14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft says that its Summer of Arcade promotion that launched in July and went on for five weeks delivered clear results. Xbox Live Arcade games went up in sales by 58% and gamers were pretty much satisfied with the quality of the new videogames released on the Microsoft created service.
August also became the month when the Xbox 360 service earned the most money with a whooping 67% increase over the previous highest earner. The titles which contributed to the increase were Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved 2 from Activision, the indie title Braid, which was based around platforming while controlling the flow of time, Bionic Commando Rearmed from Capcom, Galaga Legions from Namco Bandai and the sometimes buggy Castle Crashers from The Behemoth.
Marc Whitten, who is the Xbox Live general manager, says that “At E3, we committed to re-focusing the Xbox LIVE Arcade business, vowing to release bigger and better games while focusing on quality and not quantity. The debut of the new strategy proved to be a huge success, with the Summer of Arcade making August the highest-grossing month to date”.
Microsoft says that it plans to keep up the quality of the titles released on the Xbox Live Arcade in the coming months. Portal: Still Alive from Valve, which is a repackaging of the game already available on the PC, with no new content, is set to arrive soon and a South Park title is also set to be launched before Christmas.
The Xbox Live service is also going to get a significant upgrade, most probably in November, with a re-designed interface, the introduction of Avatars and with more social features coming to the console. All of this is part of Microsoft’s strategy set to make the Xbox 360 more interesting than the Nintendo Wii.