Hey, remember PlayStation Home? Remember how Sony pushed it for months on end? Remember how it then just kind of came out and didn’t really serve any singular, discernible function? Remember that?
Well, word on the CES 2009 street is that Microsoft will be throwing their hat into the avatars-awkwardly-interacting-with-one-another ring this Spring with Game Room, a sort of Xbox Live Arcade arcade. Except it’s limited primarily to classic arcade games, so in that sense, I guess it’s more of an arcade-game arcade for Xbox Live Arcade.
Wait. You know what? This trailer explains it much better than I ever could:
The service will will be available for both the Xbox 360 and PCs running the Games for Windows Live client. As far as pricing goes, you can choose to pay either $3 (240 points) for an individual game on an individual platform or $5 for the same game on both platforms. Conversely, you’ll be able to pay $0.50 (40 points) for a single round of the game of your choice, giving you the chance to play these old classics the way you were meant to: by emptying your wallet one (or in this case, two) quarters at a time.
You know what? This idea is honestly kind of cool.
Truth be told, I find the single round concept kind of interesting. Yeah, I know, microtransactions, horse armor, yada yada, but the option to play just one consecutive round of Centipede is an intriguing one, especially considering I never find myself wanting to play more than one round of Centipede in the first place. Honestly, though, I can’t think of an arcade game that can be completed on fewer than 6 tokens, so value-wise, buying for keeps is probably the way to go here. Either way, it’s better than the $5 Microsoft currently charges for these old games. Bonus!
The really crazy part, though? Microsoft announced at their press conference last night that they will have over 1,000 games available in Game Room within three years of its launch. That’s one thousand games. Like, damn. I didn’t even know there were 1,000 games.
Microsoft has already announced that new titles for Game Room will be released weekly, but with only 30 games and 3 companies onboard at launch, it sounds like Microsoft has some serious work ahead of them. Let’s see how this goes!
Readers! How do you see Game Room: a neat attempt to out-Home Home, or a shrewd move by Microsoft to reignite interest in lazy classic-era ports? Let us know in the comments!
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“Like, damn. I didn’t even know there were 1,000 games.”
Whippersnapper. I played 1000 games before I was 20.
I love, love, LOVE this idea. I’m all for social experiences on consoles that don’t involve killing each other or competing (don’t get me wrong, I love knifing my friends as much as the next guy…..).
One thing I will say, though, is that pricing of classic games has always seemed crazy to me. Nintendo lost a load of my respect in their decision to charge what they do for games that haven’t been in stores for 10-20 years. And most of these ’1000s’ of games can be played in your browser for free…. I’d be much more inclined to play if this was something you could subscribe to (say £40 a year gets you unlimited access to their classic games…), or even better, something they gave free with your Live Gold account or what have you….
I just don’t see how these old games are worth even $3 each…. You wouldn’t pay that to play the actual physical machines (if you could find any….). If they were $1 each or 50c or even 10c or whatever, I might be interested. That’s how Nintendo shoulda priced their classic titles, imho………
Definitely trying to cash in on easy ports. But I’m sure there’s a huge mass of people who are willing to chip in for it either to try and recreate days of old that will never happen again, or for parents to get more kid-friendly games. Someone should keep track of how many times these old games keep getting reissued…
I think both you’re absolutely right – that at its core, this is Microsoft is trying to make a cheap buck on quick and dirty ports for the Nth time.
But one thing I thought was interesting is what Jeff Gerstmann said in his write-up: that because of the 1000-game figure, “At some point, this whole thing starts to sound like legalized emulation on a grand scale, which is pretty interesting. ” I can see where he’s coming from.
But honestly, when you compare the prices of games on Steam against the prices on Games For Windows Live, the last person I want behind the wheel of ‘legalized emulation on a grand scale’ is Microsoft.
Sounds useless… But also kind of cool…
From what I’ve been able to gather looking at every available video mentioning Game Room because it’s exactly the sort of thing I’ve always wanted barring a real arcade of my own:
There is no Avatar interaction. You don’t walk around the arcade, you choose a machine menu-style. There is no Live play of games. Aside from promo vids, I’ve never even seen other than the demonstrator’s Avatar in the arcade, so I have no idea how, or even if, other Avatars are represented.
Each machine has a leaderboard, that’s the extent of the interaction.
Personally, that’s just the way I’d like it. I don’t want Home, I just want my own arcade.