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As reported last week, Minecraft Xbox 360 Edition was scheduled to receive a healthy dose of fixes, changes and additions in the form of a title update. Today, Major Nelson, …
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This week’s Deal of Week seems to have a board game/puzzle theme, letting gold subscribers grab these great puzzlers for half off.

Carcassonne – 400 MSP Catan – 400 …
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As the first season of Telltale Games’ The Walking Dead nears its conclusion, the developer invites players to see how their decisions from episode four, Around Every Corner, stack up against the community as a whole, just as they have with the other three episodes. See the jump for more – but be warned, spoilers for episode four abound.

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The 8-bit action-adventure parody, Retro City Rampage, is finally headed for Xbox Live Arcade, reports Eurogamer. Marred by delays, the title was initially to be released simultaneously across multiple platforms, …
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Ten years ago Microsoft launched Xbox Live. Today, they are celebrating with a slew of rewards and discounts. The first one you should claim is Wreckateer, because it’s free for today and tomorrow (November 15-16) only. Also, Microsoft is running a sweepstakes for a special anniversary edition Xbox 360 console (sorry, North America only). Their official post has all the details and a letter from Marc Whitten thanking YOU for making Xbox Live what it is today. Here is what’s on sale…

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The November 2012 issue of Game Developer Magazine features their “Power 50” list. These are 50 individuals who have made significant contributions to the evolution of game development in multiple areas. As fans of Xbox Live Arcade, we want to shout out the XBLA developers who earned their place on the list with some of our favorite games this year. We salute you.

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XBLAFans was able to sit in on a conference call last week with Guardians of Middle-earth Producer Bob Roberts and Senior Producer Ruth Pomandl. They shared intricate details about the game’s development process, what it was like to balance a MOBA (multiplayer online battle arena) game for the console space and some details about how various systems will work in the game.

Players new to the MOBA genre should consider checking out Monolith’s own video tutorial series explaining it. The basic idea, though, is that players choose one of a number of heroes (five of them are unlocked initially, and the others are unlocked via in-game currency), and fight on a team of five champions against a team of five other champions. While each champion has unique talents and attributes, there are five basic character archetypes. These include:

• Enchanters –- low maximum health and low physical damage, but they output lots of ability damage and withstand ability damage better than other classes.

• Defenders –- high survivability but low damage.

• Warriors –- the most balanced class and the most versatile as a result. They take a fair amount of damage and deal a fair amount in return.

• Strikers –- the physical damage equivalent of Enchanters, meaning lots of damage but very low survivability.

• Tacticians –- slightly more survivability than average but focus on AOE disruption and controlling the flow of movement across a lane.

In most PC MOBA games, players shop at an item store for items to upgrade their characters as the game progresses. Guardians mixes things up by introducing a less UI-intensive series of systems that should help make the console experience go more smoothly. Players can set loadouts similar to League of Legends rune and mastery systems  before a game begins, except that the loadout options in Guardians are even more extensive. There are three loadout systems in place for players to manage and utilize throughout a game — Potions, Commands and Guardian Belts.

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Gamasutra have published their Xbox Live Arcade sales analysis for October. The runaway success for October was unsurprisingly Happy Wars, XBLA’s first “free-to-play” game with over 760K downloads in …
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The end is near! Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the last few years, you’ve heard of The Walking Dead. Originally an award-winning comic book series by Robert Kirkman, …
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The comic mini-series that saw the Marvel universe torn asunder back in 2006, Civil War, is coming to Xbox Live Arcade. Zen Studios, the development house behind the addictive Pinball FX2, announced today that the new standalone DLC table, Marvel Civil War, will be available for download November 21 for 240 MSP.

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