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Xbox Live Arcade interview reveals game size limit is up to 350MB

supadupagama May 20th, 2008 Listen to this article "Hey! Listen!"

1600 Microsoft Points Card for use on Xbox LiveXbox Live Arcade’s David Edery was interviewed at the Nordic Game event in Malmo, Sweden, about the download games service’s future and community games becoming available on the service alongside the regular Wednesday releases.

Question: Once the community titles start arriving are we going see an increase in the rate of releases on Xbox Live Arcade rather than just one game a week?
David Edery: We have done some weeks with two titles released. It’s not clear yet. You will see an increasing number of weeks with more than one game released, there’s no question about that. But we’re really sensitive to the fact that Xbox Live Arcade developers, even if they are not investing tens of millions of dollars, you have two or three man companies investing hundreds of thousands of dollars and for them it might as well be millions. It’s there lives. So we’re very sensitive to them being able to make a reasonable return. While Xbox Live Arcade games are incredibly successful by industry standards, there’s no question that today it’s harder to have a hit than it was two year’s ago when XBLA was new. If we don’t watch that carefully, indie developers will lose the opportunities they once had on Xbox Live Arcade, and the only people who will be able to take risks on XBLA will be the publishers who can afford to spread their bets around.

Question: And you’re upping the size of Xbox Live Arcade games as well to 350 megabytes?
David Edery: Yeah, it’s a steady progress. We’ve been listening to our partners, listening to our customers to try and get a feel for what’s right. We don’t want the size limit to hit the roof because we think there’s some value in promoting small pick and play experiences that don’t cost USD 20 million, it’s good for the ecosystem.

Question: How about scheduling of titles – how far ahead are games lined-up for release?
David Edery: We have a big backlog but one thing we’ve found is that precisely because we’ve been working with a lot of independent developers or those making a console game for the first time, they may target September 2008, but they’ll miss it by a year. We have a big pipeline, and I bet you something that we may have announced from small indies in the past three months – you won’t see it for the next two years.

Question: There have been some rumblings that developers finish a game and hand it over and it doesn’t appear on Live for a number of months…
David Edery: Oh, it’s almost never like that. There have been some stories in the press – like Jeff Minter complaining about the certification process – but in general what happens is a developer realises that there’s a lot more going on in console development than they first realised. Of the three consoles our tools are by far the best, but even then making a console multiplayer game is still damned hard, making a well-tuned, not broken, Live game. Especially indies who’ve never made a console game before, they always underestimate how hard it’s going to be. And with smaller developers if something is delayed by two months it could be the difference between the company going bankrupt and not going bankrupt. So they take on another project to pay the bills and although the game might have only needed another two months, it now takes another two years. Castle Crashers (from The Behemoth) is a great example. Everyone keeps asking us when it’s coming out, and it’s going to be great, but I couldn’t even tell you what those guys are doing. I’m sure it’s going to be great because I’ve been seeing builds… [laughs]

Read the full interview at Gamesindustry if you want to know more about user generated content (amateur games) making it onto Xbox Live Arcade (through XNA tools) in the near future.

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