Ah yes, the lack of Xbox Live Arcade games.. There is no supply, but there sure is demand. They're being promised, but not delivered. Sure, we have some great titles available to download from the Marketplace at the moment, but why in the past 3 months have we only seen one Arcade release (Uno)?

Peter Moore explains to Next Generation why our Arcade games blade is so empty, and he seems to have a credible 'excuse'.

"Here's what happened - people didn't believe that Arcade was going to fly. So we went round a year and a half ago as we were doing the final plans for launching 360, and told our publishing friends that here's what we think is really cool idea, where you could make games for hundreds of thousands of dollars instead of tens of millions, and at very low risk, but people didn't believe it. And we released it and it blew the doors down. Now all of a sudden we're in this phase where Sega, Namco, Konami, Midway... they want some of that. But we do have an important quality bar in place - we could probably throw 300 games up there quickly, and we are trying to get the independent guys going as well. It's almost going to be like Pop Idol, where someone will pop out suddenly - Geometry Wars is a great example. But I love this forum, whether it's profitable or not, this platform for indie developers, for four or five guys to put $100,000 into it, and we'll publish it and see what happens."

I understand that the releases have to be consistent, but.. Wii are waiting too long.

According to Xbox360fanboy.com, Ross Erikson, of the XBLA team, has confirmed that lumines will indeed include Mutliplayer at no extra charge. While this clears up the price of Lumines Live, the question still remains as to when we will see it on the market place.

You can read the entire post here.

IGN downloaded Frogger off of 'PartnerNet', and has given us a little preview with screenshots, price, achievements, and more goodies. It's stated the Arcade game will join the 400 Microsoft Point's Club ($5), along with the other 'Coin-Op Classics'.

Achievement List

Well Ordered - 15 G - On any level fill 5 frog slots from right to left.
Complete Level 2 - 15 G - Beat the second level.
Complete Level 3 - 15 G - Same deal, third level.
Complete Level 4 - 20 G - Do what the title says.
Complete Level 5 - 20 G - Take a wild guess.
Speed Racing - 20 G - Get all 5 frogs home in level 1 in less than 45 seconds.
Helping Hand - 20 G - Save 5 lady frogs in one game.
Full Stomach - 10 G - Eat 3 bugs in one game.
Chicken 1 - 10 G - On level 1 stay on the road until the timer is red, then reach home.
Chicken 2 - 15 G - On level 2 stay on the road until the timer is red, then reach home.
Home Sweet Home - 20 G - Deliver 15 frogs to the frog home without dying once.
Co-op Brilliance - 20 G - Reach a score of 30,000 or more while playing an Xbox Live co-op game.

Xbox.com has finally added a new game to the forums, Street Fighter II: Hyper Fighting. So now we can stop our Street Fighter II conversations on the "Astropop" or "Uno" boards (I'm guilty). With the forum finally appearing, and the recently released Marketplace content for Street Fighter II, I have a feeling that it's close to its long - awaited release... real close... I hope.

Sonic, BOOM!

Lumines Live, was one of the biggest surprises announced for Xbox Live Arcade during E3. Greg Canessa, the Xbox Live Arcade Group Manager, already had a "release date" of Summer 2006 for the unique puzzler at the time.. and a price which would be 1200 Microsoft Points($15). Of course, there will be extra content to download from the Xbox Live Marketplace, such as licensed music and backgrounds. But, will we have to pay extra for a multiplayer add-on as well? Maybe.

Game Informer interviewed Tetsuya Mizuguchi, in which he said that we may have to purchase the 'Multiplayer expansion' on top of the basic game. "At least that's the way we have it planned right now," Mizuguchi said. It is still being determined whether or not the basic package will include Multiplayer, however.

A bit bold, risky if you ask me. It could turn out to be another 'Oblivion Horse Armor', not good.

Source: Kikizo Games

Denis Bourdain, VP Business Dev of Load Inc., has "gone public". Denis has been to several different Xbox 360 forums/message boards, inviting questions, comments, concerns, and etc.. for the upcoming Xbox Live Arcade game "Mad Tracks". Some interesting information regarding the game has come of this, including:

- The game will not be play-able over Xbox Live, but will support 4 - Player Split Screen.
- There will be a handful of mini - games, including Pool and Foos Ball.
- 12 different 'power - ups', similar to Re-Volt.
- 48 different Leaderboards
- 2 Game Modes: Arcade & Championship

.. and much more.

He's been shedding some light onto the revised release date, an estimated price, and throwing out an achievement or two to tease the achievement junkies.

You can also check out our interview with him here.
Head on over to the Xboxic Forums, to 'chit-chat' with Denis.

TeamXBox has posted a new slew of screenshots of Mad Tracks which you can check out here. While they reiterate that there is going to be 15 Levels (5 races, 10 mini-games), they leave out the fact that there will be the two DLC packs also with 15 Levels each that Denis Bourdain mentioned in our interview with him.

Recently we had a chance to ask a few questions of both Jacob Van Wingen (Founder, Director, Programmer) and Don Wurster (Co-Director, Programmer) of Gastronaut Studios.

Check out there answers and some screenshots (although they "aren't final and things are likely to change before release") after the jump

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?