Xbox 360 Fanboy

I don't know... I think he's saying the same thing, but doesn't have the balls to go after it like Metanet did. This "sorting" he speaks of, it would be what, exactly? Order the games from Good to Crap rather than alphabetically?

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People don't buy your game on XBLA, you whine like Jeff Minter.

People buy your game on XBLA, you say, "XBLA is teh pwnz!"

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@SoxFan13:

XBLA *does* sort its games - by genre. I have no idea WTF he's whining about.

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I really think XBLA should allow gold users the ability to rank and review games. You could then sort by the rank in any gerne you specify.

Crap game problem solved.

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I think the problem is the lack of "utter shit" in the games category listings, this would free up a lot of space for games worthy of being on there!

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Steam solves this particular problem by allowing users to sort games by metacritic rating and while this may not be appropriate for XBLA games (alot of the major review sites don't tend to review XBLA games in quite the same way as fully fledged retail titles), some kind of independant scoring system (if possible from aggregated sounrce rather than a single one) would be a great way of allowing the good stuff to rise to the top.

It's not surprising that a game such as N+ has sparked off this debate. The game has polarised opinions with some loving it (i fall in that camp!) and others thinking its a piece of tripe. Ironically an aggregate scoring system would not really help N+ as it would probably score an average rating!

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Obviously you can sort by genre, but consider coming to this system new and seeing 150 games there. There's no concept on what's the most popular, what is still played the most... some of the genre sorting is extremely vague at best.

There's certainly better ways to break it up than just offering a big list of names. If this means more sorting options or more information on the list than just the title of the game, I don't see how it's a bad thing.

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He makes a good point. And was a hell of a lot more helpful in his criticism than the N+ guy.

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even a basic star rating system would help this shit.

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XBLA is just like retail, some games are good some are not. Even the "crappy" games have fans, so they should get put out there. Just because you deem a game "crappy" doesn't mean that people shouldn't get a chance to play it.

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He probably means like keyword search.

For example, on modzilla firefox, I type in a specific game, before I finish my search has been narrowed down.

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@Sean
"I really think XBLA should allow gold users the ability to rank and review games."

Agreed, with the caveat being that you have to have played at least the trial version of the game before you can make a rating. Silver users would be OK too, except then an unscrupulous game company would probably create a bunch of fake accounts just to bump up their games' ratings (EA I'm looking at you).

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There's two features that could have been nice.

They could follow Valve's example and display the Metacritic score for each game.

You could also have - instead of a star system - simplified "I like this game" or "I did not like this game" ratings for each game, and possibly a small carrot for gamers who take the time to submit a rating after having played it.

When browsing the game store, the system could check for users with a similar like/dislike history and give some sort of indicator based on that.

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"Obviously you can sort by genre, but consider coming to this system new and seeing 150 games there. There's no concept on what's the most popular, what is still played the most... some of the genre sorting is extremely vague at best."

"They could follow Valve's example and display the Metacritic score for each game."

Microsoft doesn't need to.

Every.
Game.
Has.
A.
Free.
Trial.

Maybe people tried N+'s demo and said, "Nah. Pass."

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How about a system like Netflix, that guesses how much you might like a game based on how you liked similar games AND lets you give games that you've tried out a rating- so you can know immediately if you tried a game and how much you liked it. Perhaps even an "intend to buy" indicator flag.

I tried the N+ demo and I thought it was great, but like most games on XBLA, the demo was more than enough to satiate my curiosity and I had no desire to buy the game. Back to my staple games of Rock Band, Rez, Pinball FX, and Call of Duty 4...

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I don't see what all the fuss is about. I wasn't sure what to play so I looked at Major's site to see what was popular and downloaded the trials to see if I liked them. Fine put a damn rating on the games and allow gold members who have downloaded the trial/played it submit a review. Problem solved. Moving on...

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From a marketing standpoint, I don't think MS wants users to rate XBLA games so you can sort the best reviewed to the top. IF that happens, there would be less sales of the crappy games. MS allows users to sort based on genre and there's a free trial. Outside of that, they aren't going to take a chance of reducing sales by allowing reviews.

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Sean D. brings up a good solution that Microsoft has sort of implemented with the video section. If you play video downloaded from XBL it will suggest to you three other videos to watch. If they added that sort of system to Xbox live Arcade it might move some game types.

A user based rating should be restricted by people who buy the full game. There maybe many people who might play a game type they normally don't like because it is free.

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As far as something helpful.. why can't they mimic what they do for the video marketplace?

has latest downloads and a top downloads column

determining what's crappy is subjective and depends on the person. Many reviewers thought brain training was crap, but yet it was still the #1 sold of last week.

just keep making suggestions to MS so they can add it to their spring update. For the most part they've given us what we've wanted in those updates.

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Shit that has been sorted differently is still shit.

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