Summer of Arcade 2012: The Summer of Blah

Vagary's Tony looks back at this year's Summer of Arcade and wonders where it all went wrong.

"This 'Blockbuster Lineup that will keep you playing all summer long' clearly won’t. Is this the future of Summer Arcade? 2012 showed it for what it is becoming: an advertising device for mediocre titles. Microsoft has better titles available: why not allow your Blockbuster promotion to include actual blockbusters?"

[Chuk5]

Pretty much.

[Hicken]

I hear Dust is pretty good. If I had a 360, that'd probably be the only game from SoA that I'd buy.

[napoleon1066]

Pretty much the only title worth your time. Deadlight was good, for a little while, until the flaws became more and more exposed.

[hennessey86]

What
Deadlight was great, tony hawks was great and dust is amazing

[TheoreticalParticle]

"Why not allow your Blockbuster promotion to include actual blockbusters?"

Because Microsoft used Summer of Arcade basically to only promote Microsoft published XBLA titles this year. They took a page from Nintendo's third-party killing book and listened to the cash register sounds in their head instead.

Glad people are noticing how shitty of a move it was.

[SlipperyMooseCakes]

Well publishing really has nothing to do with it. All of the titles released were published by Microsoft except for Tony Hawk. The ones that were published by Microsoft were not first party studios of theirs. They simply saw games they liked from other developers and offered to publish in return for exclusivity. This is different than only highlighting and releasing games produced in house.

[TheoreticalParticle]

I'm not talking about the publishing side, I'm talking about the Summer of Arcade selection process. In the past, this promotion has been used to boost attention for high-quality XBLA titles from everyone, with 1 or 2 Microsoft titles in the mix.

This year Microsoft just decided it wanted all the cash for itself.

[Rupee]

Yeah pretty much... They were all pretty sub-par. Dust: repetitive. Deadlight: boring. Tony Hawk: might be fun if you're into those types of games. Wreckateer: almost seems like it should have been a mobile game.

[Locksus]

I only bothered with Dust this year.
I was excited about Deadlight but when I heard that it was approximately 2-3 hours long I didn't want to drop 1200ms points on it.

Dust, on the other hand, has lasted me for 30 hours in the course of 2 playthroughs and all 30 achievements. I simply loved the game, especially the hidden characters (Kid from Bastion, Meatgirl and Meatboy etc.). I would've liked a little more variety in the combat but it was fun!

I think Dean Dodrill deserves all the support.

[Captain Qwark 9]

played the demo for dust, loved it. will be getting that when im done with ds2 and war for cybertron.

thought the exact thing about deadlight, even enjoyed the demo but the price was too steep for the length

[Locksus]

Yeah, do that! Highly recommended!

Dust is now one of my favourite games of the year. I hope Dean gets to make a sequel of some kind as it truly deserves one.

[Sobaer]

THPS HD was the only title that interested me, and that is purely nostalgic.

[napoleon1066]

They tend to drop one of those in every year. It's usually one of the worst. TMNT was actually the worst metacritic scores of any Summer of Arcade title.