Microsoft to Cut Off XBLA’s “Long Tail”

By: Derek Yu

On: May 28th, 2008

Game|Life’s Chris Kohler has written an interesting article in which he discusses Microsoft’s plan to cut low-performing games on XBLA, the proverbial Long Tail of their product line.

“Screw our heritage,” seems to be the new motto. Whitten says that Microsoft will begin to delete games that have a Metacritic score of less than 65, a demo-to-full-version conversion rate of less than 6%, and have been on the service for over six months.

While this does potentially mean that Yaris might finally meet its grisly end, what with its dismal Metacritic rating of 17, Chris points out that it’s also a illogical solution to XBLA’s real problem – that the interface for finding games is God-awful. And Microsoft’s rubric for deciding which games stay and which games go most definitely does not benefit either the game developers (who could easily be surviving as part of the Long Tail), or game players, who are suffering from a poor interface rather than having too many choices.

Here’s a list of currently-available XBLA titles.

Posted in Business, Community, Developers, Xbox 360

dijipenne

NOOO NOT THE YARIS!
Guesst

Why are they doing this? Did server space recently start consting premium prices? Are they suffering by leaving these games on the system.

Oh, I know, Microsoft is afraid of tarnishing their reputation of producting quality software. Like Microsoft Vista. Or even Microsoft XP (pre-SP2). Microsoft Windows 2000. Microsoft Bob.
http://www.distractionware.com Terry

I really don’t get the point of this – couldn’t they just create a second “tier” for all the old stuff? Point of the appeal of digital distribution is that it (should eventually) make it easy to track down old and hard to find games and play them.

Oddbob had some interesting things to say about this, by the way!
xerus

Yeah, what the fuck. Its not like they need to take the old games down to make shelf space for the newer games when theres actually no shelf space.

Microsoft looks like a bunch of dicks, now. Well, I guess they always have but…. more so in my eyes now.
BOBO

THAT”S WUT SHE SAID!! LOL
Wait

What are you guys talking about?
homework

I have to go do some.
Zulgaines

Thrown them all into a “Bargin Bin” area at 1/3rd or 1/2 the original price.
what

what has this got to do with indie game development?
mike hawk

Someone please name a game on Live that rates less than 65 and is not god fucking awful. Really? Just one please. Please name it.

Seriously, my heart is not going to skip a beat if some of the garbage on there gets the axe.

Also, “micro$oft are a bunch of dicks now” I bet I can count on one maimed hand how may of you have ever said anything nice about microsoft, so I am sure they have a lot to fear from diving opinions.
raigan

how could ms pac-man get <65%?!?!
http://www.g4g.it FireSword

1. don t buy , pirate or use vista
2. don t pay xbox live to multiplayer
3. when u create a game don ‘t use direct x or .net
4. Repeat until microsoft is gone lol
Pekuja

You should note that a game has to meet all the three requirements mentioned to get delisted. This means that the “long tail” is only cut for games that don’t sell and were received badly critically. If the game got a good critical reception, it won’t get delisted even if it’s selling badly, and if the game is selling well (judged by conversion rate), it won’t get delisted even if it sucks.
Also, I’m not sure if this applies to Yaris at all, because it has a 100% conversion rate, being a free game and all.
I do agree that Microsoft should instead be reorganizing the service. It seems like most of the games that will get delisted are ports of old arcade games, which is kind of a shame since it’s nice to have access to those, although I do think it’s good to focus more on new games. It would had been nicer if they just made it easier for users to ignore those games if they’re not interested.
Dominic White

“Someone please name a game on Live that rates less than 65 and is not god fucking awful. Really? Just one please. Please name it. ”

Marathon: Durandal and Triggerheart Excelica to name two, both of which got 63% scores.

Durandal is a fantastic update of old Mac classic Marathon 2, with new graphics, multiplayer, survival mode and a bunch of other stuff, and Triggerheart is a solid if not amazing ‘bullet hell’ shooter.

Both good games, both potentially due to be axed.

Interestingly enough, the much-maligned Space Giraffe (which I personally loved) got an average of 68% on metacritic, and 72-ish on Gamerankings.
http://www.intuitiongames.com torncanvas

They’re totally missing the point. There are many reasons to keep the games on there, and very few to take them off. Saving face is one of those few reasons. The problem isn’t the selection of games, it’s how you find the game you want.

“The 20th century was about sorting out supply. The 21st is going to be about sorting out demand.”

Microsoft needs to be working on the demand part, not the supply part.
PHeMoX

I think it’s a fair criteria actually, as they still only delete when all three criteria are met. Doesn’t seem wrong in my opinion, as there really aren’t many games that a.) sell bad, b.) get incredibly low meta-scores and c.) are NOT bad games and thus games people would want to play.

I think the 6 months time period might be on the short side, because some games don’t get noted very quickly on their service, but apart from that I don’t see much wrong here.
rodnonymous

Since you cn set to automatically download demos you get really low conversion rates anyway. 2% is about average from what I’ve heard. Six is only for things that have popcap level push for name recognition or which people were waiting for.
Noyb

I remember them saying that you can still redownload delisted games that you have already bought, which means it’s not a server space problem.
ian

Last month it was all ‘OMG there’s too much crap on xbox live!’. Now MS is going to start delisting some of the crap and everyone is still up in arms. You people are fucking impossible.
JFizzle

I agree with ian.

Yall a bunch a haters.
Exoduster

People who complain about the quality of games like Yaris are missing the point. Prior to playing that game, I didn’t even know what a Yaris was. Game sucked, but mission accomplished.
Wait

I bought a couple Yaris after playing the game. Also there are too many good games on XBLA right now.
Dominic White

ian – you misunderstand. People complained about there being a lot of crap blocking things up on XBLA, but that’s because XBLA is the worst-designed digital store ever.

Imagine going into a games store, where there’s only one deep-stacked shelf, with A at the top, and Z at the very bottom. And you have to dig through it all to get to anything – even to browse. It means that you literally have to wade through everything you’re not interested in to get to what you are.

That’s XBLA. Now, compare it to any other digital network. Steam, Gamersgate – hell, even the Sony Store for the PS3. All of them are much better organized, laid-out and searchable.

So, as many are complaining, Microsoft have found the worst possible solution to the given problem. This is like amputating at the shoulder because your hand itches. The sane and reasonable solution would be to rearrange the store, rework the storefront and perhaps cut prices on the unloved and unwanted. Maybe go the Steam route and offer discount bundle packs. 5-10 arcade classics for $20-30 would probably go down very well.

But no, that’d be sane. That’d be reasonable. That wouldn’t involve pulling games fom sale altogether, which is doubly heinous when you consider that getting past Microsofts ridiculous certification process can take months and thousands of dollars, which may be an easily absorbed cost for a big-name developer, but for anyone indie, it’s an almighty problem.

Do you understand why people are upset now? It really isn’t that complicated.
Cobalt

Here’s a list of unbiased, legitimate and researched reasons why you should hate Microsoft:

http://www.vanwensveen.nl/rants/microsoft/IhateMS.html

These indie developers made a mistake.
Ciardhubh

“Microsoft have found the worst possible solution to the given problem.”
– Dominic White

That depends on your point of view. This way they force customers to look at their whole stock. Maybe you’ll buy something you just saw? The way I understand it, they have a monopoly on the Xbox with this store. They do not need to make customers overly happy and satisfied. That’s second to trying to turn the fact that customers cannot go elsewhere into cash.

You have to remember that business is not about how to offer what the customer wants, but to make the customer buy what you offer ;)
Dominic White

You’ll notice that no other digital store in the history of digital stores has pulled stuff from sale, because that kinda defeats the entire point of digital distribution. We’ve got a relatively stable history of many companies (including Microsofts biggest rival) providing large, easily searchable stores, thus helping people buy things.

A while ago, I wanted to look up which games were $5 on XBLA. Was I able to find this out on the actual store? No. Of course not, that’d be too simple, and the kind of thing you can do on any other goddamn e-store.

I had to look it up on wikipedia. That’s how bad it is – basic price-browsing has to be done via wikipedia, because they don’t even have it listed on their own store!
haowan

you go into a shop and they have five things for sale, you maybe spend 1 minute in there if there’s not something you’re 100% interested in. If there’s a huge store with all sorts of crap of all kinds, you’re more likely to spend time digging around looking for gold. Hell, you could even ask a shop assistant about some of the stuff and they might help you.

The analogy extends to online stores – your shop assistant is recommendations from friends, rating systems, filtering systems. NONE OF WHICH are present on XBLA.

This will only result in depopularising the service and lowering overall sales, not to mention denying developers of sales they might expect in the future – just because a games isn’t selling “well”, doesn’t mean it isn’t selling at all.
zomgzomgzomg

Some ppl are obviously just too fucktarded to find a game in the XBLA store.
McRanty

Micro$hit should have fixed their existing problem long ago… First of all, get rid of the god-awful MS Points system that fucking plagues their Marketplace. The Nintendo Wii can get away with this, why? Because 100 points equals (=) $1.00, that’s right, nice and simple. Nintendo understands simple mathematics while Microsoft seem to be raping it’s community of gamers in the ear… I say “No, not all of us that own an Xbox 360 are 12 – 14 year old racist retards that will end up having our college education bought for us by our mummy or daddy. Nay, there are a handful of us who actually enjoy a good game and understand how money and games work and also understand that money and micro$ocks marketplace points system doesn’t work. Save your retarded math for the chimps you have testing out all of your new games and leave us humans with something to enjoy and remark upon rather than ridicule and shit upon.”

Secondly, Micro$hat needs to fix their overall pricing. Yes, that means the Xbox 360 system. Not only is it the most expensive console on the market (if you’re an online gamer) it has the least amount of potential for future growth and innovative new features. If you want to play online with the Xbox 360 you are going to be forking out $50 – $70 every year (depending where you live) for a shabby service that is updated every season only to be hit by a plethora of glitches, bugs, and connection problems every single time they do update! On top of that, what exactly have they updated??? Their have been no significant improvements in performance, very few new options for customization regarding sound, display, or gameplay. The updates really only apply to the online marketplace where shit games are constantly being spewed out every week so that fans of good games can hold on to their tinkle until really good games do actually do become available… current record 1 good game every 6 – 8 months! Hoo-fucking-Rah! Besides all of this, you can sit your lazy ass down and rent a movie over your Xbox Live for the low low price of what would actually get you 3 movies at a video rental store. This makes a lot of sense since you’ll never be late with your return, and you receive no physical copy of the movie, oh and you don’t have to interact with another human being… so yes, of course it should cost more to rent a movie through this service… is the price of convenience or stupidity?

Lastly, Sony and Nintendo have free online service which is growing and becoming better / larger all the time. Their are far more unique games being released on a regular basis as well (now that Wii Ware is up and running it should get better and better over the next few months) while Sony’s online market has numerous new games that show just how unique and interesting smaller games for large consoles can be… just take a look at Echochrome! If you’re not impressed by it’s innovative gameplay then it’s only because you dress up as Master Chief when you’re home alone and probably pick your nose and eat it too when nobody is looking. Beyond all of this, when it comes to re-releasing games Sony has a library that rivals Microsofts 10 – 1. Not all of the original games were good, but even the good games come in at a ratio of 10:1 for Sony.

Micro$hyte has had plenty of opportunity to provide the fans and online community with more innovative features and titles because it’s had at least a whole year over the other consoles, but no, they’d rather screw the pooch and blow smoke up the asses of their loyal fans.

I really used to look forward to the future of the Xbox 360 and newer games including both mainstream titles and the smaller XBLA marketplace titles but I’ve been let down time and again.

This fine rant was brought to you by someone who owns all 3 major consoles on the market and who enjoys good games with fresh ideas, interesting gameplay, or are at the very least, fun.

F.U. Micro$hit for having more money than you know what to do with and for not re-investing in your own products.

Enough said, time to go play some indie games.
Trotim

Woah, Duke Nukem 3D has been announced? The Incredible Machine too?! And Magic: The Gathering! Lode Runner!

Now all I need is Carmageddon and Dungeon Keeper and I might actually forget about this whole “Windows” crap of theirs.
Moose

haowan, the problem is that MS makes it far too hard to “dig around the store”. An obvious problem is that it takes far too long for the game info display in the right hand pane to begin to scroll, so most people won’t bother to wait.
OrR

What the fuck? I LIVE in the long tail! This is why I hate consoles with all my heart. >:(
DontHateConsoles

Don’t hate the consoles, hate the people behind these dumb decisions (including all of the Marketplace decisions that have been made by Microsoft thus far)!
Snow

I completely agree with McRanty (I like the name). Micro$ux already makes enough money. Why can’t they now focus on quality of play and service rather than flooding the system and service with more crap games with $-signs in their eyes.

I don’t get it. When I first got a 360, I was amazed at the service they had. But, pretty much within a day I went from amazed to disappointed. The interface for checking out one of the indie titles is like the interface on the yoyogames website. All these game maker titles and you have no idea what the game really is or how it looks. On they 360 you’re left to download a demo to find out. If they could at the very least have some screenshots or better yet a 30 clip of streaming video showing gameplay.

Micro$ux has something others (companies or individuals) could only dream of. They have networked consoles in a large percentage of homes. I don’t know what the actual number is, but I bet there is an xbox for every 1 in 14 homes. That’s a huge chunk of the market. The xbox is both for hardcore and casual gamers. Even though the XBLA titles are more aimed to casual gamers, they are not sheep that will just fork over $10 for every second title. I think this is what MS is expecting. They’re looking at sales and that is what they gauge everything by. If the numbers are low – the game must be crap, so scrap it. If the profit from the movie rentals is too low, raise the price of the rentals by a dollar.

I don’t think I will ever understand how the large conglomerates work. Is it too much pressure from investors – that they can’t take the time to invest on quality or improving features? Is it too costly to spend some time on that – even though it mean’t more profit in the long term? I mean, do they need to make as much profit as they can NOW?

On the one hand the xbox is an incredible machine if you look at all the benefits and potential it has.
It’s the budget gamers dream machine. It will run games equvilent to a mid to high range gaming rig. Also, in this same category – the casual gamer who most likely won’t invest in a gaming rig or build one, has a machine that he/she can still enjoy current titles on. It’s also a media center powerhouse.

On the otherhand – all the features that an xbox has aren’t being PROPERLY utilized.

Scrap the xbox-live subscription – the competition is already free. Look at the most popular digital interfaces for distribution of games and media. Youtube is a good example for a video interface. Game Trailers is a good example of a game interface – just have a trailer and or user gameplay videos with each download. It’s so easy. Yet it’s so irritating to see them not understand these simple things and miserably fail.

Maybe Micro$ux should replace their entire xbox division staff with monkeys. Then we’d get some quality and progress.
shinygerbil

What exactly is the point in calling them Micro$oft or micro$ux, or Micro$hit or whatever the hell is currently cool? It’s rather juvenile, don’t you think?

It’s miKKKrosoft nowadays, fools.
josh g.

gerbil wins.
McRanty

@shinygerbil,

You’re right, I forgot their newest name… sorry.

@Snow,

Exactly… just look at what sony is doing with their online market… almost all of the exclusive titles that have come out for their network come with a preview and some screenshots plus a full description that takes a mere second to load up and read!

MiKKKro$laugh had a chance to be a leader in the game, instead they now need to take lessons from the other big boys at Nintendo and Sony. It really pisses me off that they had a whole year advantage and did nothing with it, and then even after another year of having a lead in marketplace offerings they didn’t deliver anything that was actually “New”. Every service update by MKKK$oft has only resulted in being a test of gamers patience. I renewed my Xbox Live account just before X-mas (it was a piss-off that the service went tits-up during the X-mas holidays and only pissed me off more) and now that they are lagging behind all of the other services (Sony’s and Nintendo’s), which happen to be FREE, I think this’ll be my last year with an XBL account because I’m sick of the bullshit. I’ll still play the games that I do have but as for any other games that come out for the Xbox 360 I’m only going to buy games that I feel would be very good offline.

A sad result of the incompetence behind a company that had an opportunity to do something grand but instead spent 3 years working toward something bland. People are slowly starting to wake up though and once everyone realizes that the Nintendo Wii and the PS3 are both cheaper technologies with far more innovative features a large chunk of console gamers will give up or sell off their Xbox 360’s. Way to go MS!

Ah well, perhaps one product developed by MS will actually work properly. Perhaps Vista will be the product they said it would be in 5 years or so, when Service Pack 6 hits the market. Oh and hope you all enjoyed Service Pack 3 for WinXP. The creators of Windows can’t even get their own product right…

I’m just tired of this shit… and you should be too.
na

A stupid decision made by Microsoft, how surprising.
yo

A smooth sail never made a skillful mariner
haowan

Moose:
“haowan, the problem is that MS makes it far too hard to â€œdig around the storeâ€. An obvious problem is that it takes far too long for the game info display in the right hand pane to begin to scroll, so most people wonâ€™t bother to wait.”

My point exactly.
zomgzomgzomg

Iâ€™m just tired of this shitâ€¦ and you should be too.

Yeah tired of shit leik ur post.
Satan

Stop being so mean, you guys!
falsion

“a demo-to-full-version conversion rate of less than 6%”

I guess for some people, a demo is good enough. Don’t take down the whole game just because people like to play the demo than the actual game. By doing that, you’re just taking away things that people might actually enjoy having access to. Leave the demo up somehow or better yet just offer the entire game for free since people don’t seem to care for paying for it. I mean, not buying something doesn’t mean that people don’t like it. If anything, it means that people are willing to play a game as long as it is free and the demo allows them to do so.
McRanty

@zomgzomgzomg,

Wow that was witty, coming from a guy who can’t spell the word “like”.

@falsion,

Good point! After all, we are paying for this access even if we do only try out the demos, it should be our choice whether we want to filter certain titles that we aren’t interested in after trying them out so that we can access the XBL marketplace much quicker, but of course this is a far more innovative idea than MS can handle and because of all the past bullshit I don’t plan on having an XBL account for more than another 7 months. After that I’ll stick with the free online gaming that came with my Wii and PS3 which will probably have more great features by that time anyway.

Oh, and one more thing @zomgzomgzomg, fluff-off ;-P If you have something constructive to say then say it, don’t strain yourself too hard though.