We’re in the third month of grading Xbox Live Arcade and so far we’ve seen it climb from a C in March to an A in April. Today we’ll take a look and see it it could keep up the score for May. The three areas of scoring are in game release frequency, pricing, and original content.

Game Releases
There were 8 games released in 5 Wednesdays in May. Not to bad. The games released were Catan, Centipede/Millipede, Double Dragon, Soltrio Solitaire, Aegis Wing, Xevious, Rush’n Attack, and Mad Tracks. Additionally, Centipede/Millipede was actually two games in one download. Of course they are virtually identical to each other, but still technically 2 games. So, I’m going with an 8 out of 5 in this category for May.

Pricing
The pricing was pretty standard with month with remakes and retro titles selling for $5 and original titles selling for $10. That is except for Aegis Wing which was released for free. I’m not sure how Microsoft let a free game slip through then they could have easily charged for it, but I’m not going to complain because I like free stuff especially when it is a quality product. Out off all the games released this month only two were any good. Catan and Aegis Wing were excellent. I know that Double Dragon fans are pretty happy with getting it for $5, and a lot of folks seem to like Mad Tracks for some unknown reason. I’m not sure why thought when with the add on packs it will cost over $18. So, that is 4 games decently priced. On the other hand $10 for solitaire? What?! This strange grouping of poorly priced and free games evens out to get a score of 4 out of 8.

Retro Games
Four of the eight games released in May are retro titles that were brought over to the Xbox Live Arcade. Additionally, solitaire is available about 1000 other places as well. However, since I’m still so excited about Catan and Aegis Wing I’ll let is slide and give this category a 4 out or 8 as well.

Overall
So that brings the overall score to a 16 out of 21. Back to the C range. Apparently someone thought their good April goodness would carry over through May, but they thought wrong. Xbox Live Arcade Team, please, look back at April and take notes on what went right. Then, repeat it. Cut down the retro titles and help get more original content for us.