Texas Hold 'Em Poker now has a release date of August 23rd, 2006, according to Xbox.com. Which is exactly two weeks after Pac-Man, on a Wednesday. It seems 'believable' after the recent announcement.

I have said it before, and I'll say it again: Believe it when you see it. After all of the delays, and broken promises, it's hard to believe anything... However, I would forgive them for the rest of the year if Lumines did make it in July.

UPDATE: August 23, 2006 has now been replaced with Summer 2006. It comes to no surprise after what happened with the recent Frogger, Street Fighter II: Hyper Fighting, or the entire Arcade in general.

Thanks again to Stoffs for all info.

Xbox.com has removed Frogger (Summer 2006) from the "recent addition" under Xbox Live Arcade today... and put it under a new category, "Coming soon to the Arcade". Along with 4 other Xbox Live Arcade games - Cloning Clyde (Summer 2006), Texas Hold 'Em Poker (TBD), Lumines Live (July 2006), and Street Fighter II: Hyper Fighting (Summer 2006).

Who knows what to think? What to believe?

Following it's temporary 'recent addition', Texas Hold 'Em Poker now has an official forum on Xbox.com. While we haven't heard anything concrete regarding a release date to any titles, it was said plenty of times back in March, that intentions were to have a "double-header"; Texas Hold 'Em Poker, and Street Fighter II: Hyper Fighting releasing at the same time. While that was 3 months and some days ago, could it still be the case...? With both titles added to the forums, are we going to see at least one of titles release in the coming weeks? Is the "floodgate" opening soon? Only time will tell, folks.

We'll keep our eyes open, and our ears peeled.

Well, not really, but that's what Microsoft claims on their XBLA games page. Today they added this much anticipated poker game to the "recent additions" section, placing it right up there with the 5 month old Marble Blast Ultra. News on this game was basically nonexistent for a few months, but with all of these mentions of Texas Hold'em over the last few weeks, it has to be getting close...a July release is seeming more and more likely.

My favorite part of this is the estimated release date of March 2006.

UPDATE: As noted above, Microsoft has now removed Texas Hold'em from the recent additions page. They probably realized that a March 2006 release might not work out.

I recently discovered the DreamStation podcast and they have been running a multi-part interview with Ross Erickson, XBLA Portfolio Manager, over the last few weeks. Although the first 2 parts of this interview have been entertaining, they have revealed nothing new. However, while previewing part 3, expected to be available next week, they revealed some of the discussion with Ross involving the upcoming XBLA release of Texas Hold'em Poker.

Apparently, the game will allow up to 8 players at once and will support the upcoming XBox Live Vision camera peripheral. Along with this information, they also revealed that this camera functionality is at least part of the cause of the delay because they are having difficulties getting 8 camera streams to run smoothly...that's really not that surprising.

We'll keep you posted on any other news from part 3 of the Ross Erickson interview, but in the mean time, you can listen to the first 2 parts of this interview here.

With the summer now fully upon us, we had to dig even deeper than normal to bring you these rumors.

The XBLA version of Texas Hold'em may include a "tells" system.

Rumor: The version of Texas Hold'em coming to XBLA is being developed by Carbonated Games (a MS subsidiary) and will have more than a few things in common with the Bicycle version they just released on MSN Gaming Zone, including the "tells" system.

Our Take: We asked MS to comment and they wouldn't even confirm that it's Carbonated that are developing it. That said, I'd say it's a pretty good guess that it'd be them since Texas Hold'em> is a first party game and what would be the point of having two divisions making different versions of the same game? Add to that how much everyone has loved how Uno turned out, it just makes sense for CG to be developing it.

As for the "Tells" system, it sounds like a great idea, and if CG is developing it, you'd have to guess that the game is going to be running on the same basic framework (although it does look different from the screenshots we've seen so far), so it wouldn't be unreasonable to assume that they'd share this feature.

A third Pompom game might be making it's way to XBLA

Rumor: Bliss Island will be the third XBLA game developed by Pompom Software.

Our Take: This one seems to make sense, after the success Pompom has experienced with Mutant Storm Reloaded and the upcoming Mutant Storm Empire on Xbox Live Arcade, you would imagine that they'd be pretty happy with XBLA. Add to this that the official site has three other locations stating "Coming Soon" (one of which is known to be the PSP) and you've got a pretty decent argument that we'll be seeing it at some point in the future.

In the August issue of OXM, their calendar of events for XBox Live lists August 6th as "Texas Hold 'em Poker night on XBLA". That night happens to be a Sunday, and new content is never added to the XBox Live Marketplace on the weekend, so the game would need to be released before that weekend. Although we won't know for sure until then, this scenario seems reasonable. On last week's Major Nelson podcast, it was hinted that the game was coming along nicely but was caught up in legal issues with the sponsor. Hopefully, they will get that all cleared up so we can be playing free poker on XBox 360 in less than 6 weeks.

It might be worth mentioning that OXM previously gave a release date for Marketplace content (PDZ Map Pack 1) well in advance and they got that one right.

UPDATE: Apparently, OXM's calendar of events isn't always a reliable source for XBLA release dates. We would like to thank our readers for this tip.

It seems that John Porcaro from Gamerscore blog was lucky enough to get a chance to play an early copy of Texas Hold’em. Not only did he get to play, but he snapped a couple of shots off as well. The two shots are up on his flickr site here and here. While there don’t seem to be that many bells and whistles, do you really need any for Poker as long as they can keep the “all-in all the time” people away.
UPDATE: Matt Gerlach has posted two more pictures on his site here.

XBox 360 Poker has a great roundup on the information given in Major Nelson’s blog #159 about the Texas Hold’em XBLA game sponsered by River Belle. While the info is relatively old (it dates to late January, it is all the info we’ve been given so far.
More info as it comes in…