To give the tl;dr first: I think it's horrible how XBLIGs are treated by this update.
And in a few more words:
I think that there are two different problem areas for XBLIGs with the 2011 dashboard.
The first, which somehow overshadows much of the discussion I've read so far, is discoverability - how easy/difficult it is to find the XBLIG section on the new dashboard. I guess there are different opinions here: Some (probably most) are saying it's worse than before, other saying it's not so bad, and others again saying that it simply is Microsoft's right to decide how many "precious" dashboard tiles they want to allocate to XLBIGs. So they decided to put us into a difficult to find corner? I guess we have to deal with that...
This alone is of course already a big problem, but then, what totally baffles me, layered on top of this is the second problem:
Even there, inside our already hidden XBLIG corner, Microsoft continues to make our XBLIG dev lives difficult by removing all options for filtering the huge game list! So we now have a single huge list with currently >2000 entries (and growing) that can be sorted in four different ways (by release date, by rating, by downloads, by title), but no way to filter it! That means that any game that happens to not be among the say first 100 under any of these four sort methods, is virtually invisible. There is no way for a user to find it unless he already knows the name and bings it. Because face it, nobody will scroll to the right more than about 100 games (if even so many) and scan through the covers to find a game.
I understand (even if I don't like it) that MS doesn't want to include XBLIGs in the "main" new-release lists, or in the main "by-genre" or "by-first-letter" lists, where AAA and XBLA games live. But why on earth did they not at least give XBLIGs their own "by-genre" and "by-first-letter" filtering? Or at least a "skip to next letter" option in the "by title" list?
My only conclusion is: They either totally don't care about XBLIGs so they didn't realize this omission. Or they consciously left it out to marginalize XBLIGs even more. Both versions shed a very very dire light on the future of XBLIG. No matter which death we die, the passive one because no one cares, or the active one because we are cut down - dead is dead!
So you better have a game that is among the first 100 or so by one of these four sort methods, or your game will virtually be invisible on the service to anyone who isn't actively bing-ing it by name.
The first, which somehow overshadows much of the discussion I've read so far, is discoverability - how easy/difficult it is to find the XBLIG section on the new dashboard. I guess there are different opinions here: Some (probably most) are saying it's worse than before, other saying it's not so bad, and others again saying that it simply is Microsoft's right to decide how many "precious" dashboard tiles they want to allocate to XLBIGs. So they decided to put us into a difficult to find corner? I guess we have to deal with that...
This alone is of course already a big problem, but then, what totally baffles me, layered on top of this is the second problem:
Even there, inside our already hidden XBLIG corner, Microsoft continues to make our XBLIG dev lives difficult by removing all options for filtering the huge game list! So we now have a single huge list with currently >2000 entries (and growing) that can be sorted in four different ways (by release date, by rating, by downloads, by title), but no way to filter it! That means that any game that happens to not be among the say first 100 under any of these four sort methods, is virtually invisible. There is no way for a user to find it unless he already knows the name and bings it. Because face it, nobody will scroll to the right more than about 100 games (if even so many) and scan through the covers to find a game.
I understand (even if I don't like it) that MS doesn't want to include XBLIGs in the "main" new-release lists, or in the main "by-genre" or "by-first-letter" lists, where AAA and XBLA games live. But why on earth did they not at least give XBLIGs their own "by-genre" and "by-first-letter" filtering? Or at least a "skip to next letter" option in the "by title" list?
My only conclusion is: They either totally don't care about XBLIGs so they didn't realize this omission. Or they consciously left it out to marginalize XBLIGs even more. Both versions shed a very very dire light on the future of XBLIG. No matter which death we die, the passive one because no one cares, or the active one because we are cut down - dead is dead!
So you better have a game that is among the first 100 or so by one of these four sort methods, or your game will virtually be invisible on the service to anyone who isn't actively bing-ing it by name.
My prediction: We'll see an influx of games with a name that starts with a number, to guarantee at least a front slot under the "by title" filtering.
Too bad for me that my last game's name starts with a "Y"! I just timed it: It took me 1:16min(!) to scroll to Your Doodles Are Bugged! under the "by title" sort order. And then it didn't even show me the box art of the game (or the ones surrounding it). Most likely it first had to load the ~2000 box arts of all the other games that I passed on my way to the letter "Y". So I thought I'd just wait a bit until the box art appears - but I gave up after half an hour, when the box art still wasn't showing...
Very, very disappointing...
Very, very disappointing...
