The idea of delisting games in the Marketplace is downright ridiculous. Especially considering that all they have to do to resolve the situation is to revise the interface.

Reviews and opinions are subjective, but I find it interesting that the guys who developed good games are against this measure, and the guy who developed a rather forgettable cash-in is in favor of it.

I'd agree, revise the interface and utilize user reviews. Also offer some kind of bargain bin section for games that may not be doing so well. It's not always the game that's a problem, but the pricing of said content. Get it together Microsoft.

xna != democracy

I'm for the bargain bin concept. Bargain titles in brick-and-mortar shops seem like they do reasonable business; the concept of "bargain title" in a digital download portal, to my knowledge, has never even been explored. Who even knows how the marketplace will react? As far as i can tell, no one -- it's sheer conjecture. I don't see why Microsoft wouldn't give it a shot just to, at bare minimum, take notes on the concept.

I agree, a bargian bin or at the lest better sorting of the games would help a lot more than just delisting games doing poorly right now or poorly reviewed. I seem to remember one game that reviewed poorly at first and went on to become a massive cult classic and spawn 3 more titles. What was it called? Oh yeah devil may cry.

Not saying of course that some downloadable is going to be the next DMC but there's more than enough proof to show that at the least basing delisting on the reviewers and not the fans is a swift road to pissing off your buyers.

Isn't more choice ALWAYS better for the consumer AND business? Dumb move Microsoft.

I see the point they're making with this. I mean, does it not hurt developers who deliver quality products when their game is swimming a sea of mediocrity and no one knows what's good and what's not? Also, this measure would be a push for developers to focus more on quality over marketing, and help prevent consumers from purchasing bad games that looking interesting by description.

However, I think there are better ways to address this than to outright remove the games from the service. Perhaps an ability to sort by Metacritic rating, a daily feature showcasing exceptional products, and (as others have suggested) some sort of discounted price-tag for games with poor sales and reviews could better address this issue for both the consumers and the developers.

Although I agree with Raigan Burns, he was one of the developers complaining about all the "crap" on XBLA, and his statements are really looking hypocritical now.

@anonymous:
I don't think Raigan is looking hypocritical. There's two issues here with XBLA: pre-deployment QA and inventory.

Raigan's previous comments focused on the quality of games being deployed onto XBLA, and the fact that the major players were now "muscling in" on something which was previously perceived to be a more independant channel. He also mentioned the volume of "poor quality" games on XBLA, but that comment is more around the user perception of XBLA gaming (which itself is an artefact of the poor quality UI Microsoft have implemented).

LLoyd's comments actually stand out more: "we have a great game, so delete 'lower quality' stuff until people can see it". It's somewhat self-focused (and rightly so: he has a business to support) and short-term: what happens when one of his games is in the firing line?

(Actually: Buku Sudoku has a meta-critic rating of 63, so it's already in the firing line! Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, I guess...)

He has a good point (the same as everyone else: too much noise in the channel), but the solution should be to improve the channel via Web 2.0 tagging and filtering, not to delete things which are perceived to be problematic: this just alienates large swathes of the user and developer community and forces a return to the "guaranteed returns" model: i.e. yet more remakes and sequels rather than new IP and gaming models.

I agree with everyone who's criticizing Microsoft's bizarre and alienating policy decision. Outright removal is a bad, bad way to go.

While I agree completely that Microsoft's plans are pretty stupid, I'm not sure the bargain bin method is the best way to go either. I mean, stop me if you've heard this one before:

A sales environment flooded with so many mediocre to poor titles that the quality games are drown out. Games that are of a lower quality or aren't selling well are discounted, and the consumers are still left with no way of telling what is good or not (assuming there aren't demos). When this happened before (it's the crash of the early 80's if you hadn't guessed it), the public just tended to buy the discounted (worse) games because they had no guarantee of quality either way and decided to gamble with less money(or buy what seemed like the "better deal"). That cannibalized the sales of quality titles significantly.

I know this isn't touching on a lot of the other issues that sparked the crash, and if the same thing happens on XBLA it's not going to take out the whole industry, but it could mess things up pretty good for this particular distribution channel. If handled properly (via the much needed UI upgrade everyone agrees is needed) the discount method could work wonderfully. However people need to realize the potential for such a move to be somewhat disastrous if not handled correctly.