Will Live Arcade Fizzle out or will it find Mainstream succes?

[mojovonious]

I honestly love the thing. I think I've spent more time with the arcade than any game I own. The problem is that it costs money to produce these games, and it just seems like most mainstream gamers won't be interested in it. Why play smash tv when Halo 3 is out? I know MS intended to draw the mainstream crowd in with this feature, but I really don't see anyone who isn't interested in getting a 360 for Halo or Madden, to get one for Zuma and Bedazzled.

It was a great idea for us, the hardcore gamers, but we're only what, 10% of the market?

 

[One Shot]

I hope so, That will mean finally finding a co op game online in Smash TV.

 

[<nu>faust]

well geometry wars sold 52k so far hasn't it ?(the latest number could be more than that)not a bad number considering the limited userbase of 360 and the low production budget needed to produce the game.

 

[heliosphere]

Sure it costs money but it costs a lot less money than a full AAA title and you have the potential to get a much higher percentage of the sale cost with the online distribution. I don't know how much MS charges for the hosting and billing service but I'm pretty sure the developer gets a *much* larger slice of the purchase price than with a typical retail game. By the time the retailer has taken their cut of the sale price (often as much as 50%) and you've taken out the costs of manufacturing, distribution, marketing (there will be much more spent marketing a retail title than a live title) and the publisher's cut the developer is probably getting less than $10 from a $50 retail title. Typically they won't even get that until the title has sold enough to cover the publisher's advance.

Most live arcade titles will probably cost about a 10-20% of a typical AAA title to develop and each sale will probably bring in up to 30-50% as much revenue as a retail title so developers should be able to do well selling many fewer titles than they'd need to make a profit at retail. Given the low cost to the consumer of the games it should be quite easy for developers to make a decent profit on live titles unless the market gets totally saturated.

 

[mojovonious]

That's great to hear. I really hope Geomatry Wars sold so well, its a great game and it deserves the recognition. I also noticed that I can now find games in Bankshot Billiards. It was impossible before, but now that more 360s are being sold, I often find a game.

I'm really hoping for COntra: Alien wars, or does Nintendo own the rights to it?

 

[NavNucST3]

I think Arcade will get stronger, I think the biggest issue now, is the "old-school" genre. Its great to play Robotron every once in awhile, but not enough to sustain interest in Arcade. I think once new IPs make their way to the system it will get even more casual gamers.

Right now I think they went with the safest route, a couple of old-school games, a couple of the top online games, and a couple of wild cards like (one of my favorites) Outpost Kaloki X and Wik. I would imagine once they roll out Texas Hold'em, that it will sell maybe as much as GW or better, as long as it isn't another BB@ 1200 points, although it is supposed to be sponsored so we will see.

 

[pegisys]

the sin episodes are going to be on marketplace/arcade, which I think will be cool because the graphics are not quite nextgen, but will probably be a good game

and they will have a few up to date games that may sell in the arcade but not as a standalone game like the basketball game thats using the unreal engine 3

I just hope they come out with larger harddrives soon the 20gig seems to fill up quick

 

[Inane_Dork]

Live Arcade itself may become obsolete, but the paradigm will not. That said, I doubt the Arcade will fall by the wayside. It's already becoming known as the place you go in between big game launches when you have no new game to play (and that's a good thing). They just need keep at it. Slow and steady growth is what the Arcade will get in best case.

 

[pipo]

Arcade will explode. Really, it will be huge. I see lots of original and good looking games on the horizon.

Pick up and play action rules. I'm really looking forward to HoopWorld for example: http://articles.gaminghorizon.com/media/1132809419.67.html

50K+ plus sales for GW (200K+ downloads!) as we speak. Just wait what happens when the X360 has some serious market share...

 

[winstonsmith1978]

I also think XBLA is going to be huge. I would really like to see some next gen games delivered as episodic content, on XBLA.

If i recall correctly, the one restriction that Microsoft has set for XBLA, is that there is an upper limit to the file size of a game download, to prevent long downloads. This figure will obviously rise as bandwidth rises.

So any game with levels, like halo, could be distributed as episodes on XBLA. I keep thinking how great it would be to get a true next gen game, delivered as an episode every month. Think CSI. You buy a new episode every month, solve the case, play it a couple of times, and before you know it, a new episode is ready. The other nice thing is, everyone progresses at the same speed. No one has a chance to spoil the story or episode.

When your HDD gets full, you simply delete old episodes and move on. Ofcourse, since XBLA remembers what you've purchased, you can always go back to an old episode and re-download.

This is how i picture XBLA in the future. So is this type of thing possible with XBLA? or do we have to wait a couple of years for better bandwidth and a bigger HDD?

 

[scooby_dooby]

The Mass Effect trilogy from Bioware is planning episodic content, so between major releases, they will release additional content that will further the story along, and tide you over while they work on the sequal. Sounds great.

XBLive is good, but the prices are a little high for my taste, especially when you convert over to canadian.

 

[Powderkeg]

Probably 90% of the people I see on Xbox Live who have xbox 360's have at least 1 XBL Arcade game. Most have 3-4.

And it will REALLY take off in March when Street Fighter 2 w/online multiplayer hits XBL Arcade.

 

[blakjedi]

Probably 90% of the people I see on Xbox Live who have xbox 360's have at least 1 XBL Arcade game. Most have 3-4.

And it will REALLY take off in March when Street Fighter 2 w/online multiplayer hits XBL Arcade.

Very very true words. I just wish we could have HD Street fighter... Beautiful Hand drawn hires animation has never been done much less equaled

 

[NavNucST3]

Probably 90% of the people I see on Xbox Live who have xbox 360's have at least 1 XBL Arcade game. Most have 3-4.

And it will REALLY take off in March when Street Fighter 2 w/online multiplayer hits XBL Arcade.

I'm pretty sure I skew the average with the 14 that I have. I think one of the only ones I didn't buy was Hearts (if not THE only one).

 

[winstonsmith1978]

The Mass Effect trilogy from Bioware is planning episodic content, so between major releases, they will release additional content that will further the story along, and tide you over while they work on the sequal. Sounds great.

That does sound great. I bought an xbox for KOTOR and I'll probably get a 360 for Mass Effect. If their doing episodic content, then I'm down.

 

[kyleb]

I'm having trouble accepting Live Arcade right now, I'd like to own Geometry Wars but I don't feel like giving MS $6.25 for a game that sells for $5.

 

[Powderkeg]

I'm having trouble accepting Live Arcade right now, I'd like to own Geometry Wars but I don't feel like giving MS $6.25 for a game that sells for $5.

Get PGR3.

It has both games in it, but they don't give Achievement Awards.

 

[kyleb]

I have PGR3, it's time limited just like the demo.

 

[Guden Oden]

the sin episodes are going to be on marketplace/arcade

Really?!?!??? Wow! That will totally ROCK, I thought they would just appear on steam and nowhere else.

The arcade is like, the coolest thing about the 360, apart from the really cool powerful hardware of course. No risk of this thing not taking off, I dunno if it was ever really designed to appeal to the "hardcore" crowd anyway, to me it seems much more tailored to draw in casual gamers with the puzzle games and such it offers.

Of course, the nostalgia factor is rather high too, with Joust and those other old arcade games appearing there.

As for how much money devs get, I believe MS said devs got 'the majority' of the sales price of an item from the arcade. That ought to be pretty good, considering dev costs were likely not all that high. Well, excluding full game titles like SiN Episodes of course.

 

[NavNucST3]

I'm having trouble accepting Live Arcade right now, I'd like to own Geometry Wars but I don't feel like giving MS $6.25 for a game that sells for $5.

As long as most gamers don't feel the way you do, I think Arcade will be OK. Especially considering all my retail games were $50 and $60. I've gotten much more enjoyment out of GW evolved than I have out of bankshot billiards (not that I don't like the game) and it cost me 1200 MS Points (foreverafter I deem them MSPs and it shall be so).

Overall, I think much more promoting needs to go into Arcade, like TV spots during desperate housewives or any of the many soaps in the early morning. Maybe a spot where you do a split screen, on person playing bejeweled on their 10-14" laptop screen and the other where the person is playing bejeweled on their 61" Samsung DLP.


I often hear people say that no one will buy a $300-400 game machine just to play hexic, but if you are to believe MSFTs polls about what people do with their computers email,internet, online gaming, then my question is why wouldn't they, especially at the 149.99-200.00 sweet spot. I mean you figure the average computer buyer drops maybe $800 on a computer (desktop or laptop) to sit and play texas hold'em or solitaire for hours on end. Yes I know you CAN do much more with a computer, but my point is that the average user DOESN'T.