Team 17 boss explains Worms XBLA delay

By Tom Bramwell Published 21 February, 2007

More testing than expected.

Team 17 boss Martyn Brown says the developer is as frustrated as anyone about Worms' prolonged absence from Xbox Live Arcade, but he expects we'll see it very soon.

"The delay with Worms for XBLA has been as frustrating for Team17 as it has been for the very many players eager to see it's release," Brown told Eurogamer this morning.

"It's really been a case of the last cycle of production/testing and certification taking much longer than we would have hoped. We know we aren't the only case, but that doesn't ease the frustration."

Earlier this week Microsoft said that it had nothing to offer on Xbox Live Arcade today as the scheduled title had been "delayed". Director of programming Larry Hryb said the platform holder had "a very high bar that each title must pass over in order to be released," and that nothing had quite made it in time.

Brown believes the depth of the experience offered by the Live Arcade version of Worms may have complicated the process, too.

"Worms is one of the 'richer' XBLA experiences in that it'll provide hours and hours of repeat play through it's on and offline multiplayer modes. Unfortunately that's meant a hell of a lot of testing and also re-submissions on what we felt were final builds.

"We've been working very closely with Microsoft XBLA team on this who are as excited and just as keen to see the game out there and on XBLA but there are procedures to follow before that can be the case.

"We're very close to being able to celebrate it's release though, although it's almost happened twice before, so we better keep quiet and hope that we get the green light soon."

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About Tom Bramwell

Tom is Operations director of Eurogamer Network and Editor-at-Large of Eurogamer.net. He joined the company in February 2000.

Read more articles from Tom by visiting the Tom Bramwell archive page.

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