I'm reviewing a game which has local multiplayer.

When local multiplayer is chosen, all signed in controllers are added to the game.

This is a problem, but I'm not sure it is a fail.  You have to play "hunt the controller" to sign out the extra controllers, but the game makes it clear which controllers are signed in and how to sign out any undesired controllers.

This looks like a design decision on the part of the game author - instead of starting with one controller joined and allowing other controllers to join, this game starts with all controllers joined and allows some controllers to leave.

Is this just a deviation from best practices or is it a fail?

It's a fail. Assuming all turned on controllers are playing is the same as not detecting the primary controller. So fail it in the same vein.

I wouldn't fail for that. It might not be necessay (for local multiplayer anyway, I just replied to a thread where a XNA bug automatically adds all signed in players to a networksession) but as long as the game makes it clear what's going on I don't see a reason that this would be a fail.

It's not a framework bug. He's just coding it incorrectly. Many XBLIG's handle this correctly already.

In fact here's a thread where Shawn Hargreaves describes how to do it...  http://forums.xna.com/forums/p/42018/248529.aspx#248529

Done.  Thanks for the clarification.

Harald Maassen:

I wouldn't fail for that. It might not be necessay (for local multiplayer anyway, I just replied to a thread where a XNA bug automatically adds all signed in players to a networksession) but as long as the game makes it clear what's going on I don't see a reason that this would be a fail.

Yes, I was on the fence on this one, but will go with George's view of the rule about no automatic sign-in of other controllers.

Yes its totally a failure - follow the 'players should never have to play hunt the controller' rule. If I play with a buddy and there's other controllers signed in we should not have to find those controllers to logout or even disconnect (we've seen a couple of games that insisted in playing N players where N is however many connected controllers). ALso consider those other logged in controllers may be guitars or drumkits.

The correct way is for player 1 to be selected at the 'Press start' screen and then all other players have a 'press (A) to join (B) to leave (start) to play' just like Halo etc do it.