14 DAY TRIAL // Come spring 2010, Microsoft plans to dust off a plethora of arcade titles and to make them available to Xbox console owners via the upcoming Xbox LIVE Game Room. At the 2010 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas the past week, the Redmond company announced that Xbox LIVE Game Room would go live this spring and that it would bring to the table no less than 30 classics, including Centipede and Asteroids Deluxe.
“There’s a generation of people who grew up with a set of games like Centipede that are favorites,” says Robbie Bach, president of Microsoft’s Entertainment & Devices Division. “They look almost like casual, fun games today, (but) at the time they were high-end, edgy games. Game Room is the idea of bringing that back to the market and bringing that to a very broad audience.”
Bach expects a wide range of gamers to be attracted by the content offered via the Xbox LIVE Game Room. “Even the people who would call themselves ‘hardcore gamers’ are going to think that it’s fun in a retro way,” he stated.
Aaron Greenberg, director of product management for Xbox 360 indicated that he expected the Xbox LIVE Game Room to be a key piece of “the biggest year in Xbox history” puzzle. 2010 is synonymous for Xbox with the 10th year anniversary since the release of the console.
But it won’t just be Xbox gamers that will be able to enjoy the Game Room. The content offered to the Xbox LIVE community through Game Room will also be made available for free download to PC users. “If someone on my friends list has played in my arcade, their name will be hanging next to my machine and I’ll get notified of that on all of my devices,” stated Frank Pape, senior director of business and product development for Xbox. “It’s just this constant one-upmanship and also being able to customize my own arcade and show off the machines just like they were, with lights and fancy sounds.”