The “Xbox Game Room”, as it was previously titled, was the mysterious feature coming to the Xbox 360 that Microsoft mentioned in an interview awhile back. Now we have some solid information about it, along with a nifty new trailer showing off some of the games you and your friends will be playing.
Microsoft stated in the press release that Game Room will be a “place to relive the glory days of arcade games”. They also confirmed that in the next 3 years there will be upward of 1,000 titles on the service. There is also the ability to customize your “Game Room” with game cabinets and floating pixel thingies, heck you can make your game room anyway you want to… as long as you have some Microsoft Points that is.
The pricing structure for Game Room includes 3 different options. Option number one is that you can buy the arcade game and cabinet, which will remain exclusive to either Xbox 360 or PC for a price of 240 Microsoft Points. Option number 2 is that you pay 400 Microsoft Points and then you can play the arcade game on both PC and Xbox. And finally, option number 3 is for the people who use to head to the arcades with a pocketful of quarters every time they received their allowance, you pay 40 Microsoft Points to play a game once, which comes up to about 2 quarters for a round of arcade bliss.
Check out the trailer showing off Game Room from the CES announcement:
You and a friend can both play at the same time in some select games. You can also unlock achievements and get your score posted on a leaderboards so you can compete to be the best at Asteroids Deluxe!
Atari, Activision, Konami and Intellivision are all confirmed partners that will be supplying us with the classic games for our game rooms. There will be at least 30 games available when the feature launches on both Xbox 360 and PC, and your friend is actually able to pop over to your game room and try a game before he invests any money in it. You can check a list of the 30 confirmed games for the service just below (thanks Joystiq).
Game Room Titles
- Adventure
- Armor Battle
- Asteroids Deluxe
- Astrosmash
- Battlantis
- Centipede
- Combat
- Crystal Castles
- Finalizer
- Football
- Gravitar
- Jungler
- Lunar Lander
- Millipede
- Mountain Madness: Super Pro Skiing
- Outlaw
- RealSports Tennis
- Red Baron
- Road Fighter
- Scramble
- Sea Battle
- Shao-Lin’s Road
- Space Armada
- Space Hawk
- Star Raiders
- Sub Hunt
- Super Cobra
- Tempest
- Tutankham
- Yars’ Revenge
The feature is set to hit both Xbox 360 and PC this Spring for the low, low price of nothing. The ability to start an arcade will be free, but it’s not much of an arcade if you don’t invest some points into game cabinets.
What do you think of Microsoft’s Game Room and pricing structure? What classic arcade games do you hope make it on to the service?
Source: Joystiq
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Boy does Road Fighter sound retro lol
Yeah, it’s almost as bad as Sea Battle!
I like the idea of a classic arcade that avatars can actually walk around in… but this looks a bit like a Microsoft take on a much more contained version of PlayStation Home.
The games are intriguing but I’m not sure if I’m sold on the idea of the actual space…
PlayStation Home is a mess but has some redeeming qualities that could only exist in a MMO-style community (Sodium and Buzz Spaces especially). I don’t see what the actual Game Room adds that couldn’t mostly be accomplished through Xbox Live.
It just seems fishy to me… like they’re dipping their toes in something much larger.
cool idea needs to be free though. if u have to pay for each game thats lame but a 1 time fee for the whole room is ok
Didn't bring your quarters?