It always makes me sad when a fun game's multiplayer community fails to reach critical mass in the early stages of its release and then dries up almost entirely, thus killing the lasting enjoyment that could have been had by those who did get into it.  This is a near constant on services like Xbox Live Arcade, but it occasionally afflicts a solid retail release as well.  Transformers: War for Cybertron, released just two weeks ago, is quickly becoming one such title.  My interest in this game was initially piqued by Arthur Gies' discussion of the multiplayer on the RebelFM podcast.  While I'm 30 and remember watching the G1 cartoon as a kid, I've never been a huge fan of this IP.  But Arthur's descriptions of some of his early game play experiences sounded really exciting.  After eventually reading his review I was sold.  I pre-ordered from Amazon, played through the campaign co-op with two friends, and then dove into multiplayer.
 
I immediately noticed that on a weekday night at 9:00 PM there were barely 10,000 players online a week after release.  If I sneak a few matches before leaving for work in the morning it's about 1,200.  I don't know if the blame lies mostly with Activision's lack of marketing for the title or the poor quality of previous games on the license or where, but this tremendously fun arena shooter is going criminally overlooked.  Ah well, I guess I'll go back to Bad Company 2 soon.  What a shame though.  Regarding XBLA multiplayer communities (on rather, the inevitable lack thereof) I have heard it said that there are just too many releases for any one game to hold a player pool.  I realize not every game is Halo 2, which had 3,000 daily players when the servers were decommissioned six years on, but it makes me sad that I can't even enjoy the awesome and original "Countdown to Extinction" game type in T:WfC a mere 14 days after launch.  We just came out of a 2xXP weekend, and that mode was averaging about 100 players throughout.  The last time I turned the game on, there were 0.