Xbox LIVE policy is changing, and we’re not talking about their ridiculous gay banhammer. No, today Next-Gen has an exclusive interview with Microsoft’s Marc Witten, who reveals that after selling over one-quarter of a billion dollars in digitally-delivered content, Redmond has decided to improve the quality of that content with some controversial yet exciting new policies.
According to Witten, the following changes have occurred:
1.) As reported Tuesday, the XBLA filesize limit has been officially increased from 150MB to 350MB.
2.) Publishers are now able to increase their price point to 1600 MS Points (a full $20) for “bigger and better” games — like Penny Arcade Adventures Episode One, released yesterday.
3.) “In order to keep the service focused on a section of high quality games,” Microsoft will delist underperforming titles that are more than 6 months old, have a Metacritic score below 65, and a conversion rate below 6%.
4.) There will be no Spring Dashboard Update this year.
Microsoft will additionally:
5.) Open a first-party studio to create original content “that will be compelling and exclusive to Xbox LIVE.” This is not limited to Dashboard decoration; Witten specifically mentions that they are working on “big original XBLA games.”
6.) Release a new DRM tool in June that will allow Xbox LIVE Marketplace users to consolidate their DLC licenses, play stored content without having to connect to LIVE, and re-download their purchases in case hardware failure results in their existing 360 being replaced.
The new policies raise certain questions: With the memory card rationale wearing thin, why the seemingly arbitrary 350 megabytes? (We suppose you could comfortable fit one 350MB game and one 150MB game on a single 512MB memory card, but we’d be splitting hairs.)
What happens to the sub-6% micro minority who have nonetheless paid for a title that might vanish?
What new pains might the updated DRM bring?
For now, we have no answers — but we will ask.
Meanwhile, you can read Microsoft’s rationale and some more details at Next Generation, while we sit back and wait for Yaris to vanish from our lives forever.
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