This sucks.

" http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2010-10-15-xbl-game-room-dev-dead-on-monday 
 
Oh it's true - woe betide me, the endurance run is no more "

This isn't surprising, for the past few months we've been seeing the long, drawn-out death of Game Room caused by Microsoft just not getting enough good games in there.

Those emulations were very competent.  It wasn't the devs fault that MS could not make the deals on the content.  Shame, GR really didn't last long.  Maybe Jeff should dig his old consoles out of the closet and do 1 retro QL (maybe 5 carts per vid) a week.

I think that the Game Room QL's should still continue.
30 mins each week of Jeff staring at an empty arcade, occasionally making "pew, pew, pew" noises pretending that he was playing something that would have made it the success it first promised to be.

" @Vitor said:

" http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2010-10-15-xbl-game-room-dev-dead-on-monday 
 
Oh it's true - woe betide me, the endurance run is no more "

Eurogamer is reporting on the exact same story Kotaku reported on. There still hasn't been an official announcement, although it does look likely. Bad news for Ty the Tasmanian Tiger fans. "

" @sharma55 said:

" Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo! 
Quote from story :  

 Krome Studios, the Australian developer behind Ty the Tasmanian Tiger and more recently the Xbox 360's Game Room, has shut down, online reports are suggesting.    

 
 It now appears the remaining staff at Krome's Brisbane and Melbourne offices have been let go, with both studios to then close their doors first thing Monday morning. A handful of developers will then reportedly be re-hired as contractors to complete Krome's remaining projects.

   Let's hope they get someone else, hopefully more capable to run gameroom rather than just shutting it down and we keep getting our quick looks. 
 
Link "

What the fuck is this supposed to mean? More capable? What exactly do you think the holdup on significant Gameroom content is or is the busted avatar bug a dealbreaker for you or something? Of all the dumb crap to spout this is pretty close to taking the cake. "

It's a tough market. I live in Brisbane - didn't know these guys, but they were pretty much the only relatively big developer we had. Krome made some decent games - Viva Pinata Party animals for one, and they ported Force Unleashed (hey, I said decent not good ). This doesn't surprise me - they were in trouble since last year, and have always struggled with investment. I suppose after the dismal reviews of "Blade Kitten", the rest of the investors decided to take their chances elsewhere. 
 
I think there were many people who were somewhat capable at Krome Studios. Viva Pinata Party Animals wasn't...... bad. True, for the past few years, they've mostly been doing ports, but Gearbox started out the same way. I suppose they've gone the way of the Tassie Tiger after all, eh? Farewell, Krome. You were the one trick pony of Brisbane. Now we've got no pony, no tricks, and now no game room, barring anyone stepping in to save it. 

" @McBradders said:

" @sharma55 said:

" Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo! 
Quote from story :  

 Krome Studios, the Australian developer behind Ty the Tasmanian Tiger and more recently the Xbox 360's Game Room, has shut down, online reports are suggesting.    

 
 It now appears the remaining staff at Krome's Brisbane and Melbourne offices have been let go, with both studios to then close their doors first thing Monday morning. A handful of developers will then reportedly be re-hired as contractors to complete Krome's remaining projects.

   Let's hope they get someone else, hopefully more capable to run gameroom rather than just shutting it down and we keep getting our quick looks. 
 
Link "

What the fuck is this supposed to mean? More capable? What exactly do you think the holdup on significant Gameroom content is or is the busted avatar bug a dealbreaker for you or something? Of all the dumb crap to spout this is pretty close to taking the cake. "

Game Rooms issues were 100% bad management.  I'm betting that these Krome guys were left with very little direction and had to work on whatever they were given.  Things like funky avatar stuff are likely on the back end of the avatar code and something they had little to no control over without the tools from MS to address it.  The number one problem was a lack of direction in the games they would put out and the small amount of companies they had to pull content from.  It's true there's no shortage of 2600 or intellivision games, but that doesn't mean you make it the focus of the project and sell games for $3-$5 that aren't worth more than a few tokens most will spend to play a trial version of.    The biggest issue is the difficulty and resources involved in securing deals with companies that own the rights to these games.  Data East for example doesn't exist anymore, so they have to talk to G-Mode and convince them to sign a deal, one that might conflict with their own plans on making money off the Data East games they port to phones and the Virtual Console.  Same thing with Taito, who is owned by Square.  Then there's Midway and Williams, that's all screwed up now.  Capcom seems to be trying stuff on their own with the various collections as well as Sega, SNK and Namco.  We're starting to run out of arcade companies left with more than one or two big hits.  The Virtual Console is also a big problem since it is obviously handled far better and has the backing of far more companies - which may also include exclusivity barring them from putting out stuff on other services.  Especially in Japan where VC has way more arcade titles than the Western store.  At the end of the day it's a problem of competing with free emulation.  It's doable if you make the front end attractive and enjoyable with incentives to play for rewards, and the convenience of playing on your TV with a good controller makes paying a few bucks for a game worth it over playing a free rom of questionable legality on your PC with a keyboard.  The problem comes when your front end loses it's luster with buggy crap and poor design choices (the control mapping for some games is insane) and the variety of games is limited to a specific era of really old games.  I'm left wanting to play games from the mid 80s like Bad Dudes, Rastan, Dig Dug, Darius and so-on, and many of those are either on other outlets or only available via emulation.  It's clear that lately Game Room started to find a niche and was continually putting out some really obscure games that even veterans of that time didn't remember, making Game Room a repository of long lost games.  It's pretty crazy seeing intellivision games from fucking 1990, and nowhere were you going to see that other than Game Room. I hope that perhaps another developer gets to work on Game Room.  Maybe Backbone with its experience in emulation and being a little more close to home than Australia will step in.  I'd like to see Game Room continue, it's a great idea and deserves to be what it could become if it had the proper management. "

Conceptually the Game Room was really cool. However, the real thing left much to be desired.

" @CH3BURASHKA said:

" @Asurastrike said:

" @MrRedwine said:

" You know what?  Game room is a colossal disappointment.  My personal feeling is that Jeff should be spending that same $12 - $21 on indie games on the 360 each week and be showing some more of them.  There is some really interesting stuff happening there and I think it should be highlighted more. "

But even the high profile Indie games aren't nearly as good as free flash games on your browser. "

That's a pretty shitty thing to say, dude. What about Machinarium? AudioSurf? PB Winterbottom? I'm blanking on a lot more indie games (because it's 5AM), but there are plenty of high-quality games even when compared to AAA releases, and especially when compared to 2600 games. "

Oh, I thought you meant the "Xbox Live Indies". I agree there are a bunch of awesome Indie games out there, but man that Xbox Live Indies tab is just full of awful games. "