Xbox

Developers Disagree with Microsoft

When it comes to XBLA delistings

By Andrei Dumitrescu, Games Editor

17th of June 2008, 18:06 GMT

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Microsoft recently said that it would take down those Xbox Live Arcade games that have a score of lower than 65% from Metacritic. Gamerbytes interviewed some XBLA developers to see how they reacted to the news coming from Microsoft.

Ilari Kuittinen, who is the Chief Executive Officer of Housemarque, a company that created Super Stardust HD and is now working on Golf: Tee it Up for Xbox Live Arcade, says that the real problem for the Xbox Live Arcade is not having games with low scores, but rather having an interface that does not accommodate more games. He rhetorically asked "Are there really many games that are under the threat of being delisted from the service?", stating that to him a game should be delisted from the service only if sales are very close to zero for at least one month if not more.

Mare Sheppard and Raigan Burns, the two people behind Metanet Software, who created N , believe that the measure is extreme and that a user rating system should be introduced and used for delistings. Raigan Burns points out that "Amazon stocks books with single-digit annual sales, and they have to deal with physical inventory! You'd think digital would be even cheaper to manage".

Another developer, Lloyd Melnick of Merscom thinks that Microsoft might be right in getting some games out of its service. He says that "I support this policy. I think it is important to maintain a consistent level of quality and if a game is not hitting these targets they aren't giving the gamer a good experience".

Probably most users and most developers would also approve of the concept of eliminating "bad" games from the Xbox Live Arcade, but they disagree heavily with the system employed in doing so. Using Metacritic as reference is a far worse idea than implementing a real way for the users who buy the games to rate them. By letting users do the rating Microsoft might get a tool they could use to take down those games that users really dis-like.

TAGS:

Microsoft | Xbox Live Arcade | Metacritic | user ratings | Xbox 360

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