For a couple weeks now, I’ve been getting calls from friends in the industry bemoaning their lack of inclusion in the upcoming Summer of Arcade promotion on XBLA. The tone of the calls has varied, but they’ve all shared one thing in common — frustration with Microsoft. As I’ve thought about it, I’ve come to the following conclusion: Summer of Arcade will have to change or, at very least, cease to be Microsoft’s ultimate promotion for the XBLA service.
First, a bit of history. Summer of Arcade was the brilliant brainchild of my good friend, Jeremy Wacksman. It was born of the realization that Microsoft desperately needed something that would draw positive attention to XBLA and make consumers, developers and the press take it seriously (bear in mind, this was during XBLA’s “inevitable misery” phase, when no one had anything good to say about the platform.) SoA served that purpose beautifully; it kicked off XBLA’s “triumphant return” and changed the tone of public conversation from “XBLA is full of crap” to “XBLA is the only place you can find games like Castle Crashers and Braid.” It also established the $15 price point on XBLA — an important and under-appreciated feat.
Dealing with rejection
Summer of Arcade still gives consumers and the press something positive to focus on. Unfortunately, SoA seems to be turning into a net negative for the developer/publisher community. Today, many companies will target a summer release in hopes of making it into SoA and may even choose to hold a finished game in their pockets for several months for that purpose. A couple months before SoA is scheduled to begin, ~five lucky development teams find out their games have been blessed; significantly more discover that they’ve been rejected.
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