It was known for quite some time that the live arcade service would be the latest battle ground for two of the biggest fighting franchises to duke it out.

Capcom launched first in August with Street Fighter II which came out to mixed reviews. It seems that everyone complained about something, if it wasn't the 360's D-pad, it was the lag, if it wasn't the 4:3 aspect ratio, it was people using the hundred hand slap. The good news for Capcom though, was that it sold like crazy, quickly becoming one of the fastest selling XBLA games to date.

According to Gamespot, Midway will be launching Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 this November. Will they learn from the mistakes of their foe and have spotless online multiplayer? It's certainly far to early to tell. From the screenshots I've seen, they seem to have gone with the wide screen aspect ration which should quite a few detractors (although how this will change the game dynamic is yet to be seen).

I for one bought SFII and will happily buy UMK3 and if it weren't for the fact that I regularly get my butt handed to me by people who have barely ever played the game, I'd challenge you all :)

You can check out Gamespot's story here.

Well the first of many gesture based games for XBLA will be available tomorrow as part of Microsoft's XBLA Wednesdays. The info for the release was just posted on Major Nelson's blog, and does state what everyone already knew, that it'll be free.

While it may be a disappointment for those who don't have the camera, it's good to at least see something come out.

You can check out the post here.

Kotaku has been busy pouring over the 3D realms forums and has found a few interesting quotes from their staff:

Looking through the thread, the most promising quote to me is this one:

It seems to me that if it's just up to MS to give it the OK, then they'd better get on it as I'm sure that Sony, trying to get their own system up and running would be only too happy to see this happen.

You can check the thread here, and the kotaku article here.

Achieve360Points.com has put up the list of Achievements that we can expect for both Dig Dug and TotemBall. While it is still unknown when we will actually see these games, I'm sure the Achievement Whores out there will be happy for the information.

You can check them out here: Dig Dug and TotemBall

It seems that in all the excitement of X06 we missed the announcement and info about Street Trace:NYC. Xboxyde has posted some pretty good looking shots and a bit of info of the Gaia Industries game. According to Xboxyde:

It's great to see that we will soon be getting some new IPs released on XBLA.

Also, while it's not live yet, the official site is supposed to go live today.

You can check out the shots here.

[UPDATE] The official site is now live, so go check it out.

Vivendi, the first large publishing house to embrace XBLA with new, original IP, has cemented their place as a leader in the market with the acquisition of two new dev houses. Secret Lair Studio located in Washington and Studio Ch'in from Shanghai, China will join Vivendi's Sierra Online in developing "mid-session and PC online titles".

One interesting thing about these acquisitions is that Secret Lair in the past has boasted about how "Secret Lair is set to revolutionize the MMOG industry". Could this mean that we will be seeing an XBLA based MMO in the future? I for one would be very interested in that.

At Microsoft's X06 Conference in "Barcelona" they confirmed that the "previously unannounced major franchise" that was being released today is DOOM.

The XBLA version includes upgraded resolution, 5.1 support, 4 player split-screen, both local and online 4 player co-op as well as Death match. Unfortunately it doesn't support WS (although it does allow you to stretch the screen).

For those of you who are Achievement whores, here's the list.

In even more pre-press conference news, Gamespot has posted some pretty good looking shots of two games that Sierra will be releasing on XBLA "sometime this winter".

Assault Heroes look like it could well be shaping up to be a fun action title, through in online co-op and it certainly has jumped up a couple notches on my own to-get list.

3D Ultra Mini Golf on the other hand will deliver 36 holes of Mini Golf over a variety of crazy environments, that have to be seen to be believed.

You can check out the Assault Heroes screens here

And the 3D Ultra Mini Golf ones here

While were all eagerly waiting for X06 and the "Major Franchise" it will bring, news of Hexic 2 has been found via Game Informer. In an interview with the magazine, Alexey Pajitnov, the creator of both Hexic and Tetris, stated:

While I never got close to getting all 200 points for the game, I certainly enjoyed the original and would certainly enjoy it with multiplayer.

In an "meeting" with Gamasutra last week, Greg Canessa brought new light on Microsoft's ideas around Asian specific XBLA content and how (short of creating a Japanese account) those of us in the west can play them. It seems that MS is batting around the idea of having an import section on the market place that would allow for developers who might not have the funds to do a full localization the opportunity to tap into the far larger Western market as they will be available in the west in their original language.

Another tidbit that came out was the it seems that Fatal Fury Special will be only available in the east. If this is the case I'm certainly not going to be the only one who hopes that MS adds the new section to the Marketplace.

You can check out the whole article here.

[UPDATED] To clarify that the import section will probably not have games in english.