January 12th 2010 5:00 pm PT

grrr…..was hoping for a release date for perfect dark for xbla….

Nothing I’m particularly interested in but thanks for sharing the schedule.

Good stuff Major!

Major, nice to see you guys are listening

BTW just checked Bioshock and it’s the same price. Any idea what time it will lower?

29.99 is reduced price for Bioshock? It’s 19.99 on Steam! Come on Major, tell those guys that’s a crap deal for a game over 2 years old.

Decent Deals of the Week for the rest of January AWESOME! Games on Demand overpiced! And wtf is up with jan 20th xbla titles LOL WE WANT Perfect Dark for XBLA!

Burton gear? As in: Burton snowboard gear, or Tim Burton gear (now that would be nice).
Also… Darksiders outfits? Wouldn’t the people who pre-ordered be a bit ripped off?

Both Bioshock and Civ Rev are at their original prices ($29.99). No price reduction yet.

Actually, doesn’t like any of the Games on Demand games listed have received their price reductions yet…

@Wulf684 Its avatar stuff, i think the preorder for the game was ingame outfits.

Great stuff Major.

Oooh, Vandal Hearts: Flames of Judgment! Great for that one to finally see daylight! The series was jolly good SRPG fun way, way back on PS1 and as long as the “sequel” can deliver a decent story to go with the strategy, it’s a purchase for sure.

Absolute joke. We’ve already had Hasbro Game Shite on DotW, and now you’re dropping the price of just ONE? Mass Effect DLC’s prices should really have a reduction that isn’t just temporary by now, and most of that stuff there costs too much.
-
Lower DLC and arcade prices, fix or ditch Games on Demand, give us back free vlothing, make the Avatars actually serve a purpose, release more games people actually want, give us something on Joy Ride, and pull your fingers out.

any news on Joyride release date ?

@Queasy1 – Yeah Major just said on his Twitter that the prices will be updated later today

What the 800 pt rebate if you buy 3 pieces of EA DLC ( http://www.ea.com/news/xbox-live-holiday-discounts )? Does the discount effect this?

The prices for Games on Demand are still DOUBLE than what you can buy them for on eBay or at Gamestop.

“If all goes well, I should be able to share a schedule like this with you on a bimonthly basis”

This is great! Surprised you didn’t get more props on this, but I hope all goes well.

What about Trials HD on deal of the week ? I look forward this.

wow redd yeah I’m feeling ripped off now. I got mass and both the dlc’s for $30 to get that EA deal… if I could have got the deal for $25 it would have been even better.

Heh, even if they reduce the price of prey, you can get it used at gamestop for $4

So the 30$ GoD titles get reduced. How about reducing all European GoD titles since they are all 30€.

I am now refering to Perfect Dark as: Perfert Dark Forever.

OMG Burton gear on Thursday?? Damn you Microsoft!! You know all my weaknesses…

I’ve been waiting for some Burton stuff to appear on the Avatar Marketplace since the beginning! I hope there’s a sick board as a Prop!

More information is always better! Thanks Major.
May I suggest that instead of “Starting today” you default to “Later today” as a better phrase? I think it’s well established that changes take a while to propagate.

Also, who’s been playing Frogger on your account Major?

Seriously where is ROYRIDE??? I really hope this game doesn’t fade into darkness and never be heard of again. It looked really good and got me and my friends excited. Some info would be nice. COME ON!!!

@Xandek – You’re in for a long wait, Trials HD still sells a lot on a weekly basis, regularly coming top. The price isn’t going to be cut any time soon.

@Biomonkey
No, there was a War outfit and a Ruin mask as pre-order incentives.

Given the dates you’ve given, do you mean “twice a month” bimonthly or “once every two months” bimonthly? Gotta love words that mean two different things.

Thanks for posting this info! It’s always great to have something like this so we can plan out our points purchasing if necessary.

This is great now I can plan my live point purchases, never again will I be without points for a cool XBLA release

What is up with HFGN: Battleship being on this list…again…as a deal of the week? The whole HFGN was on sale last year (and I still feel cheated out of about $30 since you can buy the disc in stores now for under $30). I really wish some of the other board games went on sale…like Carcassone (sp?) for example. It’s great to let us know ahead of time…but a disappointment when something has already been offered once already. Bring on multiple deals of the week. That would rock in 2010.

Bioshock still costs the same price here. Is the price drop only for some specific regions Major ?

Portal: Still Alive and Vandal Hearts seems the way to go

Also, I’m curious to see how the Tim Burton stuff comes out.

PS: Still waiting for my Ruins Head Mask.

I hope this goes well and you can continue to post schedules like this, Major. Its great to know whats coming out in the following weeks. No more waiting till Monday afternoon to know what the week’s XBLA game is going to be.

Thanks Major!
This is good and prevents headaches!

Nice to see some price drops on Games On Demand!

Bringing Down the Sky is probably worth the 240, but I’d recommend avoiding Pinnacle Station even at 240 pts unless you really have some spare points with nothing better to spend it on. Seriously, compared to how great the game itself was, Bioware dropped the ball big time on ME1 DLC. Here’s to hoping it’s better for ME2 (they say they have ambitious plans for dlc, but we’ll see).

I always wanted to play Dead Rising. If it’s $19.99 I’ll probably bite the bullet.

Vandal Hearts o.O No wai!

@kanugopt
I’m thinking we are getting Burton Snowboard gear for avatars not Tim Burton costumes, but I could be wrong.

I always thought it was humorous that they were selling Prey for an asinine $30 when I can drive 10 minutes go to Gamestop and pick up a pre-owned copy for $7.

$20 is a lot more reasonable, however. Every game on this service should be no more than $20.

Good to see MS listen to its customers about providing better advance notice on downloadable releases and deals. I hope this is standard practice moving forward.

Looks like they may also be getting the message that previous pricing for Games on Demand was insane. It’s still a little too high, but is almost where it should be ($10-20 for these older games). Strange that prices haven’t dropped on old XBLA releases though – they could help spur sales on titles that aren’t moving at all anymore with Steam-type bargains.

Lowing price on Games on Demand is a good start

No shock that the lowered prices only apply to the US………

This is great Major. I know some news sites have asked for such a feature to be a regular thing in addition of special events like Summer of Arcade. Here’s hoping this can be done throughout 2010 to make it Xbox’s best year ever.

Keep it up!

so no price reductions for europe? Are we too rich?

I like having the schedule, awesome if it can continue! It saves me the joy of getting a points card in the wee hours of the night when a good deal breaks.
I scooped up a few offers during the holiday deals too, great stuff! Now about that Halo Wars DLC…

Still no Perfect Dark, and constant $15 dollar arcade titles. I’m not saying these choices of games are bad like usual because I know plenty of people looking forward to Serious Sam, but not me and lately nothing is appealing to me on the arcade. I remember when I loved the arcade with the 5 and dollar titles that I loved like Geo. Wars 1 and 2, and Pac-man CE, Uno, Uno Rush, etc.. but now its just overpriced games that take only a few hours to breeze through. What about the Snoopy game? Why show videos for upcoming games on live many months before they are going to come out. Thats another thing I miss, back in the day we found out when a game was coming out just a short while before it did, now we see a game and here no release date or a release date for a year later and then hope it doesn’t get delayed like usual.

The trends are ridiculous, will we ever get 5 and 10 dollar addictive arcade titles again or just the same ole, it would be great if you ever responded Major, but I know you won’t. btw, GO ORANGE!!!

I want Perfect Dark and Plants Vs Zombies!

@murph17 – Yeap, probably you’re right. I tought that would be something related to Alice in Wonderland.

Will this Vandal Hearts be as bloody as the original one?

bloody EA, at the last minute they extend the length of their 800 points giveaway promotion then slash the prices of the things that everyone was buying to be eligible for it in the first place, sneaky

Does anyone at Microsoft actually read this blog and its comments? It seems highly unlikely given the amount of negative reaction that has accumulated since Games on Demand was released. It’s really hard to be excited about anything here. Last FM free for Silver users for one week-end? Gold subscribers in Australia don’t get it anyway. Although the US-centric focus is to be expected (given a lot of this content comes out of the States) but the disparities between international regions has encouraged quite a few of us in the antipodes to cancel our Xbox Live Gold accounts (including me). Some of the discrepancies are inexplicable. For example, Bioshock is still $49.95 in Australia despite the fact that the Australian dollar is currently trading at $0.92 US. Huh?

Why are games like Prey 19.99? You can buy it brand new for 9.99 bucks at gamestop, or 7.99 used. if 20 bucks is the lowest that these games on demand are going to be for games that have been out for years, I will never buy one. lower the price of the 19.99 games and i’m sure you’ll see alot more sales. There’s a few I would buy right off the bat, but i’m not going to spend twice as much money for a game. Ridiculous! Lower the price of the origional xbox games would be nice too. Since you can find most of them for about 5 bucks

@PriusGuy2004

Battleship is only for Japan. Did you think there would be 3 things discounted in 1 week ^^

@PriusGuy-Carcassonne was free a couple of years ago, not sure if you were on Live when that happened. I’ll be honest, I would have never played the game if it wasn’t free but it is probably one of my favorite XBLA games.

You may aswell have all the deals active now until the end of the month, I mean who is really going to buy Portal Arcade now knowing that it’ll be a deal in a few days time?

Staggering them made more sense before we got the info on an entire months worth of deals in one go.

You know what, I’m going to just assume Games on Demand discounts are taking a little longer to apply for the European region. There’s NO way you’d discount the ALREADY CHEAPER US prices and not our already more expensive ones. I refuse to believe Microsoft would be that stupid.

Games on Demand prices being reduced? About time, MS.

Yah I gotta 5 star this for the fact that having this on a bimonthly basis would be awesome.

Darn! I was hoping to see price reductions for Oblivion and Kameo.

I thought Prey was reduced? It’s still at $19.99!

The new, lower prices should be available now. If not, let me know.

I am hoping to post a list like this twice a month.

Oh and yea, we read the comments…bad and good.

Bioshock is still full price here….

Everything’s still full price here too.

I love the scheduled list It really helps with planning and having a heads-up for what is coming

Twice a month is good. Once per month would be even better, but I suspect that internal systems and scheduling will not allow notification that far in advance…

Either way, thank you for the list of upcoming XBLA titles and fingers crossed for PvZ next month

Waiting for the Civ Rev price drop. Will definitely consider that if its under $20.

Prices haven’t changed here either. Even if they had I agree with everyone else here who says you can buy the disc at bargain rates second hand by simply driving (or in my case walking) for no more than a half hour return trip. I’m also one of those people who is constantly removing games from the hard drive to install newer titles so I much prefer to have the disc rather than have to download 5 gig every time I want to play one of my older games. (and then clear out a title or two)
Geektopia is right, given the value of the AU $$ against the greenback the prices should be less than what we are paying. This INCLUDES the yearly XBL susbscription fee (currently $79.95AU)especially since predictions are that we will have parity within 6 months. You guys and gals in the states are griping about $29.95 for a “Classic/Platinum” title, we’re paying $49.95 (online). And no last FM. Come one Major, push it for the peeps down under!

No price changes yet on the East Coast of the USA.

No price changes here in good old New Zealand yet either….

the price reductions don’t apply to UK. “Prey” is still £19.99, despite it being readily available on amazon for just £2. what a joke

@Majornelson (and the Microsoft Marketing Team)
Pretty much all of those games are AU$49.95 here in Australia and US$19.99 in the US.
Price disparity based on how much your regional marketers think they can rip off the local populous will only result either alienating your consumers or justifying us to use alternative means to obtain the content. Take a tip from Google and ‘Dont be evil’.

if Major does read all these posts then please do something about the stinking mess that is “1 vs 100 UK”. I fully accept that it is a “beta”, but generally beta products do not degrade over time, they normally get better. We’ve lost the live host, we have virtually none of the ‘themed’ rounds that the US gets, we get atrocious spelling mistakes, we get ludicrously wrong answers, we get impossible questions (example: “what is 10 + 8″, is it 12, 14 or 16 [from last week]), we get “network errors” ever 5 minutes… number of players has dropped from 25,000+ to just 5,000 tonight. it’s a disgrace!

Major, my hope is to see Games on Demand(360 and pc) able to compete with Steam. The ability to purchase content and play it on either platform would be huge to me.

“Why are games like Prey 19.99? You can buy it brand new for 9.99″

That’s the kicker to me. You can bitch about how used games are $4 at your local mom and pop shop, but I don’t think that’s quite a fair comparison. However, if a game is selling for $20 new in retail shops, the digital version (which comes without the overhead of physical media production, packaging costs, shipping and inventory costs, ability to lend to a friend etc) should NEVER sell for even a penny more. Realistically, the digital version should be $10 less than the copy you buy in stores, but I’m willing to pay a premium for the convenience of just clicking a button and having it download. That premium is a price that’s no more than par with retail.

I thought I might pick up Bioshock as I though it was already $20 and it would be less. I guess it was more because it’s $20 now. $10-15 and I might buy it for convenience. And Civ Rev for $30?! Not that you can’t get $30 out of it, but it’s pretty old and not that popular to be $30.

Thanks for the schedule though. I might get the ME expansions sense I’ve got 500 points lying around.

Major, thank you for posting these schedules in advance. It does help me out quite a bit and I hope you’ll continue to do so (even as I understand that the contents are subject to change). I’m also pleased to see some Games On Demand prices are going down. They’re still not quite where I’d like them to be, but I’m at least CONSIDERING a few purchases now (probably not, but this is a step up from “Hahaha, no” which is where I was earlier on the matter). This sort of up-front info and response to customer concerns is nice and I hope it continues.

What is the Jan 19th Game On Demand?! And yes, I NEED a Trials HD deal of the week if you ever want a sale.

Good question Elektro, what is the January 19th game going to be?

When Games On Demand was first starting, I predicted it wasn’t going to gain much purchase, particularly in Australia, due to major bandwidth limitations (nothing to do with Microsoft naturally), non-competitive pricing, regional restrictions limiting our selection and the tiny size of the 360 hard drive (and its associated extremely high price per GB).

There’s an opportunity to correct the hard drive issue with the impending release of the 250GB HDD that is strongly rumoured to be any day now but I have a feeling that at best it’ll be priced the same as the current 120gb which will still make it damned expensive. Selling a 250GB xbox drive for the price of a regular 500GB drive leaves only the casing to eat up the rest of the price and somehow I doubt that really costs so much. Bit of a markup because its a profit area and you’re holding a monopoly? Sure, go for it, more power to you (IS there more power than a monopoly? Maybe some cooler board game like Space Hulk). A LOT of a markup? Yeah I’m a bit less enthusiastic there.

Removing the regional restrictions should be as easy as copying the ISO or whatever the system uses to local content servers and flipping a bit in the database to allow us to buy it. Until and unless we hear a damned convincing reason why Australia can’t get certain titles (which were fine for a disc based release here), the only thing we can assume is that Microsoft are enfocing this “Because we can” which is just a stupid business move. Our money is as good as anyone else’s, in fact its better because it has more pretty colours in!

As for the pricing, if you fail to compete on price, you’re selling on nothing but convenience and a multi-hour download of a game IF you can get it and IF you have enough free drive space on a locked system that you can’t just whack a 1TB drive into is not what I would call convenient. I’m afraid that to get my money you have to start getting consistently cheaper than retail and adopt a model comparable to GOG or Steam with regular discounts and good quality sales.

On the upside though, at least you can FIND things on the xbox marketplace to complain about, its a big plus over the PSN store…

Still seeing old prizes.

Will be buying Serious Sam this week and Vandal Hearts next week. Appreciate the work you do major (and the rest of the team) in trying to be open. It feels like there is a real sony-microsoft content/price war kicking off. Great for the consumer

Can you please leave a statement here if this pricereduction only affects USA, major? Cause I don`t see any here in Germany. Thanks in advance.

This is great. I’m always wary of buying XBLA games in case they go on deal of the week the following week. If this is a regular feature, I need fear no more =) Awesome.
Thanks Major.

“Starting today, the following Games on Demand are now available for a lower price:
BioShock, Saints Row, MX vs. ATV Untamed, Prey and Sid Meier’s Civilization Revolution.”

Those reduced prices seem to be for the US only. Bioshock is now $19.99 in the US by the looks of it – but you’re still charging the UK £19.99.

Just go buy a retail copy of Bioshock. It’s $20 or less at most stores and you get a physical disc.

This kind of information two times a month should be enough. That way, we always can have some spare points to the days ahead. Thanks Major.

Well im happy to see Serious Sam up there, but still no Perfect Dark makes me a semi-sad panda.

Speaking of release dates and of last.fm, do you have any kind of news concerning last.fm coming outside of US and UK?
We see many ads for Xbox saying things like “enjoy facebook twitter and last.fm on your 360!” but last.fm never reached our countries. Are those ads from Microsoft only lies or is it really coming?

Nobody is forcing you guys to buy the GOD games at these outrageous prices, they are just one more available “option”. You can always buy the games cheaper elsewhere.

29.99€ in Finland for pretty much every single game.

£14.99 brand new on play.com, and you get to sell it on afterwards

I will be picking up that Portal: Still Alive.

Really Major Nelson last fm is already free and your making it seem like is a gift to use it

for a specific time frame you guys are ridiculous and think consumers are retards.

What a deal you get to use Last fm for free WOW what a value u suck microsoft

maybe more like last year i’m paying for live ripoff

@BURIBLAZING X
Go buy a PS3 then mate. You pay nothing – you get nothing. M$ isn’t a charity.

I already have one and i’m thinking of dropping ms live for good and i don’t want any charity

i just don’t like the way they rip people off with their shady pricing.

Rubbish!

Perfect Dark XBLA – Spring 2010.

Why hasn’t Civilization Revolution (or Prey, for that matter) dropped in price yet?

Wheres the Burton gear at Major?

GoD pricing is way too high in Norway. The price is twice or tripple of what you find at regular stores when the games hit GoD. Its just slightly less than the price at the release date.

Bioshock for instance, can be found as low as 89NOK, but in GoD its 299NOK, that’s three and a half times as expensive as a norwegian store.

still no price drop on Civilization Revolutions. is it coming soon?

GoD prices are still the same here in the UK? Are they changing for all regions or just US?
And for that matter what incentive do we have to buy GoD anyway, they are always more expensive than buying it brand new in the shop. Digital downloads should be cheaper not more expensive. You basically telling us its gonna cost £5-£10 more per game if we don’t want to get off are arse and put the disc in. I’m not that lazy!

What happened to the Burton collection? The Darksiders collection showed up on time, but there is absolutely no sign of the Burton store. This is how you repay the consumer base? Say one thing, and then not have it happen, with no mention about it at all? Poor.

Xbox Live really needs to observe Steam to see how deals should be done. Really. These deals are not interesting to me, if Trials HD came out for $2.49 like it once was on Steam… sigh. One can only hope, all of these terrible/ineffective deals are making me weary. =( Bioshock was $5 on Steam during some of their deals! Why can’t those miracles be on the system I enjoy?

we want a monthly schedule!!!

Civilization Revolution is still 30 bucks. Just an FYI. Someone should also let the person in charge know that that you can get Fable II brand new for 20 bucks as opposed to the episodic downloads at 800pts a pop. That would end up being like 60 dollars. Outrageous! Why is that the only game like that? Some weird experiment?

Still no Burton gear here in the UK. All of the snow will have melted by the time it shows up.

Since I told my son the other day about the Burton gear, he’s been waiting on it. Any update as to when it will be out?

Thanks.

Where is the Burton gear? This all I’ve wanted from the avatar store and now it’s not even here.

I’m pretty sure 2K Games would like my money from downloading Civilization Revolution, if the price would drop as advertised.

Also, is it possible Xbox Originals could get price drops, if at least momentary? I can think of 3 that I would snatch up if they were cheaper.

Portal deal looks tempting, and once again I will continue my campaign to have more Arcade hit titles please! Some more pemanent price drops for old library items!

Its now the 17th and still no Burton gear, why did you post the 14th? At least some news as to why its not here would be nice.

Plus, still no price drops on any of the games listed here either.

thanks for sharing, it’s much appreciated. cheers.

when on the 18th are those prices dropping?

Will there be a NHL jerseys for our avatars? I need a Blackhawks Jersey!

“when on the 18th are those prices dropping?”

Who knows? Some of us are waiting for the price drops that were supposed to occur on the 12th. *eye roll* Good luck getting an answer…

WTF! I was going to get Battleship from Family Game Night yet it is still $10! When will it drop down to $5? It is the 18th. and I want my savings.

Quicksilver, in a more recent post about it Major Nelson actually responded in the comments to say that it is a Japan-only deal.

Now if only he’d respond to the pricing problem he’s ignored since the 12th…

What pricing problem? I missed what you are referring to…sorry. Drop me an email.

Are you kidding me, Major? 4 Pages of commentary say that there are NO PRICE DROPS for the GOD and you REALLY ask which pricing problem we are referring to?

Major, email sent, but the Games on Demand Civilization Revolution and Prey are the pricing problems.

I just wanted to make sure I had specifics.

My understanding is that the price drop is only for specific areas, but I will follow up on that.