Xbox Live Arcade is a mess. Read my thoughts on XBLA that I posted earlier today. You can’t find anything. Most of the games on there aren’t worth the code they’re made from. What to do? Is there a way to re-energize the Xbox Live Arcade, get a one up on the competition and get everybody playing Arcade games again?
Hey Microsoft, you better click on the jump, because I’m about to save your rear end and your bottom line.
The easy answer: Make Xbox Live and all the games on it available by subscription. Make it one or two bucks a month and let Gold members play every game ever put on the system.
Think about it. First, it would re-energize XBLA and you’d have a sure fire one up on PSN. You’d have your huge Gold base playing all of the games instead of a select few and you’d get revenue from ALL of them, except for the couple of thousand that actually buy the game after playing the demo.
Second, you’d hear people absolutely stop complaining about the quality of games on XBLA. That, in and of itself, is worth it’s PR weight in gold. In stead of having gamers complain, they’d be talking about the sheer number of games at their disposal.
Third, you could really amp up the use of Xbox Live. Little known fact: XBLA titles sell in the thousands, not millions. How many times have you wanted to get into a game of Carcassone or Catan, but nobody on your friends list had the game. Well, if it was subscription based, perhaps built into your yearly Gold membership, everyone could play the game. Catan communities would be vibrant. UNO would see more nudity in one night than it’s seen in the last three months.
Heck, I’d even try out hearts or spades or some of the other silly card games you charge five bucks for.
It’s a no-brainer. Change the model. Get revenue from everybody. Get everybody involved. Make Xbox Live Arcade a REAL arcade, where people could come and go and play when they want with their friends, whenever they want.
It just makes sense.
You heard it here first. When they finally change over to my idea, I’d better get my cut…
Popularity: 1% [?]
| Related Posts:
|
If it’s free for Gold’s then hell yeah I’d like that.
Good article, Lono. Hey Msoft, listen up hear to Lono! I had an idea similar where you could make a third tier, Platinum, add $10 a year and give out downloads, or have a seperate xbla membership, considering they have the online system “built-in” to manage 2 accounts. I’d assume that they’d try to charge for premium titles, like $5 for Braid and Castle Crashers if they ever implemented this, though.
It is a great idea for the junk games. I think though that the model is unattractive to devs who have a shot at making a good and successful game. This route is just conceding that load of your product is junk and not attractive on its own.
This idea might work, but Microsoft would never do this. Even if they did, there is no way that they would charge just one or two bucks a month! I mean cmon! They would have to at least charge ten, maybe twenty to make the endeavor worthwhile.
yeah it would be bloody incredible I would absolutly love this (which is why it probabally makes no business sense at all)
Man, wouldn’t that be nice. Sounds like a good solution to something that is obviously not ideal. Like you said Lono, I would be willing to spend an extra 2-3 bucks a month for unlimited access to XBLA. Hell , I would even be willing to spend an extra 20 bucks a year to have unlimited downloads with everything on Xbox Live ( DLC , Arcade Titles, Movie rentals , Gamer Pics and Themes. ). Now that would be something I would use. What ever MS decides to do , I hope they figure a way to really make use of all the content they have at their disposal.
But what incentive would a developer have to make a game for the Xbox Live Arcade? There is no revenue to be made for them.
Personally I see this idea causing more problems. With the formula with have now it’s pretty quite simple, don’t like it = don’t buy it. If this Platinum membership did become active people would complain that they are paying extra just be the exclusive of the exclusive but all they are getting in return are crappy games. Sure you’re getting dollars off certain XBLA titles but is it really worth it? Personally I think they need to go through all the XBLA titles and rework the pricing, look at stats like how often is this downloaded, how often is it played, review scores, etc. High quality games like Braid and Castle Crashers I see no problem having a price point of $15, heck I could see BC: Rearmed even having that price point. But then you have games like Frogger 2 that are priced at 800, Bankshot Billiards is still priced at 900 points (originally 1200) and that game came out over 2 years ago. All in all, there needs to be a BIG price drop on these terrible games.
Truth N Justice, that sounds smart, and considering Msoft has something called a “Zune Pass” (it’s an unlimited subscription to the Zune music service) you cab have a simlar XBL service. And just like the Zune Pass, when you stop paying, the downloads time out. Great way to encourage the full 360 use. You could pay $10/month for a Platinum Pass!
@DWK
But also the Zune Pass doesn’t let you access everything on the Zune Marketplace.
How would you propose making royalty payments to the developers? By usage? Surely you’d then have to pay each a retainer just to appear on XBLA… which would add up quickly to more than the subscription provides when you take into account storage space, support, administration, server requirements etc.
^^^
What he said.
And would the Braid devs get the same amount as say, Tee it Up?
I think the quality of new content would go down big time.
This could work for XNA maybe.