MS now have ‘no immediate plans’ to delist XBLA titles

Earlier this year, Microsoft announced that they were seriously considering the delisting of a large number of Xbox Live Arcade titles. This would have involved the complete removal of certain games from their digital distribution catalouge. The justification for this was that the list of online downloadable games was becoming increasingly cluttered, and that gamers were finding it more difficult to sift through the crap to find the decent Live Arcade games.

The criteria for games to be delisted was that they had to have been released for at least six months, have an average review score under 65%, and a conversion rate (number of trials converted to purchases) of under 3%. This could have included the removal of such ‘classics’ as Contra, Frogger, Time Pilot, Texas Hold ‘Em, Pac-Man, Ecco the Dolphin, and of course the brilliant Shrek-N-Roll.

Yesterday, Microsoft confirmed that the New Xbox Experience dashboard will be live from the 19th November. The NXE promises to make the Marketplace a much more streamlined operation, which is more user-friendly and helps everyone find the content they’re looking for.

Microsoft’s John Schappert has confirmed that now there’s no need to trawl through extensive lists of shovelware to get the diamonds, that they have no immediate plans to act on their delisting initiative.

Fans of Cyberball 2072 can breathe a sigh of relief…