It's an interesting thing.... Yesterday morning as I was perusing the latest XBL release info over at Major Nelson's site, one of the comments demanded the removal of Greg Canessa as GM of the Xbox Live Arcade.    Today, we find out he's decided to accept a job over at Popcap games.

For me, this brings up an interesting question - Is it more important to be a competant business man who has no real interest in games, beyond it being his business?  Or is it better to have a manager who understands the desires of gamers because, ultimately, he is one - even though he may be less experianced? 

The removal of Greg Canessa comes at an interesting time in the life of the Xbox Live Arcade Marketplace - the last game I bought was Small Arms, and I havn't felt like I was missing out.   On my console I have every single game downloaded, but have only purchased maybe five.   Why?   Even though I'm a hardcore gamer who does enjoy his gamerscore, I despise the repackaging of "Retro" titles.   In gaming, people use the word "Retro" like a compliment. "Oh, Pacman?   It's Retro!"  when in reality, some games are just old.    I understand the merits of titles like Galaga or Pole Position, but the fact of the matter is: If you havn't already played Pole Position, and you're a gamer - then you're not going to appreciate it.   Oh sure, you might claim to, but ultimately you just get that funky taste in your mouth and think "Hrmm, Maybe I should have played this before playing Grand Turismo 4". 

The practice of porting Retro Games to modern consoles is nothing but lazy developing.   While Microsoft is bad, Nintendo is even worse - somebody made a rather insightful comment on the VM for the Wii

From a development standpoing Nintendo has actually only released five items for the VC- an NES emulator, a SNES emulator, a Genesis emulator, a TG-16 emulator, and a N64 emulator. The rest are just ROM images.

So when you think about it, Nintendo is actually being even lazier!  The ROMS have been out there for years, as have the emulators.    No added features at all "to preserve the original feel", and they're expensive to boot.     Don't even get me started on the controls for Super Mario World when using a Gamecube controller.... 

Which brings us back to Greg Canessa leaving his post as the General Manager of the Xbox Live Arcade...   I think what we're seeing here is either Greg or Microsoft (or both) realizing that your average executive just doesn't understand what we, the gamers, actually want.  And since We, the Gamers, are their entire market, it's a significant distinction.    Microsoft recently announced that starting this week (and for the next 9 weeks ), a mostly impressive list of titles will be hitting the XBLA including (but not limited to) Catan, Worms, Alien Hominid HD, Rootbeer Tapper, Paperboy, Band of Bugs,  and Castlevania: SOTN. 

First one out the gate?  Rootbeer Tapper.
The next day?  General Manager Greg Canessa no longer works for Microsoft.

About six months ago, I had a conversation with a friend within MS, and we got to talking about the way Arcade was being handled.   He told me that we (GamerAndy Live!) bagged on Arcade too much, and I said that when they started putting out games I didn't feel they should be embarrassed about charging real money for (Lame, overdone retro titles) that we'd say nice things about it.   He then told me that he agreed and there were alot of people within that division who were trying to push the original content out, but it was being stopped because some of the higher-ups had gotten it in their heads that you could produce retro titles very cheaply, and make money off the nostalgic gamers - Pretty much all profit.

Coincidence?

I think we're about to see a New Day for XBLA

-Andy
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