Hang out in the Arcade
Mar 02, 9:52 pm

Where does Xbox Live Arcade rate on your priority list of platforms? There was a time not so long ago where you wouldn’t even have thought of it as a platform at all – just a forgotten about add-on. It seems that XBLA has really come into its own of late. At the game developers’ conference recently, Microsoft held its inaugural XBLA Awards and we got a real idea for the first time of just how successful it’s been.

More than 25 independent studios are behind the original titles on Arcade. It seems developers are scrambling to get on board where a year ago it was hard to find anyone who was interested. With 115 million gaming hours logged by people playing these games Live Arcade is not just a viable business for developers, but in fact - for many - the platform of choice. Whether it can stay a haven for independent developers is definitely in question. As bigger developers take note of how many gamers are using the service, we may find the bigger fish eating up the little ones to produce bigger and more advanced Arcade games than we’ve ever seen before.

It’s all good for us gamers though.  As more money is pumped into the service better games will appear. It’s not unusual now when a puzzle game comes along for us to think “Will I get it on the DS or my PC or will I wait for the XBLA version to appear?” It’s no flash in the pan either. People sometimes forget that the Arcade was there in a slightly different form back on the original Xbox 1 (it launched in November 2004). It’s taken a long time to find its feet, but now that it has, expect bigger and better things in 2008