Warner Bros. announced today that Midway Arcade Origins, a collection of 30 classic Midway titles from the golden age of arcades on a single disc, is now available for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, priced at $29.99.
New players can experience the seminal classics, while longtime fans of classic arcade games can re-master their favorite titles with new PlayStation Network Trophies and Xbox 360 Achievements support. Players will also be able to enjoy many games with up to three of their friends in local, co-op multiplayer and post their high scores online.
Capcom has said the next Xbox Live Arcade game they will release is Rocketmen: Axis of Evil.
This download will be available from Wednesday, March 5 at around at 9:00 am GMT (1:00 am PT), you can download this game for around 800 Microsoft Points (or about $10).
Tim Innes the producer of "Rocketmen: Axis of Evil" describes the game play here: "Upgradable Run and Gun is the best way to describe it. The actual controls are similar to that of what is referred to as a 4-way shooter (one stick moves, the other points where to shoot.) But there are also secondary weapons like rockets and land mines that provide additional tactics. Although the game is very arcade like, the player is always earning experience points towards their character and can upgrade skills, weapons, and other cool stuff after each level."
"It should be familiar. Just reading this you can get a pretty quick grasp: Imagine using the left stick to move right, left, up, and down to evade incoming rounds and enemies. Use the right stick to fire back. Pull a trigger to use a secondary item/weapon to fire rockets, launch seeking missiles, drop mines, etc.. And hit a controller button to activate stuff like doors, computers, control panels, … you get it. Controls are very easy to learn."
"Our goals were simple – old school gameplay with all the modern bells and whistles. I could compare the game to old classics like Robotron (a personal favorite), Contra, or even Smash TV, but those games are not as deep as this one (or 3d). I think ultimately the goal we accomplished was re-envisioning a classic game-play concept with better art, story, weapons, and a heavy dose of sci-fi smackdown. But gameplay is fast, challenging, you have to be competitive to get drops and use them. It’s a busy game, and rewarding as you develop your character."
Thanks to services like GameTap and Xbox Live Arcade, classic games are being given new life and are bringing in revenue years and years after they first hit the market. GameTap's Stuart Synder, XBLA's Greg Canessa and others chime in on the retro phenomenon.
Want to feel really old? It's been 26 years since the sound of "waka-waka-waka" first resounded in an arcade. Yes, 1980 was the year Midway licensed and installed the coin-op version of Namco's "Pac-Man" in the U.S. And 2006 is the year that "Pac-Man" has become one of the most popular downloads on Xbox Live Arcade and GameTap.
Talk about a game with legs.
In fact, while most of the video games industry is marveling over the success of today's casual games -- those small, downloadable games with simple rules that make it easy for a mass audience to begin playing almost immediately -- less-noticed is the fact that a subset of casual games has become hot this last year and is getting hotter. Indeed, here come the retro arcade classics!
Since Xbox Live's online gaming network launched in November 2002, gamers have spent over 1.5 billion hours on the network playing games online with their friends around the world. This is equal to 65 million days of gaming or close to 200,000 years. With our top title, Halo 2, which is being played on both the Xbox and Xbox 360, gamers have spent over 500 million hours playing online.
Not only are the majority of our owners connected, but they are also spending more time connected to the Xbox Live community on Xbox 360 than ever before. The average number of gaming sessions on Xbox Live on Xbox 360 is currently at 25-a-week, which is up dramatically from the average of 6 sessions-a-week we saw on the original Xbox.
Xbox Live on Xbox 360 continues to grow as a social community; we are seeing an average of 600,000 text messages sent every day between members on the service.
We have already had over 10 million downloads on Marketplace in the first 4 months on the market, reaching this milestone faster than iTunes did when it launched. Playable game demos remain the most popular item with over half of our consumers downloading these.
Xbox Live Arcade has been an instant hit on the Xbox 360, with over 60% of all connected consoles already downloading and playing Xbox Live Arcade titles.
Every Xbox Live Arcade title has a free trial version. To-date, we are seeing on average 20% trial to purchase conversion rates across all Arcade titles, with our top title converting at 39%.
Xbox Live Arcade group manager Greg Canessa (pictured) tells Next Generation that retro downloadable Nintendo games "won't hold up", and as far as a Sony online service goes... "good luck".
ImageSince it was first conceived as a humble disc for the original Xbox, Xbox Live Arcade has grown from a side note in the Xbox Live story into a viable revenue stream. Games like Bizarre's original Geometry Wars and classics like Smash TV and Gauntlet are proving to be hits for the platform, and the list of games is becoming larger and more compelling. The upcoming Street Fighter II: Hyper Fighting sounds like it will just be the first of many Capcom titles that will be hitting the system (fingers crossed for some "Versus" action), and large and independent publishers and developers alike are offering up games at a frantic pace. Deals with Konami, Midway and Atari ensure we'll see more classics, and healthy relationships with indie game publishers such as Garage Games will keep interest piqued with new innovative quick-play casual games.
Canessa gives us his thoughts on Nintendo's proposed Revolution retro-games download service, and how he believes Sony has a lot of groundwork to lay down before it even thinks of a games download service.
On Nintendo's retro service
"I think it was interesting to see Nintendo's announcement for the Revolution downloadable games service which, of course, came over a year after we launched our initiative internally and around nine months after we already launched the first generation of Arcade for Xbox. I think it was a responsive move. Their service is interesting in sort of a 'retro' way, but I view Arcade as being so much more than what they're planning on doing. Their service is kind of a subset of what we're doing. We have a retro coin-op category within Arcade - the Midway titles have been performing amazingly - and we're doing a lot more in that space. Of course, we're doing Street Fighter, we've announced our partnership with Konami, Atari, and Midway - more titles are coming from Midway. So, we're going to be doing a lot in the retro space, console and coin-op. But that's just one part of the Arcade strategy.
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Canessa gives us his thoughts on Nintendo's proposed Revolution retro-games download service, and how he believes Sony has a lot of groundwork to lay down before it even thinks of a games download service.
