Xbox’s Major Nelson has just announced a new way to browse the Xbox LIVE Arcade games, named Destination Arcade. The need for this new front end for the Xbox"s discovery of Arcade games arose because there are now over 300 Xbox live Arcade games and the current user interface for browsing games isn’t suited for efficient browsing of that many titles.
The new storefront will allow users to browse games in the new “easy-to-use visual browser” which will feature new ways to sort titles "by price, community rating and more." This new browser and its features should allow users to discover new Arcade games and additional content. A news feed will also debut in this browser, allowing users to see new titles easily and will tie in with Xbox LIVE to show games that a user’s friends like and recommend.
This new browser for the Xbox LIVE Arcade may be only available in the US at launch and is “coming soon”. You can see some more images of the browser on Major Nelson"s Flickr page.
The newly designed Xbox 360 S is scheduled to go on sale later this month in countries outside of the United States. It will be interesting to see how long it takes for Destination Arcade to appear on consoles around the world. Currently, there is no word on when Destination Arcade might be available outside of the US. There is a lot happening over the coming months for Xbox, including the launch of Kinect on November 4th and Xbox LIVE appearing on Microsoft’s new mobile operating system, Windows Phone 7.
There are currently 25 million Xbox LIVE subscribers around the world and it is thought over 70% of these users access Xbox LIVE Arcade in a year. This new way to browse Arcade games might be well needed and Microsoft will be hoping that it is well received by users.