360 Arcade games HAVE to run on a 14" TV

Wednesday 15-Oct-2008 9:28 AM Well not everyone owns a 42" high def plasma...

http://www.computerandvideogames.com/

A little bit of behind-the-scenes info has come to light about Microsoft's Xbox Live Arcade certification process via OXM.

Now we all know XBLA game have to have a certain number of achievements and be under a certain size, but did you know that they have to be playable on a 14-inch CRT television? If you did, stop reading now. There's nothing more for you here.

Introversion Software MD Mark Morris (currently working on Darwinia+ for XBLA) told OXM, "Microsoft has extremely strict technical certification requirements that you have to get right. One of the biggest challenges is that your game has got to be playable on a 14-inch CRT television.

"So you have to do all this visibility work in case someone is playing it on a composite cable through a TV, to make sure they can still read all of the text and tell exactly what's going on."

If anyone can remember playing Capcom's Dead Rising on an old-skool TV, and bursting blood vessels in their eyeballs trying to read the tiny text, then you'll know what he's talking about.

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wow i didnt know that, how many of you play on an old sd 14"?????

Plenty of people will still play on fairly old CRT sets. Alot of kids with consoles certainly have to put up with portable TV's in their rooms. I'm alright in having a good quality PC monitor hooked to my 360 via VGA so I have my HD sorted!

I wish this same encouragement happened for 360 games themselves, it's great to see that at least with XBLA, non-HD owners aren't being completely screwed over.

I HAD THAT PROBLEM WITH GEOW, MASS EFFECT...AND ESPECIALLY CONDEMNED 2 X_X.

Its nice to know that they are putting some thought into it!

well the only game i really had problems with reading text in sd was phantasy star universe, you just couldnt read anythning, but in hd its fine

hd > sd

My daughter has one in her room that used to be mine, but I don't play games on it anymore. I used to use it for my Dreamcast and Gamecube from time to time plus some earlier consoles. It used to be very common to have to play games on a 14 inch as a kid unless you always wanted to share TV time with your folks and siblings, or if your parents had enough money to give you a decent sized set for your room. This just seems to be a practice that would be more acceptable back when 14 inch sets were the norm for bedroom TVs and not an obsolete design like they are now. I can find bigger screened TVs that work, off the lawn of people throwing them away for trash pickup.

Maybe this is for other countries though. I don't know but a poorer nation may still have 14inch TVs as common place.

If anyone can remember playing Capcom's Dead Rising on an old-skool TV, and bursting blood vessels in their eyeballs trying to read the tiny text, then you'll know what he's talking about.

^

That line made me lol.

Maybe Xbox live games have this requirement...but Dead Rising was unplayable on my old 27inch CRT. Letters for the missions were too small.

lol, I play on a 7" LCD mini DVD player x.x

My eyes can't take the big screens.

I play it on my 19" LCD computer monitor and I assume a lot of college students do too.