Watch out now the Ghoulies gonna grab ya…
I must be remembering the Xbox 1 era of gaming wrong. Because I thought that there were more than 20 games worth owning on the system, but you wouldn’t have guessed it by the games Microsoft’s been putting out via their Xbox Originals program. The Originals banner, which does not seem to imply any sort of quality standard or particular sales requirement, is frankly a joke of a program that makes you wonder how the hell Microsoft’s been lucky enough to be in second place this generation if this is the kind of software deemed “original” on the first Xbox.
The most recent example of which is Grabbed by the Ghoulies, Rare’s first game under Microsoft’s publishing banner and a pretty bad one at that. I remember spending a little bit of time with the odd analog-stick brawling control of the game and not being terribly impressed by it, but then again perhaps my utter and complete disgust with Star Fox Adventures colored my judgement of that one.
Frankly I think Microsoft should step up and establish the Originals banner as something other than a dumping ground. Really program the label with quality Xbox 1 games (and release something like Ghoulies in October to coincide with Halloween where it sort of looks like there’s a reason you put it there.) But then I think it’d be worth unifying the store as Apple has with its App Store. In the end, Originals, Arcade and Community games are all downloadable games — and what happens in the future if Microsoft begins offering full downloadable 360 games as Sony has done on the PSN with stuff like Warhawk and Burnout Paradise? There’s no reason to keep the “Arcade” banner if half the games released in there aren’t actually “Arcade” or retro games. Open it up. And give Community Games the kind of exposure and dignity they need to foster more and better titles by taking them out of the black hole that is the “Community Games” area on XBLM. Does anyone go in there? No. As Apple has on the App Store, let the iFart Mobiles mingle with the Sim Cities of the world on the charts.
Also, and I’ll really never get this…open up new releases to days other than Wednesday. And open the floodgates. I know that early on there were reports that Microsoft would say no to games of similar genre on Xbox Live Arcade. But screw it, man! Let the best version of Sudoku win (or what have you).
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