Game Room for Xbox 360: virtual arcade + avatars

[RadarScope1]

UPDATE: If you're down for high score challenges and some old-school pew-pew-pew, drop into the thread and let us know. Here's a list of forum members using Game Room and some of the more popular games with us so far. Slim pickings on launch but it's bound to get better over time.

Gamertags:
Octopod666
jfe2
DaGamingMonkey
RadarScope1
Kenshiro28
Zenlogikos
Niode

Games: Shao-lin's Road; Asteroids Deluxe, Battlantis, Tempest, Finalizer, Super Cobra

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MS is unveiling a virtual arcade for avatars. You can hang out there with friends as avatars, pay $3 a pop to own an arcade cab and friends in the space can play with you and vice versa. Pay $5 to "own" the cab on 360 and Games for Windows Live. Pay 50 cents to play a game without owning it, like dropping quarters in. 1,000 classic games will be released over the next couple of years. Some old console games, too, like Atari 2600 and Intellivision games.

Here's a teaser video:

Apparently the company doing the emulation, Krome, does good work, which will be key. I dunno. Good concept and the nostalgia factor in the video seems right, but they ought to make it free for Gold subscribers. Drop in, with friends, shoot for high scores or play against each other. But I don't want to pay $3 a pop for a virtual "cabinet."

[classicgamer5]

looks pretty cool, I would it rather be free though

[RyaNtheSlayA]

Wait... so if I understand this right... is this Microsoft's answer to PSHome?

[RadarScope1]

Wait... so if I understand this right... Playstation Home + Microsoft = this?

Yeah, that doesn't seem to be very far off the mark.

[t0yrobo]

Good concept and the nostalgia factor in the video seems right, but they ought to make it free for Gold subscribers. Drop in, with friends, shoot for high scores or play against each other. But I don't want to pay $3 a pop for a virtual "cabinet."

That's how I feel. I'd like at least a decent amount of free games off that bat, like say 10 or so good games. Then I could get more if I felt like it. I also hope that it doesn't have ads sprinkled everywhere like the rest of live, I get really annoyed when I have ads come up on last.fm.

[Xonticus]

I sure do love my pc and my atari emulators

[nickfil]

5 bucks seems a bit high.

I'm sure you can find most of the cartridges on your 2600 for far less than that.

[t0yrobo]

The offical fact sheet thing for it is here, down near the bottom of the page http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/even ... rials.aspx

It's only 240 points to buy a machine for only xbox, or only pc. Which seems reasonable enough to me. There's no good reason to buy one for pc as already mentioned. it's something good spend spend spare points on besides indie games at least.

[Niode]

Yeah this looks cool, let's hope it isn't as dumb as Home is. Actually, it would be a million times better than Home if it just let's you play the games at the same time as someone else. Why the hell does Home not do that? It's a virtual world, why am I constrained by real world conventions? At least if you're going to do that then at least implement some sort of queuing system.

Does anybody actually use Home anymore? I assume it's either full of bots spamming, or it's just a wasteland of emptiness and advertising...

[Jayson]

This looks pretty damn cool. I know you can just get the games "free" via MAME or whatever emulator, but $3 each isn't too bad. Especially if you can invite your friends over to your "arcade" to play with you.

I'm sure that $3 would only be for the classics, and that newer stuff would be more expensive. Plus the obvious Nintendo owned properties being absent.