One question we’ve been debating among my circles at Relic and in the game dev community is why XBLA insists on publishing so many ports of 80s games. Most recently, Paperboy and Root Beer Tapper, but Froggers jumps to mind as well as others.

As I mentioned in the interview, it takes 6 to 9 months (on average) for a title to progress from greenlight to live release. In some cases, it takes over a year. XBLA was in a very different place that far back in time. 1) Nobody knew how much retro was “enough”, and regardless 2) Most developers and publishers were unconvinced that digital distribution on the console would really matter (anytime soon anyway), and as a result, our biz dev person found it very difficult to proactively secure the kind of original content that we’re happily being pitched today.

Of course, this is all second-hand information; I only joined XBLA about four months ago. Which, unfortunately, means that it will be another 2 to 3 months (at the earliest) before you see any titles on the service that I’ve had anything to do with!

One question we’ve been debating among my circles at Relic and in the game dev community is why XBLA insists on publishing so many ports of 80s games. Most recently, Paperboy and Root Beer Tapper, but Froggers “jumps” to mind as well as others.

XBLA does seem to want innovative games, but cranking out these verbatim ports of terribly old titles doesn’t fit that bill. Why not make a Classics “channel” on XBLA to group these retro titles under so as not to tarnish the innovative name of XBLA?

Anyway – keep up the good work. I’ll be talking to you at some point about an XBLA pitch, I’m sure. :)

Adrian

MS sometimes funds titles (hint, this usually is the role of a publisher, so in this case we’d be viewed as teh publisher for these), but we sometimes also introduce people to publishers if they need someone to fill that role (funding, testing, etc, etc)

K

In other words, approval of a pitch for an unfinished game does not necessarily equal funding. In fact, as noted before, it *usually* does not equal funding. XBLA games are (generally) inexpensive enough to develop that many studios can bear the burden (between projects, or with a small amount of private funding, etc.) Of course, third party publishers have started funding a lot of development work for XBLA as well.

We do fund some titles, but they are relatively few in number, and I can’t disclose how we select them.

This does not, however, mean that most approved titles are “already developed.” Most aren’t.

Should I assume that means, “Yes, Microsoft can fund the development of successfully pitched XBLA titles”? If so, how would developers reach that point with their titles? What do successful pitches for XBLA titles look like?

If Live Arcade weren’t such a great service, we wouldn’t be so up in arms! Thanks again.

Let’s put it this way: we almost never *choose* to withhold a title from Asia in general (and Korea in specific). In fact, more often that not, we go to great lengths to incentivize the release of titles outside US & Europe (with varying degrees of success, obviously.) I know it isn’t a satisfying answer, but the fact is, it generally is a ratings issue and/or the decision of the publisher. I can’t give specific examples, but I’ve found that publishers have a surprising array of reasons why they might forgo the extra profit from a release. It’s my hope that these reasons will prove less and less compelling as customers (such as yourself) voice their demand for content!