"Summer of Arcade." Is it any good?

First off, the name "Summer of Arcade" is a bit misleading since it only really lasts through August, with a few days of July in there. However, this is my only problem with it. Every Wednesday throughout this month has been amazing so far. Booting up my Xbox 360 to try out all these fantastic games being released.

Bionic Commando: Rearmed is one of the best retro remakes I've played in quite a while, Braid is just beautiful in so many ways and Geometry Wars 2 is just plain fun. We also have Galaga Legions and Castle Crashers to look forward to in the coming weeks. But why are we getting them all in one big chunk?

It's obvious that once this Summer is over, we're going to be going back to the usual crap like Yaris. With not many decent XBLA titles on the horizon after this summer, is this a good move on Microsoft's part?


*cough cough*

From a business perspective, yes. It is a fantastic move. The whole "Summer of Arcade" banner is giving these games, which otherwise may have been overlooked, some extra advertising. MS points will be bought in big chunks to make sure people can afford the games when they are released throughout the summer and extra treats such as the secret Bionic Commando trailer with Rearmed and the free gamerpics/theme with Castle Crashers entice people to buy them.



However, from a gamers perspective it is sort of mixed. We're getting fantastic games coming out each week and they've all blown me away and I'm sure other people have. With people competing for high scores in Geometry Wars 2 and reliving the NES days with Bionic Commando, it truly has been great. Promising games such as Castle Crashers are still to come. But after this month, it's back to the normal trash. We'll end up in a slump of good XBLA games with maybe a sleeper hit here and there. Using up all their trump cards at once is a bad move in the long term for Microsoft, but at least the games we have had have been fantastic ones.

Maybe Microsoft will see how successful it is and get a selection of decent games made and market them in one big bunch which means more games for us.