Shagrath

But it's still absolutely horrible for the developers. It's going to push the smaller developers to think twice about trying to make an XBLA game, and therefore some of the more unique games and ideas might go by the wayside.

lordwow

I disagree, part of the problem is that when you go on the arcade and look at it, there's a whole lot of crap on there (I think they said 140 arcade games), it makes it very difficult to find stuff you like. Additionally, as they stated, having the trifecta of being out for 6 months, having a sub-65 metacritic score and not selling well, basically means your game sucks (and if it was in a real store it'd likely get pulled from the shelf) (though I think it'd more likely end up a clearance bin)

I think that by clearing out a lot of the crap on there, they're giving smaller developers a better chance of being seen. And, they' guaranteed to be up there for 6 months.

PopcornTreeCt

I don't own any of the games on the list. But looking at it, wow there are a lot of crap games out there.

Shagrath

The problem is it's not "sitting on a shelf". There's no reason that they should be pulling stuff off of a virtual shelf. What they need to do is have better sorting methods, similar to what they have on the Video Marketplace or even the PSN. Possibly even put those games in a "bargain" section if the developers agree to it. There's hundreds of movies available on the Video Marketplace, and you don't really see clutter there. I think it's shit for developers and they're catching a lot of flak on other forums about this. I'm pretty sure that they're going to rethink actually going through with this.

lordwow

I agree that they should just discount them as well, hopefully we'll see that instead.

Decker

That list is total BS. TiQal is on that list and has only been stinking up XBLA a few weeks. Where is Piss Island? And yeah, Yaris scored in the 20's so where is it? Someone just ran down the Metacritc list and picked out titles.

lordwow

Yaris is free, and technically has a 100% conversion rate, there's no way they'll yank it.

Michael Corvin

I think it will be more beneficial to the gamer. If a company knows their game will be delisted if it is crap, then hopefully developers will spend a little more time on their games than rush out the crap.

PixyJunket

False.

PixyJunket

As somebody previously put it..

BINGO!

But this is Microsoft, nobody should be surprised.

Shagrath

The problem isn't that all of it is crap. The MetaCritics scores are shit. TiQal is your average "falling blocks" puzzle game that reviews and most of us have played a million times, and therefore it gets a low score for not bringing anything new to the table. However, a casual gamer may be all over it. Why should they take it off the service when it's still on the server? Just re-organize things!

There's absolutely no reason why anything should ever be removed from a digital marketplace. Just put it in a section marked "Archive" or something of that nature. Why would a system want a library of games that is shrinking over time? It makes no sense.

We've all had the system for a while, and have tried most of these. But shouldn't new purchasers be able to also try them out when they pick up the box this year or next?

dvd182

I agree with pretty much everything Shagrath has been posting in this thread.

Microsoft should fix the XBLA interface if they think people are having trouble finding the good stuff, rather than de-list items on a service with theoretically unlimited shelf space as a stop-gap method.

RichC2

They should just make a folder called "Stinkers" and put them there.

lordwow

There is absolutely no reason they shouldn't clearance these games. These were the games I assumed would hit the XBLA hits first (although, apparently, they aren't really hits), games like Root Beer Tapper and even some of the other ones mentioned in here would be buys for me at 200 points.

I'm starting to agree more with Shagrath the more I think about it.

gongon78

This may be off topic, but does the DRM issue apply to other DLC content, such as Rock Band/GH3 song downloads, or strictly with XBLA games?

Michael Corvin

I believe it applies to all DLC, not just games.

What's funny about all this is that rumored list that was floating about. Where did that come from? Somebody had a good laugh over that one.

Shagrath

I believe it came from everyone's favorite tabloid gaming site, kotaku.

Groucho

That was a list of all the games that were > 6 months old and had a Metacritic score of < 65%. So basically, 2 of the 3 criteria for delisting.

Shagrath

Actually, it was just the < 65%, so only one criteria met. There were titles there like TiQal that I don't believe have been out six months.

Michael Corvin

I was actually referring to the rumored long list of Spring Update features that ended up being zero update/features.

lordwow

The games list came from Joystiq, not Kotaku.

Shagrath

And I was referring to what Michael Corvin was asking about. The new dashboard features list that was rumored. My psychic powers at work.

Breakfast with Girls

Cutting consumer selection from "every option available, good or bad" to "the right selection" helps customers and enhances perception of the overall selection. It's why Nintendo invented the Nintendo Seal of Approval, because it saw that the flood of shitty video games in the early '80s had a big hand in the video game crash.

Other examples...

Target used to sell 31 brands of toasters. William-Sonoma (a leading kitchen store) sold two. Target was perceived as a Wal-Mart also-ran. Target looked at William-Sonoma and (as part of a larger, comprehensive strategy, of course) reduced the number of toaster choices. Now Target is no longer a Wal-Mart also-ran.

In the mid-'90s, Apple had hundreds of products and was rapidly going out of business. They had a poster to help people decide which Mac was right for them, and it looked like a Microsoft org chart. One of the first things Steve Jobs did when he returned to the company was to cut that down to literally four products, all new: the iBook, the iMac, the PowerBook G3, and the Power Macintosh G3. A few years later, they introduced one additional product: the iPod. Now Apple is more efficient than Dell and its market share is rising steadily.

But I agree that the interface, like that of PSN, needs some serious help.

Jeremy517

Ah yes, the seal of quality...



I love Nintendo, but the seal doesn't mean anything.

tonyc3742

I do agree that having too much choice can be bad--many people will do (buy) nothing in the face of too much choice. However, the scorched earth policy of deleting 1/5 of the games is like throwing the baby out with the bathwater, when offering more organizing options and breaking the games into smaller sets would be easier and better. Let me see all offline co-op games, all Live co-op games, all XBL competitive games, etc.
I still believe that most games have a fan somewhere, and I don't want to get into the situation where all that's available is what's "popular" (music would suck if that were the case). And if they were that concerned about quality, they could have put the brakes on Screwjumper or Rocky and Bullwinkle four months before release. Of course, I heard an interview with some guy who worked on selecting games for XBLA, I think, and he said he would have rejected Poker Smash, which had some level of success and reasonably good reviews.