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If you aren’t among the millions who have already downloaded Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition, you will soon find yourself presented with another option when the game becomes available on a disc. According to PlayXBLA, the disc will contain everything from the original downloadable game, including the most recent title updates and content. It will also work in conjunction with other players and receive updates just like the downloadable game. In other words, it is the exact same game, just not loaded on your hard drive.

After its US release on April 30 it will come to Australia, Hong Kong, India, New Zealand, Singapore and Taiwan in early June. You can see the box it’ll come packed in right after the jump.

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Major Nelson has released the list of content hitting the Xbox Marketplace today. Among the releases is the fickle Scott Pilgrim DLC that introduces online multiplayer and an additional playable …
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Legendary video game designer Ron Gilbert announced yesterday via his blog that he has parted ways with Double Fine Productions. The news comes just shy of two months after …
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Phantom Breaker: Battle Grounds was developed by Release Universal Network and published by Mages. It was released February 27, 2013 for 800 MSP. A copy was provided for review purposes.

Phantom Breaker: Battle Grounds is a 2D, retro-styled, side-scrolling beat-em-up in a similar vein to 2010’s popular XBLA brawler, Scott Pilgrim vs The World. In Phantom Breaker: Battlegrounds, players take on the role of one of the four colorful starting characters: Mikoto, Waka, Itsuki and Yuzuha, and battle their way through the streets of Tokyo and finally to a Demonsphere universe in order to rescue Waka’s sister Nagi from the clutches of the evil Phantom.

The XBLA game is actually a spinoff of Phantom Breaker, a retail fighting game released in Japan by 5pb, however the presentation ensures no prior knowledge of the characters or story is required. The game is bundled with four modes including Story, Arcade, Co-op, and a PvP Battleground mode. Both multiplayer modes can be played online or offline but do not allow for you to bring your couch buddy into online territory. Read More

Star Wars: First Assault isn’t the reincarnation of the now defunct Battlefront series like many had hoped. According to a Kotaku report citing an unnamed source who is said to be “familiar with the project,” Star Wars: First Assault is a first-person shooter consisting of 8-on-8 matches between the Rebel Alliance and Imperial Stormtroopers.

First Assault popped up on our radar last year, when LucasArts — the gaming arm of the Lucas empire — filed trademark and domain registrations for the title. It was a move that was not-so-subtly reinforced a month later when a solitary image leaked depicting a confrontation between opposing ground forces of the Star Wars universe, complete with an XBLA banner.

We’ve since suspected that Star Wars: First Assault could be the byproduct of Battlefront III, the long-rumored entry to the franchise that spent six misbegotten years in development and bounced between development studios before being unceremoniously killed. Allegedly, development on Battlefront III had been merged with Star Wars: Battlefront Online, a new iteration of the series that was designed for a console generation with an approaching expiration date and collapsed under its own weight, leaving years of assets unused.

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In recent interviews with Edge and Eurogamer, the makers of Braid and Super Meat Boy expressed their frustration with developing for Xbox Live Arcade. As independent developers, taking on the heated business of console development on top of development costs is more stress than its worth, say the developers.

“The overhead cost of just developing for those consoles is insane,” explained Tommy Refenes from Team Meat. “It costs zero dollars to develop on Steam if you already have a computer. When you look at PlayStation and Xbox and Nintendo, you have to buy thousand dollar dev kits and pay for certification and pay for testing and pay for localisation – you have to do all these things and at the end of the day it’s like, ‘I could have developed for other platforms and it would’ve been easier.'”

On top of development costs, there are lawyers, fees and ambiguity to sort through that cause an equally overwhelming headache. Ed McMillen from Team Meat said that to bring his studio’s games to consoles, his team would need “some magical middleman who would just appear and do all of our business for us… We went in and found out what it was like to develop for a console and the reality is there’s no loyalty on either side and it’s a business. And when you step in to that business arena it goes from us making art and it turns into business.”

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It’s been a long time since we’ve heard news of Gravity’s remake of Double Dragon II, subtitled Wander of the Dragons. In fact, …
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What we are playing is a weekly column published on Sunday. Select members  of the team talk about the games they’ve been playing over the past week and  which they’re …
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The side-scrolling Sega Genesis classic Castle of Illusion Starring Mickey Mouse may be coming to XBLA if recent classification ratings are any indication.  Not to be confused …
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