"*Official* XBLA thread"

Murbal wrote:

famous_roy wrote:
I tell you what we need on XBLA.

Oddworld: Abe's Odyssey and Exodus, preferably in one package, with enhancements and all the trimmings.

Now, thank you.

Nah, I want them on my PSP first. But I've said it once and I'll say it again - the achievements would be awesome :-)

Burst Slig's head after possession - 10G!

Murbal wrote:

RedSparrows wrote:
I got Ion Assault, along with about 2000 other people. Oh dear.

It's a very enjoyable two stick shooter. I like it.

Two stick shooter you say?

/googles

hmm. Looks nice.

/adds to queue

It has a nice mechanic I've not seen elsewhere, and looks very pretty.

Ion Assualt completely passed me by! I remember being intrigued by screens of it a while back. It's supposed to be a rather good Geo Wars clone, right?

Basically, yeah. Has multi too, but not tried it. Co-op and Vs.

5 minutes of Joe Danger footage. Danger Danger !

Surely one to look forward to early next year, loads of different game modes and a level editor to boot. EG and Edge have done features with them quite recently if you missed those. Their official site is here. Top of my most wanted list after watching that video. Twice.

Already a must buy for me!

By any chance have there been any Chase HQ announcements?

Taito seem to be putting their wares up there - ideally they'd put up the arcade original before botching a remake, then put the newer 3D arcade version up.

None that I'm aware of.

IGN have a PC Genjin / PC Kid / BC Kid / Bonk (depending on your first exposure): Bonk: Extinction hands-on and screenshots!

Really enjoyed this on my PC Engine (and the Amiga conversion, called BC Kid) so I'm cautiously optimistic for this.

I'm going to get seriously narked if that game isn't out this Wednesday.

I'm serious.

edit: I just remembered, MW2 is out this week isn't it? so it's likely to be CoD XBLA.

FUUUUUUUCCCCKKKKKK!

/grabs cannon

Edited by SomaticSense at 15:17:16 09-11-2009

Duke Nukem': Manhattan Project coming to XBLA?

Not even game cancellation can get the Duke down, as we've learned that his 2002 sidescroller may be on its way to the Xbox Live Arcade.

This news comes courtesy of the Linkedin profile of Rebecca Heineman, one of the founding members of Interplay back in 1983 and programmer of such classics as The Bards Tale III. Rebecca currently resides as Lead Software Development Engineer at Microsoft.

In her LinkedIn profile, as well as a cached versionof a forum post, she suggests that she's been working on bringing Duke Nukem: Manhattan Project to the Xbox Live Arcade.

Quick history lesson - Manhatten Project was a 3D side scrolling Duke Nukem adventure developed by 3D Realms and the now defunct Sunstorm Interactive back in 2002, and was well received by critics. It was used to keep Duke Nukem in the limelight after Duke Nukem Forever's release date continued to slip.

PC version trailer

SomaticSense wrote:
I'm going to get seriously narked if that game isn't out this Wednesday.

I'm serious.

edit: I just remembered, MW2 is out this week isn't it? so it's likely to be CoD XBLA.

FUUUUUUUCCCCKKKKKK!

/grabs cannon

CoD XBLA will be available for the people who ordered the Hard-something version two weeks earlier, so CoD won´t be available for the general public this week.

Kind of good news then.

Come on MS, please! I'll even settle for Alien Breed as a sub!

Ready your Fact Cannon: Gamerbytes sales analysis time!

Highlights:

October has been a month of highs and lows - games that have done remarkably well and continue to sell well after their release, while new games and dropped off almost instantly.

....

Lucasarts’ Lucidity and Doublesix’ South Park Tower Defensethe first two released for October. South Park was the victor here, appearing to sell over 77,000 copies. By our estimates it was the best selling game of the month thanks to its opening week, but is rapidly dropping off despite keeping second place on the Top 10 throughout the month.

Lucidity meanwhile performed very poorly. This was Lucasarts’ second XBLA title and their first original IP for a while now, and was unable to make the Top 10 in its opening week. In comparison, Monkey Island: SE just tipped over the 100,000 mark on its Leaderboards.

Digital distribution consultant David Edery recently made the suggestion that Lucidity’s poor sales could be based on two problems we see in digital downloads – insufficient marketing and unforgiving design.

....

Insufficient marketing could be said for almost all the Xbox Live Arcade game this month, particularly with the next two releases - Axel & Pixel and Sam & Max: Beyond Time and Space. Axel & Pixel was announced a little over a month before it was released, but there was no real idea of what the game actually was. There was a website but the game trailer wasn’t released until a week before it came out. For a game to be so based around a bizarre art style it seems strange that the developer and artists weren’t thrown to websites for interviews about the games' development. Axel & Pixel was able to sell better than Lucidity with a better post-launch sales curve, but certainly didn’t do as well as it could have.

Sam & Max: Season 2 suffered a similar fate – it only added 1,774 players in its first week of sales for a total of 3,305 for the month – far less than the 10,000 S&M Season 1 was able to get in a similar time frame. Season 2 was not previewed or discussed much at all prior to release – it is admittedly difficult to talk about the re-release of a two year old game, especially when the first season came out just months before it, but the effort should have been made.

....

Tower Bloxx Deluxe.... Digital Chocolate have been well versed in digital games through the iPhone, but the instant announcement-than-release format of iPhone games has never worked that well for consoles. The game did do well despite itself, and for a very simple and casual game it has done better than I would have expected.

Ubisoft’s Panzer General: Allied Assault is the complete opposite experience from Tower Bloxx – a complex collectible card game similar to that of Magic: The Gathering but set in World War II. It was announced quite a bit earlier than other games mentioned, but an official trailer was never released for the game at all. Prior to the games release there were previews, but no trailer to show people how it played.

One thing Ubisoft never appeared to do was push this against those who are buying Magic on Xbox Live Arcade. Nothing says this more than Jerry “Tycho” Holkins over on Penny Arcade who discussed the game on the website's blog. “Where in the hell did Panzer General: Allied Assault come from?” he asks, “I'll leave it for you to determine whether or not World War II recast as a tactical CCG is something my very bones would desire”.

If one of the most forefront tabletop nerds doesn’t know about this game, then you’re doing something wrong. In fact the post-release trailer released by Petroglyph got 63% of its views just from that Penny Arcade post, making it the most viewed Youtube video of the game online.

....

While we can’t specify Rainbow Island’s Leaderboard data, as it only counts Challenge mode and not the Story mode, we can see that it sold poorly in comparison to Taito’s Bubble Bobble and Puzzle Bobble games. The XBLA version wasn’t announced until the week before release – plus the game was a port of the WiiWare game released earlier this year to poor reviews.

Inferno Pool had only 327 people who had played the endurance mode in its first week, plus the release was extremely limited as it only coming out in Asia and North America - only available in Europe via the PlayStation Network, where it came out 5 months earlier.

As for games which were already out....

Trials HD continues to blow through the competition, and while it may not have sold as much as South Park it still has Castle Crashers-style momentum in terms of sales. Leaderboards show Trials HD added 73,000 players during October, but we believe the sales are more around 62,000 – still fantastic.

Speaking of Castle Crashers, it’s still holding on but did drop to its lowest position ever at 9th place in the third week, and still added 35,000 players during the month. We estimate the sales are closer to 24,000 however, thanks to the Leaderboards including offline multiplayer data.

Zombie Apocalypse may have received poor reviews, but it’s certainly hit the Zombie market perfectly and stayed in the top 4 positions throughout October. The single player Leaderboards state over 43,000 people have played it, we believe the sales may be slightly higher thanks to the focus on online multiplayer, which may be strictly played by the owner, so we estimate the sales being more around 51,000.

Shadow Complex dropped pretty significantly but still stayed in the Top 10, hanging around the 10th spot by the end with 23,000 additions by the end of the month.

Magic: The Gathering, Marvel Vs. Capcom 2 and Battlefield 1943 all continued to stay in the Top 10, but thanks to not having overall Leaderboard statistics we can only estimate their sales in comparison. Battlefield 1943 continues to do remarkably well with an estimated 31,000 sales, which is great considering it requires Xbox Live Gold to play. Magic: The Gathering has sold an estimated 21,000 copies, and while Marvel Vs. Capcom 2 has now dropped out of the Top 10, but when it was it looked to be doing 4,000 or so a week.

SomaticSense wrote:
Kind of good news then.

Come on MS, please! I'll even settle for Alien Breed as a sub!

The Team 17 guy I spoke to at the Expo the other week said it should be 'early next year', iirc. So not in the immediate future.

Encleverment Experiment and 0D Beat Drop this week.

Golgoth Studios (who're currently working on the Toki remake) are going to be working on Joe & Mac: Caveman Ninja next. Apparently.

Still no Serious Sam...

Any news on Perfect Dark?

Nope.

What about "Jimmy Krackenhausen: Top Secret Rodent", eh? When's that out on XBLA?

Rick Dangerous please.

Rik Mayall please.

Rick Astley... no thanks.

Rick Astley no thank you

Spooky!

OH LOL

Did anyone else here know an anagram of Rick Astley is Tickly Arse?

ANYWAY

Achievement lists for Encleverment Experiment, 0D Beat Drop and Polar Panic (no, I don't either).

Retroid wrote:
Encleverment Experiment and 0D Beat Drop this week.

More filler shit, and still no Serious Sam! What in the holy fuck is going on?

I will be tearing off my head and replacing it with a bomb, and then charge screaming into MS's offices at this rate.

ARRRRGGGGHHHH!

edit

Checked the Marketplace myself to find out the above gutting news, and ended up finding something called, if I remember rightly, NBA Unrivalled as well. I'm sure this is new as it wasn't there before, but wasn't part of any announcements.

Seems to be an homage to NBA Jam, which I'm sure will get a good reaction from some folks here :)

Edited by SomaticSense at 11:15:05 11-11-2009

I can't help but feel that Sony have the right idea with downloady games sometimes. Do we really need multiple releases every week? The sheer amount of averageness/dross effectively buries the really good stuff.

Incidentally, I tried Ion Assault. Didn't get on with it, so deleted. Same with Lucidity. The joy of trial games!