Developers Share Their Thoughts on XBLA Delisting

I’ve been pretty outspoken about how terrible of an idea I think delisting Xbox Live Arcade games is, and a few developers such as Load Inc. and Zen Studios have spoken out as well. Gamasutra seeked out a few more developers for their thoughts on the newly adopted delistment policy, including Super Stardust HD developer Housemarque and Metanet Software.

“If you think of a game that is selling about 200 copies per week at $10 each, it can still create income of up to $6,000 USD per month,” said Housemarque CEO Ilari Kuittinen. “It may seem low, but for a small, independent developer, this is a very welcomed additional income to keep the company floating. As the digital distribution is really allowing to keep an inventory without a significant cost to the service provider, I really think that these games should be still available unless the sales have been close to zero many months.

“Rather than removing the games, the marketplace interface should be improved to include innovations from other web stores. There are many ways to improve the service. There should be an equivalent of a bargain bin in the marketplace, recommendations of other similar products available on XBLA, tell people that what other people buying a particular game have also bought or a possibility to do customer’s reviews & ratings.

Amazon.com has literally hundreds of thousands of different items available and they are happy to add more items to their lists every day rather than delisting items from their database.”

Mare Sheppard and Raigan Burns of N+ fame both believe it’s a foolish decision, with Burns saying that deleting games “[is] outright insane.”

But they were in complete contradiction to what Merscom CEO Lloyd Melnick believes. Merscom was behind Buku Sudoku, which you might remember I found to be quite enjoyable, even if it doesn’t exactly fit into a genre people were clamoring for.

“We put almost three years into Buku and it is frustrating that there is so much noise that player’s may not realize our game really is good.

“I always believe in quality over quantity and I think the Microsoft policy is a good move in this direction. I understand how some developers feel they might end up wasting their effort, but I think if they make a REAL effort these hurdles should be a piece of cake.”