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?
It's no secret: You love Geometry Wars 2, we love Geometry Wars 2, everybody loves it. We recently talked with Bizarre Creation's Stephen Cakebread, Senior Coder, and Craig Howard, Games Manager, to find out how they crafted the game that won our hearts.
It would seem to the layman that, with as popular as Geometry Wars was, a sequel would be pretty easy to crap out. Why wait so long?
Howard: Because the first one was so well received, it would have cheapened the game if we just knocked something out and not given it a lot of thought. We wanted something to make sure it was something we'd be really proud of.
Cakebread: Our inital plan was to get it our a year later and then the plan was to ship it when Gotham 4 shipped and that didn't work out either. It really was a case that we weren't going to ship it until we were ready to ship it. It might seem silly, but it took us quite a while to figure out a graphical style that still looked like the original. One of our big things was when people came to our stations we wanted them to say "Oh, is that a sequel to Geometry Wars?" rather than "Is that Geometry Wars?" It took us quite a while to come up with something that really worked. We tried some mad stuff.
When we get really frustrated by Geometry Wars 2 (and we do) we deal with our anger the only way we know how: We become physically abusive towards loved ones and pets. But not Matthew McCarthy. No, Matthew McCarthy just picks up a guitar and channels the rage into a song about why he hates all those stupid, cruel shapes.
We tried to ape McCarthy's far healthier anger management, but after picking up our guitar we just used that to be physically abusive to loved ones and pets, which really isn't much better, when you think about it.
Our sister site X3F (a.k.a. Xbox 360 Fanboy) is giving away three copies of Geometry Wars Retro Evolved 2(a.k.a. Retro More Evolved). Head over to their contest page and tell them your favorite color (a.k.a. The Absolute Hardest Possible Question We Could Come Up With at the Time). Contest ends 11:00 pm ET today. Official rules can be found here.
Hey gang, terrible, terrible news: You can now check your status on the Geometry Wars 2 leaderboards at any moment of the day, thanks to a Bizarre Creations application that's just gone live. While you can't check your status as it compares to your friends, you can see, in real-time, how you stack up against the rest of the world.
It's not just the time you'll spend plugging gamertags into the site to see how everyone ranks that's so troubling. It's watching your status slipping while you toil at the office, debating if it's worth faking food poisoning to get back in the Pacifism top 10,000 that's really going to mess with you. (Spoiler alert: It's totally worth it.)
A flood of Greek letters coming after us is just like those dreams we had in high school the night before our Calculus exams. So it's only natural that 2P Start's The Fundamental Theorem of War bring back intense feelings of elation (or perhaps pain and suffering, if you're not huge math geeks). Fitting for us, then, that it had the highest rate of change from 0, or more accurately, it had the most votes in this week's webcomic wrapup.
Second and third place both went to Penny Arcade with Anguish and For Your Consideration, respectively. Thanks to everyone who voted; be sure to let us know of any game-related webcomics you stumble upon this week!
Much like the endless assault of the franchise's squirrely squares, devious diamonds and annoying arrows, Geometry Wars is sure to keep gamers frantically twiddling their thumbsticks for some time to come. Speaking to MTV Multiplayer, geometric warlord Stephen Cakebread has assured fans that the creative team hasn't run out of ideas yet.
"We have enough game ideas to do 'Geometry Wars' for probably about 10 games," said Cakebread. "It depends on what will work." Things that didn't work and ended up being removed from Geometry Wars 2: Gimmicky multiplayer modes, such as a a soccer/football-style game that had players shooting objects into gravity-well goals. Things that might work in the future: Developer Bizarre Creations isn't saying, as it might "use them in the future for god knows what."
Things that work in today's industry: Good franchises! "Geometry Wars is definitely a franchise," noted Bizarre manager Craig Howard. "It's not going to stop." Well, not unless you release a bomb.
The "Smile" achievement in Geometry Wars 2 seems to giving people a run for their 800 MS points. Rooster Teeth's new achievement site, Achievement Hunter, has produced a spiffy little walkthrough vid of how to painlessly get attempt to get the 25 gamer point reward. Nobody says it's going to be easy, but then the best rewards in life (that leave you feeling alone and used at the end of the day) never are.
We're not sure if you've noticed, but there are an awful lot of things trying to kill you in Geometry Wars 2. With so many sinister shapes boxing you in and particles exploding from every angle, it can be difficult to see what the hell's going on, never mind a clear escape route. If you're tired of hearing that final bang and seeing your ranking in the friends leaderboard slip ever lower, might we suggest trying the game's hidden 3D camera?
The fine folks at Giant Bomb (who, in turn, credit former Joystiq writer Jared Rea) have pointed us to this neat little Easter egg which pauses the game's frantic action and allows you to swoop through the battle grid ... and even to the stars beyond. To access it, press the right bumper together with the back button during any of the game's modes. The analog sticks control the movement and direction of the camera, while the left and right triggers enable vertical adjustment. Neat!
If this still doesn't aid you in getting your blaster bearings, you'd best adopt our strategy for remaining atop the leaderboard: Delete your friends.
At $22.50, Castle Crashers would hold the record for most expensive XBLA title. The total price for the Summer of arcade is $67.50, which is a little bit more than a standard Xbox 360 title + applicable tax. The prices are currently set for Japan only, but they generally don't differ with the North American releases. Is your wallet prepared?
Update: Microsoft tells Shacknews these prices are incorrect, and that the final prices won't be revealed until the Monday before each respective game launches.
Wow, how long have we waited to write that headline? 100 years? 150? Even now as the momentous day has arrived, it still puzzles us that we had to wait so long for the reigning king of dual-stick shooters to return to us. C'mon guys, you just bump all the sliders from 8 to 10, it's not rocket science.
In case you've forgotten, your 800 point purchase is going to net you a "remixed" version of the first game and five new modes: Waves, Pacifism, King, Deadline and Sequence. Also: 4-player multiplayer locally. Now, seriously ... what are you still doing reading this?
The official Microsoft Gamerscore blog has just outlined how you'll be spending our weekly allowance for the next month. Five major Xbox Live Arcade titles are debuting over the next five weeks (that's one each week). Pause your game of Coffeetime Crosswords and check out the schedule:
One of our favorite PR moves is the affirmative denial. It's risky, and not to be attempted by newbies. But when they can pull it off well, it's dazzling. It's like watching someone able to rub their head and play the Minute Waltz at the same time.
Check out Bizarre Creations games manager Craig Howard's answer to 1UP's query about Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved 2 coming to PSN: "Geometry Wars Retro Evolved 2 is currently an Xbox 360 exclusive title, although PSN is definitely in our company plans going forward." (And he nails it!) No, we don't know what his comment means either. But we think our PS3-owning friends would be completely justified if they had a little extra spring in their step today.
What's the antonym for delay? Whatever the word, we're not used to using it around here. So when Bizarre Creations community lead Ben Ward let us know this morning that Geometry Wars 2 will be released on Xbox Live Arcade one week earlier than expected (next Wednesday!), we were at a loss for the word (of course, we could have settled along the lines of "bumped up," but opted instead for a geeky math-related term: realigned -- get it?). Ward also confirmed that the age of super-budget priced geometric space shooters is over, as we'll be paying 800 Microsoft Points ($10) this time (of course, the premium comes with a whole lot more game -- more on that in a minute).
In addition, Ward revealed that the Geometry Wars 2 trial version is "basically" the full Deadline game mode, including multiplayer support (up to four players locally). We've posted Bizarre's descriptions of Deadline and the 5 additional game modes, preserved in their original British flavour, after the break. (But before you read on ... FUN FACT: Geometry Wars 2 is the first Bizarre game published by proud, sorta new parent company Activision.)
During our guided demo of Microsoft's upcoming stable of XBLA games, Microsoft's Scott Austin informed us that all the games on display would be available in the next four to six weeks on Xbox Live Arcade. All of 'em. If you've been reading the impressions on Joystiq, you'll know that this a reason to be excited. For the record, the XBLA games being shown by Microsoft are:
