7. Ubisoft Games - Responsible for a few little known titles, Ubisoft has somehow eked its own slice out in the video game industry. Seriously though, without Ubisoft we wouldn’t have Assassin’s Creed, Beyond Good & Evil and all of those Tom Clancy games wouldn’t exist either. That’s right, Ubisoft has given us Splinter Cell, Rainbow Six, End War, Hawx and of course Ghost Recon. Add Brother’s in Arms, Far Cry and of course Prince of Persia and you’ve got a developer that has created a good chunk of library for both the original Xbox and the Xbox 360. While we all continue to wait as patiently as we can without getting punchy for Beyond Good & Evil 2 and Splinter Cell: Conviction, they’ll be releasing Assassin’s Creed II into the holiday lineup to keep gamers entertained. I would almost say that Ubisoft has way too much on their plate like a fat kid at the buffet, but they keep enough of a rotation on existing titles and new intellectual properties, like RUSE, where everything comes out smelling fresher than a new bar of soap.
6. Valve Software - While most of the software was available on PC at the same time, if not prior, Valve has still made contributions to the 360 that make it an exceedingly valuable developer. Portal, Team Fortress 2, Portal, Half-Life 2 as well as its episodic content are all outstanding on their own; however Valve did something ingenious with them. By packaging five titles all in one convenient bundle Valve didn’t decrease the relative value of all the games; they succeeded in exponentially increasing the significance of the overall package. The orange box, in my opinion, is still one of the best values you can get on the Xbox 360 since you’re getting five games for about $12 dollars each. Succeeded by Left 4 Dead as one of the premier multiplayer titles, it has kept an extremely powerful community on Xbox Live. As Valve is succinctly biased to developing for the PC and 360, widely regarding the PS3 as a troublesome system and coupled with the impending release of Left 4 Dead 2 as well as the eventual releases of Portal 2 and Half-Life 2: Episode 3 – things are shaped pretty nicely for 360 owners as far as Valve is concerned.
5. Lionhead Games - While Peter Molyneux has consistently promised gamers the world and delivered somewhat lesser results, it can’t be argued that the man and the studio behind him dream big and aim high. Fable, originally known simply as Project: Ego, was supposed to be everything that Fable II became. It seems that with additional iterations in the Fable series the completed product drifts closer and closer to what Molyneux originally promised in his high concept for Fable. The games are fun in addition to strong game mechanics and narrative, but I’m yet to feel as though I’m living the complete life of a hero. In the meantime, Lionhead continues to provide genuinely good support for the 360 with the recently announced Fable III and as Natal comes closer to release will be releasing titles to take advantage of that new interactivity.
4. Bethesda - Fallout 3 is a truly epic role-playing title and along with Oblivion, Bethesda has kept gamers glued to their televisions for lengths of time I don’t even want to imagine. While Oblivion captured the fantasy crowd with an immense amount of gameplay along, a completion time that could spiral into fifty or more hours merely served to keep those who wanted to play doing just that. Taking the same formula, mixing in the game mechanics and sci-fi elements that made the Fallout universe stand out among other games on the shelf along with promising a completion time around 100 hours had many players, including myself, hooked for months. The scary thing is, when it seemed like I could stop at any given time, the rewarding ‘ding’ emanating from my pip-boy kept me playing and frothing at the mouth for more in some twisted Pavlovian response. Throw in the Operation: Anchorage, Broken Steel, The Pitt, Point Lookout and Mothership Zeta downloadable content and it becomes a game capable of being played forever.
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