Xbox Live Arcade is a hit...

[Paco]

or at least it's showing some promising potential...

February 9, 2006 - Flip on your Xbox 360, log onto Xbox Live and you're more likely to find your friends playing Geometry Wars and Zuma than Perfect Dark Zero or Madden NFL '06. Microsoft's Xbox Live Arcade service, which offers users the option to download classic-style games -- usually for a small fee -- has become the platform's sleeper attraction. And according to Microsoft bigwigs and third-party publishers alike, the service is shaping up to be more than a means to keep players glued to their systems. It is, in fact, proving to be a valuable alternative revenue stream that requires both very little investment and even less upkeep.

At the DICE 2006 summit in Las Vegas, Nevada, this week, we had the chance to schmooze with several sources representing big-name third-party publishers, and everyone we talked to was in agreement that Xbox Live Arcade (XBLA) is flexible and -- dare we say it -- profitable. Sources intimately familiar with Arcade's model say revenues are on the rise as more and more users log on and download.

Microsoft is aggressively encouraging external XBLA support by actively propositioning third parties about porting their classics and by offering an attractive pricing model. Publishers tell IGN that model is generously divided between two different structures. Third parties who port their classics over to XBLA take home 70% of all profits -- the remaining 30% going to Microsoft. Meanwhile, the company that Bill Gates built purportedly has developed an internal group whose sole purpose is to take over the responsibility of porting publishers' classic games. If Microsoft handles the port, the company takes 40% of XBLA profits, leaving the remaining 60% to third parties. Either way, small-level developers and big-name publishers win.

Microsoft has so far shied away from announcing official XBLA sales figures, but a publisher told us that Geometry Wars, one of the biggest titles to hit the service, has sold more than 60,000 copies. This figure could not be verified by Microsoft. Nintendo, whose next generation console -- codenamed Revolution -- is set to offer a similar service when it debuts later this year, may be playing catch up to Microsoft from day one. Publishers tell us that more than 30 XBLA titles from various third parties have already been submitted to Microsoft and that the company has them queued up and ready for release. These efforts are likely to trickle out at a rate of Microsoft's choosing, providing users new reasons to play with their 360 and Microsoft and its partners new and growing streams of revenue.

Link

It's nice to see one aspect of the 360 being well received. I hope Street Fighter II does well so Capcom considers more of their classics for Arcade. It'd be nice to see more original content as well.

MS is being really aggressive. Porting games for free, then letting the developer have 60% of the profits! Why wouldn't a developer or publisher want their old games on Arcade?

Speaking of Live Arcade, there are two rumors that EGM recently published. One is that Bungie's next game is an Arcade game and will release sometime this spring. The second rumor is that full Xbox games will be available for download at some point in the future.

[lazyfatbum]

It's an awesome idea, but how long would you have to wait for for a d/l that's 10 gigs of info? (in HD)? wouldn't that take, like, days? :D How big is PDZ?

imo d/l games directly to consoles is going to be how most developers distribute their games in the near future. Think about it, the only post costs you would have is the space to host it and some banners and flash ads. Why go to the mall to drop 50 bucks when you could order it for 30? or pay a monthly service fee or whatever.

well, I guess you'd still have the post costs of the box art and what have you. There's still plenty of people who buy games just because the box art is cool (overly masculine men holding electronic/mechanical penises or 3/4ths nude, semi-pubescent woman again holding the electronic or mechanical penis).

[A Black Falcon]

Um, XLA isn't for full games, it's just for small stuff... Gauntlet, Smash TV, etc. for older stuff, and new ones... Geometry Wars being the most popular one. Great idea, and it's great that it's successful... Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved definitely looks like one of the best games on the X360. :)

[lazyfatbum]

I was talking specifically about the two rumors posted in EGM. full 360 game downloads and Bungie's Arcade game.

I understand that its smaller stuff right now, like the marble Madness-like game i'd like o try out, but that's my point: wouldn't it take a loooooong time to d/l a 10 gig+ HD game?

[A Black Falcon]

Yeah, it would take a long time, but there are already downloadable multi-CD games on PC... I've downloaded games as large as 3 or 4 gigs, anyway (mmorpg tests...)... so it's doable, but time consuming.

As for X360 downloading full games though, it'd need an exponentially larger harddrive, as I've said before.

[Paco]

I was talking specifically about the two rumors posted in EGM. full 360 game downloads and Bungie's Arcade game.

I understand that its smaller stuff right now, like the marble Madness-like game i'd like o try out, but that's my point: wouldn't it take a loooooong time to d/l a 10 gig+ HD game?

There are demos on Xbox Live you can download right now (Full Auto, Fight Night Round 3, Condemned, Kameo, Quake 4, Project Gotham Racing 3, etc.), usually coming in around 500 MB to a gig, and people report different download times depending on their connection speed. Times ranged from 10 minutes to a couple days.

Download times from TXB forum

Project Gotham 3, for example, is 1.25 gigs. One TXB'er said:

"yup...hope the demo is worthwhile....

EDIT: after 5 minutes im at 10%..."

and another said

"Holy Hell this demo is taking forever to download..."

I'm guessing games with 10 gigabytes or so would take several hours to a week depending on your download speed.

[A Black Falcon]

Pause/resume and being able to download while doing other things (does X360 have either one of these things?) are musts, that's for sure...

[Paco]

Pause/resume and being able to download while doing other things (does X360 have either one of these things?) are musts, that's for sure...

I'm not sure about the Pause/Resume feature, but I know for a fact that you can't do anything else while downloading. I also know Microsoft is working on this.

[lazyfatbum]

That would definitely hurt the possibility of people d/l full games. However, maybe they were talking about overhaul patches, like you own a platformer, Crash bandicoot 8 or whatever it is now, you d/l an overhaul patch and it uses the engine, physics and most of the texture files, etc to create a different game. Like you d/l the patch and now it's a racing game or shooter, etc so at most we're talking about a 200 MB d/l (depending on how any new textures and sound files they want to add).

that would cut down costs by a huge margin. as far as the d/l system the 360 is using; i would say implement something akin to LimeWire so you can leech off of other users who also downloaded the patches. or even better, let people direct-connect in a chat, you'll get full speed then.

[A Black Falcon]

I'm not sure about the Pause/Resume feature, but I know for a fact that you can't do anything else while downloading. I also know Microsoft is working on this.

I thought I'd read that you couldn't do anything else while downloading, but wasn't sure about the pause/resume... yeah, that's definitely a problem for large downloads...

[Paco]

How big is PDZ?

If you put it in your PC DVD-drive it says something like 3.4 gigs.