The Summer of Killer Shapes

The nice thing about the summer game lull is that it allows players to clear up the backlog or try some games that may have been overlooked in a more crowded environment. Microsoft is currently pushing its “Summer of Arcade” promotion in an effort to highlight some top-tier downloadable games that are being released over the next month. It’s an interesting tactic – Microsoft won’t move any significant number of of consoles because of the promotion, but should be fairly successful in generating revenue from existing users. If the company was trying to push just any old Xbox Live Arcade games right now, the promotion would fall flat on its face. Fortunately, the Summer of Arcade is built on some of the best downloadable games around, starting with the excellent Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved 2.

As the built-in leaderboards showed, I was far from the only player obsessing over Geometry Wars 2 last night, but the actual gameplay is only part of why this title is so fascinating. The release of this game has a lot to stay about the state of the games industry as a whole. Read on for more:

The original Geometry Wars, as most gamers know, was included as a bonus game in Bizarre Creations’ Project Gotham Racing 2. It apparently began its life as a little independent project by a single Bizarre employee. It was followed up with Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved when the Xbox 360 launched. The “killer app” of Xbox 360 Live Arcade (The XBLA Halo, if you will), Retro Evolved is still one of the best-selling games on the service. Although it launched for 400 Microsoft Points ($5), Bizarre Creations made some statements indicating that they wanted it to be free.

After Retro Evolved, the next game in the series was Geometry Wars Galaxies for Wii and Nintendo DS. What’s interesting about these titles is that they were published by Sierra (later part of Activision), while previous Geometry Wars games were published by Microsoft. While Microsoft does occasionally license its properties to other publishers (see THQ publishing Viva Pinata: Pocket Paradise, for example), it’s more likely that Bizarre Creations retained the license to their creation. Of course, Bizarre was later purchased by Activision, so it became the new owner and publisher of Geometry Wars Retro Evolved 2.

So, in the story of one XBLA game, you’ve got indie development, a developer-owned property, a studio purchase, and even a publisher merger. If that doesn’t encompass the current reality of the video game industry, I don’t know what does.

As an entirely separate point, take note of pricing. The original Geometry Wars was a rare $5 title. The sequel is $10. Granted, there is much, much more content in the sequel and it’s completely worth the price. But if there was ever going to be another XBLA game released at $5, it would have been Retro Evolved 2 – the Halo 2 of XBLA. The $5 price point is dead, never to return (save for old arcade ports). Fortunately, you won’t be upset paying $10 for the new Geometry Wars. It’s that good.

*Full disclosure: I was provided with a free download of Geometry Wars Retro Evolved 2 by Activision.