Shortly after the 360's launch, the Xbox Live Arcade was filled with a nice mix of older games and new, original content. The possibility of getting inexpensive games without ever having to leave the house was an exciting one, and Live Arcade seemed poised to deliver all sorts of great content. But has Microsoft delivered? I say "No." The release schedule is inconsistent, and the service is lacking in terms of the number games available as well as the quality of those games.

I've had 1800 Microsoft Points burning a hole in my pocket for awhile now, and every so often I hop online and browse the Xbox Live Arcade in hopes of finding something new and fun. But it has been a long time since I've found anything that really interested me, and I don't think I'm alone. I'm not saying there aren't great games on Live Arcade, because there certainly are. Geometry Wars is awesome, Uno is a blast, Outpost Kaloki X is really cool, Pac-Man is always fun, and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 was our fighting game of the year. What I'm saying is that there simply aren't enough great games out there. Sure there are a few people that had fun with Frogger, Joust, Scramble, and New Rally-X for a couple of minutes, but I'm not one of them. If you're going to release barely-touched versions of classic games then they need to come out faster. Why has it taken so long for Ms. Pac-Man to hit the service? And for Pete's sake, where's Tetris?

I already mentioned that I'm a fan of Outpost Kaloki X, and Cloning Clyde was pretty cool, but a good portion of the lineup of original games leaves a lot to be desired. Novadrome isn't very good, TotemBall is lousy, Wik was kind of a snoozer (to me at least), and Bankshot Billiards is about as fun as...yeah, it's not fun at all. Live Arcade was supposed to be the savior for smaller developers who couldn't afford the high cost of competing with the likes of EA and Ubisoft in the next-gen arena. Where are all these awesome original games we were promised? I find it hard to believe that small developers are adverse to the idea of making downloadable games for a wide audience, and would rather spend their resources trying to woo publishers, so I suspect there's some untold issue behind the scenes where perhaps Microsoft wants too big a cut or is simply too demanding with their requirements. Who the heck knows? The only thing I know for sure is that there hasn't been a steady stream of good, original games for the service.

The introduction of Live Wednesdays, where we'd be blessed with one new game each week seemed to be, at least on the surface, Microsoft acknowledging that they could do better with regards to how they went about releasing games. The first month was promising, but even that hasn't worked out as there have been weeks where no games were released. You're telling me that they can't crank out 52 games a year? Nobody could get their act together and release Solitaire, Checkers, Chess, or something?

Oh, and let's not forget Street Fighter II which was repeatedly delayed, yet was still broken when it was finally released. If you want to see disappointment, check out Greg's or Jeff's video blog where they stayed up late (on a work night no less) for the game's release and then tried to convince themselves that it wasn't that bad. To this day that game is a sore subject around the office.

To tell you the truth, I don't even care what the reasons are for Live Arcade being less than impressive--I just want to play games and I just don't understand what's going on. I'm willing to buy games and I'm willing to buy them on the Xbox 360, but apparently Microsoft just doesn't need my money so I'll have to look elsewhere for my downloadable gaming fix. It's too early to tell how things will pan out for Sony's PlayStation Store, but it certainly has potential, and getting Gran Turismo for free was a nice way of getting on my good side. I've got a pretty extensive collection of classic games so the Wii's Virtual Console isn't as exciting a prospect for me as it is for some people, but I'm definitely planning on picking up some games here and there (even if many of them are overpriced), and so far they've stuck to the Monday release schedule, which is a good thing. Perhaps some competition will get Microsoft on the ball, but after them not even releasing a game last week, I'm not very optimistic.