[quote name='Strider Turbulence']I just want the guaranteed prizes back.[/QUOTE]
[quote name='tylerh1701']It's posted. It's even dumber than last week.[/QUOTE]
I certainly agree. In the previous format (own all 3, get 7 of 9 achievements, two unknown prizes earned) it encouraged purchase of the new, and sometimes some old XBLA titles. That I felt was beneficial to the Xbox brand by a marketing standpoint by showing a focus on a gaming community and helps in bolstering sales for the new titles of the week.
The format went from bad (own at least 2 of 4, get 10 of 20 achievements, 3 known prizes for 5 randomly drawn winners) to worse (own all 4, get 12 of 16 achievements, for 3 known prizes for 5 randomly drawn winners). The only improvement are the 3 known prizes. Perhaps an alternative is to give 1 prize to participants and 2 more to the randomly drawn of the population of qualifiers, which I feel could alleviate the "wasting of time" factor of doing a challenge (since the PlayXBLA challenges tend to have some of the more time consuming achievements required at some point). Yet, I think it is just the PlayXBLA team (person?) probably doesn't want to sift through so many entries. It's my opinion that it is also to Microsoft's character to go from a good idea to a bad one and stick with the bad for Xbox.
I know MS wants to emphasize Kinect. It would have bothered me less if there were a weekend with two or more Kinect XBLA titles to get a Kinect title and something else. In this weekend's challenge, it just seems like an added layer of restriction. I don't own a Kinect, but I know it is not worth me purchasing the peripheral (or finding a means to use one) and purchasing the one Kinect title, just to have a chance, a chance, to get something. That and I still gotta get everything else aside from Limbo =P.
With the challenges getting less inclusive, I've already started to change my habit of checking the PlayXBLA website every Friday to just visiting this thread instead to tell if I can even try to get something. The trend to get less and less to participate implies that either participants are made of time (by them requiring more achievements), or had already bought and played through the choice games prior to the challenge. PlayXBLA doesn't encourage me to get off my current title I am working off my backlog to really work on other (XBLA) titles in my backlog, which was the side benefit of the one weekend where I did participate.
Good luck to those who qualify.
[quote name='Wrong']Agreed. Sweepstakes are ridiculous.[/QUOTE]
I don't know. Sometimes there were "play and win" or "download and win" with some minor requirements offered on the dashboard. You download a registration gamerpic/theme, play some game real fast on Xbox Live, and you may randomly get something. I always wanted to win those with 10000+ Microsoft points drawings so I can buy all the ridiculously priced DLC I would have normally not purchased (like say all of the Otomedius Excellent DLC ^^). I no longer get those ads on my dashboard for those sweepstakes because I block the ad server, so I have to seek the sweepstakes out if I want to. As for PlayXBLA, the change of format to a sweepstakes is within their prerogative, but I think it loses most of its spirit to encourage people to, you know, play some XBLA titles.