Samurai Slowdown

Alright, so now I'm pissed. A quick browsing of Major Nelson's blog post about Samurai Shodown 2 proves that the game was originally listed at 400 fake points, then later upped to 800. That's $10 in real money for a retro title. What the fuck?

I know I've been bitching about the rising prices of arcade titles for a while now, and I'm sure everyone is pretty sick of it. Oh well.

I have really been looking forward to this game since I heard it was in the works. My sister and I used to play the hell out of the Genesis version. Nothing beats playing as Hanzo and doing a bunch of cheap grabs. lol!

Anyway, I've decided that I'm done with the Xbox Live Arcade. I've bought my last title. I'm not shelling out 800 points for a game that should be 400 since Microsoft is trying to push their price increase with the "Summer of Arcade". Fuck that. Any money I spend on downloadable games will be on the PSN.

The sticky-sweet irony of the whole thing is that I'm in the market for a new 360 with the 60Gig HDD. My quasi-launch system's disc drive has been making some very unpleasant noises lately, and even given me disc read errors while playing Rock Band the other night. I'm not sure, but I think that's a sign that I might be screwed.

Of course, buying a new Xbox means moving all my content to a new HDD. I do not look forward to that, especially since I've never migrated my licenses to the replacement system they sent me after my launch console RROD'd. I anticipate it being a pain in the ass.

Anyway, look for my Xbox on eBay! Bidding starts at $149.99!

On The Rain-Slick Slope

Two recent events have caused me to be very concerned about the prices we'll be paying for Xbox Live Arcade games in the near future.

First, Microsoft announced that they will be restructuring the XBLA. Basically, this means they will be de-listing titles that don't perform well or get low scores on Metacritic. You know this will include mostly retro titles that debuted at 400 points. I don't know why they don't just discount them and try to boost sales. The whole point of having digital distribution is to save money on packaging and shelf space. Arcade titles don't require any of that, so why take them off the service?

Second, the Penny Arcade game sold over 16k copies so far according to X3F. This means that, even with it's hefty $20 price tag, it still sold extremely well. Now, there's nothing wrong with a game selling well. The problem is the message that is sent by those numbers. Pricing the game at $20 was a risk, but it was also a way to test the waters to see if the world is ready for a 1600 point arcade game. Well, according to over 16,000 of you, we are. Thanks for fucking the rest of us!

Now, everyone makes the argument that the game is 7-8 hours, which is more than some retail games. And they say that those of us that speak out against the prices are just too poor to buy them. I call bullshit on both those arguments and I'll tell you why.

First off, 7-8 hours of gameplay is fine, but that's all you get. There's no multiplayer. There's no real replay value unless you want to play the same story multiple times. Also, if it were a retail game you would have the option to trade it in for credit or sell it on eBay. With the digital distribution, the game will just sit on your hard drive forever.

Finally, just because I don't want to drop $20 on a 8 hour game does not mean I'm poor. It means I'm not willing to support higher prices for the sake of higher prices. I'm all for the advancement of the industry, but this just smacks of the fleecing of the 360 install base.

Some people who are big PA fans may think the game is reasonably priced, but I say it's just one more step in the direction of higher prices and less value for the consumer.