Good show, but I didn't really learn anything new about delisting the XBLA games or the DRM tool.

1. Why does everyone take it out on Major?  If you want to say something say it against MS not Major like its his fault for giving us the news (good or bad). If it wasn't for him we would be in the dark.

2. On that note. Frankly I don't care anyways about Arcade because the games cost to much. If its 1600 I never buy period. If its 800 MAYBE I'll buy it if REALLY good and has replay value and stuff like that. But thats rare. I only own like 6 Arcade games. I'd pay anything under 600. Especially when its an old game like Golden Axe. Yeah its a great game but its still OLD. Stop jacking the price for profit.

The show didn't really give much more information about the lack of a dashboard update, it just said "The team was really busy making the systems more stable." The service should be stable anyway, you should have a team making sure that the service is stable at all times, not choose between either an update, or decent service.

Major have you ever thought about lifecasting?

Show may be corrupted on iTunes?

Nvm, I had to download it 4 times for it to save though, I wonder why?

RE: "Cleaning the shelves"

The point isn't that it's like a retail store cleaning the shelves - our point is that Digital Distribution IS NOT like a retail store! That's the point! If you can still download it after purchase and still tell someone about a game and have them download it through a "Tell a friend" feature then what is the point of removing it in the first place?

You have all these categories which make searching somewhat easier, but Microsoft's claim is that this is "making it easier for other people to find a game". So by saving a gamer 3 seconds of time your inconveniencing a developer now? It's absurd. The better thing to do would be to rework the actual search system in the first place - make a text search, have more categories - Delisting is the last thing you should be thinking about! Perhaps a rating system akin to the Wii Nintendo Channel, or a rating like the iTunes store!

All it feels like is someone in marketing wanted to remove "bad" games. The problem is that you're using Metacritic - and critics review XBLA titles far less than regular titles (15 reviews for Word Puzzle, 60 for Project Gotham 4) and so the actual pool isn't nearly big enough. Most of the lower selling games are not FOR game reviewers at all! Look at Word Puzzle or other casual games - they get poor reviews but they're not FOR me! Much like Asteroids or Centipede aren't for me - they're for people who were 'there'.

I've written an article over at my blog XBLAH, and I'd like everyone to read it:

http://www.xblah.net/2008/05/rant-mode-microsoft-to-start-delisting.html">www.xblah.net/.../rant-mode-microsoft-to-start-delisting.html

I did like the slip that Greenberg said of "We found most people downloading XBLA titles actually own the Elite / Pro skews with a HDD". Then what's the point of the Arcade Skew!?

- Ryan Langley

http://www.xblah.net

So when is the drawing of e coming up?

Frankly, no spring update is a cop out.

It sounds like you guys had no intention of releasing a spring update because the resources where used for the DRM fix and to fix the back end of live.

So why wait to the last week of spring to announce there will be no spring update?

You have always indicated that there will be two updates a year and this was a major selling point of your platform. In fact, if we use the Australia Laws as an example, you have breached the Trade Practises Act by saying you would do one thing, but clearly doing something else.