Uno Dev Says 'Bigger Isn't Better'

Carbonated Games' Josh Howard has nothing against the standard 50MB Xbox Live Arcade size limit, but he tells Next-Gen that if that limit is in fact increased, he expects developers will stick to a "small is okay" mentality.

Howard, who is head of production at Microsoft's Carbonated Games, helped lead the creation of the XBLA version of UNO, which has seen big success on the console.

UNO weighs in at a dainty 23MB-and much of that amount is attributed to the game's music.

Howard says that an XBLA game size limit increase has been discussed at Microsoft, but even though Carbonated is a Microsoft first-party, he's not heard an official confirmation of an official size limit increase.

A spokesperson for Microsoft told Next-Gen today that the company "has not announced any plans to increase the 50MB size of XBLA games."

But even if the limit is increased across the board, that 50MB target has helped established a small-game mentality that XBLA developers will continue to embrace, according to Howard.

"From my standpoint, more isn't better," he says. "The 50MB cap, I think, has served its purpose. Its purpose was to demonstrate to developers that you can really do a tremendous amount in that size space."

Howard, a self-confessed Mutant Storm Reloaded fan, says that console developers that were used to creating much larger projects felt "paralyzed" by the size limit at first. "It's like asking somebody that writes a novel to put it in a haiku. … It's been exciting to see how [developers have] taken [those limitations] and expanded their ideas on their own," he says.