So at this point I am pretty sure that the people who are on the approval committee for Xbox Community Games are trolls. Last time I checked, I found a game that was basically a re-skinned XNA coding example. That means they took pre-existingcode written by developers at Microsoft (designed to help fledgling coders understand how to do certain things), changed some textures, and tried to sell it.

I check now, and I find this thing called "Urban Art Gallery". It's... a scrolling list of twenty or so "urban art" images. Most of them being solid black silhouettes of women against bright color patterns. We're talking the sort of stuff that you can do in Photoshop in ten minutes. And, of course, they are trying to sell it.

I mean, wow. I get that there was a recent report that Community Games don't sell, and all, but this is actually a little bit sad. The entire reason there's supposed to be an approval committee at all is to make sure that things like this don't make it out for sale. Of course nobody's going to buy your silly Photoshop gallery or your awful driving game. Community Games need to move past WELCOME TO MEXICO and more towards Carneyvale Showtime.

Let's see some more quality! Do we really need five Community Games whose only purpose is to vibrate the controller?

So at this point I am pretty sure that the people who are on the approval committee for Xbox Community Games are trolls. Last time I checked, I found a game that was basically a re-skinned XNA coding example. That means they took pre-existingcode written by developers at Microsoft (designed to help fledgling coders understand how to do certain things), changed some textures, and tried to sell it.

I check now, and I find this thing called "Urban Art Gallery". It's... a scrolling list of twenty or so "urban art" images. Most of them being solid black silhouettes of women against bright color patterns. We're talking the sort of stuff that you can do in Photoshop in ten minutes. And, of course, they are trying to sell it.

I mean, wow. I get that there was a recent report that Community Games don't sell, and all, but this is actually a little bit sad. The entire reason there's supposed to be an approval committee at all is to make sure that things like this don't make it out for sale. Of course nobody's going to buy your silly Photoshop gallery or your awful driving game. Community Games need to move past WELCOME TO MEXICO and more towards Carneyvale Showtime.

Let's see some more quality! Do we really need five Community Games whose only purpose is to vibrate the controller?

ahaha urban art gallery?

I've yet to be the slightest bit interested in any Community Game.  Even the high quality games just didn't look very interesting..

You didn't even mention the Plasma TV calibrator.

XNA games are approved by the XNA creators club members, and they are instructed to merely check that the game works as intended, does not contain content prohibited by microsoft, and rate its violence, sexual content etc. They are not trolls, they are merely doing as microsoft instruct them. They aren't supposed to make decisions based on the quality. It's designed to be an open-ish platform, where people can develop anything they want, providing it doesn't contain extreme violence, sex, or anything fun to do with avatars. And if MS were being more restrictive, people would complain much much more.

It's no different then the iPhone apps out there. Anyone can make one, most are stupid, but there's a few gems in there that make it all worth it.