MS confirms no Spring update, a DRM fix and an XBLA restructuring

This is a pretty good reason why digital distribution can fall flat on it's face. Everyone needs to make a stink about this and stop Microsoft from doing this.

As a fan of Space Giraffe, I think this blows.

Don't dump YARIS! In forty years it will be quaint to see yaris on XBLA. It would be like having a game called PINTO on there today.

So why do i pay AUS$70/year for a more reliable service then new desperate features (more chat!)?
Anyways, "changes" to DRM is better than nothing.
I would like a free XBLA game in compensation, even if it is underperfoming.

MS always fucking up.

I hate MS

what a bunch of pricks, freaking MS ruining all of our $50/year hopes and dreams.

This is fucking bullshit...I love my 360 and frankly hate every other console but I'm fucking pissed. Why do I pay for xbox live? Does anyone have a silver account? Does it actually impede anything that bad to have a silver account? I don't really know anything about the silver accounts but I'm not paying for absolutely nothing anymore. Bunch of fucking bitches I swear to fucking god...UGH!

Wait, what? Removing titles? Doesn't that sort of go against the point of XBLA's "no shelving space needed" benefit? I fail to see how this could possibly be at all beneficial to MS or.. anyone, really.

Ugh.

Give us something MS!

Though, this does make me curious what the dashboard update that was to "prepare for the growth of the service" was all about. I think that may have been our spring update. :-(

What is going on MS? I really want to know, though I'm guessing you're gonna wait until E3 (bastards).

No spring update??!! Garbage!! How about M$ gets off it's collective lazy a**es then and starting working on that bogus update list...since most of that stuff was pretty good.

PS - This means the fall update better drop on 9/20 or whatever the first official day of fall is.

sad face :(

Seriously make any games they want to delete a dollar for a month so we can get them cheap and then delete them.

Also isn't this sort of better? I mean on one hand I can have four way voice chat (pretty useless because there's rarely times when I want to talk to four people at once) or have Xbox Live to play on at all?

It seems to me that lately they are dropping the ball. I still love you XBOX360 but damn no update that is a bad move. Deleting games old arcade titles another bad move. Netflix not coming onboard another bad move. you could own this market and your letting it slip away.

Under 65 games includes:

Robotron: 2084
Bankshot Billiards 2
Feeding Frenzy
Dig Dug
Ms. Pac-Man
Gauntlet
Speedball 2: Brutal Deluxe
Texas Hold 'em
Contra
Marathon: Durandal
Triggerheart Exelica
Missile Command
Time Pilot
Track & Field
Hardwood Backgammon
Pac-Man
Frogger
Mad Tracks
Root Beer Tapper
Super Contra
Geon: Emotions
Soltrio Solitaire
Arkadian Warriors
TiQal
Rush'n Attack
Aegis Wing
Defender
Rocketmen: Axis of Evil
Double Dragon
Xevious
Gyruss
Asteroids / Asteroids Deluxe
Battlestar Galactica
Centipede & Millipede
Boogie Bunnies
Spyglass Board Games
Brain Challenge
Tetris Splash
Ecco the Dolphin
Battlezone
Yie Ar Kung-Fu
Wing Commander Arena
Novadrome
Shrek-N-Roll
Mr. Driller Online
Scramble
Tempest
Sonic the Hedgehog
Discs of Tron
TotemBall
Word Puzzle
New Rally-X
Tron
Bliss Island
Cyberball 2072
Screwjumper!
Rocky and Bullwinkle
Yaris

This doesn't look good for the future of the Arcade Titles, and those were one of the main reasons I wanted a 360 in the first place. That'll be a LOT of games I no longer have access to should something happen to my 360. On the plus side, I'll no longer spend a damn dime on XBLA anymore.

Maybe that PS3 sales jump in 2012 isn't that absurd as it seemed.

Sensationalists unite!

Seriously, this is being blown up and into a bad thing, when its not really bad at all. Yes, if you are yearning to get games that scored horribly and dont have nearly anyone buying, it will hurt you. However, if you already purchased it, I am sure you would still be able to redownload it - you simply couldnt purchase it if you hadnt already. Not to mention they are now addressing moving the content licences to another 360, which removes that fear associated with it as well. All in all, I am more excited than every for the potential of XBLA, now that they are focusing on higher quality, and fixing some of the downfalls of the DRM on XBLA titles.

This sucks so much. Why "delist" games? They don't take generally disliked games off of store shelves because some people still buy them.

This is a severely bad decision, Microsoft!

If they insist on doing this, they should post a list of the soon to be released games online like a week beforehand. That way, people would have a chance to buy them before they disappear.

As I was saying,...

LFotF - They say later in the article about it something about like a 3 months notice or something in regards to when games would be removed, so there IS ample notice as well before it happens.

I would have listed that as a reply had I seen a button to do so, but I didnt.. Just now did ;p

Sounds like a "quality over quantity" initiative to me, I mean from a business point of view it would be better to have your users (esp new ones) browse your marketplace and only see relatively decent games; save disappointing them with stuff like, ahem, Yaris

I am glad to read that MS is addressing the DRM problem, but the rest of the is total crap. Setting the new price point just means that now we can expect to pay $20 for most popular XBLA games. (Castle Crashers anyone?) And then telling us that old games, even if they are poorly rated, will be unavailable. What a bunch of crap MS!

How about just discounting those underperforming XBLA titles instead of delisting?

Also, I blame Peter Moore leaving the last shitty update and the lack of one this time. Get that EA guy out of there!

Well, To start I'll have to say no Spring Dashboard update blows.

Delisting games is a massive mistake, maybe even a bigger mistake than the Xbox Originals program.

I am definatly more for cutting the prices on those games and dumping them somewhere like the arcade hits section. Find some other way to make the service smoother MS.

For the current users, there may be games they have been meaning to get, but have been putting off, thinking they would always be there.

For someone that already has some of these games, one way or the other, delisting them is going to be a nightmare, either on this console or the next.

These are MY games and I bought them.
These games have no physical form what-so-ever.
As far as I am conserned MS needs to ALWAYS provide a way that I can redownload these titles now and until the end of thier existence.

Which isn't going to be too far off in the cosole industry if they don't stop making dumbass choices.

What MS is doing in thier choice making process is comparable to shooting yourself in the foot, digging your own grave, locking your keys in the car, just fucking themselves.

You cannot tell me that a team, of who know how many people, in six months time could only fix the DRM issue. They should have given us something, anything.

And the whole thing about removing XBLA games is stupid but i know why they are doing it.

Next weeks PRESS RELEASE:

"We at Microsoft only have high quality games on XBLA, 100% games of games available in XBLA have a meta critic rating of 65% or higher and not only that but they sell really well."

So very very disapointing...

Did anyone actually RTFA? What's written here (and elsewhere) is a misinterpretation of what was originally said by Whitten in the interview. Here's the exact quote:

"We have taken a different approach this spring and spent a lot of our time and resources of building the proper infrastructure and scale for the service not just today but also into the future. So while most users will not notice any significant changes to the dashboard this spring, I can tell you that the team will be releasing a new digital rights management (DRM) tool next month that will allow you to better consolidate your licenses for downloaded content to a single Xbox and allow you the freedom to be able to play your content both online and offline."

He definitely doesn't say there won't be a spring update, but rather they are taking a different approach. What was going around the 'net with regard to feature updates were rumors and could have come from anywhere. Who knows what will actually be included in the update.

fuck you, microsoft.

I asked MrPointyHead about it! He didn't confirm or deny it! So there still may be an update!