Hong’s Cave

With the imminent introduction of the next generation gaming consoles (Microsoft Xbox 360, Nintendo “Revolution”, and Sony PlayStation 3), a lot of people talk about the future trends and stuff.

For me, two things stand out. One is that the console gaming market needs to grow. That is, it should appeal to more than just young males, to females and younger/older people. Nintendo mentioned this when they introduced the new “TV remote” controller.

The other is that with the increased capability of the hardware, the game development cost is growing out of hands (ArsTechnica, GameSpot and News.com). Some game production costs seem to rival those of movies and it is highly likely that the costs won’t come down. Most of the cost increase, I think, is in the increased/more-detailed artworks. Although Microsoft and Sony promised better developer tools and middleware solutions to ease these developer complaints, it is indisputable that it is becomingly very difficult for smaller (and probably more creative) game developers to survive.

In these sense, I have a high hope that Xbox Live Arcade (”XBL Arcade”) can solve both issues. XBL Arcade is a way to play downloadable “small” or classic games such as “Bejeweled 2″ or “Joust” on the Microsoft’s console. All XBL Arcade games are supposed to have demos, and if people like some they can buy full versions. You can think of it as a “shareware” game that was popular on PC except that it is distributed only through the Microsoft’s console network.

Not only this is a great outlet for smaller gaming outfits, but this is a great way for many people to enjoy simpler puzzle-type (or brain-teaser if you like) games. Although there have been “classic collection” games on disks so far, I don’t think those were that popular. This way we may be able to nurture more creative games instead of standard NFL or WWII games with glitzy graphics.

Sure, XBL Arcade was introduced a year ago, but I don’t think neither Microsoft nor the game developers had proper strategies developed. Also, Microsoft was trying very hard to establish itself in the traditional console market as a newcomer, so it seems this project was given less attention. And then they already knew that Xbox’s life was coming to an end (or Xbox 360 was coming).

This time, it seems it’s going to be different. For one, every Xbox 360 owner gets an Xbox Live account free. Although this XBL Silver account won’t let you play online mode of the DVD games, it allows you to enjoy XBL Arcade along with some other basic features. Of course, one still needs to connect the console to the network, but it greatly increases the target audience for XBL Arcade.

What’s still not known and which is probably the most important thing for XBL Arcade to succeed is the price for each XBL Arcade games. For me, $15 would be the maximum I would pay for buy-once type of games. I’d like it to be around $10 a game, but we’ll have to see. It just can’t be “expensive”. Otherwise, XBL Arcade is doomed. And I do think that Microsoft should subsidize this for the first year or so to make it a real success if the numbers don’t add up initially.

Although not discussed by Microsoft, I think the XBL Arcade could really charge like a real arcade. That is, one would pay $0.10 or $0.25 per play. These type of micro-payments might seem difficult at first, but Xbox Live already has a concept of “points”. So you can say one “XBL points” for a play, for example.

For me, the most interesting genre for XBL Arcade is definitely puzzle games. One of the games my wife and I enjoyed at an arcade in Korea a few years ago was “find-the-differences-in-two-pictures” type of games. Or those “bar”-games that some places (even arcades) have that have hundreds of quick games. This type of games will work really well with the per-play model since the contents need to get updated regularly, and paying for the whole game (or whole collection of games that I may not play) would be too much.

I hope Microsoft can set up good pricing models. HD gaming is all good and nice, but I believe this will make home-gaming truly popular.