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Pac-Man wakka wakka wakkas XBLA
The good news: it's Wednesday and there's another Xbox Live Arcade game to blow some MS bucks on. This time it's Pac-Man, part two of Namco's arcade offerings following Galaga, and he's also fetching 400 MS Points ($5 in Earth money). The bad news: Pac-Man is the last game confirmed on Microsoft's initial Xbox Live Arcade Wednesdays list. We know Microsoft wants to keep up the weekly cycle, but with no announcement of future games, it makes us feel uneasy. Official Xbox Magazine listed the following titles and dates ... Aug. 16: Texas Hold 'em Aug. 23: Time Pilot Aug. 30: Scramble Sept 6: Lumines Live! ... but Microsoft naturally shot 'em down. We're thinking OXM is right on the money (they are official), and Microsoft's just being cautious.See also:The growing list of Xbox Live Arcade titles
'XBLA Wednesdays' looks to keep rolling, Konami leading the charge [update 1]
Club Skill reports that OXM has published the list of Xbox Live Arcade titles scheduled for release on Wednesdays through September 6: Aug. 16: Texas Hold 'em Aug. 23: Time Pilot Aug. 30: Scramble Sept 6: Lumines Live! I gotta admit, I have a soft spot for Konami's Time Pilot. Back in the early 80s, that joint was in heavy rotation on my older brother's ColecoVision. But I digress ...With Frogger out, and Time Pilot & Scramble on the horizon, the Konami classics are starting to make their mark on XBLA. So where's Contra? And what's this about Symphony of the Night? What up with those Turtles![Update: redirected link to OXM directly.]
SFII is the fastest sellng XBLA game ever
Timeout problems, E. Honda spammers, impossible d-pads, lag, all of these things combined could do nothing to stop the momentum of the Live Arcade juggernaut known as Street Fighter II. Within the first 24 hours of its release, SFII became the fastest selling Arcade title ever. Behold:"Capcom® today [Aug 4th] announced that Street Fighter® II' Hyper Fighting, the company's first title for Xbox Live® Arcade for the Xbox 360™ video game and entertainment system from Microsoft, has seen a phenomenal record of downloads since it's debut on August 2. Within the first 24 hours of it's unveiling, Street Fighter II' Hyper Fighting has become the fastest selling Xbox Live Arcade title to date with hundreds of matches being played every hour."Great news for Capcom sure, but it also means that we can pretty much kiss five dollar XBLA games goodbye. 360 Fanboy would love to complain, but then we'd have to stop playing. (And by the way, since you've all gotten your Street Fighter fix, give Cloning Clyde a try.)
Symphony of the Night to be heard on XBLA
At last, every miserable little pile of secrets that owns an Xbox 360 will be able to experience Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, a game considered by many to be the best in Konami's esteemed franchise. According to the September issue of EGM, the game is scheduled to hit Xbox Live Arcade in early 2007. It'll be a torturously long wait, though it leaves us time to ponder how exactly a Playstation (and Saturn!) classic will slip under XBLA's 50MB Limbo pole. It seems likely that by next year, the size requirement will have been given a significant bump by larger memory cards and hard drives. After all, we doubt fans would be pleased if anything were to happen to the game's wonderful soundtrack in order to cut down on space.But enough talk. Have at you![Thanks soco and doomx24!]
Street Fighter II shoryukens XBLA Wednesdays
Here it is, folks. The one XBLA game we've all been waiting for. Originally unveiled at CES last January, the nearly eight-month wait has been a true test of patience. Lesser gamers blew all their MS loot on puzzler after puzzler, hoping to break The Hunger. Now they sit there, in a jewel/gem/crystal-induced catatonic state, unaware of the day's significance. Street Fighter II is here and you can grab your 800 earmarked MS Points (that's ten of your Earth "dollars") and download the ~50MB arcade classic before venturing online and having a 14 year-old who's never even heard of Street Fighter the game ("the movie was hella great though") embarrass you terribly, sending you back to the warm embrace of the Joystiq comments page. There, there Joystiq reader. It'll be okay. You'll get the hang of that d-pad in no time, and then it'll be you making them your "bitch." Feel better?[Thanks to all you Street Fighters for the tips!]
The growing list of Xbox Live Arcade titles
Gaming Bits presents this list of 31 future Xbox Live Arcade titles including some better knowns (Alien Hominid, Lumines Live!, and Texas Hold 'Em) and some familiar names (Paperboy, Small Arms, and the non-alcoholic Root Beer Tapper). Gaming Bits says many of these are listed in the September issue of OXM, and many are already known, so who knows what the unknowns are, y'know?We know Microsoft has plenty of games in their pipeline because, well, Xbox Live Arcade's Ross Erickson told us, "We certainly have enough games in the pipeline – more than enough, in fact – to achieve that goal on a weekly basis. We're not announcing anything in terms of what's beyond Pac-Man at this point; there are enough games in the pipeline to last for a very, very long time." See also: Castle Crashers: an XBLA original from The BehemothAlien Hominid to crash land on XBLA this yearLumines Live to hit Xbox Live Arcade18 Xbox Live Arcade titles revealed[Via Aeropause]
One lonely shot of Mad Tracks
More than a few people were disappointed that Mad Tracks was not included on last Sunday's poll. As a form of penance, please accept this solitary shot of the upcoming Live Arcade racer. The game is based on the little pull back car toys -- you know, pull the car backwards and let it go: zoom! Check out Load, Inc's site for some images of the PC version. You can even get a PC trial of it if you want. The 360 version should hit the Arcade in October.Anybody played the PC version yet?
Galaga hits Live Arcade
It's Galaga! Available right now on Xbox Live Arcade! A game sure to make gamers, non-gamers, and even the significant others of gamers very happy. Everybody loves Galaga. Grab the demo, and if you like it, Galaga can be purchased for 400 points. That's a mere $5. Seriously, when you were a kid, if someone told you that you could play all the Galaga you ever wanted for five bucks, you'd go for it right?If by chance you have no idea what Galaga is, get the demo and experience gaming history. Otherwise, rejoice!
Small shots of Small Arms
Gastronaut Studios has seen fit to release a handful of shots for their upcoming Live Arcade multiplayer title, Small Arms. The shots look nice, though something is lost when the game is not in motion. Still, in comparison to other Arcade titles, Small Arms stacks up pretty well (and performed well in our recent poll). Hopefully, Gastronaut will give us a release date soon.
The unofficial Xbox Live Arcade sales chart, and other useless facts
C4Lukins, a member of the NeoGAF forums, has posted the results of his unofficial Xbox Live Arcade survey. C4 figured he could generate a rough estimate of XBLA game sales by recording the number of the last position on each game's leaderboard. To avoid scrolling through tens of thousands of positions on each leaderboard, C4 set out to land the lowest possible score on as many XBLA titles as he had access to. In his own words: "It can actually be quite challenging to suck worse then everyone else..."While it's nearly impossible to determine if his final numbers* are even close to accurate, C4 has made some other quirky discoveries that are certainly worth a mention: "Over 20,000 Uno players have not managed to win a single single-player game" "Somehow people are managing to get a lower score then 200 on Joust, despite the fact that you get 4 lives and 50 points each time you die" "The worst finishing time on the first level of Marble Blast Ultra is over an hour" *Hexic HD has the highest count because it comes pre-installed on the Xbox 360 HDD (Premium Bundle).
Joystiq interviews XBLA's Ross Erickson
Hate your job? You're about to hate it a whole lot more. We discovered why Ross Erickson, as the Worldwide Games Portfolio Manager for Xbox Live Arcade, has one of the greatest jobs on the planet. We chatted for a couple (untranscribed) minutes about his time at the Salt Lake Games Group (his boss was actually Tex Murphy) before getting into questions about the merits of the portfolio strategy, the value of the indie game scene, his game collection and, of course, what he actually does for a living.Your title is Worldwide Games Portfolio Manager, which is a big way of saying what? It's a big way of saying finding and picking and identifying the games we want to put on Arcade and then working with all the publishers and developers around the world. Both on an inbound basis, when those guys are interested in getting a title on Arcade, original ideas come through me first and I vet out the ideas and justify the choices and sort of pick out which ones fit in the portfolio best, which ones magnify the goals and objectives of Arcade, and also really assess the risks of working with said developers to determine if this is great in the idea stage or is this something that can make it all the way to the finish line and be a real productive game and a game that people are going to love.The other side of it is going outbound, which is to go and find the kinds of games that we're looking for, evangelize the goals and ideals of the platform both on a 360 macro level and on the Arcade level, the kinds of features and things that we want and the kind the kind of game experiences we want to get into the hands of customers at various stages in the lifecycle of the whole console. Clearly right now we're in the early adopter stage still, the first twelve months of people really enthusiastic about the console, primarily male, hardcore gamers. But they have significant others and spouses and wives and girlfriends and whatever in their lives as well and many of them are having kids and Arcade's sort of becoming this thing where, as an entire portfolio, we sort of want it to look like there's eventually something there. There's many choices in Arcade and there's something there for everybody in the Xbox household.
360's financial future looking rosy
Xbox 360's latest financial numbers have been flying about for a few days now, like so many winged monkeys. As you can imagine, winged monkeys are sort of dangerous, difficult to understand. Thankfully, Robert Summa broke down the numbers (monkeys, remember) into easily understandable bits (like removing the monkey's wings). Now the numbers are safe for everyone (though somewhat disappointed, having lost the gift of flight). Things of note:
