N+ Devs HAMMER XBLA

[InsightGoalie]

Originally Posted by Icemage

That's actually been a very pleasant surprise from PSN.

Sony seem to really understand that the freely distributed themes are marketing tools. They not only build goodwill with customers who feel they "got something for nothing", but they give you continual marketing presence that you don't have to pay for.

And I'll bet that most, if not all, of the games that have had a publicly supported PSN theme have seen at least some improved sales (plus the unknown amount of improvement in brandshare recognition).

Same for wallpapers and the like.

Yeah, it's a real shame MS doesn't jump in on this. I don't own a PS3 but PSP does the same type of thing. It, since firmware 3.70, allows user made themes. It's great!

[Axeus]

Themes are good marketing tools. A friend of mine got the Ratchet theme, afterwards he bought the game.

I must mention that he told me that Ratchet looks kiddy and that "I ain't buyin' that shit".

[chedabob]

There's lots of free themes on marketplace...

[lol_pc]

Yeah it's stupid they charge for it, i've only bought Oblivion gamerpics and CoD4 theme and i'm not gonna spend more money on themes and gamerpics! But instead of charging they could do what Chair did with Undertow, if you complete a certain thing in the game you get a gamerpic.

[downphoenix]

Originally Posted by lol_pc

Yeah it's stupid they charge for it, i've only bought Oblivion gamerpics and CoD4 theme and i'm not gonna spend more money on themes and gamerpics! But instead of charging they could do what Chair did with Undertow, if you complete a certain thing in the game you get a gamerpic.

That would be pretty nice.

It be nice to unlock stuff for the dashboard as opposed to getting SOLELY achievement points. Like a really hard to get achievement for instance, if you get it, gamerpic. That way you can attach it and at a glance people can tell you beat that part w/o having to go through your gamerscore

[PirateThom]

I don't see why Gamerscore isn't even linked to marketplace.

Like, for every 1000GS, you get 100 Points for the store. Not only would you buy more 360 games, you'd play them more to get the achievements to get free stuff.

Funny enough, that's exactly were Sony are going with Trophies - you can unlock stuff in Home and for certain games for beating certain Accomplishments - but with the system Microsoft have it place, they could go one step further.

[chedabob]

It'd encourage way too much cheating. If you start offering a reward for something, people will do everything to manipulate the system.

[PirateThom]

Originally Posted by chedabob

It'd encourage way too much cheating. If you start offering a reward for something, people will do everything to manipulate the system.

Good point, if there was a way they could just block GS on games when you enter cheat codes, it could work.

[lol_pc]

Originally Posted by PirateThom

Good point, if there was a way they could just block GS on games when you enter cheat codes, it could work.

Yeah that would be a good solution, if i'm not mistaken they did that in Saints Row.

[Leonidas]

I remember the days when the reward for playing a game was playing the game.