xbox 360

 It’s been a while since we brought you Xbox Live Arcade news, other than announcing the Ascend: New Gods closed beta signups and that fun little Zombie Driver HD interview and contest we held last month. But XBLA games remain a passion of mine, and our Xbox 360-owning readers who have embraced digital downloads likely feel much the same.

Okay, GDC starts on Monday but a little consumer gaming event called PAX East is taking place right now. And on the first day of the show, a little publisher called Capcom made a couple of announcements that had pretty much the whole console gaming world abuzz. This summer, Capcom will release both a remake of NES platforming favorite Ducktales as well as a collection of the Dungeons & Dragons arcade games, both for XBLA and other digital platforms.

Read onto find out why folks in the know are so stoked for these titles!

Many console gamers out there are abuzz about the Playstation 4 right now, and an official announcement of the next Xbox probably won’t happen until April. How can Microsoft maintain the Xbox hype? Why, by announcing a big sale of course!

The Ultimate Game Sale starts today and runs through March 4^th. 15 different Games on Demand titles have their prices slashed to $3-5 for the duration of the sale (discount varies by region). There will be daily sales every day too. In fact, three Halo games are on sale for ten bucks apiece today – awesome prices if you’re looking to get into the series.

Read on for more Ultimate Game Sale and Xbox 360 Deal of the Week details!

We dished out praises like crazy to the original Full House Poker game for Windows Phone. It was the first Windows Phone 7 game to have proper avatar support and is still the only one, really. A picture of the user’s avatar on their stats screen like AlphaJax and Wordament have doesn’t really count; users want to play games as their avatars.

We’re still unsure about the next couple of weeks, but the drought of Xbox game releases for Windows Phone will definitely cease by the end of the month. Microsoft has made a rare advance release date announcement for a mobile game – and it’s a good one. At long last, Skulls of the Shogun from 17-Bit and Microsoft Studios will debut on January 30^th for Windows Phone 7 and 8, Xbox Live Arcade, and Windows 8 and RT!

Microsoft may have shelved the Xbox Windows Phone Deal of the Week program for the remainder of the year, but that doesn’t mean there won’t be any more sales on Xbox games. Similar to the Black Friday week sales last month, the big MS has just kicked off a major sale on Xbox Live games for Windows Phone and Xbox 360. Yes, the Countdown to 2013 sale (sequel to last year’s Countdown to 2012 sale) has already begun! As a special treat for console owners, you'll be able to get two free XBLA games during the countdown.

Last year’s Windows Phone Xbox Live Black Friday Week Sale wasn’t terribly exciting, but it did put three games on sale at once, a quantity only equaled in the Countdown to 2012 Sale a month later. A lot has happened between then and now, and today Microsoft has really upped the ante. The 2012 Black Friday Week Sale is live and includes a whopping six discounted Xbox Windows Phone games!

Head past the break for sale details, game impressions, and Xbox 360 Black Friday news too.

It might seem like only yesterday for some of us, but Microsoft’s Xbox Live service launched 10 years ago this month – a year after the original Xbox debuted. Xbox live was a major differentiator between the Xbox and the Playstation 2 and GameCube. Some PS2 games could connect to the internet via optional modem, but Sony’s console lacked a proper online system. Nintendo’s GameCube had only a handful of online games, something the big N did little (virtually nothing) to rectify with the GameCube’s successor, the Wii. Only the Xbox had a fairly standardized online system with each game required to support voice chat.

Ten years later, the Xbox 360 is the world’s most popular console (especially in North America) and the Xbox Live service extends to Windows Phone and Windows 8 games. Read on to discover Microsoft’s plans to celebrate the anniversary, including giving everyone a free XBLA game!

Nike and Microsoft launched the official Nike+ Kinect Training program this week, which was first unveiled at this year's E3 convention. It joins a growing number of fitness titles available for the Xbox 360. What's more is an official companion Windows Phone app has been released to the Store.

Xbox Live Arcade is heating up to a boiling point lately, with top-shelf titles coming out pretty much every week (sometimes more than once a week). We’ve just posted impressions of SEGA’s latest releases, and the quality train doesn't look to be stopping anytime soon.

So what’s in store for next week? Well, on Wednesday, October 10^th Team 17’s Worms Revolutions comes along, continuing the awesomely addictive Worms series. Even more exciting, Happy Wars (the first freemium XBLA game) launches Friday the 12^th for all Xbox Live Gold members. Head past the break for details of both titles!