Some Xbox Live Titles to be De-Listed

Microsoft has said that it will start to de-list titles that aren't performing well on Xbox Live.

Speaking in an interview, the service's general manager, Marc Whitten said, “we will be delisting older underperforming titles in order to keep the service focused on a section of high quality games.” The criteria for de-lisiting, according to Whitten, goes as follows - “The way it will work is that the title will need to be at least 6 months old and have a Metacritic score below 65 and a conversion rate below 6% on the service.”

Explaining further, Whitten said, “Overall I think you will find this will focus the catalogue more on larger, more immersive games and make it much easier to find the games you are looking for.”

That's right, larger. Whitten also said, “we are officially increasing our XBLA game size limits dramatically from 150mb to 350mb." To go with larger releases, there is also be a higher price point open to developers – 1,600 Microsoft Points. We have already seen that with this week's Penny Arcade release on Xbox Live.

The reason for the size change? Simple. “We have heard from some of our developers that if they had as much as 350mb of space they could create some really amazing games. So we don’t want anything to hold these guys back”, Whitten said.

Whitten also said that Microsoft is creating a dedicated first-party studio for Xbox Live. Of the studio, Whitten stated, “Well the main idea behind the concept is to invest deeply in developing original content that will be compelling and exclusive to Xbox LIVE. This is a place where we’ve redoubled our commitment and I’m putting both dollars and people behind new games that push the quality and the bounds of the system.” So... not a right lot. We should keep an eye out, however, for “some big original XBLA games we will be announcing soon.”

SPOnG also feels the need to point something out. Reports have been rife that there will not be a Spring dashboard update. In fact, the update will just be a modest one. Whitten said, “So while most users will not notice any significant changes to the dashboard this spring, I can tell you that the team will be releasing a new digital rights management (DRM) tool next month that will allow you to better consolidate your licenses for downloaded content to a single Xbox and allow you the freedom to be able to play your content both online and offline.”

While many gamers will not be dazzled by that, it will come as a relief to some who have been struggling to transfer licenses for Xbox Live games to new consoles after having their hardware replaced under warranty.

You can read the interview in full here.