So Major Nelson had Ross Erickson, the Worldwide Games Portfolio Manager for Xbox Live Arcade, to explain what's going on with the lack of games being released on XBLA. While he did say that there will be a bunch of games coming to the marketplace "soon", both Street Fighter (Capcom wants to make sure they get it right) and Poker (Lawyers always slow everything down) seem like they are about a month away.

While there wasn't anything earth shattering, there was some interesting info thrown in. The biggest news was that when they said sonic was coming to XBLA, they didn't mean just the one they showed, but rather they (Microsoft & Sega) are currently working to "determine the pacing of which sonic games [they] should bring out bring out first as opposed to later". While obviously they aren't going to ship every Sonic ever made, one of the ones that they are considering is the Dreamcast Version (guess they'll have to drop the 50MB limit for that).

The other interesting bit that was said was that Konami has 9 titles coming. At E3 they announced 6, so I wonder if this was just a slip of the tongue, or they do actually have 9 decided on.

You can check out the entire podcast here.

At the BREW 2006 Conference more info was release about "Live Anywhere". While we knew that we'd be able to play Zuma on your Cellphone, the screenshots show a whole lot more about the games available. Whether these will be available on the 360 version, is unknown as of yet. Here's the list:

• Zuma
• Mozaki Blocks
• Bricks of Egypt
• Astropop
• Hexic
• Diner Dash
• Magic Match
• PGR Mobile
• Cubis
• Bejeweled 2
• Luxor

Another couple of things to notice that are different than the 360 version are that the free demo seems to be time limited and the ability to record segments of the game.

How much would you pay for the same monthly unlimited service on the 360?

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