Co-founder of Stainless Games Neil Barnden was kind enough to answer a few questions about Crystal Quest, XBLA Development and there next game Novadrome.

Jeremy Throckmorton and Steve Taylor of NinjaBee let us fire a few questions at them and came up with some interesting answers, including a great line by Jeremy that will certainly become a standard question in all of our upcoming interviews: “Is a game from ten years ago a threat to a truly new and unique game?”

[XBLArcade.com] Could you please say who you are and what your role in the company is?
[Jeremy] Hi. My name is Jeremy Throckmorton, and I’m one of the NinjaBee designers. For anyone who wants to look me up on Xbox Live, my gamertag is Marmosetofdeath.
[Steve] I’m Steve Taylor (gostay on Xbox Live). I’m a programmer, and part of the team that made Outpost Kaloki X.
[XBLArcade.com] Did Wahoo submit an application to Microsoft to be part of XBLA or did Microsoft come to you?
[Steve] Sort of both. I had known Ross Erickson for a few years, and we started talking to him in general about possibilities for projects we could do with Microsoft. One of the things Ross suggested was XBLA, and after very little discussion it was clear what a fantastic opportunity this would be for Outpost Kaloki. Since Outpost Kaloki was originally designed as a console title, this was an amazing chance to realize the original vision we had for the game, and we jumped on it.
[XBLArcade.com] Will you have a booth at E3? and if so will you be showing off existing or upcoming properties?
[Steve] We won’t have our own booth at E3, but some of the things that we’re working on now (as Wahoo Studios and as NinjaBee) will be showing there, including, we hope, NinjaBee’s next XBLA game.
[XBLArcade.com] What are some of the biggest differences between developing for an XBLA game as opposed to a regular game?
[Jeremy] A Live Arcade game is smaller to a regular Xbox 360 game in just about every conceivable way. I guess it could be argued that size is the only real difference. For us at the NinjaBee hive, that means the budget is smaller, the development schedule is shorter, and the data size of the game has to be kept way down. When compared to other 360 games even the number of Achievements and Gamerpoints we can award is smaller. Fortunately, the one thing that doesn’t change is the focus on fun and gameplay. In some ways the smaller scope makes it easier for us to focus on the gameplay more than we could with a larger game.