TBA

I'm about start working on the big 'explanation post', expect it within the next couple of days, it won't take that long to write but I want to make sure that Balai see what I put down before it gets posted, so that he may point out any changes to be made, IE. where I have made a ton of shit up, which I will unconsciously do.

I partly wanted to make a post now to break the two day radio silence (as if that is really a big deal) and also force my thoughts about the Xbox 360's new 'community games' feature upon you all. Think of it as mental surprise sex.

As per usual, Microsoft is unmoving on their pricing policy, which is something that is, finally, going to bite them in the arse. They got away with it on arcade games because, lets face it, when the strenuous mental exercise of figuring out the actual, real world price of these games they were selling was completed, you generally ended up with a figure you would expect to pay for the product that was being delivered, a middle ground between the 400 and 800 price points was not as necessary. It is now. Indie games are hard enough for developers to price, on the PC most devs stick to around the £5 mark, but there is allot of deviation even there, the problem with Microsoft's nebulous space bucks system is that 400 points is roughly £3, I don't want to spoil too much about how much money the 800 points mark roughly translates into, but suffice to say that it is double that of it's compatriot.
The minimum price point on community games is 200 points and rather sadly almost everything sitting at that number would require significant budgetary adjustments before I even considered buying it. It's a shame really, this was the feature I was most looking forward to in the NXE, but most of the content is either unplayably bad or lacking enough polish to justify the entry fee. The main problem with these releases is that most of them focus on a single aspect of game play way too much on a single aspect of game play, 'Bad Atom Episode 1' for example, may be a modern day messiah of innovation, but with a UI as incomprehensible as its', I may well never know.
'Artoon' is another example of being overly focused on a single aspect, although unlike most of its' comrades it focus almost solely on presentation, this means that it is playable, sadly the game play, which is OK at first, prevents it from being replayable. To elaborate, I was bored before the end of trial screen was summoned forth to boot me off, and that thing kicks at after only five or ten minutes. Pretty looking game though.

I promise we'll get down to business soon.

I have a secret that I cannot say