Culling Xbox Live Arcade

In an exclusive interview with Next Generation, Xbox Live General Manager Marc Whitten revealed that Microsoft will start removing Xbox Live Arcade titles that have an aggregate score less than 65% on Metacritic, are more than six months old, and have a demo-to-purchase rate of less than six percent. The online gaming community, not surprisingly, is upset. It’s very difficult to see how anyone (outside of Microsoft) could see this a good decision for the gaming community – who has ever been excited to have fewer games available? But Microsoft never does anything without a reason, so what’s the company’s angle?