If I understand correctly, Microsoft wants a piece of Nintendos casual market.  My question is why even bother designing new games to tap into this market when XBLA has casual games already.  I know it's a little more then that (e.g. Wiimote) but nothing can be done about that.

My girlfriend and I have been looking through the XBLA games and every casual game we own on the Wii is also available on XMLA at a fraction of the cost.  We paid 90 bucks for Geometry Wars, Puzzle Quest and Luxor when we could have gottent the same games for a fraction of the cost and without the Wiimote hickups. 

We didn't know these games were available on xBox until a couple of you guys told me.   Why doesn't MS just run a commercial and show off some of these XBLA games?

I'm not sure if Sony has downloadable casual games but they could do this too.

Hmm, that's actually not that bad of an idea.

As you said, you didn't know they were available. They need the casual tittles to be given shelf-space and thus more mind-share.

To say u the truth :

these arcade/casual games that u can dl on Xbox360, PS3, or even Wii online are not really selling the console AND are not well know by the casuals.

In fact, I m not even sure "geometry wars can be considered as casual ...

Casual doesn't mean low budget games.
It means "games that appeal to everyone, that generate lot of fun, and that are easy to access".

In general : casual games = family party games (not too complex gameplay + offline multiplayer).

Wii Sport, Mario Party, Wiifit, Singstar, Buzz, Scene it etc ...

So, to win this market, MS need to create something that is not on the Wii (BIG POINT), that is cheap, that is new, that is fun, that is simple.
Indeed, it is very hard to find what they could do to shift people away from the Wii since the Wii is matching so well the casual market.

I think part of the problem is you have to be connect to XBL and a lot of "casual" don't usually have their console networking. Not having a built in Wi-Fi also doesn't help pushing XBL to casual crowd.

I think MS should really do more "Best of" and released them as disc base games.

Obviously, mysticD, obviously

its possible they may do this when the more casual friendly dashboard comes out.

XBLA isn't publicized enough.

@Strategyking92 - you're absolutely right, I think it deserves some ad space/commercials.

@FaRmLaNd - I haven't played any of XBLA games yet (I'm online yet) so I'm not sure how many buttons they roughly use. Why not just create a simple NES style controller, it can't possible cost that much. Grab about 10-20 good XBLA games. Slap the disc and controller together, call Oprah and run with that.

Well they do sell bundles of XBLA software.

One thing microsoft could do is port as many popcap games as possible and then get it advertised on the popcap website. They wont get the console casual crowd very easily but they would probably have more luck if they attempted to draw on the mass of casual gamers on the pc.

Also, I definetely agree that getting a game (maybe something like scene it or lips) on Oprah would be a great move.