JUNE 5, 2008 • Microsoft Entertainment product management director Aaron Greenberg told MTV that the division was not happy with the difficulty in finding titles available via Xbox Live Arcade, which led to a recently imposed de-listing policy. “I think a lot of that is we built Xbox Live Marketplace for a few hundred items and now we have 17,000 items,” Greenberg said.
Impact: Xbox Live Marketplace has sold over $250 million worth of content and is clearly receiving a great deal of consumer interest. However, now is the time where Microsoft needs to decide whether Marketplace is going to be a free-for-all swap meet with a buyer beware philosophy or like a more tightly controlled retail store where consumers can feel more comfortable about the quality of items for purchase. Console systems have always kept a comparatively tight control over what is released for the platform and that is part of their attraction to mainstream consumers. Under this perspective a de-listing policy makes complete sense.
