The “Break it Down” Blog

Up until August there were only 2 games on Xbox Live Arcade that cost over $10.  These were Roboblitz, which came out in December 2006 for 1200 points ($15 dollars), and Penny Arcade Adventures, which released this last May for 1600 points ($20 dollars).

Since August there have been 3 more titles which all released for 1200 points ($15).  These were Braid, Castle Crashers, and Portal: Still Alive.  All three games released with great reviews and complaints that Microsoft was going to start raising their Xbox Live Arcade prices across the board.

I was not buying into this price raising mindset and just though it happened to be coincidence that 3 games all released so closely together at the $15 price point.  Since all three games seemed to be getting great reviews, by both mainstream gaming press and gamers alike, I think the $15 price point is justified in the case of these three games.

However, Microsoft announced today that this week on Xbox Live Arcade would bring the release of Are You Smarter Than A 5th Grader?. While I think games like this have their place on Xbox Live Arcade since they are family friendly the fact that the game is priced at 1200 points caught me by surprise.

‘Are You Smarter Than A 5th Grader?’ seems like it would be more correctly priced at 800 points.  $15 for a game that consists of answer a bunch of questions seems steep to me.  Even with 4 player multiplayer over Live that extra $5 really turns me off.  I can think of two possible reasons for the higher price:

• Either they are paying Jeff Foxworthy a lot of money to put his likeness in the game
• The conspiracy theorist are right and Microsoft is looking to make 1200 points the new normal price for Xbox Live Arcade games.

I still have trouble with this conspiracy theory though because in less than a month Xbox Live Arcade is going to have a lot of competition from the XNA Community Games being released with the new dashboard on November 19th.  Those games will range in price from $2.50 to $10, and it is expected there will be dozens of them releasing within the first few weeks.  With that type of competition I don’t see $15 Arcade titles selling well for much longer.  Even it the $15 games are really good and worth the price it is hard to buy just one $15 game when you could get 6 XNA games for the same money.

So, what does everyone else think?  Was I wrong and Microsoft is looking to make $15 the new “normal” price for Arcade titles?  Or, is ‘Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader?’ a really great game that I’m underestimating?