games/demos confusion. It's looking more like it's it's full versions of those 5 games, but you also get 5 additional trial games/demos. The engadget unboxing shows the disc interface and it shows a option for demos that's separate from the 5 games. Seems like the disc is similar to the Live Arcade Unplugged disc since they have be prepared for the fact the buyers may not have a broadband connection and the necessary means to redeem full game codes via Live Marketplace. Now they'll need Live in order to purchase the full version of the demos, but they shouldn't for the 5 full games. The bad thing is I don't think the disc-based games can moved to a hard drive. You'd have to download the trial off Marketplace and onto your hard drive to do that.
