XBLA General Downturn.

[Stewart]

Anyone else of the opinion the XBLA games prices are getting a tad more expensive \ uncompetitive?

First of all there was that Penny Arcade Adventures: On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness. It deserves a kicking for the name. 1600pts? Now you can argue if that is too much for an XBLA game ($20 US) but more importantly, why was it twice as expensive as almost every other game?

It doesn't look much better than most, and it certainly doesn't last a long time - 5 hours apparently is roughly the time you can get through it.

So why, apart from MS seeing if they can get away with it, does it cost 1600pts?

Then there is the add-on content for Puzzle Quest. Puzzle Quest is itself a 1200pt game - this is more justified than the Penny Arcade madness, as its a 'proper' retail game, as well as great fun and a slog to get through it all.

The DLC comes out - 700pts. That's 100pts off a full price game. What a total rip off.

Then something like this jizz bag comes out (http://xboxlive.ign.com/articles/893/893568p1.html) rated as the single worst XBLA game ever. Probably cost 16p to make, online hardly works, offline you wish didn't work, and it looks like a homebrew game, made by a Romanian schizophrenic, for the Atari 2600.

So no redeeming features at all, and a total insult to the human species in general. 400pts? Nope - 800pts or 'standard full price' if you will. What's the 400pts section for then? If utter mush like this isn't considered cheap and cheerful enough, the 400pt section must only be for trying to desperately flog a few extra copies of the 'classics' that noone is buying any more.

Then 1942: Joint Strike comes out and its a disappointment, Bionic Commando Rearmed is delayed again and again.

Just seems that XBLA is getting less fun. Prices are going up, quality is going down. Might just be a bad patch I suppose, but don't Microsoft have any sort of quality control? The people responsible for Double D Dodgeball should have been crucified, and their burning corpses used both to illuminate the corridors at Microsoft HQ and to serve as a warning to anyone else thinking of wasting every bodies time with sub-sub-sub-sub par games.

What you reckon?

[digit]

I exactly agree, xbox live arcade to me appeared to be back when it first came out, quick pick up and play games at an affordable and importantly cheap price point. Instead what has happened is games get stupidly priced now even when they are a pile of steaming poo. The Penny Arcade Adventures game is awful, wouldn't even want to pay for it!

[Parm]

It's definitely filled with too many below-par titles. I've only ever purchased a handful - admittedly some of those are crackers, but there aren't enough "must buys".

On the other hand, we do have Geo Wars 2 landing tomorrow...

[spazman]

Commando rearmed is out in a couple of weeks too, cant wait for Geometry Wars 2!

[Knoxville]

Geometry Wars 2, Galaga 2 and Bionic Commando are all out in the next month, XBLA is full of some utter trash, theres some gems in there though, the recent price hike could be down to M$ cutting the royalties developers are getting for XBLA titles I suppose or maybe they're trying to push the smaller developers towards XNA leaving XBLA for the bigger budget remakes and new franchises like Penny Arcade.

[Steve B]

Braid looks pretty cool too. It might be the first XBLA title that i purchase!

[danroyle]

i've only bought a couple of games over xbla like gauntlet and bomberman live

i was looking at sensible soccer as i got given 2100 points last month but only have 1700 left and begrudge paying 800 points for it if it was 400 i'd get it straight away.

but i have paid more for my xbla games than i have some of my full xbox 360 games