In an interview with Gamasutra, Dan Irish, CEO of Threewave briefly mentioned that they are currently working on an XBLA title. While details were scarce, when asked about the market for his game, he stated "I would say… Well, how about a competitor to Nintendogs?"

You can check out the whole article here.

The people who run the Independent Games Festival have announced the entries for the 9th iteration of the show. While many of the games are completely unknown to the general public, this is not due to the quality of the game but rather due to the lack of marketing budget. So next time you get sick of Tony Hawk 52 or Madden 78 check out this list for some great games.

Another thing to note that three upcoming XBLA games are on the list; Load Inc's Mad Tracks, Naked Sky's RoboBlitz, and The Behemoth's Crashers.

You can check out the list here.

With far more in-depth questions than the usual prefab questionnaire some sites have used of late, Gamasutra has a great interview with Jacob Van Wingen, the studio founder of Gastronaut Studios. It covers their first XBLA game (on the original XBox) Fuzzee Fever, achievement design, and managing expectations for would be XNA developers. It's a must read for all of you (myself included) who are eagerly awaiting Small Arms.

You can check out the interview here.

Konami has finally released it's 80s side scroller Scramble. Available as the latest entry to XBLA Wednesday, it's available for just 400 points. While I'm sure Scramble will scratch many peoples retro itch, am I alone in far preferring Defender?

ARogan, a professional coder by day, has released what may well be the best XNA developed game so far. F14 XNA Game (maybe he should find something a little more catchy) is available on his blog here. You can also check out both a screen shot and video of the game on his site.

With games like this already popping up, it seems that the $99 a year to be able to play all of these on the 360 is getting better and better.

Xbox-Scene.com is reporting that within the September XDK release developers have been able to get a preview of what the dashboard will look like after the fall update. While I for one will be quite happy if this ends up being the case as the current version is a little on the cluttered side. You can check out the article, along with screenshots here.

interesting in the screenshots is the Kameo pack for Uno. With no release date for the pack, one has to wonder if MS is just keeping it in their back pockets in case there are any other last minute delays.

Citing difficulties getting "...all our content within [the mandated] limitations", Streamline Studios has brought in the "hardcore engineering house", Virtual Toys in a move that will push back the release date of Hoopworld to sometime in 2007.

In conversations with Gamespot, Streamline co-founder Hector Fernandez, stated that although the rework of HoopWorld wouldn't involve any major rework, extra content was certainly not out of the picture.

You can read the whole article here.

hanks to Arthur for the heads up.

Mark this one down as a rumor for a slow news week, but durring an interview with IGN, the Mega Man series producer Ken Horinouchi had this little tidbit about the boy in blue making his way to XBLA:

While this certainly doesn't mean we'll be seeing it any time soon, it's good to know that they are concidering it.

You can check out the whole interview here.

Matt, an XBox MVP, sent us the heads up that Scramble failed the final testing and certification, and as such will not be released tomorrow. No word yet as to how this will effect the rest of the scheduled games, but I can just imagine the backlash if Lumines Live's release date slips.

Here's the word from MSMVPS.com:

It's good to see that we will be finally getting a new theme deck (the same one that was originally part of last weeks release list then removed from the list).

In their latest investor presentation, Vivendi let slip that they are embracing XBLA full throttle. Later this year, they will be releasing Megaforce and 3D Ultra MiniGolf, while 2007 releases include Incredible Machine, Red Baron, and the title that will no doubt get the most speculation, Battlestar Galactica. While these were the only named XBLA games, there were several other games listed without title or platform that fit into their "short session titles" Categories.

It's certainly great to see the list of big time publishers making their way to XBLA, here's to hoping EA is next.