Full House Poker fall season update: No news isn’t bad news
Microsoft has been rather silent on Full House Poker recently, which has prompted many of our readers to become worried the game might suffer a similar fate to its spiritual successor 1 vs. 100. The current summer season of Texas Heat started back in May, and while many of us have turned our calendars to fall, no plans have been made public regarding when Full House Poker will do the same.
Sales for Full House Poker have been exceptional. According to Gamasutra’s First Half XBLA sales estimates, the game pulled in over 330,000 sales as of June. We gave it a Buy upon release, specifically citing Texas Heat as one of the main selling points. Microsoft renewed the spring season of Full House Poker (which lasted 66 days) with a summer season (currently sitting at 118 days with no announced end in sight).
We approached Microsoft about when Full House Poker might finally turn the page. Product Manger Daniel McConnell informed us that at this time Microsoft is keeping the summer season open, citing that many users felt the prior season was too short to collect all the achievements. He followed that up with “the Texas Heat mode is thriving, and we plan to refresh the Texas Heat season in the future.”
We were grateful to hear Microsoft hasn’t moved on from Full House Poker and we could definitely see their reasoning. Because of the time sensitive nature of the Texas Heat achievements, an interesting dilemma occurs. Once a new season begins players will never have the option to collect past seasons achievements. As such, the most dedicated Full House Poker fans are pushing for a new season to begin, while the more casual segment may still be working on putting the finishing touches on summer. Ideally, we hope that Microsoft just gives players enough warning to let them know they need to complete the prior season without just unveiling it silently.