It suddenly seems to me that Nintendo and Sony are allowing Microsoft to dominate the online casual game market.
I'm not referring to games such as Wii Sports and Wii Bowling, Little Big Planet, or even the Nintendo DS - I'm referring to licensed properties that already have a huge fan bases, and casual games by established indie PC developers such as PopCap.
From the board and card game standpoint, both companies haven't even touched that genre. Catan is the Euroboard game of the last 15 years, Already on the BoardGameGeeks forums they're raving about the game as a whole (with some minor gripes about color selection, etc.), and it coming to Arcade heralds the beginning of a string of games including:
The possibilities are limitless, really. Games like Ra and Evo are just begging to be ported onto XBLA (and Live for Windows, too.) And what about licensed card games like The Great Dalmuti, Wizard, Bohnanza and Tichu? Heck, they haven't even done good ole Cribbage and Bridge yet. Never underestimate the drawing power of these games - it might seem silly to obsess over the lack of, say, Cribbage, but on Microsoft Zone, it was one of the most popular games available, attracting literally tens of thousands of people per day to play in Crib tourneys. Look at how popular UNO has been on XBLA. It's just a licensed Crazy Eights, really, and it was on the Top 10 of online 360 games for a long, long time (maybe still is, I haven't checked.)
On the casual game side, games like Bejeweled, Puzzle Quest, and Zuma are also massively played games. Yes, you can purchase some of these games for the Nintendo DS and PlayStation Portable, but that just emphasizes the value. With Microsoft's cunning introduction of Achievement points and Leaderboards, most people will purchase the Xbox Live version simply because of the worldwide version of High Scores. Some games like Astropop receive new life on the 360. Even the hokiest game like Soltrio Solitaire (otherwise known as Klondike Solitaire everywhere else) will get a lot of paying downloads just for the 200 points, even if the percentage of people buying it would be 1% of owners. How much development costs can there possibly be in such a game?
From the board and card game standpoint, both companies haven't even touched that genre. Catan is the Euroboard game of the last 15 years, Already on the BoardGameGeeks forums they're raving about the game as a whole (with some minor gripes about color selection, etc.), and it coming to Arcade heralds the beginning of a string of games including:
- Carcassonne (June)
- Alhambra (Announced, no release date yet)
- Puerto Rico (Microsoft reportedly bought the rights)
The possibilities are limitless, really. Games like Ra and Evo are just begging to be ported onto XBLA (and Live for Windows, too.) And what about licensed card games like The Great Dalmuti, Wizard, Bohnanza and Tichu? Heck, they haven't even done good ole Cribbage and Bridge yet. Never underestimate the drawing power of these games - it might seem silly to obsess over the lack of, say, Cribbage, but on Microsoft Zone, it was one of the most popular games available, attracting literally tens of thousands of people per day to play in Crib tourneys. Look at how popular UNO has been on XBLA. It's just a licensed Crazy Eights, really, and it was on the Top 10 of online 360 games for a long, long time (maybe still is, I haven't checked.)
On the casual game side, games like Bejeweled, Puzzle Quest, and Zuma are also massively played games. Yes, you can purchase some of these games for the Nintendo DS and PlayStation Portable, but that just emphasizes the value. With Microsoft's cunning introduction of Achievement points and Leaderboards, most people will purchase the Xbox Live version simply because of the worldwide version of High Scores. Some games like Astropop receive new life on the 360. Even the hokiest game like Soltrio Solitaire (otherwise known as Klondike Solitaire everywhere else) will get a lot of paying downloads just for the 200 points, even if the percentage of people buying it would be 1% of owners. How much development costs can there possibly be in such a game?
