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Microsoft’s Xbox Live Arcade service has been running for over half a decade now seeing a major boost in content since the Summer of Arcade promotions began running and since last year House Party (previously Block Party) has joined it for Spring releases. A steady flow of releases during each month also bring a fair amount of titles to the downloadable market space. With a healthy mix of ports, original content, big and indie developers, it begs the question: how mixed is the genre offering?

Before examining what isn’t out there, it’s important to observe what is. Xbox.com has listings for the amount of games contained in each of their classifications, bringing up some pretty startling numbers. Leading the way (not surprisingly) are Action & Adventure games with 177 individual titles including Castle Crashers, Battlefield 1943, Geometry Wars and Shadow Complex. Puzzle & Trivia and Classics are the next highest below Action with 74 and 76 respectively. On the opposite side of the spectrum are some very niche genres including Kinect with 4, Music with 6, and Educational with 3. A genre expected to have plenty of titles would be fighting, but believe it or not only 13 titles are classified as fighting games on XBLA, while the nebulous Other category has 7. Above those are 23 Role Playing games, 20 Racing & Flying games and 33 Strategy & Simulation games. Also noteworthy you’d think there’s more than 38 platformers out there, but not according to Xbox.com. (as of October 2011) Read More

Think you have the best strategy? Prove it!
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What we are playing is a weekly column that appears each weekend. Various staff members let the world know what games had them hooked the past week and which ones …
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What we are playing is a weekly column that appears each weekend. Various staff members let the world know what games had them hooked the past week and which ones …
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Everything you need to know to eliminate the orc infestation
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Everyone has that list of things that bug you about video gaming, the sequel syndrome, DLC overflow, etc. Having been a part of the media side of the industry for a while now I’ve developed a few of my own. These are things that I just can’t stand, and I’ll wholly admit that I might not always be fully educated on all the matters, but I think making five changes can help the gaming industry and community for the better.

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What we are playing is a weekly column that appears each weekend. Various staff members let the world know what games had them hooked the past week and which ones …
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Call us nostalgic if you want, but we want yet another Quake game to come to Xbox Live Arcade. We’ve got Quake Arena Arcade, which is an enhanced version of Quake III Arena. We’ve got Quake IV via retail, and we’ve already petitioned id Software for the original Quake on XBLA. Now it’s Quake II‘s turn.

Here’s the thing: it’s already been released on the Xbox 360 once before, in a manner of speaking. It came as a bonus feature with Quake IV. It had the entire game, system link, and four player splitscreen. While it didn’t feature any graphical improvements or Xbox Live support, it was a proper port (read: not emulated) and so gets the ball rolling for an XBLA release.

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It’s no secret that Nintendo isn’t in the best shape right now. After finding great success with the Nintendo DS, the Wii launched and got the masses talking about Nintendo once again. Then something happened. The Wii’s sales plummeted, the Nintendo 3DS launched poorly, and investors are questioning Nintendo’s direction with their next console, the Wii-U. Nintendo is desperately trying to gain back momentum. What happened to Nintendo’s mojo? Well, Microsoft, the Xbox 360 and Xbox Live Arcade all have something to do with it.

To truly understand what’s at play here, we have to first consider why Nintendo has historically been a successful company. Nintendo has always excelled at making games that appeal to the masses. Nintendo makes games that anyone can pick up and play. Mario has been a part of our living room since 1983 because Mario games have always been easily approachable for anyone who wants to sit down and play. Whether it’s you, your little sister, your best buddy or your dead beat uncle, Nintendo makes products for everyone. When Nintendo is succeeding, it has always been the case. So why are the tables turning?

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What we are playing is a weekly column that appears each weekend. Various staff members let the world know what games had them hooked the past week and which ones …
Read More