You may have noticed that the last news post on the site look different than all of the other, for the first time, it didn't say "Written by xblarcade" at the end of it. That's right we've finally got someone else to help searching around finding every bit of XBLA news to bring all of you.

On his quest to get a job in the industry, Trent82 has been gracious enough to lend a hand around here so that I can start working on some new features for the site that I've been trying to find time for. One of the first things you'll see is a replacement for that somewhat sad XBLA games list we have.

So welcome to the party trent, hope you brought your hip waiters

It looks like yet another upcoming XBLA game has found its way on to the XBox 360 PartnerNet. Head on over to IGN to read their hands-on impressions of this upcoming release and be sure to check out the 2 new game play videos on their media page.

This weeks Rumor Roundup will be a little bit different than the other's as I'm going to comment on the pricing/release date leak first.

360 Gamer leaked a whack of release dates and prices for xbla titles

Rumor: Read all about it here.

Our take: Well along with my comments from before about the matter, I'd just like to add two things:

1) Print Magazines often have to have there magazines completely finished sometimes months before they hit the news stands. Looking at this list, it very well could have been Microsoft's Plan from a month or two ago (ie before the full understanding of the Street Fighter net-code issues were known)

2) When the scan was presented to Steve Taylor over at the Ninja Bee forums, his response was: "I think June/July are both possible at this point". Not exactly what I would call a ringing endorsement for the list being more than a best guess.

Rare will be bringing Jetpac to XBLA

Rumor:Many different sites are listing "inside" sources as saying Jetpac will be Rare's first title to reach XBLA.

Our take: It looks like Xbox Evolved was the first to list "inside" sources followed a couple days later by Eurogamer. The funny part of this story, is that if I didn't know better, I'd say the inside source told us all about a month earlier about this story here:

Dear Scribes,
You know what you guys made me realize? Right, I thought you guys were pretty sweet back when I first played Battletoads. That game rocked. And, you know, toads, nay, toads who can punch things in succession with other things; that always has potential to rock the Casbah, perhaps Casbahs. But it was only Xbox Threesiddy time, when booting up one of the machines with PDZ in the drive, did I realize my love for you (not sexually, well not right now, at least) transcends the very time I knew of your work.

While it does seem odd that there isn't even any mention of what magazine it's from, and the layout of the scan seems a bit suspect, it looks like Club Skill Lite may have found a huge amount of upcoming details.

Along with a slew of retail title info, there's the following prices/release time frames for XBLA titles:

• Street fighter - June - 400
• Cloning Clyde - July - 800
• Frogger - Aug/Sept - 400
• Lumines Live - Aug/Sept - 1200
• Roboblitz - Aug/Sept - 800
• Pacman - Aug/Sept - 400

While were not saying this list isn't real, the fact that Pacman is the last listed, and the complete absence of Galaga (both of which are available on the debug XBLA) make us very suspicious.

Here's the link

UPDATE: Our astute readers have pointed out that the magazine in question is 360 Gamer, UK Magazine. Also, it the price of Roboblitz listed seems to go against the price given by the CTO of naked sky

"Thrills Killa" is at it again, this time bringing us an interview with Chief Technical Officer of Naked Sky, Joshua Glazer.

While most XBLA developers are quick to avoid any specifics when it comes to pricing, Joshua is very specific in his "1,200 Points" answer. Another interesting answers was to the multi-player question where he talks about how the initial offering of Roboblitz won't have multi-player but rather it will show up later in an expansion (no doubt a move to keep under the 50MB limit).

You can check out the whole interview here

In their podcast this morning, VGM Daily had the first portion of there interview with Shayne Guiliano of Autonomous Productions. The first part didn't get into too much, but did reveal that he has be given permission to develop and release a game on both XBLA and Nintendo's Virtual Console. The game he is developing is titled "Butterfly Garden" and looks like it will be released on both consoles. It strikes me as odd, but I would have thought that Nintendo would have avoided having the same game on both as the XBLA version will have Achievement Points and HD graphics where as the Wii version will not. Since it sounds like the game is still in early development (and were talking about a very, very small team), don't expect this game to show up any time soon. You can check out the podcast here, and make sure to check back throughout the week as they publish more parts of the interview.

Well this week we only have one Rumor, and it's a bit of an old one, but it's a pretty good one none the less.

Introversion is going to be bringing the award winning Darwinia to XBLA.

Rumor: There have been many bits of info over the last couple of weeks about this, but the big ones started with Introversion being listed as one of the Independent developers working on XBLA titles at Microsoft's E3 Keynote. The biggest hint though was when Mark Morris started talking about how they were going to talk to Microsoft about bringing it to XBLA in this clip on SpikeTV.

Our Take: So you have Introversion going up to Microsoft asking them if they could bring the Independent Game of the Year winner to there system where they are trying to get great indie games...What do you think the answer was?

According to Finance Asia, Microsoft will be holding a developers contest this year for Korean developers to try their hand at developing some XBLA games. In an effort to "provide more localised contents to customers", MS will be selecting up to 5 winners who will receive development kits.

Could you image the number of entries they would get if they tried that in North America?

You can check out the Finance Asia post here.

While no specific date was released, Richard Thames Rowan, UNO Program Manager said:

"The UNO development team is aware of the problem that some people are having with matchmaking and has a fix going through certification right now. Hopefully, you’ll see this roll out soon, so no need to email anyone."

I know personally I've had this issue and it's great that it's being fixed, now maybe I can get those last two achievements. :)

You can check out the entire post on K1lla's Xbox Domain.

IGN has previews for both these arcade classics that are soon to make there way to XBLA. Also included in the previews are the price (500 MS Points) and a full list of achievements for both.

You can check Pac-man out here and Galaga out here.