Download now, or forever hold your points: Potential delisted Xbox Live Arcade titles

by Griffin McElroy on May 26th 2008 12:30PM

Our Xbox-toting brethren at 360 Fanboy recently came across a list of Xbox Live Arcade titles which may be up for expungement in Microsoft's spring cleaning of their online store. The list (available after the break) includes all titles that fulfill the first and second criteria of Microsoft's new standards -- that is, they've been available for six months, and currently hold a 65 percent or lower average score on Metacritic. A steady conversion rate (the number of people who purchase the complete title after downloading the demo, a figure only Microsoft has access to) is the only thing standing between these games and a date with the delete button -- so if you've been holding out on downloading Shrek-N-Roll, you may want to pick it up in an expedient manner.

Crystal Quest
Speedball 2: Brutal Deluxe
Hardwood Hearts
Texas Hold 'em
Fatal Fury Special
Contra
Marathon: Durandal
Missile Command
Time Pilot
Track & Field
Hardwood Backgammon
Hardwood Spades
Pac-Man
Frogger
Mad Tracks
Root Beer Tapper
Super Contra
Geon: Emotions
Soltrio Solitaire
Arkadian Warriors
TiQal
Rush'n Attack
Defender
Double Dragon
Xevious
Gyruss
Asteroids / Asteroids Deluxe
Battlestar Galactica
Centipede & Millipede
Spyglass Board Games
Tetris Splash
Ecco the Dolphin
Yie Ar Kung-Fu
Wing Commander Arena
Novadrome
Shrek-N-Roll
Scramble
Tempest
Street Trace: NYC
Word Puzzle
New Rally-X
Cyberball 2072
Screwjumper!

Source

Tags: 360, delist, delisted, live, livearcade, metacritic, microsoft, springcleaning, xbla, Xbox-360, xbox360, xboxlivearcade

Reader Comments (83)

Wow, I have four of those...

CONTRA AND SUPER CONTRA?

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!

I feel like a King amongst dying games...I have seven of those.

Here's an idea, drop the price then see what is picked up. Half of these were way overpriced to begin with...

I totally agree. They should lower the price for these games. If they still do horrible, than they could remove them.

Hardwood Hearts for 1,200 points, c'mon now, this ridiculous.

All arcade games should be 400 points, if they are good games, than 800 points is ok. 1,200 and 1,600 are totally out of the question.

EXACTLY. i know they havea bottom line to uphold, but they arent even dealing with packaging/copying/distributing. It's all just electronic information! drop the fucking price

Agreed. BSG and Marathon are not worth $10.

I vote me for Microsoft President. And when I say me I mean "me", not me. That is, the me I'm replying to...oh geez...could you pick a more difficult name to reply to in a post ;)

Yea! There's so many games I would have downloaded if they were 400 rather than 800.

i mean come on, how much would it cost to keep these things on a server?
drop the price, it's not like they are going to drop below distribution costs.

I think this is a horrible idea. There may still yet be some drunken night when I'm willing to spend 5 bucks to play double dragon or fatal fury. Is that the new pacman remake game or an original pacman? I thought the new one was supposed to be really really good. I was hoping for a price drop before I bought it.

It's the old Pacman. The new one is called Pacman Championship Edition.

I agree, this is delisting garbage is terrible. MS needs to not blame their terrible organization on the content.

Instead of delisting, they should work on a summer update that better organizes their content. Hell, drop the prices on those games too.

In trying to be a legitimate digital distribution service, they're doing the wrong things. Do Amazon.com or iTunes delete songs or videos that don't sell well or at all?

I own 8 of those games... what does that say about me? Seriously, Frogger, Rootbeer Tapper, Time Pilot, Track and Field, Fatal Furry, and even Texas Hold 'em all are pretty good.

This is an assault to achievement junkies every where! They are taking points away forever! Also If I already have the demo, a.k.a already downloaded the entire game can I still purchase it post delisting?

Yes, you can. In an interview, Major Nelson said that people who have the game can suggest it to you and you can still buy it that way, and you can buy them through the demos as well. In other words, the files will still be on the servers; it's just an interface cleanup.

Man, if I don't get my Live access back before Root Beer Tapper vanishes I will be severely bummed!

I see Frogger on the list, and not Space Giraffe, Jeff Minter must be happy.

Jeff Minter can go fuck a Llama while a Neon Sign stating "All Your Base Are Belong To Us" strobes to a crappy 2 minute techno loop he threw together in a pirated copy of fruity loops plays endlessly to his thrusting rhythm.

I don't know who is that Jeff you speak about but your post honestly your comment brought some good ol Roflcopters to this thread.

Bravo sir, bravo and for once I'm not being sarcastic.

sheppy, show respect to one of the all time great programmers. While you work on a flight simulator, minter has worked on every classic computer and console as well as the new ones. Obviously he's done something right over the years. Attack of the mutant camels FTW

Yep, I think that about covers the idea of Space Giraffe; well done my friend.

Thankfully I already have all the ones I'd want from that list. This also reminds me to find out why my sega XBLA titles always say I'm playing the trial version even when I'm on Live. Seems to be happening to a couple of my friends as well.

The vast majority of these never should have been released, anyway. It's mostly shovelware and desperate, shoddy remakes.

The Pac-Man, for the record, is plain vanilla pac-man, the same one you can play for free on billions of websites.

I've played most of these, and the only one I had any fun with was Track and Field, but that's a mostly terrible game that's fun to play with three people after drinking. In other words, it worked out well as half-time entertainment during the NFL playoffs. Hasn't been touched since.

Pardon my stance:

THIS IS BULLSHIT.

I like some of these games and I have paid for them. WHEN my hard drive crashes (as they ALL do at some point), I won't have access to them again. I smell class-action lawsuit.

Why not lower the price and have a bargain bin of Arcade games? I know storage isn't the concern.

Actually you'll probly be able to redownload them

Yep, you'll be able to look at your download history and re-download the titles.

Plus, Major Nelson's latest podcast let it slip that if a friend recommends a de-listed title to you, you'll be able to download it.

Which means that all these games will still be on the system, and begs the question... why not just have an archive section on the Marketplace?

I wish they'd drop the price on Tetris Splash. I'd probably buy it, then.

I'd say its one of the better versions of tetris. I like it a lot.

What happens to someone with a 20 gig HDD that deletes an arcade game to make room for other stuff? Its always been my understanding that once you buy a game its yours forever and you can re-download it at any time. You cant exactly re-download something that isnt there anymore. How do they plan on solving this possible problem? Or is it just another case of tough luck for the consumer?

You'll still be able to redownlod it, thank God. Still, if it's going to be on the server anyway, why not add these titles to a different list? And I'm with the rest of the folks here who think a price drop would help a lot of these titles. I know if some of these were say half-price, I'd buy them in a second.

Major Nelson confirmed that the titles will remain on the servers, so if your hard drive breaks, you will be able to re-download them.
You'll also be able to buy trials you've downloaded and download from a friend recommendation.

They're removing the unpopular titles from the marketplace, not the whole system.

I have to wonder then... why remove them at all, if you can still obtain them?

I think Microsoft made a bad decision in announcing that titles would be removed if certain criteria were met.

I'd much rather see Microsoft concentrate on improving the quality of future titles than penalize titles they've released in the past.

I like most of you have some of these:

Texas Hold'em
Track and Field
Tetris Splash (which my wife loves)
Hardwood Backgammon

Actually, I was thinking of picking up Arkadian Warriors at some point just to have some almost Gauntlet style mindless fun. Same for Spyglass Board Games.

I think they should have lowered the price before pulling them off. If you classed them under a new heading like "Arcade Bargains" or something, some of these could find new life.

K387

Moronic policy. Theres a couple on the list that i already bought, and a couple i might've bought in the future. They are throwing away profits and screwing the gamers, for no good. Assholes

They never bothered to fix the major glitch in Soltrio Solitaire that completely kills the "voyage" mode. I was on the phone with MS for an hour before they put me on hold for a manager and then hung up on me.

I even got a hold of one of the game's programmers who was able to reproduce the problem, but they never released a patch. Looks like they finally figured out a way to not have to deal with it at all.

I know it's not a popular game, but it was great for chilling out.

Huh, I could see some of those titles being missed.

NOT ECCO

I wish I had the money to buy it, but I still got my Genesis

On a side note, anyone know how I can log into my profile? I never got a password but can't find anything that will allow me to click "Forgot Password"

K387

Wow Marathon is on there? Ouch, it wasn't THAT bad.

what the hell, their dropping marathon?
both contras?
wing commander?
needs more arcade ports on this list.

Argh, this is the thing - they are NOT necessarily delisting all of these. These just meet SOME of the criteria to be delisted. This is not definitive, especially because we don't know the sales for any of these games.

Man people are overreacting.. Microsoft isn't deleting the titles from Live. they're just removing the listing from the Marketplace.

If you have ever downloaded the demo for one of these games in the past, simply go to your download history, re-download it and purchase it from within the game!

The game will be available. Just not actively deplayed all the time in the Marketplace.

Yes re-classifications or categories would've been better but how do you want MS to actually create a category called "shitty games"??

They'll have to seperate the wheat from the chaff eventually. This is a graceful way of doing it.

BTW - I own Texas Hold-Em and Arkadian Warriors from that list, the latter I personally really enjoyed.

umm who cares? And to the people who are bitching, because a day with out complaining is a day without food for some people, if you haven't bought these games now you probably won't ever buy them.

And judging from the games on that list, I highly douubt a majority of people are going to miss games like Shrek N Roll.

Who's the bigger whiner, the whiners or the whiner who whines about them?

I use to tell one of my friends nothing worse than a whiner whining about whiners.

"umm who cares"

Apparently a lot of people like these games, so they are showing joystiq how much they care about the lost of the list. If no one bitched, nothing good would be done. It's like when people bitch about things they find sucks in a game they like.. and the company hears enough complaints to do something about it.

I love crystal quest, pac man, marathon, frogger and other titles on there. I have them all and at least knowing when they delist them I'll still be able to get them back if something happens.

Then if you're really that "concerned" for these games, then go and buy them. It's not like they're gone now. If you really need another version of Tetris, then go buy it.

V, some people care about these things, and if you don't then there is no reason to jump on them for it.

I may or may not buy any of those titles, but there are still millions of 360's to be sold and those people may want to buy some of them. I guess it would depend on the final list since this isn't confirmed at all. Some of those titles aren't fantastic, but are definitely worth five bucks

Where precisely did this list come from? I can't help but notice that TiQal is on there, and it has most definitely NOT been on XBL Marketplace for six months.

This leaves the whole list suspect, as it's not the only title that is really new on it.

- Scott

Don't forget, like the article says this list doesn't account for the conversion rate. If you bought some of these games chances are other people did to and they're not going anywhere. I don't see why anyone would complain about them delisting games that nobody's buying anyway.

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Download now, or forever hold your points: Potential delisted Xbox Live Arcade titles

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