Next-gen.biz has an interview with Marc Whitten, the general manager of Xbox Live. There’s a good bit of information in the article, but one of the big announcements is that Microsoft is going to start pulling “underperforming” games from their direct-download Xbox Live Arcade service.

Games that have been out for more than six months, have a Metacritic score of less than 65% (Good news, Space Giraffe fans!), and have a conversion rate of less than 6% will be eligible for delisting. “Conversion rate” in this case is the number of people who play the demo and go on to buy the full game.

At first glace, it seems like an odd move. After all, with digital distribution, you’re not sitting around with a bunch of unsold inventory, and you don’t have any up front manufacturing costs. If only one person buys the game for $5 in a month, that’s $5 you didn’t have before. It’s that whole long tail thing.

It seems to be a matter of focus. Microsoft just doesn’t want subpar games clogging up the demo lists. Well, it’s their service. They can do what they please with it.

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