Bizarre wanted to give you Geometry Wars for free, MS said no

Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved, one of the most popular games on the Xbox Live Arcade download service, was intended to be a free download.

Bizarre Creations' Ben Ward stated in an interview with IGN: ""Geometry Wars was really intended as a gift to hardcore gamers and we initially wanted to give the game away for free.

""When it became evident that we couldn't do this, we said to Microsoft 'what's the absolute bare minimum we can charge'. They said 400 points, so we went with that."

The original Geometry Wars on Xbox was a hidden extra included in PGR 2.

Bizarre will get their wish in the long run, as Microsoft recently announced it will give away the hit shoot-'em-up game on the new 512Mb memory cards to be launched worldwide on April 3.

via cvg

XBLA should have a Greatest Hits sorta thing where games down the road will have the price cut in half (in this case from 400 MP tp 200 MP) or be given away for free. The fact that Microsoft did not allow this game to be distributed freely was most likely due to Microsoft testing the waters at the time and studying how a great game on XBLA would be perceived by the gamers. Since about 80% on Live probably own the game, it's a testament to its success.