mark of the ninja

Another year is in the books, and, as expected, XBLA has continued to grow and reach milestones that one would not have imagined possible seven years ago when the first few XBLA games released. In 2012, XBLA games set many records only to break those same records again and again in the ensuing weeks. From Fez to Trials Evolution to Minecraft, the downloads just kept queuing up all over the world. The success of XBLA in 2012 was impressive to say the least.

That meant that we had quite the task in front of us when coming together as a staff to try to decide which game to pick for each Game of the Year category below. The nominee list for each category offered so many great choices, but at the end of the day, only one game could win each award and as a staff of passionate XBLA gamers, we think we did a pretty good job of presenting the highlights of Xbox Live Arcade in 2012. Hope you like what we picked, but if not, let us know in the comments what you would have voted for. Without further delay, here are the 2012 XBLA Fans Game of the Year awards as chosen by the XBLA Fans staff.

Read More

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 …
Read More

As the holiday shopping season winds to a close, take a second from dropping wads of cash on your friends, family and other loved ones and get a little something for yourself – and XBLA is making it crazy easy, because through today a number of platformers are on deep discount: More than a 50 percent slash in some cases. Hit the jump for a list of games you can nab for a steal today only:

Read More

In a blog post he’s since deleted, Xbox Live Director of Programming, Larry “Major Nelson” Hryb, announced the “Countdown to 2013” sale for the marketplace. The sale, which begins on December 18 and runs through December 31, will see discounts for a raft of content from certain franchises and publishers on both XBLA and the wider marketplace.

Although the official page has been pulled, the folks over at NeoGAF managed to compile a reasonably comprehensive list of the titles to go on sale and the date their discounts will take effect. Unfortunately, Major Nelson never revealed the discounted prices at any stage. But if you hope to catch any of the games or DLC in the list below for cheap, it may pay to stock up on MSP!

However, the fact that the official page has been pulled (even though most of the details are out in the wild) has us at least a little concerned, so maybe try not to pin all your hopes and dreams on the “Countdown to 2013” sale.

The full list of currently known discounted XBLA items follows:

Read More

Weekly Roundup compiles all the biggest news stories, reviews and features from the week into one handy post on the weekends.

A bit of a slow week due to the holidays, but it’s hard to complain with a week of great XBLA sales. XBLA Fans wants to know if you picked up anything good during the holiday deals.

Read More

It’s that time of year again — SPIKE TV’s annual Video Game Awards. This year marks the tenth anniversary of the tribute show, showcasing the big names …
Read More

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.

Read More

[springboard type=”youtube” id=”T8uODyf-Pdk” player=”xbla001″ width=”640″ height=”400″ ]

All things considered, Mark of the Ninja was a pretty great stealth action game. It was chock-full of inventive, fun (if occasionally repetitive) …
Read More

Taking advantage of its one week’s head start, Harmonix’s Rock Band Blitz more than doubled the sales of its closest XBLA rival for the month of September, according to …
Read More

• Minecraft has reached yet another sales milestone on XBLA. As announced on 4J Studio’s Twitter, a whopping 4 million units have been sold to date.
• If you’re a …
  Read More