'Summer of Arcade' behind XBLA's best month yet

by Randy Nelson { Sep 26th 2008 at 11:00PM }

Newly released figures show that the "Summer of Arcade" wasn't just a windfall for gamers; it made Microsoft some serious scratch. MS reports that it saw a 58% increase in Arcade title purchases during the five-week "event," amounting to a 67% increase in revenue generated by XBLA in August – a new monthly record for the service. The company itself acknowledges that the quality of the titles was crucial to the gains. "The reason for all of this success? The games were really good," it said in a press release.

Xbox Live general manager, Marc Whitten, promises that, "The focus on quality games doesn't stop with the Summer of Arcade." So ... we're due for a "Fall and Winter of Arcade," then? Whitten called out upcoming XBLA releases such as Portal: Still Alive, South Park, and R-Type Dimensions as examples of a new wave of potential Arcade hits. "We have plenty more great titles coming out in the next few months and beyond that we think will continue to fuel this incredible momentum," he said. Wait, back up ... did he mean the R-Type Dimensions that hasn't been officially announced yet?

Tags: bionic-commando-rearmed, braid, castle-crashers, galaga-legions, geometry-wars-2, sales, summer-of-arcade, xbla

Related From Joystiq

This Wednesday: Inferno Pool burns up XBLA with Rainbow Islands
13 days ago
Indie title 'Capsized' shows off gameplay; tipping onto XBLA, PC in 2010
25 days ago
Madden NFL Arcade coming to XBLA & PSN; $15 this Dec.
25 days ago

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Levi @ Sep 26th 2008 11:27PM

you know, I'm really hott.

Tiptup300 @ Sep 27th 2008 2:10AM

Duke 3D was a massive disappointment.

Apparently Duke 64 is nothing like it. :(

All the levels, weapons, and splitscreen capabilities are different. :(

Levi @ Sep 27th 2008 8:58AM

oh really? It's been a long time since I played Duke 64, but I thought it was a port.

I used to make single player levels for D3D, long live the Build engine!

Ever play the 2D sidescrolling Dukes?

Tiptup300 @ Sep 27th 2008 2:24PM

Well, it's a port of Duke 3d, which I myself always thought was the same as Duke 64, but nope, different games. It uses the build engine, the levels are just changed around and actually, they apparently were all upgraded. Because the distortion of looking up/down wasn't that bad as it is.

It also didn't have a level editor, although it's levels were way better then the originals.

&rew @ Sep 26th 2008 11:31PM

If it really was a summer of arcades we wouldn't be mourning/dancingonthegrave of arcades.

DBuck_Eye @ Sep 26th 2008 11:38PM

Is anyone else a little cautious about the South Park game? I still haven't forgotten how the N64 venture turned out.

BIGFAT @ Sep 27th 2008 1:04AM

What? pissing on a snow ball and throwing it at your friend in multi player never gets old.

ah, good times,good times indeed.

Red Leader @ Sep 27th 2008 1:17AM

I never played it back on the N64, and I think I can safely say I'll never play it and not miss out on anything.

BIGFAT @ Sep 27th 2008 1:27AM

in all honesty the game was a pile of shit, but it was one of them "so bad, its good" type games.

Red Leader @ Sep 27th 2008 4:18AM

A friend of mine and I have this thing that we do pretty regularly. We go to the movie rental place and find the most embarassingly aweful looking scary movies we can find. Sometimes we just rent movies we know are going to be aweful, too.

You should give it a shot if you're into that kinda thing. It's funny as hell seeing bad actors try to be scary or "convincing"-like.

Goodfella @ Sep 27th 2008 6:15AM

Castle Crashers is acording to me the best game on xbla so far.

knighty (GT: ZeraKnight) @ Sep 27th 2008 8:23AM

Me too. And the rest are all pretty awesome too, they obviously succeeded with the whole Summer of Arcade thing. I hope they do it again soon but I don't know of any more arcade games due to come out.

Tiptup300 @ Sep 27th 2008 2:25PM

I thought it was awesome, till I took my HD over to a friends so I could show him. I lost my gamesave, :(, it wasn't that far so not a big loss. So we played for hours and I came home to find it was gone again.

knighty (GT: ZeraKnight) @ Sep 27th 2008 5:02PM

Yep. I felt the pain of losing all my hard earned data too, but it didn't annoy me to the extent that it did to others.

dphizzle @ Sep 28th 2008 12:00AM

agreed with Castle Crashers. Can't seem to get enough of that game! I can't wait for them to patch the network issues though - still hard for me to enjoy a game with my friends for longer than an hour without it crashing or kicking me back to the main menu.