Does anyone else feel like XBLA is too expensive now?


  

142 members have voted

  1. 1. Is XBLA expensive?

    • Yes
      112
    • No
      15
    • The games are worth the asking price
      15


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Uhhh, jubber2002 your sig is f*****.

As for MS points, I hate how they only sell them in amounts that are ultimately useless, like 2100, but then again it's nice when you find them for cheap, however that is rare.

I noticed, though I can't believe that just earlier today my sig was fine. Oh well, I made a new one! Sometimes I wish I could jump through the computer screen and meet the hackers face to face, especially after they took my company website offline for a day.

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Some arcade games are overpriced, but i feel it's a medium between small games that people throw together (community games), and full retail games. 15 dollers (1200 points) isin't a too horrible of price for some of them; but a majority of them could be dropped down a quarter of their current price.

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much as i love XBLA, had to vote "yes". bought quite a few games from them, and the pricing trend is definitely upwardly mobile. They mostly did away with the coin op classic 400 pointers, except a couple from SEGA last month. And 1200 is basically retail - that's fifteen bucks. Of this summer's lineup, looks like Shadow Complex will be worth that asking price, but if it was 800 i'd be much happier.

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i hate the expansion pricing too...

halo 3 was $70, then 800 points for each map pack.

fallout 3 was $60, then 800 for each expansion, with 2 of the expansions being a small area added. (first two expansions were really disappointing)

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But the game was developed years ago. All that Capcom had to do was port it, not exactly something difficult and nothing new for them. Absolutely no reason to charge 1200 points for it.

Like I said, it fits in with the price band of Xbox Classic games on Xbox Live. If anything SF2THDR was over priced. MvC2 is a full retail game.

You can play it with the BC on the 360, but you'll see it barely runs. So it's clearly more than just a copy & paste job, they've had to work on it a lot to get it to run so good.

And again, you'll be hard pushed to buy it for ?10 offline because it's such a collectors item.

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Like I said, it fits in with the price band of Xbox Classic games on Xbox Live. If anything SF2THDR was over priced. MvC2 is a full retail game.

You can play it with the BC on the 360, but you'll see it barely runs. So it's clearly more than just a copy & paste job, they've had to work on it a lot to get it to run so good.

And again, you'll be hard pushed to buy it for ?10 offline because it's such a collectors item.

Not really, the difference is any Xbox1 game on the 360 is run through an emulation layer, whereas XBLA games (plus any anything else running on the system) are ported to run natively. There's your speed boost right there. And as for the smoothing, that's essentially "free", the 360 has a dedicated scaling unit inside it that can upscale to any output resolution.

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I think one of my main gripes is with Live, you can't even buy a 1200 point option, so you are essentially forced into paying even more for a game, and have extra points just sitting there. I think it's a psychology game, where they hope you will buy cheaper bull**** off live with the remaining points.

I haven't done it myself, but can't you buy the games off Amazon.com now, and just pay what they cost? It might be more of a pain but it could be worth the $5 you save.

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Not really, the difference is any Xbox1 game on the 360 is run through an emulation layer, whereas XBLA games (plus any anything else running on the system) are ported to run natively. There's your speed boost right there.

If that was really the case then why do they not do the same with all of the Xbox Classic titles.

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It all comes down to the amount of effort involved. For just one title, it's easier to just recompile the code for a new platform, but for several titles it's easier to write a piece of emulation software. Emulation is tricky, but when you have detailed information on the original system, it's not too hard to pull off. And Microsoft is a huge software company with a lot of talented people in that field.

Why recompile every single game when you can just write one program to emulate most of them?

Furthermore, Microsoft doesn't have the source code to every Xbox Classic title, so they can't do it, it's up to the original developers or whoever owns the rights to the source code.

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rook, you're my hero, didn't even know about the amazon.com options. seems like they have quite a few of the games available. but you get a code...those can be problematic with XBL. any experience?

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The amazon option is (Y). Thanks for that. I think I'm still a little annoyed that the game I've been dying to buy (TMNT: ###### RS) is 1200 points. Unless it really looks amazing and the reviews are high, I am going to have to skip out on it.

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Considering the original idea was that arcade games were suppose to be cheap so they were bought on impulse buys. Yes they are too expensive. ?10 for an arcade rehash?

But in turn all we got was largely arcade games and the like.

I have no real issue personally. If it means developers can pursue bigger and better games sure. Same with download sizes which too I'm happy to see go up when it's justified. I'd much rather pay 1200 or more points for a full game than some half baked 80's arcade title that has 200 free web based flash immulations already on line.

Now I agree that for some the price is unreasonable, but thats when you vote with your dollar. It's not like pricing isnt controversial in other outlets be it steam or retail. Hell when 800 points was the top tier people would then claim that was too much for specific titles. Unfortunatly digital distribution, while great in some regards really does cut out the competition and price drops you see in a retail store. I pretty much think developers/publishers should at least have the choice about how they make the game and what they sell it for and they are free to live or die based on that decision. I'd prefer that than MS saying games are fixed to $XX and thus scaring developers away who don't want to make budget titles.

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i can't believe we're now complaining about the coin op classics. there's no pleasing you children. they're five bucks, save you the hassle of emulation and even come with achievements. plus they don't negate the releasing of other, more complex titles.

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Well since I mentioned them, I wasn't complaining. I'm saying I'd rather be playing new original games however made for todays hardware and if things such as larger download sizes or higher prices are what serve as incentives for developers to persue those titles then I'm all for the changes to XBLA.

I wouldn't wish upon anyone the removal of the classics, but I'd argue XBLA has evolved well beyond that, thus why some titles have higher prices and the like.

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considering i buy most games used, except the really good ones, i can get for example motorstorm 2 for ?12 or viva pinata trouble in paradise for ?10 !

most arcade games are crap, one or two are worth it

but then you have to pay MORE to use xbox live!

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I think the number of 1200 point releases is too high, it started out as one or two games, now that seems a fairly normal base price.

If those games were a little cheaper (maybe 950?) I think I'd be more inclined to buy.

MS would probably find that there's a psychological barrier with a lot of people - if they kept all the releases less than 1000 points (i.e three-digit numbers) then I'm sure they'd sell a load more.

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and what's this about having to pay for Live in order to download stuff? some people keep regurgitating this nonsense. the basic subscription is enough to buy from the Marketplace, you don't need to pay for Gold to do so.

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