At its CES press conference last night, besides announcing a Winter 2010 launch date for its Natal motion gaming interface, Microsoft released the first official details of Game Room, a virtual arcade for Xbox 360 and PC. Penned for launch this spring, the service will give players a Playstation-Home esque space to customise and design as they play classic arcade games.
What’s pretty cool about this is that Game Room will allow players to invite friends to their arcade to play on any 2-player games they have bought.
30 games are expected for launch including Centipede, Outlaw and Star Raiders. Like Xbox Live Arcade, a new Game Room game will be released every week, with over 1,000 retro titles promised for the next three years.
The pricing structure is a little weird though. You can either pay up to 400 MS points to buy an arcade machine or you can spend 40 MS points for a single play. How the latter is any value for money at all is beyond me, but hey, at least the option is there.
The company has posted an entertaining trailer for the service featuring Microsoft execs Robbie Bach and Steve Ballmer in avatar form, showing off much of the virtual environment the games will be set in. Take a look at the video below.
