Microsoft Acquires Wednesday

[N. Evan Van Zelfden]

Microsoft Acquires Wednesday

An early announcement, which was pulled, and later confirmed reveals: ?Xbox Live Arcade Wednesdays.? Microsoft?s online service is set to release a series of retro games, one per week.

 

[Araman]

I saw a report stating that some of these will be $10 to purchase. In my personal opinion that's too much. Sure, many of them have added functionality in the form of online play, but one would think that there's very little in development costs going into making these available.

Whatever happened to these "micro transactions" they touted so heavily?

 

[phoenixsflame [deprecated]]

I'm semi-against Micro-Transactions.. I'd much rather pay like, 10 dollars a month for access to the content (Al La Gametap) and I think this would make more sense if we were going to go with X-Box Live... Maybe an X-Box Arcade Subscription, I'd rather not pay 2-4 dollars for a few games here and there... I may pay 20 bucks a month, or 2 bucks a month... This is good and bad for MS, I think it'd be better on their side if they charge a monthly fee to access it. I'm usually against monthly fee's, but in this case I am more for it than against it.

What I am *majorly* against, is the MMO "buying items" type format, but that's another story.

 

[Virgil]

I just paid $5 for Frogger. I forsee Galaga (probably $5) and Street Fighter II (gotta be $10 or $15) in my future.

Honestly, I think it's worth it, both as a consumer and for the industry as a whole. I know for a fact that I'll get my $5 worth of gameplay from Frogger. I mean, c'mon, it's Frogger! I have 10 Arcade games so far, and haven't been disappointed in any of them.

On a better note though, it's digital distribution. For these 'classic' arcade games it doesn't matter so much, but for games like Cloning Clyde [http://www.ninjabee.com/clyde.html] it gives a huge distribution channel, and the opportunity to develop quality independent games, to smaller developers. Plus the majority of the price of the game goes to the developer, and not to the retailer/distributor/publisher - I like that too.

Whatever happened to these "micro transactions" they touted so heavily?

I've seen things up for 'purchase' for as low as 10 points (that'd be $0.125), and there's a pretty fair number of things in the $1-$4 range. Most full games are $5-10, and the content expansions can range pretty wildly. The developer sets the price, so it's pretty much up to them.

 

[Bongo Bill]

I can't help but wonder if it really takes a full week to convert one of those old arcade games to make it compatible.

Anyway, it's good to see they're at least trying to offer something to compete against Nintendo's virtual console.

 

[Incommunicado]

In my opinion a 10$ pricetag on those arcade games is totally acceptable. Porting old code is probably impossible so they are most possibly complete rewrites with even new graphical assets. Considering debugging, quality assurance and serverspace/bandwidth required for each title 10$ is not that much after all. Futhermore I would even say 15$ for an innovative game like Outpost Kaloki X is still a sweet deal (think I paid 800 points/7.99? for that).

Making the live Arcade a subscription service is in my opinion not necessary and wise (for MS) since these types of casual games sell well over a much longer timespan than AAA titles on a shelve, so there is much more money to earn that way since the overall amount of content and therefore sales will be increasing over a very long period. On anaother perspective it would also make distribuition of royalties to the developers of those games way to complex and MS might have to buy the titles completely instead of publishing them and paying developers royalties. This way MS would earn less than possible with increasing amount of content available and developers as well, since royalties over 2-3 years for a good title earn much more after all.

 

[Virgil]

In my opinion a 10$ pricetag on those arcade games is totally acceptable. Porting old code is probably impossible so they are most possibly complete rewrites with even new graphical assets.

With the classic arcade games, it looks like they're doing some level of emulation on the original arcade code, but there's also obvious additional work that goes into it. Frogger has a set of upgraded graphics and audio that are quite nice (optional, can be turned off), multiplayer (including split-screen), global leaderboards, X-Box Live support, and Achievements. It's really a nice little package.

Futhermore I would even say 15$ for an innovative game like Outpost Kaloki X is still a sweet deal

Agreed. The classic games are a nice treat, but the real gems are the modern titles.

 

[Incommunicado]

With the classic arcade games, it looks like they're doing some level of emulation on the original arcade code, but there's also obvious additional work that goes into it.

Well that sounds pretty interesting. I do not want to dive into technical detail here, because I think it would be to off topic, but do you have a source on that you could point me to?

 

[Virgil]

Well that sounds pretty interesting. I do not want to dive into technical detail here, because I think it would be to off topic, but do you have a source on that you could point me to?

As you boot up the games, during the company logo/legal stuff, there's a reference to "Digital Arcade™ Emulation Technology" being used in the game. I suppose it could be just marketing-speak, but given the number of classic games Digital Eclipse has ported, I don't think so.

 

[Incommunicado]

As you boot up the games, during the company logo/legal stuff, there's a reference to "Digital Arcade™ Emulation Technology" being used in the game. I suppose it could be just marketing-speak, but given the number of classic games Digital Eclipse has ported, I don't think so.

Well thank you very much. I was really curious and will take a look at it on the internet.