SharkJumping

Articles are starting to turn up on the revamped casual game service XBox 360 Live Arcade as the new console prepares to launch.  Although I don't personally believe that the first few million purchasers of this $400+ (for most bundles) next generation console will have any interest in playing traditional casual games such as Bejeweled (see prior post), it looks like the team under Greg Canessa has made some strong moves to make the service more appealing.   The service will supposedly be available out of the box for all XBox 360 users, will require no monthly or annual fee, will cost only $5-10 per downloadable game, and will have a 50%+ revenue share to developers  - and it will have a broader set of games than just "match 3" clones.

This potentially changes the game a lot from the current PC casual game market.  It's a 50-75% decrease in average retail game price (to $5-10 from $20) while also increasing the market share to the developer (to 50%+ from 35%+) and eliminating any need to download software beyond the game itself.  Assuming Xbox 360 is successful, and especially if PS3 follows with a similar model, I'm not sure how the current PC casual game market sustains itself over time - as I have discussed before, prices are going to inevitably decline in this category, and XBox 360 may be a catalyst for it.