Major Nelson's Podcast:

http://centracomm.cachefly.net/majornelson/2008/mnr-052608-280-XNAandmore-mp3.mp3

De-Listed titles will not be available on XBLA Games tab. However, they will NOT be removed from XBL. You can still re-download them if you want to/need to. Also, every given game, even de-listed will be available to be referred via the "tell a friend" tab on XBL...So the games will still be available for download. Just not as easy for the games that'd get de-listed.

Better than not being there, but that method is so obscure...It'd make me think there might be issues. 

If they're not deleteing them completely, why not just make a new twist header for them? The only reason I can see for de-listing games is to make room on the servers, but the games are tiny compared to modern storage media so what's the point really?

They need more room for the XNA community games come the Fall (my guess)

The point of de-listing is to cut down on their bandwidth by removing games that have demos downloaded for free but no sales.

They are talking about games that are under 50mb. 100 of these would weigh in at less than 5gb. How much space do they need?

does anyone have a list of these games?

 http://www.xbox360fanboy.com/2008/05/26/list-of-potentially-de-listed-arcade-titles/

Damn, they are not kidding. Its cool tho as I got fatal fury and contra...rest I don't think I'd want.

It's not so much bandwidth that they are trying to reduce (because I doubt that bandwidth for the stated games is that high). The issue is "shelf space". If a consumer has to scroll through.......10 bad games they won't buy, to find 1 game they have a good chance to buy, it means that your list is in-effective, and is choking good games out from sales. It's almost like a knee-jerk-esque reaction to the MetaNet rant a few months ago about total crap on XBLA.

Ultimately, MS needs to tier the XBLA games - New games first in 1 blade. Highly rated games in the next. Console/Arcade classics in the next. All games in the last blade. That way a consumer can just go through the good ones, rather than just do an alphabetical crapfest.

mrstickball nailed it i think... and it's also a way to reward the devs of the good games..... and also motivate the xna population to produce quality games... it can act as a filter.....