Microsoft puts Xbox into arcade games business

Stan Beer
Wednesday, 12 July 2006 16:08

Your IT - Home IT

Never mind about Patch Tuesday, Microsoft plans to create its own Arcade Wednesday for Xbox 360 owners. From now until mid-August, a new classic 1980s style arcade game of the Pac-Man and Galaga ilk will be added to a list of such games available for free download by Xbox 360 owners.
The free downloads will only be trial versions, however, serving as enticements for users to purchase them. If Microsoft's figures are to be believed, the Xbox 360 games download business could turn into a nice little earner for the company. So far, according to Microsoft, about 5 million trial games have been downloaded in the past 8 months with more than 1 million of the downloads being converted into purchases.

According to Microsoft, there should be about 50 arcade games available for download by the end of the year. The irony of avid gamers spending money to download ancient computer games on a console with super graphics capabilities should not be lost on anyone. However, those of us who used to deposit coins into the Space Invaders console at local bar for hours on end remember how addictive those games were.