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Constant C is mixes time, space and gravity gameplay mechanics into a physics-based puzzle-platformer. It’s headed to Xbox Live Arcade next week, but we’ve already played it extensively and spoken with one of its three creators.

So what exactly is “Constant C”? Light Wang of Taiwan-based developer International Games System Co. (IGS) tells XBLA Fans that the title comes from “the equation of mass–energy equivalence [which] is E = MC². Constant C is the speed of light.”

In the game, scientists were trying to break the speed of light, but accidentally stopped the flow of time instead. As a result, all objects are frozen in time except for on-board artificial intelligences, such as the player character.

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Xbox 360 owners who have not yet thrown down money for a Xbox One will be able to get their hands on the newest Peggle game in the coming months. EA and PopCap Games have announced Peggle 2 will release on Xbox 360 on May 7 in North America and Europe. The release date comes alongside news of the Xbox One version receiving a free update that inserts Duel Mode into the game which is available now.

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The long-awaited March update that fixes the Xbox One party and friends system in preparation for Titanfall‘s release next week has begun rolling out. Xbox One owners will be prompted to update their systems within the next few days, unless their Xbox is set to “Instant On” in which case the Xbox One will automatically check for updates once turned off. Aside from the fixes to the party and friends systems, the update also prepares the Xbox One for the new audio adapter, Twitch broadcasting (available next week), as well as including SmartGlass updates, live TV improvements, Dolby Digital support and myriad other tweaks and changes.

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Dust: An Elysian Tail, which came in at number 14 on XBLA Fans’ list ofbest arcade games of all time, has passed an incredible milestone with creator Dean Dodrill …
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Iridium, the developer of Sequence (a hybrid RPG/rhythm game), has announced that its next title There Came an Echo will be headed to Xbox One. There Came and Echo …
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As part of an interview feature that will soon appear here at XBLA Fans, we asked Constant C creator Light Wang if there were any plans for a version …
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The second episode of The Walking Dead Season 2 was already announced to be coming this week, but now we have an exact date. You can get your hands on …
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The ambitious game creation tool Project Spark has had its beta extended beyond the confines of the PC and onto the Xbox One starting today. Project Spark on the …
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Strider was developed by Double Helix Games and published by Capcom. It was released on February 19, 2014 on Xbox Live Arcade and Xbox One for $14.99. An Xbox 360 copy was provided for review purposes.

Strider has had a long history in gaming, despite not having too many games. First arriving in arcades in 1989, Strider‘s fast-paced ninja gameplay spawned an NES port and numerous knock-offs. Despite being well-received, the game didn’t get a true sequel until 1999’s Strider II. Outside of being a playable fighter in the Marvel vs. Capcom series, protagonist Strider Hiryu hasn’t been in a game for over 10 years.

Now the franchise has finally been awoken from its slumber with Strider, a reboot that re-tells the original game’s story. Taking place in the year 2048, the game opens with an organization of high-tech ninjas known as Striders sending their best agent, Hiryu, on a deadly mission. Armed with his deadly plasma Cypher and loads of ninja skills, Hiryu is tasked with assassinating the the city of Kazahk’s evil dictator, Grandmaster Meio. The adventure is great at delivering fast-paced action, at least when there aren’t too many speed bumps in the way.

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This isn’t a new argument; it’s been made before. Chances are high that you’ve made it yourself once or twice. Recent events, however, warrant revisiting it. Microsoft teased us all last week with a feature that the Xbox One should have had at launch. It told us that we’d all have the ability to do on Xbox One what we’ve enjoyed doing on digital distribution platforms like Steam and Origin for years: pre-purchase and pre-download a game prior to its release. Then, in a move that felt like some sort of cruel joke, Microsoft took it all back.

Just kidding, you guys

“Whoops, our bad. Sorry if you got excited, but we’re not actually going to let you do that thing we said we’d let you do that we know you want us to let you do,” Microsoft said in a statement after removing the pre-download option for first-person shooter Titanfall.

OK, no, it didn’t actually say that — but it might as well have. Here’s what Microsoft actually told told Polygon of its blunder: “The pre-purchase offer page was posted in error. We apologize for any confusion.”

The Xbox.com page for Titanfall, which releases on March 11, temporarily had the digital pre-download option that has been so conspicuously absent from digital Xbox purchase pages to date. It was quickly removed, and now Microsoft is apologizing for dangling that carrot out there before yanking it back and locking it away. Polygon captured the official explanation for how pre-downloading on Xbox would work before Microsoft “fixed the glitch.”

Pre-purchase: You will be charged the full price immediately for this pre-purchase. Xbox One game expected to release on March 11th, 2014. You may download the game from Xbox Live before then, but it will not be playable until after 12:01 AM PST on the release date in your country.

For a brief time, at least, it looked like gaming digitally on Xbox was now going to be a little bit more like gaming digitally on PC. It looked like it was going to have something that has become so commonplace in PC gaming that it’s no longer a value-added feature; it’s an expected part of the service that is taken for granted. Unfortunately, unlike those freewheeling distributors of digital PC games, Microsoft has interests other than its own to consider.

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