Xbox 360 Game Room, thoughts?

[Leo_A]

Now that this has been dead for several years due to Krome's demise, what does everyone think of it in retrospective? Despite the poor app, overpriced games, bugs, emulation issues, and various other technical issues, I think it ended up being a nice addition to the Xbox 360 for the classic gamer. Wish it had continued, thrived, and seen a lot of improvement since only a fraction of the content they had licensed ever even made its way out.

I ignored the Atari content besides the exclusive release of arcade Food Fight since Atari Anthology runs beautifully on the 360, had superior emulation, and included everything that appeared here. But I happily bought a big chunk of the Konami lineup that saw release here for the first time in arcade form (Including the excellent Juno First which shines here despite some of the audio being off), Thin Ice and Shark! Shark! for the Intellivision, and three of my favorite Activision titles for the 2600.

Missed opportunity for Microsoft. A Virtual Console style service for Xbox Live would've been an excellent addition if handled well. But the $60 I ended up spending on games was money well spent I think despite all the flaws.

[Graham Mitchell]

I think it was a lost opportunity. Don't get me wrong--I enjoy it and still play it occasionally. But the games Konami put up there leave me scratching my head. Where's nemesis, salamder/life force, gradius 2, etc?

And it's shameful that Capcom never jumped on this. This would have been a great home for cps 1and 2 games.

Toaplans back catalogue would have been awesome on here too.

[Leo_A]

They seemed to be building up to their newer releases so I'm sure more such releases were in the cards. Sunset Riders for instance is still previewed if you log into Game Room and watch the coming attractions for the game pack they were on and would've been the next release had there been one.

Glad some rarities made their way out though since that's what I was looking for rather than things like Scramble or Gradius. Was nice to see games like Juno First, Amidar, Jungler, and such instead of them focusing only on material Konami has brought home before in arcade form sometimes multiple times.

Judging by my post above, it sounds like Capcom might've been signed late in its life but Krome died before they did anything with that deal. Too bad Capcom overpriced their own attempt later on with Capcom Arcade Cabinet since the emulation is great.

[Gamevet]

I would have stuck with it, if they had fixed the stupid glitch that would make some games stutter for a millisecond every now and then. It totally ruined the experience of playing Breakout, when the game would stutter just as I'm lining my paddle up with the ball.

Great idea, but horribly executed.

[Leo_A]

They really needed some emulation talent. Kind of impressed these folks that were new to it as a studio were even able to get as far as they did. Wish Microsoft had selected a different contract developer that was more familiar with the demands of emulation. Game Room might still be alive today if they had more carefully selected a partner.

And Breakout without a paddle? You're crazy for even trying.

[Gamevet]

They really needed some emulation talent. Kind of impressed these folks that were new to it as a studio were even able to get as far as they did. Wish Microsoft had selected a different contract developer that was more familiar with the demands of emulation. Game Room might still be alive today if they had more carefully selected a partner.

And Breakout without a paddle? You're crazy for even trying.

It was worth a try. I needed a little challenge, but not one that had stuttering.


I still have the VCS version with paddles, if I want to experience the game the way it was meant to be played.

[Nature Boy]

I'd love to know how it did financially, as I'm willing to bet it's the primary reason it sputtered out rather quickly. If there's no money in it for those with the IPs, it's tough to get them to give us what we would have wanted.

What they should have done is focus on the high score games, and left out the single player games (like Adventure). And work on more Arcade games with high score followings. I know Donkey Kong is out, but Pac-Man anybody? Maybe a contest to see who can get the first perfect score in Game Room?

I bought a handful of games like Frostbite and H.E.R.O., and playing in the Game Room is still my favourite way to play those, as I love seeing where I rank amongst my friends and the entire Game Room community. Watching your score climb up as you're playing is an experience I enjoy so much that I don't mind I'm not playing them on the original hardware.

I'd love to see someone try it again. Same premise with the high score table, but with a focus on the right kind of games and less worry about consoles and more worry about promoting competitive high score game play.

[Leo_A]

I don't think guaranteed games was a problem. Microsoft's press release at launch stressed that over 1,000 games were planned for the first three years. So presumably only a mere fraction of what they had secured licenses for ever made its way out in the end.

But I definitely think finances played a role. While they brought much of it upon themselves with their quality issues and high prices to name some major problems that kept it from being more of a hit, I'm sure if this had been doing well that Microsoft would've contracted with a different developer to continue with it where Krome left off.

Hopefully this idea is resurrected someday and done right. Retail compilations are tough sells these days and original content has largely driven out the classics in their main digital storefronts. An independent digital service like this that's dedicated to classic gaming just might be the recipe for publishers to continue to take advantage of their back catalogs if Sony or Microsoft would step up to the plate and do it right.

[YoshiM]

One complaint I saw floating about was that some people had already purchased an arcade game in XBLA but they couldn't port it over and felt they were getting double dipped.

[Leo_A]

Yeah, but that made sense even though I do think that turned some players off. Different publishers, different emulation, etc. I can see how some that were uninformed held that against it, but really the only thing in common between say Time Pilot on Game Room and Time Pilot on XBLA was their source material that both were bringing home. Krome and Microsoft deserved to be paid for their work since one developed the emulator and the other paid for the license, they didn't just repackage a XBLA release.

Probably the better solution for that limited group that overlapped was just not releasing them early on until the service had established itself.