By now you've read our review of Lumines Live for the Xbox 360 (if not go now and see it) and know that though we love the gameplay and would have gave it a perfect five, the game the gameplay was wrapped up in was severely lacking, mainly because it gave you so little and makes you spend even more money in the future to fully unlock the whole game. In a new interview, Microsoft talks about Lumines Live, Live, and the Marketplace.

From the article:

1UP: Looking at the screenshot that we put up on 1UP (see image), to see a message like that in a game I just paid for is frustrating. For a consumer who didn't know that the Base Pack was providing a limited amount of content, that's irritating, isn't it? The language that was used on the Marketplace didn't indicate that this was a different type of experience and because it is that way, are we to treat the Lumines Live! a la carte style downloads as an anomaly or another type of Live Arcade SKU that we'll see more and more?

GC: I definitely see what you're talking about. I would classify it as something that was done that was very different from what we've done previously. Something that the developer, that Q Entertainment thought about, and decided to do. Like I said, this is a new business and there was a bit of experimentation that went on and obviously we're going to listen to customer feedback on that.

We're going to listen to customer feedback overall and we're going to look at the sales of the title. We tried some things that were a little different on that title [Lumines] and the experience, whether or not that messaging was the right messaging, I won't comment specifically on the messaging, but I will say that what we intended to communicate, what Q intended to communicate that there was additional downloadable content that would be available that further enhanced the experience. In no way was it meant to indicate that it was anything less than a full experience in the basic game. The basic game, to address Versus CPU mode specifically, there is a way to play the CPU in the versus mode where the line is shifted left and right against a CPU opponent. That mode exists in the game, you can play that mode as much as you want. Now, what Q Entertainment is going to provide through that is they are going to provide additional CPU opponents to play against. Now what it is, frankly, is not different AI, it's different skins, which is probably not optimally communicated there [on Live], it will be different skins that you can play in that mode -- the skin meaning the sound effects, plus the music, plus the background. They are going to sell skins that are for that specific mode. It's not going to change the gameplay in any significant way, it's not going to add specific functionality -- they are not selling that, they are selling skins for that mode. They are going to provide that in a loop, once you defeat a certain opponent it will loop to the other skins. That was a design decision that Q made, I cannot comment specifically on the wording of that.

A lot of these decisions were made by Q, it is their game, Microsoft's duty is that we own the overall platform, we assist, we approve the titles and help developers if they need assistance and provide the infrastructure and the back end. Much of these details are the decisions of the individual publishers and developers. This is Q Entertainment's title and some of the specifics there are what Q Entertainment decided to implement.

Read the full article over at 1up.com