I wanted to rustle up an extremely cunning title like ‘Megabites the dust’ or ‘Bite the way, Mega Man is here to Say that Portal: Still Alive is over 600 Megs’ or something incredible like that, but alas I couldn’t get anything that actually made sense. So, I went with the cliche.  Oh well, let’s plough on…as usual.

First of all, XBLA games were limited at 50MB, but that was too small so 250MB of cold hard XBLA goodness was allowed (though 450MB would be granted under special circumstances), but that was still too small, so it was raised 350MB. But these megabytical size conventions appear to have been blown out the water as Portal: Still Alive, which hit XBLA recently, clocks in at a whopping 629MB.

Find out nothing, nakon skoka

Think of each XBLA game as a cardboard box. No, not cardboard, it might get soggy and fall apart (XBLA games are strangely moist), how about steel? No, too heavy. Um..sponge? Not strong enough. Perhaps some sort of emerald encrusted titanium plated box, with copper hinges. Yeah, that could work. The box certainly needs hinges – that’s how the games get inside. There’s also a lock to keep the XBLA games in, not that they don’t want to be in there, but its necessary to protect them during transit. This lock is a fairly standard padlock, with a hardened-

Ok, forget the fucking box!

Portal: Still Alive is now the biggest game on the XBLA service and, with Sony putting out big games like Burnout Paradise, we thought that Microsoft may have abolished the size limit in order to compete, but alas no.

Speaking to Joystiq, Microsoft said:

“We have set file limits as a general guideline. An important part of Xbox LIVE Arcade is easy access and keeping file size down is a vital part of that. Equally important is offering titles with superior game play. We weigh both considerations on a case-by-case basis, and will make exceptions when it makes sense to ensure the best customer experience.”

The fourth letter in the XBLA acronym does stand for ‘arcade’, so it makes sense to keep games small. After all, they were designed to be cheap, little pick-up-and-play games, that you could have a bit of fun with, yet things like Castle Crashers and Braid are hardly fit those criteria. It seems that Microsoft want to keep the ‘arcade’ image, while also releasing bigger, more substantial, downloadable games but, with no brand to put them under, they use XBLA.

So, if Xbox Live Arcade is for small games, and Xbox Originals is for Xbox 1 games, then where do these big, original downloadable titles go? Not releasing big games at all, is out of the question. Sony already have Burnout Paradise and SOCOM: Confrontation on PSN, and Microsoft are evidently trying to get back in the game with Portal: Still Alive. It’s important that Microsoft can do this, because it may just be the first step towards the abolition of game boxes, and the welcoming of an all-download future.

So what should Microsoft do?

Well, surely launching a new brand for large downloadable games would make sense? Xbox Cool Games or something. I don’t know, I’m not a marketing exec, but cool games for my Xbox certainly sound appealing. Regardless of the name, they need a brand to release downloadable games under. Limit arcade games to 100MB – keep them small and quick to download – but keep this new brand limitless and see what developers come up with.

It could work…right?

Source: Joystiq

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