Spartan_X Posted July 26, 2006 Share Posted July 26, 2006 Microsoft Plans Weekly Arcade Releases For Foreseeable Future Following the recent launch of Microsoft's Xbox Live Arcade Wednesdays, a new program that aims to debut a new title for download over the Xbox 360's Xbox Live Marketplace each Wednesday, new comments posted in a recent interview indicate that the company has full intentions to continue its program and release a new title each week from here on out. In an interview with gaming weblog Joystiq, Ross Erickson, Worldwide Games Portfolio Manager for Xbox Live Arcade, noted that Microsoft has enough titles on deck to meet ? or even exceed ? company's executive Peter Moore's previous announcement of having 160 games for the Xbox 360 for the holidays, the bulk of which is expected to be made up of titles for Xbox Live Arcade. ?We certainly have enough games in the pipeline ? more than enough, in fact ? to achieve that goal on a weekly basis,? commented Erikson. ?We're not announcing anything in terms of what's beyond Pac-Man at this point; there are enough games in the pipeline to last for a very, very long time.? He added: ?I'm glad Wednesdays have kicked off. Barring unforeseen development issues from the developers themselves -- our issue was to fill the pipeline with a lot of titles on the upfront because of the inevitable schedule delays we'll have -- we'll still have enough queued up in our certification process we'll always be able to have something coming out once a week.? Concerning the possibility of games being released over Xbox Live Arcade that exceed the current 50MB threshold, perhaps through the release of larger capacity memory units, Erikson told Joystiq that the company is ?always evaluating? this as a possibility, not just regarding the memory units, but also concerning ?the quality bar? that Microsoft expects from developers. He continued: ?At this time and for the foreseeable future we're sticking to our position that 50MBs is what defines an Arcade title so that portability between system and system can work and so that those users who do not have a hard drive, don't think there's many of them, but for those that don't have a storage solution for getting their games onto their system.? Finally, when presented with the topic of Live Anywhere, which was first presented by Microsoft chairman Bill Gates at E3 and purports to align the company's mobile, Windows Vista, and Xbox 360 strategies by connecting the three platforms in various ways (a topic covered in more in depth in Gamasutra's interview with Chris Early at E3), Erickson responded that, with regards to Xbox Live Arcade, Microsoft is ?looking at how certain game mechanics and game types lend themselves to bringing games that are potentially cross platform playable.? He also added that an Arcade title is essentially no different than a traditional retail Xbox 360 title, and as such could conceivably take advantage of the achievements and systems presented at E3 regarding the Live Anywhere solution. News source: Gamasutra Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spenser.d Posted July 26, 2006 Share Posted July 26, 2006 This is great news :D. I'm absolutely loving XBLA. -Spenser Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Agnes Leroy Posted August 12, 2006 Share Posted August 12, 2006 This is great news . I'm absolutely loving XBLA. +1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
icecaveman Posted August 12, 2006 Share Posted August 12, 2006 Great to hear they have enough games and they have more than enough for a weekly release. But please Microsoft stop this stupidity about the 50MB barrier I don't know a single person that stor his arcade games on a memory card, if I would I would slap him in the face. It's seriously limiting the quality of games we can have on arcade. No voice acting is possible and music must either be very repetive or MIDI/MOD based to fit. I hope Castlevania: Symphony of the Night won't have to suffer much by these limitation. Games should be allowed to take upto 256MB AT LEAST. No matter how advanced compression you use you use 64MB just don't cut it unless all you want is the very simplest type of games available, games without any serious though to it. Oh and stop claiming old arcade games to be High Definition when they are not! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+vlsi0n Subscriber¹ Posted August 13, 2006 Subscriber¹ Share Posted August 13, 2006 This is good news; I happy to see the arcade doing well, means more devs will want to make games for it :). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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