Downloadable games have now proven to the be the real deal. For a while before the launch of the Xbox 360 and its ambitious new Xbox Live Arcade program, journalists and gamers wondered whether small downloadable games had an appealing business proposition.

“You give us a few bucks, and you get a little bit of gaming.”

Many predicted such a model would mean there would be a whole bunch of crap to download that wouldn’t even be worth a few bucks while Microsoft and XBLA developers cashed in on the gullible lot with these “micro-transactions” of sorts. Even more people feared incompleted games shipping with developers forcing you to download small updates for a miniscule price that would fill their coffers and leave them whored out.

It turns out things are working out pretty well, with a whole bunch of solid Xbox Live Arcade releases this summer including Braid, Castle Crashers, Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved 2, and Bionic Commando: Rearmed. All of those worthy titles helped push XBLA revenue to an all time high by a whopping 62%.

So it appears that the initial apprehension we all had toward XBLA was a bit unwarranted. Sure, there is a lot of crap to be downloaded, but a lot of people’s favorite games have been delivered by the service. Independent developers have also exhaulted the service since it provides them a steady platform on good hardware with a wide audience.

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About This Author: Anthony Perez

Founder of SmashPad and former GameSpot freelancer, I love covering the gaming industry when it surprises me. Sometimes gaming gets a bit too stagnant, but when a game wows me like Scribblenauts, then I get excited again. Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/tonyp1222

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