XBox Ultimate Game Sales, Summer of Arcade

[liolio]

Shouldn't we discuss Sebbi's team engine in the tech section?
I watched the vids and it's really impressive, I want to learn more about where they are standing what trade off they had to do to achieve such an impressive features set.

 

[Rangers]

Oh lovely! Very, very awesome.

Booo. Splosion man I will not buy, nor trials. Therefore nothing looks good to me until August 5th now. Waiting waiting waiting, sigh, the life of video games...

Splosion Man has that uber-goofy art style..instant turnoff for me.

But these games are looking better and better (and more and more expensive to develop, hah). I remember when we all got excited about that stupid chicken game (forget the name) on XBLA..it was like the first proper publicized major original game on the service. These games are so far beyond that now..

 

[Silent_Buddha]

Whoa, Trials HD does look cool. Dang, it's awesome to see the 2D side scroller genre making a comeback. But rendered in beautiful 3D. Just awesome.

Regards,
SB

 

[sebbbi]

Are you planning to have an online setup for custom tracks? As in, you can download other people's track and rate them? It'd be cool to check out custom tracks, rate them and have an online community for it with diff sections such as "most played, top rated, newest tracks."

Unfortunately this was not possible for us. Trials HD is a moderate budget live arcade game after all. Track sharing system with rating and reviews between all players would require massive server infrastructure and lots of full day paid moderators to check that user levels do not have any vulgar content or copyright issues. LittleBigPlanet is a top budget AAA platform seller game, so Media Molecule and Sony could include a full featured all-to-all player content sharing system to it. This is a feature we are certainly looking forward in the game sequel(s) in the future.

In Trials HD you can share your tracks with your friends. Players can upload tracks, download tracks and browse tracks made by their friends. We have also local high scores and replays stored for all user created level top scores.

1200 sounds too hefty to me, unless game has good replayability.

We think that Trials HD has plenty of replayability. The most addicted fans of the previous game in the series (Trials 2 SE) have played the game for more than 2000 hours already (that's over a year if you play 5 hours every day 7 days in a week). As the game is fully physics based, it's always possible to improve your scores fraction by fraction. Even a year after Trials 2 SE release, the top players are still finding new styles to pass various obstacles as fast as possible, new shortcuts and fast paths to the game levels. Online leaderboards with full replay and ghost riding support for each score increases the competition a lot. If you are fan of speed runs, this game offers you very much replayability. And the level editor and track sharing is going to improve the game life time considerably, especially for those who are fans of physics based playgrounds.

Also you have to note that all the new Summer of Arcade 2009 games have much higher development budgets compared to older Live Arcade games. Couple of years ago the game size limit was 60 megabytes. Now game sizes are often double or triple of that. Trials HD is around 220 megabytes, and I am pretty sure Shadow Complex is even bigger. The gap between online and retail game budgets is closing all the time. And the quality of online releases is rising also. We are not talking about small shoot-em-ups like Geometry Wars anymore.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

In Trials HD you can share your tracks with your friends. Players can upload tracks, download tracks and browse tracks made by their friends. We have also local high scores and replays stored for all user created level top scores.

Limiting to Friend's shifts moderation to the users, which is smart, but then limits the scope of tracks to what your friends create. Is it possible to add a system of 'pass-it-on' where a track can be shared among friends between different lists, so the same great track could find it's way to zillions of players? That is, Aligie has two friends only on his friends list, Ben and Callum. His track is played by both. Ben forwards the track to Dave and Egon on his list, while Callum forwards it to Frank and George on his friends list. They do likewise with other friends, and Algie's track gets played by 300,000 different players.

This seems like a good compromise between moderation and sharing to me.

 

[RobertR1]

Still looking for reason to avoid spolsion man? Look harder........

http://www.videogamer.com/xbox360/splosion_man/review.html

'Splosion Man has come out of nowhere, with little to no hype surrounding its release, but it easily ranks as one of the best XBLA games we've played. It's a remarkably simple idea that's been turned into a truly devilish platform puzzler, and it's full of charm and humour without coming across as cheesy. At only 800 Microsoft Points 'Splosion Man comes highly recommended.

9/10

http://xboxlive.ign.com/articles/100/1005157p1.html

Ugh, please don't spoiler tag review scores, that's so stupid.

9.0 Presentation
Everything from menus to idle animation has been given some TLC. 'Splosion Man is bursting with humor and personality.

8.0 Graphics
The occasional background or loading screen looks a little suspect, but most of the game (especially the 'splosions) looks very nice.

8.5 Sound
The soundtrack is full of rousing sci-fi and spy music, and 'Splosion Man's manic babbling is a delight.

9.0 Gameplay
Devilishly challenging platforming that will test your reflexes and brain power. Oh, and bad guys explode into deli meat.

9.0 Lasting Appeal
A lengthy single-player game, plus local and online four-player co-op.

9.0
Outstanding OVERALL

http://reviews.teamxbox.com/xbox-360/1740/Splosion-Man/p1/

9/10

Also: Major Nelson's latest podcast confirms that not only will 'Splosion Man have a premium theme to unlock, it will be the first game to have Avatar accessories. Everything will unlock like Achievements.

 

[ban25]

Sounds great. The Maw was a lot of fun.

 

[Scott_Arm]

I guess 'Splosion Man is on my list now, online co-op being the deciding factor.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

Whoa, sounds awesome...

Damn, I think I may have to get some MS points sooner than I was planning. Where's a good place to get them? This would mark the first game I've purchased on X360 (was going to wait for Shadow Complex).

Regards,
SB

 

[ban25]

Whoa, sounds awesome...

Damn, I think I may have to get some MS points sooner than I was planning. Where's a good place to get them? This would mark the first game I've purchased on X360 (was going to wait for Shadow Complex).

Regards,
SB

Amazon is always good.

 

[AzBat]

This week Target has 1600 MS Points for $20, but you get a $5 Target gift card.

I'll at least check out the trial of Splosion Man. Want to check out the Avatar awards.

Tommy McClain

 

[Tchock]

+1 to Splosion. At this rate I'm getting way more indie titles than any blockbusters.

Am holding out till I have enough money to get 4000 points for ~30 bucks or so on eBay again.

 

[AzBat]

Evidently I wasn't the only one who noticed that 4 out of 5 Summer of Arcade games are $15. Kotaku noticed as well and decided to do an investigation into the rising prices...

http://kotaku.com/5320178/the-rising-price-of-xbla-games

Tommy McClain

 

[obonicus]

First signs of inflation.

MSP prices are equal across all territories, right?

 

[AlNom]

Well it's probably more useful to see what exactly is being priced higher. The average itself doesn't mean much.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

I'd say it's probably more in line with the average XBLA game having more developement time = more expensive to produce.

At least this summer's featured games seem to be more fully polished/full featured than those shortly after launch.

Regards,
SB

 

[Scott_Arm]

Splosion man seems pretty cool. When you blow up scientists they turn into slices of ham. And you're basically playing as a raving lunatic with limited mental capacity that can explode himself. You run with your arms outstretched making plane noises.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

They'll charge what they need/think they can, to make a living. But it'd be a real shame if this game thread ends up turning into another dull market analysis and future predicitions thread!

Personally I love the 'bite sized' download games, the variety and opportunity. Let the developers pick the price-point that works for them and keep turning out the quality titles.

 

[ban25]

Splosion man is fantastic, like a crazy version of N+.

 

[PARANOiA]

Splosion Man is great fun. Highly recommended, and exactly the kind of gaming goodness digital downloads has allowed to "fill the gap" in terms of non-mega smash hit genres over the last few gens.