Luke Smith over at 1up recently sat down with Aaron Greenberg, Group Product Manager for Xbox 360 and Xbox Live, and asked him some questions about XBLA. Greenberg had some interesting things to say. For one, he confirmed the release of Alien Homonid for this week. He also admitted that the last few weeks of XBLA hadn’t gone as planned, and went on to say that March would make up for it.

There was one horrible little sentence that I can’t get my head around:

“People shouldn’t expect anything different from Xbox Live Arcade going forward“

To say something like that in the same interview where you acknowledge the fact that you are aware of your customers feedback and complaints is like seeing a friend on fire, and letting them know that you see it happening, but you’ve got no intention of getting them some water. It’s common sense in the business world that if a product is meeting with negative feedback from consumers you need to make changes to said product.

It’s clear that there are problems with XBLA. Greg Canessa (group manager) and Ross Erickson (portfolio manager) have both jumped ship from the XBLA team recently, and seasoned developers like Team17 are frustrated by how many times their games are failing certification. Unhappy customers, employees that feel it’s time to move on, and angry developers are all clear signs of a greater problem.

Read the interview - it’s interesting

-MIKE KURZ

Tags: Microsoft, XBLA, Xbox 360

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