There once was a time that I was really excited for Microsoft‘s Game Room project. It sure sounded like a great idea, in spite of some arguments about pricing and game selection, I figured that the combined libraries of Atari, Konami, and Activision would supply us with games for a long time. Now, less than a year later, the project is in disarray. Updates have been inconsistent. The application and leaderboards have been buggy. There have been more obscure games released than familiar ones. Microsoft has arguably distanced itself from the project with little to no word of mouth about it coming from within the Xbox community. 

In short, Game Room has been a huge disappointment… and the fact that there haven’t been any updates yet in 2011 (aside from a patch) certainly doesn’t give me any hope that good things lie ahead for the troubled application. What went wrong? 

For starters, the uncertainty and eventual collapse of Game Room development house Krome Studios hurt the project significantly. Without stability on the development side of the project, quality faded pretty early. There were technical issues with Game Room from the very start, as servers crashed repeatedly which denied high scores and replays from being saved and uploaded. There also didn’t seem to be any quality control on the part of Microsoft Game Studios, which was surprising given the fact that the Game Room project anchored the Block Party promotion last winter. This lack of quality set the stage for the letdowns to come. 

The next problem had to do with inconsistent updates. After the initial wave of games released along with the application last March, updates dried up for weeks and users quickly lost interest in Game Room. Microsoft’s inability to strike while the iron was hot cost the Game Room project valuable momentum, and gaming press sources started speculating early that the project was doomed. While updates did eventually begin rolling out with occasional consistency, there have been a few times within the first year where updates stopped altogether. This led to more speculation about the future of the project, especially once news that Krome had folded became public. There have been no updates for the past two weeks, and after Sunset Riders had been confirmed for release to the press late last year, the game still has not been posted for sale. 

When the updates have come, there simply hasn’t been a good mix of familiar titles and rare gems. The titles from Konami‘s library have been the biggest area of offense in this aspect. It’s nice to be able to play TwinBee and The Main Event, but where are Gradius and Double Dribble? We haven’t (yet) seen Rush’n Attack, but we got its pesudo-sequel in Missing in Action. Why did it take so long to get Blades of Steel up for sale? The title selection has just been too weird; more familiar titles are needed to foster any kind of interest from anyone other than diehard arcade fans… and even they might not know of some of the Konami games that we’ve seen posted so far. 

I’ve also noticed that Microsoft community staff, like Larry Hryb for example, all but ignored the Game Room project when talking about Xbox LIVE Arcade after a few weeks. It’s easy to get the feeling that Game Room is not at all a priority to Microsoft; consequently, why should consumers care when Microsoft obviously doesn’t? Yes, I see it occasionally advertised (in a less than prominent fashion) on the Xbox LIVE Marketplace… but when’s the last time you saw it mentioned on Hryb’s blog or on one of his Major’s Minute video shorts? It’s been too long, and the lack of support from Microsoft here is inexplicable. Again… Game Room is less than one year old, yet Microsoft has all but forgotten about it or sworn it off. That’s some excellent follow-through right there. 

As someone who’s invested a lot of time and Microsoft Points on games for the Game Room project, I’m frankly tired of being jerked around. If the project is dead, then I would appreciate the decency of Microsoft announcing it instead of stringing along what few consumers are left who still maintain at least a passing interest. If Game Room is not dead, then Microsoft needs to be more proactive and not fix the problems that continue to plague the application… but they also need to dedicate themselves and the development team to getting the project moving again. Show some interest. Revive the Facebook page and Twitter feed and resume telling us what we can expect to see. Get back to licensing some familiar titles and make sure that the emulations are at least close… no more running games at half the frame rate or completely missing sound files (I’m looking at you, Asteroids.). 

Either way, it’s time for Microsoft to show some accountability for Game Room. The lack of support for the project, combined with the decision to drop the highly successful 1 vs. 100 project, indicates to me that Full House Poker is doomed before it even arrives this spring. The trend has already been set.