Capcom questions N+ dev's logic

By Robert Purchese Published 28 March, 2008

Responds to XBLA outburst.

Wolf of the Battlefield: Commando 3 director Adam Boyes thinks N+ developer Metanet was wrong to call the vast majority of games on XBLA rubbish.

Writing on the Capcom US blog, Boyes said the real problem is how the content is presented, not the content itself.

"There is good content up there, but the Yellow Pages system [alphabetised with numerical titles at the top] doesn't lend itself to a proper sorting mechanic that we are used to from Amazon or YouTube," he said.

"Instead of complaining that XBLA has hundreds of games that are 'utter sh**' and advocating a no-limit release of a billion craptastic games, I think we need to work on lobbying a better system for sorting games. After all, Sony already has sorting for 'Most Popular' on PSN..."

Boyes praised the "indefinite shelf space" of the service that makes a game always available, and said he appreciated the demo system that lets you try before you buy.

These demos, if you remember, were one of the problem areas picked out by Metanet, which claimed it "was unbelievably depressing for us to try literally 80 games and enjoy less than 8 of them".

As a result, Metanet relies on word of mouth and reviews, which puts us back in "retail land" and far from the "Mecca for small teams" that it envisioned at the beginning of XBLA.

Meanwhile, Boyes continued to laud the freedom of the service and how there was a game for everyone, including his wife.

But again, this was something Metanet was against. It argued that "casual games outnumber proper videogames", which leads to the "vast majority of titles" being disappointing.

Conflicting interests, then. But who is right and who is wrong?

Pop over to the Capcom US blog and the Metanet website to read more.

Picture of Robert.

About Robert Purchese

Bertie is Eurogamer's Senior Staff Writer. When he's not hunting down news stories he's often found playing with his kids or gabbling about fantasy games and strange online worlds.

Read more articles from Robert by visiting the Robert Purchese archive page.

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Comments (32) Latest comment 4 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • monkie_king #1 4 years ago

    Game sells badly, therefore entire rest of world must be at fault.

  • Bennicus #2 4 years ago

    How many live arcade games have you played recently? Most of them are complete shit.

  • SeesThroughAll #3 4 years ago

    "Most popular"?

    I've never seen that in the PS Store.

    Before comparing, let's wait for the upcoming redesign to see how is it Sony sorts the content out, right?

  • asphaltcowboy #4 4 years ago

    @monkie_king: sales of N+ have actually been very good, so I'm not sure that's it. In a way, I agree: there's a whole load of crap on XBLA, with a few gems that stand out!

  • monkie_king #5 4 years ago

    Well hush my mouth. Thought this was another Minter-style rant.

    What it could really do with is a way for owners of a XBLA game to give it a rating out of 5 stars, or something. Probably more useful would be a "people who bought this also bought ...", Amazon style.

    Problem with listing by most-popular is that it becomes self-fulfilling, and it's hard for new or obscure games to get noticed.

    It'll be interesting to see what Apple does with the iPhone app-store, as it's a similar proposition.

  • BadBoyBonner #6 4 years ago

    N+ is clearly a standout release, and certainly a diamond in the rough.

    Think the point the developer was making was that most people can't be bothered to sift through sh*t mountain to find a gold nugget.

    And once it is perceived as a sh*t mountain, no matter how big the nugget of gold you place in it, lots of potential purchasers will have given up prospecting long ago.

    I agree the mechanism needs a complete rethink - it would be nice if people could actually search smalerl sh*t piles that contain the type of nuggets they are looking for.

  • Inquisitor #7 4 years ago

    That's the problem isn't it.

    For the casual audience it's a huge undertaking to find a game they like in that list. It's not too bad for those that keep up with reviews and such like cause we'll only play the demos of games that interest us, but even then it's still a chore.

    A rating system would be excellent, it does need an overhaul, I think they need to do away with shoving all the information on the blades when you click on the game and instead overhaul the entire design. Design it to look more like a webpage, rip off Amazons design, everyone knows that.

  • jack_klugman #8 4 years ago

    He's entirely right. The marketplace interface on Xbox is appaling. They could take a leaf out of iTunes' or, as mentioned in the article, YouTube's or Amazon's book when it comes to presenting this kind of information.

  • Rash' #9 4 years ago

    SeesThroughAll, You get it if you have an HD display.

  • kangarootoo #10 4 years ago

    The interface on the 360 has always beenbobbins. It might look sort of pretty, but it was never going to be scalable. Now it needs to house more content its all gone a bit wrong.

    Anyway, back to the main topic.

    "It argued that "casual games outnumber proper videogames", which leads to the "vast majority of titles" being disappointing."

    That is quite a loaded statement. I don't like to hear developers talk in terms of "proper video games", as if only the l33t games are of any value. If he is saying that many games aimed at the mainstream are badly produced (and therefore diappointing) then perhaps he is right, but that is an ENTIRELY different issue centred on quality of product.

    A game that is fun to play and generates profit, is a good game for anyone to be making. A wide variety of games that are both of these things, that appeal to a wide variety of players, is a good thing for the industry overall. You would think that the smaller dev would understand that better than anyone.

    This idea that some games, regardless of quality, are more valid than others because they target "hardcore gamers" instead of the " mass market" (quotes because no one ever seems to agree on what either of those terms actually means) is outdated and doesn't help anyone.

    How can we complain about the way the general public views video games in one breath, if we then get all snobbish about the mass market with the next breath?

  • wobbly_Bob #11 4 years ago

    Xbox live arcade is full of utter shit. I have regretted every single purchase made. The only semi decent game, for me, is Geometry Wars. The PSN seems to have a much higher ratio of good games... shame that the games are rarer than honest politicians ;-)

  • thisisatempaccount #12 4 years ago

    You have to work pretty hard with those quotes to make this into an argument, EG. Ultimately both devs are decrying a lack of a recommendation system to filter out the crap on XBLA - as gamers, we ALL want it to improve as a service, so why are you standing on the playground sidelines chanting 'fight! fight! fight!'?

    Metanet believe in the strength of their product - fine. They feel that it's been swamped by a sea of other bad products and this is hurting sales, because the faith of the audience in the service is undermined and nobody buys anything - good OR bad. A perfect solution to this would be a "proper sorting mechanic" that the Capcom guy also calls for.

    A user called 'fruitpunch' or similar gave an excellent example of how Microsoft could implement this in the comments section of the last article you ran on this story. It really was very well thought out; idiot AND fanboy proof. I hope he did as somebody else suggested and emailed it to MS. Quite why the system isn't already set to filter out bad games is hard to understand - it would be to the benefit of every party except the designers of genuinely shit games, and I can't fathom why MS would want to protect their interests.

  • jlaakso #13 4 years ago

    I don't have as much time to keep up with XBLA as I used to. The result is that I check out zero games - there's far too many of them and I have no other guidance except the buzz on the forums I frequent if there's something really very good in there (rare). This should be sorted pronto.

  • sanctusmortis #14 4 years ago

    It depends, as usual, what you're looking for; it is, as the name suggests, arcade oriented, and as such if you love old arcade games there's some seriously great stuff on there. It's like saying there's too few new games on Wii VC!

  • BillyBrush #15 4 years ago

    All distribution channels contain lots of bad in with the good, all platforms do, especially the sucessful ones (or were all PS2 games 8/10 +)

    you want a Nintendo seal of approval type thing?

    Microsoft telling devs their game didn't turn out good enough so they can't release it? or telling them the game they regard as a classic has aged badly so they can't monetise it again?

    You want more of a closed system then, with only a few handpicked games on there? what if an MS rep thought a game you liked like N+ or Omega5 that i liked wasn't wanted, or god forbid, what if those old skool Pac Man or Frogger fans out there didn't get to play them cos the kidz say no nowadays?

    seems like it'd be a risky proposition for any new devs too knowing if their game does not turn out very high quality it will not reach it's intended distribution channel

    seems like...people don't have a f*****ing clue



  • BillyBrush #16 4 years ago

    A user rating system, now that'd be great...

  • Miths #17 4 years ago

    Well, at least XBLA and PSN titles are listed on Metacritic, so it shouldn't be too difficult for anyone with ten minutes of free time to gather a few hints on potentially interesting titles.
    That said, both the 360 and the PS3 stores could probably benefit from a makeover. And the latter from content :p.

  • Darren #18 4 years ago

    But most XBLA games *are* shit...

    ... IMO! ;)

  • Dizzy #19 4 years ago

    Most people who think XBLA has no good games have no taste.

    See what I did there?

  • dr_shambles #20 4 years ago

    There's a lot of crap on there, but there's also Rez so it's not all bad.

  • miiiguel #21 4 years ago

    Ikaruga Achievements: [link url=ht tp://www.xbox360achievements.org/news.php?id=681
    ]http://ww w.xbox360achievements.org/news....[/link]

    Release must be close!

  • adamamosa #22 4 years ago

    Sure, theres a LOT of crap but I understand that nobody is MAKING me buy it. So I really dont see what the problem is. You just ignore those games you dont like and play the ones you do like.

    Really though . . . do you really want somebody to police XBLA and decide which games people will like and which they wont? Personally I would rather make that decision myself. Everybody has different tastes after all. And if it were not for the trials I would never have bought games like Gripshift, Carcasonne and N+ which have given me more hours of game time than many retail games. Its not difficult to make an informed decision about which games to check out, after all thats what games sites are for. I have 14 XBLA games now which means there are around 100 or so games on there I dont like. But I dont see why that should bother me. I just wont buy them!!!

    er

  • Feanor #23 4 years ago

    Steam has a lot of games and therefore a lot of crap games but you can sort them by MetaCritic score. I guess XBLA titles aren't all on MetaCritic, though.

  • The_Inquisitor #24 4 years ago

    A 'most popular' list like on the PSN would be a good idea, or even a pick of the week so some of the older releases can get the attention that they crave so much.

  • miiiguel #25 4 years ago

    "Steam has a lot of games and therefore a lot of crap games but you can sort them by MetaCritic score. I guess XBLA titles aren't all on MetaCritic, though. "
    But ALL of them has a demo version... isn't that enough?

  • patchbox360 #26 4 years ago


    categorise games by adverage rating and genre

  • Hughes. #27 4 years ago

    Yesterday CAPCOM say a title has to sell by the skipload in the first week or it should stop being made and stocked, today they welcome indefinite shelf space?

    Arse - Elbow.

  • muscleblade #28 4 years ago

    All XBLA games are on metacric and they all have demos. Most of them are pretty good imo.

  • DAN.E.B #29 4 years ago

    i would,nt take too much notice of most popular!
    you only have to look at the retail charts to know the general public dont have a clue what a good game is!

  • Nithron #30 4 years ago

    MS has the resources and the knowhow to create some kind of quality-based ordering system on Xbox Live, however, I think they've deliberately avoided it for philosophical reasons. In retail, shelf space is consumed entirely by the most heavily promoted and most popular products, leaving no room for an independently made masterpeice to sell anything.

    By making sure that everything in the Marketplace is represented equally, this problem is eliminated and every single game gets the same opportunity to shine.

    I'm not saying this is right, of course, it's just the only possible justification i can see for why the organisation of Live Marketplace is so utterly shite.

  • bloodflowers #31 4 years ago

    Whining: because choice and free demos are bad, mmkay?

  • SomaticSense #32 4 years ago

    WTF?

    Sorting games is not going to improve the quality, so what th hell is this guy going on about? Besides, most of the games are rubbish.