Microsoft's Xbox Live Arcade stays the course in '07 with solid new titles and only a few modifications. 2007-03-07
Yesterday I sat in on a demo covering what Microsoft has planned for its Xbox Live Arcade service, and judging by the success the unorthodox game delivery system has enjoyed so far, it appears Microsoft is proceeding with only a few little tweaks. The two biggest changes it announced were the relaxing of size restrictions on Xbox Live Arcade games (from a limit of 50MB per game up to 150MB per game) and the release of the new 512MB Memory Unit (increased from 64MB). Microsoft also announced a few of its upcoming XBLA titles, including Boom Boom Rocket, Jet Pac and 3D Ultra Mini Golf Adventures.
Live-in Live Arcade
The focus of the Xbox Live Arcade has always been to provide quick access to casual yet online-enabled games, so Microsoft had initially set a limit to how large a game could be in order to be featured on the service. This 50MB limit was arrived at due to a desire to keep download times at a minimum, but Microsoft noticed that it was becoming something of a hindrance to developers of Live Arcade titles. Based on feedback from a number of developers, Microsoft found that too much time was being spent trying to compress games into the tiny footprint mandated by the 50MB limit. No big deal; Microsoft just decided to allow larger download sizes.
Of course, Microsoft still expects Live Arcade titles to remain relatively tiny: somewhere in the neighborhood of 75MB to 100MB. Now, this does mean that the larger games may undergo a "change in initial price po
