Back at CES, Microsoft unveiled the ‘Xbox LIVE Game Room’, a copy of PlayStation Home virtual arcade where you can walk around, as your avatar, to different arcade cabinets and play classic arcade games that are available on Xbox LIVE Arcade. When it was announced, I was naive enough to ask aloud what Microsoft would do with the arcade games that are already available on the Xbox LIVE Marketplace.

I should have just kept my whore mouth shut.

According to Game Informer’s Matthew Kato, any games that are already on the Xbox LIVE Marketplace will have to be re-purchased for use inside the XBL Game Room. Microsoft’s justification? The games already available on the Xbox LIVE Marketplace are “revamped” versions of their classic originals. The Game Room versions of the games already available on the XBLA will cost you between 240 and 400 MS Points, or… hell, I don’t know how much in non-play money that is.

Now to give you an idea of how many classic arcade games are on the XBL Marketplace, here are just a few of the original, non “revamped” titles:

• Pac-Man
• Ms. Pac-Man
• Contra
• Defender
• Dig Dug
• Joust
• Robotron: 2084
• Tron
• Discs of Tron
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1989)

I’m sure there are more on Xbox LIVE, plus I tried to not include games that have both a “classic” mdoe and a “revamp” mode (or whatever you want to call it), leaving out games like Time Pilot. But assuming that Microsoft doesn’t let these games transfer over, thus forcing someone who may own all of these games (I’m sure there is one) to purchase them again, gamers are looking at spending between 2,400 and 4,000 points from just the games listed above.

Of course, you could also decide to pay 30 MS Points (or thereabouts) for each playthrough. Regardless, it certainly seems that Microsoft has some retro gamers by the balls with no signs of letting up on their grip.

via Game Informer

*Title taken from Bill Hicks comedy bit

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