Microsoft to delist Xbox Live Arcade titles based on bad reviews

Who says critics have no power? According to Microsoft Xbox Live exec Marc Whitten, the company will begin dropping titles from its increasingly crowded Xbox Live Arcade Marketplace if they have a Metacritic score below 65 percent and a conversion rate of less than 6 percent.

The conversion rate refers to the percentage of people who download the demo of the game and then purchase the full title. Hot titles can hit upwards of a 30 percent conversion rate.

In an interview with Next Generation, Whitten discussed a number of changes to the XBLA program, including a fix to the long-suffering DRM problem that owners of replaced Xbox 360s have had to deal with. (If you had to replace a broken 360, you could no longer play any purchased XBLA games unless you were connected to the Internet.) Microsoft has also announced that it's increasing the maximum size of XBLA games, from 150MB to 350MB. (It's also increasing the maximum price of games, to 1600 Microsoft Points for "bigger and better" titles.)

But the biggest news involves the dumping of old titles based on reviews. Just a dozen or so critics typically cover the average XBLA title and are included on Metacritic; that's a lot of power in very few hands. But really, you gotta wonder why Microsoft has to defer to outside reviewers to determine whether a game is any good. The game group's had a pretty good track record on the whole.

Anyway, we'll see how long this takes to go into effect. Sorry, Bliss Island, looks like your number is up.