The last few months have been rather divisive on Xbox Live Arcade. Releases have tended towards extremes, perhaps not so much in quality as in gamers' opinions of them. Some of the platform-within-a-platform's recent offerings have been bona-fide classics, from Rez to Metal Slug 3 to GripShift, all ported games that originally underperformed at retail but were nevertheless much-loved on other systems, for good reason. Original games that have turned out to be remarkable include Poker Smash, Omega Five, and Arkadian Warriors - perhaps not outright classics, but solid games that have their fans. Sadly, some of the recent stinkers have been arcade ports that were actually anticipated: Tempest, Asteroids/Asteroids Deluxe and Tron simply haven't aged as well as most would've hoped, while some original offerings have passed by with barely more than a flicker, like Boogie Bunnies, Chessmaster Live and Screwjumper.

Forthcoming releases on XBLA are always hazy, often only being announced a day or two ahead of time. Confirmed games more than likely to appear very shortly include N+, Warlords, Discs of Tron and Commanders: Attack of the Genos, while many highly-anticipated titles like Super Street Fighter II: Turbo HD Remix, Castle Crashers and Ikaruga are on their way, but no-one will give us a clue as to when.

It is a peculiarity of the downloadable-content era that none of the big three console holders will give much warning as to the releases of their online games, be it Microsoft, Sony with the PSN network, or Nintendo's Virtual Console or forthcoming WiiWare services. Microsoft's infamous "certification process" is well-documented, but the others have similar systems in place too. Is it so hard to integrate these processes with a forthcoming release schedule, even one just a month or so ahead of time? Is this practice avoided simply to stop customers going "Hmm, game X is out this week and it looks okay, but game Y is coming out next week so I'll save my cash/points for that"? Is it possible that an alternative method for Microsoft to implement DRM without effectively screwing their customers... oh wait, that's another blog altogether.

However, perhaps the best part of the DLC era is that prices are on a level not far away from the 8-bit computer games I grew up with. $5 and $10 games were once (closer to) the norm, not the exception, and that's something I can get behind... although the one-or-two-games-a-week trickle feels like it could be sped up a bit. And I hate that the Xbox 360's fall dashboard update marginalised the Arcade so much (seriously: three fucking menus before I even see a trace of it now?).

So, what do you like and dislike about the DLC era of games, and their respective quality? Sound off, that's why we have comments.