Topic: Microsoft Game Room

[vudu]

Microsoft's highly-anticipated (at least by me) Game Room launched today for PC and Xbox 360.

Here's a list of the 30 launch titles available.  There 15 arcade titles (roughly half Konami titles and half Atari titles), 7 Atari 2600 games and 8 Intellivision games.  Microsoft has announced they're going to release an additional 7 titles each week and expect to have over 1,000 games available within the next 3 years.

If you like classic games the service sounds extremely promising.

You can "rent" any game for $0.50 for a single play or buy one for the low price of $3.00 ($5.00 if you want the ability to play on either your PC or Xbox 360).

Anyone check this out yet?

[BlackNMild2k1]

So the Xbox Virtual Arcade arrives.

The pricing sounds good and I like that you can pay just $0.50 per play and not buy if you don't want (some people will wish they had just bought it), but will they only be bring old school arcade games out?

[Ian Sane]

I think if it's an old school arcade game I should be able to play it once for a quarter!  Paying 50 cents for one play is that sort of overpriced bullshit that turned me off of arcades in the first place.  If you went into an arcade today and they happened to have Centipede do you think it would cost 50 cents to play?

$3 is a good price to buy though.  That's cheaper than any VC game.

[vudu]

Ian Sane hates good things.  It makes me sad.

[KDR_11k]

Wasn't the problem with the Intellivision that it has a weirdass controller that only the DS can properly emulate?

Since I have the Konami Arcade Classics for the DS (it's like 7€ in stores now) and the 80 Atari Classics for the PC (was like 5€ on Steam) I already have most of them. KAC is portable so I can play it anywhere and the DS has a WAY better D-pad than the 360, playing Kicker (Shao-Lin Road) with an analog stick felt weird.

For the existing games I don't think 3$/€ is that good a deal, these are way older and way more primitive than the NES games the Virtual Console serves up. People have said the C64 should have been priced lower than 5$ and these are even simpler games.

You get one free play per game to try it out.

[ShyGuy]

Not not much I would be interested in for even $3. Maybe Centipede.

[vudu]

I'll fully admit that the initial launch titles aren't that interesting.  It's the potential of the service that truly astounds me.  1,000 games within 3 years?  Virtual Console has like half of that in America.

I also think the interface of the service is brilliant.  You start out with an empty, virtual game room (think PlayStation's Home).  As you buy games your virtual space fills up with models of the actual arcade games, complete with sound effects, attract sequences, etc.  If your friend has the same game as you do and he has a higher score than you a spot above the arcade lights up alerting you of the fact, challenging you to best his high score.  It adds a social aspect to these classic games that you would otherwise lose interest in after a few minutes/hours.  It gives you a reason to come back to Centipede again and again.

There are a few other neat features that sound very promising.  First, you can send homemade challenges to your friends based on your accomplishments in a game.  For example, if you get to the 20th level in Centipede you can create a customer challenge and send it to your friend.  Second, each of the games has a practice mode that will allow you to "undo" a mistake (sort of like the Sands of Time).  So if you just want to beat a game and don't care about a high score you can use this mode and if you die you can rewind the game and try again.  Brilliant!