Original Value
December 10th, 2007A lot of people have been complaining about the emulation of Xbox Originals, but it seems to me like pricing is by far the more egregious issue. This IGN summary puts the issue in stark relief - the authors have actually gone out and compared the $15 asking price with what you might find the game for on eBay or at your local game shop. Only one of the games - Indigo Prophecy - is likely to be in short enough supply that you can’t find a copy for less than $15.
This is confusing me to no end. If two guys with some free time can work out that your games can be purchased (without poor emulation) for less money from any number of obvious sources, why would Microsoft expect that people are going to buy these? It’s not like $15 is reaching the point of an impulse buy, and the games don’t have the name brand or nostalgia value that Nintendo’s Virtual Console can command. I ask this out of genuine curiosity.
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December 10th, 2007 at 12:35 am
Some people don’t want to hunt around for a specific game at a specific price. These games effectively last forever and require little action on your part…so i can see the appeal.
I think it is also in a way, something of a futureproofing measure for them. Next console cycle, or late in this one, getting those original games will be much harder…and new customers might want to make use of such a service rather than trying to find a game on ebay. It’s like Live arcade on the original xbox. They mostly set it up as a tesbed for the 360, whihc is where it took off. these games are effectively free money at this point but they dramaticaly increase the digital library available to the 360.
December 10th, 2007 at 3:54 am
Dave-
“These games effectively last forever and require little action on your part…so i can see the appeal.”
Except that as a digital download they’re effectively rentals… ready to be taken away whether during the next console upgrade or whenever Microsoft decides to stop supporting the titles. Maybe it’s not likely, but who really knows?
Also, as for the poor emulation for some games, isn’t it the same exact emulation you’d get with a disc? That is, if Fuzion Frenzy is bad with a download, isn’t it bad with a disc as well?
December 10th, 2007 at 8:20 am
Some of IGN’s analyses aren’t great. Psychonauts, for example, may well be available on Gametap until the end of the year — but that’s only for another three weeks, and requires a computer capable of running it, and would be irritating to control unless the user also owned a gamepad. If I didn’t already have a disc copy, I’d buy it.
Halo is cheaper than it would be in a store, and eBay doesn’t have the same instant gratification as either a store purchase or a download.
In any case, I like the idea of having a store that is guaranteed to have particular games no matter what. MS needed to meet particular criteria for its Originals store to appeal to a broad audience — it offered some platformers, some action shooters, a couple quirky games. They mostly picked some pretty good stuff and I don’t think this is a bad first list for them.