XBLA Fans Anticipated 2011 XBLA Game Releases: A-C
We’ve spent the past week searching the internet and hounding our industry contacts in an effort to compile the ultimate 2011 XBLA Game Release List. We anticipated on heck of a year for Xbox Live Arcade. So epic we couldn’t even fit everything on one page. So without further ado, check out the list:
Raskulls review (XBLA)
Raskulls was developed and published by Halfbrick Studios for XBLA on December 29, 2010, and retails for 800 Microsoft Points. The publisher provided us with a copy of the game for reviewing purposes.
Raskulls is a unique blend of action-platforming, objective racing and puzzle solving, and is something you won’t really find anywhere else on the XBLA. It is also the type of game to that starts off at almost mind-numbing levels of simplicity before it really begins to grow on you as you spend more time with it.
Coming soon to Xbox Live Arcade
Major Nelson has released a lovely post outlining what will be coming out on Xbox live on December 21 and lasting until December 31. I am not sure if this has anything to do with the deal days they are planning that counts down to the new year. Click read more of course!
Record sales for XBLA in October
The XBLA generated record revenue in October with $11.2 million in sales, according to a new report from market research firm Forecasting and Analyzing Digital Entertainment (FADE).
The sales are up 91 percent from last year in October, and helped the download service break the $100 million mark for year-to-date revenue.
Here’s the list of the top ten selling titles for October, 2010:
The Behemoth crushes our hopes and dreams… until 2011
That’s right, you heard it here first: The Behemoth has delayed BattleBlock Theatre. Obviously this is not the best of circumstances, but there is a silver lining to this storm cloud, details after the jump.
Case Zero Maintains Top Slot on XBLA Activity Charts
When we first reported that companies were considering releasing Demos on Xbox Live Arcade, we were a little wary. Back this spring, EA made it clear they …
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Sales save XBLA in second quarter
Since the launch of Xbox 360 Arcade, Microsoft has struggled to keep sales up during the second quarter of the year, according to research firm FADE (Forcasting and Analyzing Digital Entertainment). But last April, Microsoft might have figured out how to beat this – a huge sale. According to the numbers, XBLA sales in April 2010 were up 11 percent over last years sale. Add that into the increase of total Arcade sales (7%), bringing the total revenue for the year thus far up to $33.8 million.
With a huge inventory blowout on older games, XBLA grossed over $500,000 just off these titles, with many actually seeing a 200-400 percent increase in sales. Add in a strong lineup of releases like Toy Soldiers, Mega Man 10, Perfect Dark and Battlefield 1943, and Microsoft might have a winning formula, with Toy Soldiers leading the sales for two months even with a 74 percent drop in sales from the first month to the second.
More than a tambourine hero: Charlie Murder’s Kelly
There’s a scene in Ska Studios’ Charlie Murder in which the members of the titular punk rock group do what rock stars do best. No, they don’t rock out, though the game does dedicates several scenes to just that. During the scene in question, the band does the rock star thing and tears apart a hotel room. The rambunctious five behave the way we’ve all come to expect rock stars to behave: irresponsibly. Furniture is destroyed, a mattress gets kicked, hell is raised.
So what, right? That’s all standard rock star fare, and it fits right into a game that celebrates nearly every aspect of the (undead) punk rocker lifestyle. That little mattress-kicking bit, though, well, that seems to have upset at least a few game critics. It’s not so much that the mattress is being kicked that caused the issue, but it’s the individual doing the kicking and the role she plays in the game on the whole that caused some reviewers to be put-off by the character.
The character is Kelly “Skelekitten” Skitten, and she spends most of the hotel scene meagerly kicking at a mattress while the rest of the band — which itself raises from hell in the game’s opening scene — raises hell. Eventually, a male member of the band walks over and does the job of destroying the mattress that Skitten apparently could not accomplish on her own. I noticed it while playing through Charlie Murder for review, but I thought it merely a harmless joke about a woman who looks to weigh all of 90 pounds not being capable of destroying a mattress by kicking it. Another critic felt differently.
Interview: Skulls of the Shogun dev on asynchronous multiplayer and XBLA
It’s 30-minutes til the doors slam shut on day two of Rezzed; Brighton’s PC and indie games soiree featuring the likes of Gunpoint, Hotline Miami and, of course, Skulls of the Shogun. Hot stuff, but it’s no doubt to the chagrin of Borut Pfeifer – developer at 17-Bit – that I’ve asked him to describe Skulls in just 20 words at this late juncture.
“It’s turn-based strategy infused with the spirit of an action or arcade game. It’s fast, no grid, with multiplayer.” Nailed.
Skulls of the Shogun marks 17-Bits’ attempt to haul the turn-based strategy shenanigans of something like Advance Wars (possibly the greatest game ever made) onto Xbox Live Arcade. No easy feat; the Xbox is without touch screen, without keyboard and mouse and about the only example I can think of turn-based strategy game built solely for XBLA is Band of Bugs. Gulp.
With that in mind, I chat with Borut about how Skulls has been tailored to XBLA, why 17-Bit chose the platform and, mostly, the intricacies of the recently announced asynchronous multiplayer. What’s an asynchronous multiplayer? Read on!
XBLA tattoos that will make you smile (or cringe)
Do you love something so much that you’d want it on your skin for the rest of your life? Has a video game ever meant so much to you that …
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