MS: No Spring Update!

[warcrow]

Originally posted by: Queasy

Originally posted by: warcrow
I agree that this is most likely an organizational issue at the heart of things, but I fear that this will have nothing but a negative effect in the long run. I can appreciate MS attempt at trying to ?keep the house clean? here, but I fear that even in a few years time this will make rare, hard-to-find games even harder to find. The idea of having a huge library of digital games available on XBL is very appealing. We?re not talking about physical shelf space here, we're talking about soft copies of software! I say, impliment a great search feature to help cut down on confusion for the end users and get more organized--not take away gaming options.

I don't know, I look at that list of games with metacritic scores of less than 65 and see many that shouldn't have been made (or should have been made properly). There are a few classics in there like Pac-Man and Contra but I'm betting that games like those have a high enough conversion ratio to keep it listed on the service. Then there are the Tron and Discs of Tron remakes that are so awful control wise that they should never have been released ion the first place.

I do agree though that MS needs to find a better way to organize the XBLA games as the number of XBLA games continues to grow. It would be nice if there were a way for users to rate games, sort by popularity, most downloaded, most purchased, etc.

But as far as digital distribution goes I just dont subscribe to the quality over quantity practice. The distribution and overall production costs of DLC is so minimal that it can allow significant profit out of selling small volumes of hard-to-find games to many customers. You're limiting your store and your audience if you're selling only high volume, popular items and consequently reducing the market.

Have you heard of the market phrase "The Long Tail"? It was a term first coined by Chris Anderson from Wired back in 2004 in an article he wrote about it. He describes that niche strategies of certain businesses like Netflix can succeed on more than just megahits. His subtitle on the article reads:

"Forget squeezing millions from a few megahits at the top of the charts. The future of entertainment is in the millions of niche markets at the shallow end of the bitstream."

Anderson argued that products that are in low demand or have low sales volume can collectively make up a market share that rivals or exceeds the relatively few current bestsellers and blockbusters, if the store or distribution channel is large enough. Anderson cites earlier research by Erik Brynjolfsson, Yu (Jeffrey) Hu, and Michael D. Smith, that showed that a significant portion of Amazon.com's sales come from obscure books that are not available in brick-and-mortar stores. The Long Tail is a potential market and, as the examples illustrate, the distribution and sales channel opportunities created by the Internet often enable businesses to tap that market successfully.

To me this just makes so much sense in the DLC age of this and future console generation. I really want to see the little, independant titles stick around for a long time. Just because their metacritic score isnt great doesnt mean the game wont be enjoyable by an amount of people that would turn a profit (or enough to find it enjoyable). Look at God Hand. I havent checked metacrtic in ages but I bet it's score isnt very high and I LOVED that game--it's an amazing experience (at least it was for me). But as I understand it, most people didnt enjoy it.

I just dont like this move at all--I think over all it's bad for the industry and gamers.

 

[Queasy]

Yeah, I'm aware of the long tail and I think that's why MS included the 6% conversion rate as a condition. A 6% conversion rate certainly doesn't qualify as high volume or popular. Though, I think that number could probably be adjusted downward.

I think this is just a case of 'you can't please everybody'. I think this was a reaction on MS' part to complaints from users and developers that XBLA was getting flooded with junk and cheap remakes. MS tries to respond and fix this complaint and ends up ticking off another group of people. 🙂

 

[warcrow]

Perhaps they should just make a "clearance tab" for some of these games? They need to organize things even more than they have. If they had a really effective, more organized system then this might help with some of the issues people are having?

 

[blurredvision]

Now that I'm aware of exactly what's going on with delisting titles, I think it's a great idea. While I wouldn't be opposed to a "clearance" tab of sorts, I don't think it's necessary. Microsoft's 3 stipulations of a game being delisted is pretty thorough IMO. New titles will never be delisted, decently reviewed games will never be delisted, and games that the market deems as good judging by sales will not be delisted.

If a game is old, was reviewed very poorly, and isn't selling, I see no harm in delisting it. It's doubtful anyone would seek out these titles in the future, anyhow.