Penny Arcade Adventures takes the honors for highest grossing XBLA debut

Buying the next chapter the day it's released.

Oh noes! *checks list*

Steps to rule the world!
1) become internet famous
2) ?
3) PROFIT!

Well I guess that we could have a worse ruler...

The demo was OK, but the RPG element killed it for me.

I loved the game, but I will absolutely not pay 20 dollars for an expansion/episode. The price was ridiculous to start with. If it weren't for my undying devotion to point and click adventures, this game would be rotting at the bottom of the bargain bin.

God, if they fixed the issues with the overall game difficulty, and added some more customization, this series would be damn near perfect.

this game rocked!!! the big words and humor were worth the 20$

I liked the demo, but put off buying the full game as of yet. First must get finished with GTA4...I'm 60 hours in, and just now unlocked all the islands.

if it takes another 40 at my leisurely pace, I'll be ready for Rain Slick about the time Episode 2 is released...

Worth it, I will buy the next episode for sure!

Top 4 XBLA launches over 3 days (from PA):

#1 RezHD, 25k units
#2 Ikaruga, 22.5k units
#3 PAA Episode 1, 16.5k units
#4 N+, 13k units

And $20 is worth it. It's a great experience for about 7.5 hours of gameplay. Bioshock was triple the cost for only about double the hours.

Definitely thought I got what I paid for, looking forward to the next one. I hate rpg combat, but never got bored with the fighting here; wouldn't mind seeing the later games tip a bit more to the adventure side of things, since this one felt more like a beat 'em up than anything else, but I'll take what they give me.

I really need to buy me some new XBLA points so I can download this.

That means 16500 people paid $20 for it, which isn't really all that much when you think about it. How many people would've bought it at $10? The true success of the game will be measured in how much it can continue to sell over the next few weeks, not what it sold it's first few days. Especially since sales of future episodes depend on sales of the first episode. No one who skips the first one is going to buy the second one and not everyone who does buy the first is going to continue on to the second and beyond.

That said, I don't think they're going to continue to charge $20 for the episodes. If they're as smart as I know they are, they'll drop the price of Episode I to $10 when Episode II comes out at $20, then that will drop to $10 when Episode III is released and so forth. They'd get a huge bump in revenue when Episode II comes out from not only sales of the new game but from all the people who couldn't bring themselves to shell out $20 for the first one. The benefit to that is, when Episode IV comes out, people who bought the discounted episodes all along will probably be more willing to drop the $20 for the final episode. That would result in an altogether more reasonable $50 for all the episodes.

I'd wager that if they drop the price of Episode I to $10 when Episode II is released, Episode I will outsell Episode II that week, or damn close to it. Because not only will a lot of people to decide to jump in with Episode I at that point but a lot of those who shelled out $20 for Episode I will then wait for Episode II to drop to $10 as well. For every PA fan who shelled out $20 for the game there's probably another 2 or 3 who passed because of the high price. I know I'll download it as soon as it drops to $10.

I don't how care how people justify a $20 price tag for a 5 hour game, I see the big picture as it being a 20 hour game that will be $80. That's just nuts, especially for an RPG. I'm more than happy to allow all the early adopters to subsidize a decreased price tag for me later on.

Fuck yeah! Go Penny Arcade!!! BTW: The game is freaking amazing, so anyone who has an xbox and hasn't played it, definitely pick it up. ;)

I can't wait for the next one. I thought that it was a rather balanced game. I loved the items. Not only were they actually useful they were damn near necessary in the later part of the game. Plus they were plentiful so you never felt bad about using them.

I did feel a little giped when I figured out there were only going to be two real areas to explore. But after playing for a couple of hours I felt content and was left wanting more. I can't wait to see how the next story pans out.
(and I can't wait to unlock the DivX player/monophone thing and see how that turns out)

It was way too short, but I don't regret buying it. I'm waiting for chapter 2

I hate to be so pessimistic about all this, but I fear that other developers will take note of this and only see the success with charging $20, and not see the (presumably, I haven't tried) quality gameplay.

That's probably the thing that I hate most about the $20. The breaking of precedence when it comes to pricing.

I just keep getting this bad image of the future where companies deem it acceptable to start charging $20 and up for XBLA games, regardless of how good it is.

love the humour, only downloaded the demo for the pc, but i dont see this game going for 20 bucks so i didnt buy it.
15 would be more "fair" for such a short game.

Probably I will buy the whole seasson in the future.
And I hate that it is not on STEAM.

Played the demo and loved it. I'm going to have to get the full game eventually.

Penny Arcade...

yeah, no thanks

@Velt
It's not on Steam because Penny Arcade is releasing their own Steam-style distribution system called Greenhouse with this game as the first game available.

Bought it and enjoyed it.

Episode 2 will need to add a lot for me to shell out another $20 though. I can't get over thinking of this game as 1/3 of GTA4 (or $20 MORE when all is said and done). We aren't even buying physical media here - I can't sell the game to EB to get half my money back or give it to my brother-in-law to try. I'm ok with not actually owning a few old VC games on my Wii or the occasional $5-$10 amusement on XBLA, but at some point I have to say no more.

I'll wait for the "series" disc to come out before I pick up the rest of them.