Major Nelson has gone ahead and let everyone know that Crimson Alliance is a free full game/trial hybrid.

Although, I have heard it will be a free arcade game but heavy on restrictions through DLC.

Correct, you have to buy the "Class Packs" to unlock the entire game to be able to play. You can get the All Class Pack for 1200 space bucks. However, if you purchased all 5 of the Summer of Arcade games, you will get the game for free.

Guess I need to go ahead and pick up Bastion to complete out the SoA games. Just what I need another XBLA game. Will total 132 at that point. UGH!

So in other words its not *free*

Spawn. It makes me happy to know I will never be close to your arcade collection.

Kind of like what they pulled with Pinball FX 2, Family Game Night and Xbox Game Room. Not a huge fan of this kind of marketing, get you in with something free... Then oh wait, you have to buy XY and Z to actually play the game.

^Agreed.

Spawn. It makes me happy to know I will never be close to your arcade collection.

Well, some of them are review copies that I've gotten. Quite a few actually. Went through and cleaned out all the demos and everything I had sitting there before posting. That number includes indie games too, so it's a little inflated. Still crazy. Some of them I haven't ever even started up. Purchased and they just sit there. Same way with Steam games. Then again, I'll never match your Steam total Dat. lol

Well at least those XBLA games are arcade titles, most of which can usually be beaten in a few short hours, and not full fledged Steam titles lol. We're all infected with backlogiosis.

As for the topic, I don't much like the idea. I don't see the point of it being a $15 game, that you have the option of buying in three parts for $10 (doubling the price if you went that way for some reason). At most you'd save $5 if you only got one class pack. I'm not a fan of episodic, or otherwise microtransactional content at all.

They should just make better demos, like ones that show you (non-mandatory but still interesting) parts of the story you wouldn't otherwise see. Like Dead Rising 2: Case Zero, but a bit shorter so not so much effort has to go into a demo, and of course free. Or at least cheap. Case Zero actually had a good value to it in my opinion, since it was more than just a demo, and formed a pretty good prologue.

Well, my steam list is full of games that I played back in the day and then bought again on steam for nostalgia or sickness. I think the issue is more of a overwhelming issue than anything else. There are just plain more games, especially with the indie and arcade scene.