40 Days #32: Come up with a strategy and a name for large new downloadable games

Every so often I get jealous of a specific game or feature that PS3 fans can enjoy. One of those games is Warhawk, a seemingly fun downloadable title that also demonstrates one thing that the PS3 currently has but the Xbox 360 does not: the availability of large original downloadable games.

The Xbox Live Marketplace offers original games, but just within the smaller Arcade size limits. There are also large pieces of new content like the Shivering Isles expansion for Oblivion, and later this year GTA IV's expansion pieces. Then there were temporary large "games": the online beta programs for Halo 3, Shadowrun, and COD4. Finally, you can now download full copies of last-gen Xbox games. However, none of these channels of the Marketplace currently allow for something like Warhawk.

The Marketplace really needs a new outlet, something that makes it clear to gamers that it is distributing new, original Xbox 360 downloadable games, ones with a scope too wide to fit into the notion of Arcade games. There would then definitely have to be a firm size and price cutoff for Arcade content, so that these larger games would represent a significant jump in the amount of content.

Such a new section of the Marketplace would need a catchy name to illustrate what it is all about. Something like, say, "Xbox Originals". Sigh, except that was taken late last year as the unfortunate moniker for the last-gen Xbox store. When I first heard that name I was really hoping for large current-gen games and I was crushed when I found out what it actually was. Why couldn't they have called it something like "Xbox Classics"?!

At this point, Xbox Originals are somewhat misleadingly named, and I wonder what most gamers think about the name. On the other hand, Xbox Live Arcade sounds very limited in scope, and all you expect to find there are smaller and cheaper games. So when Penny Arcade's game comes out this summer, where will it go? No matter how small it is, it just shouldn't automatically belong into the Arcade, because to many people it won't seem like an Arcade game, especially given its eventual episodic nature. However, there is really nowhere better right now, so I hope that Microsoft adds some sort of additional outlet for these sorts of games in the spring update.

I wonder if more developers would work on truly episodic content for the Xbox platform if they had a clearly defined method of reaching potential customers, one without a label that suggests retro remakes to most people.

I always thought that the one mistake Microsoft made when Shadowrun was released (a game, which I didn't think was nearly as bad as many people seemed to think) was that it was a retail game instead of the first full, downloadable game on the platform. It didn't come with too many maps or features, so I bet it wasn't all that big, and it would have been a great example of what the Live platform could do: a fleshed-out downloadable title and cross-platform play. Shadowrun could easily have been a groundbreaking title that started a trend instead of the disappointing dud it ended up being.

I truly hope that this year will bring us both an answer to Warhawk and some sort of strategy from Microsoft in regard to full original downloadable titles, including episodic titles that show up in some sort of new "episodic gaming store".