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View Full Version : Microsoft's Scott Austin talks XBLA delistings and delays



Shrygue
July 16th, 2008, 23:38
via Joystiq (http://www.joystiq.com/2008/07/16/microsofts-scott-austin-talks-xbox-delisting-and-delays/)


During an E3 appointment today, we confronted Scott Austin, Director of Digitally Distributed Games for Microsoft's Xbox Live Arcade, about two controversial XBLA topics: delistings and delays.

Austin was dodgy, unfortunately. When asked when games might start disappearing from the service, he stayed mum, only saying that Microsoft wanted to "keep evolving and improving [its] content." We also asked for comment on the unofficial list of games that met the criteria for delisting, and he agreed that the list is accurate according to the criteria.

We also talked to Austin about the delays that Microsoft has made in releasing content, and he told us that Microsoft runs a very stringent QA process in addition to any processes the developers run for themselves. The largest part of these delays, he said, is "making sure the games we release are high quality" -- Microsoft runs every game through for bugs, and will then send back to the developers any game that has issues. When pressed for a percentage of games that are sent back for bugs, Austin told he us didn't have that information.