By Eli Green
January 21, 2008 - 23:59
In
recognition of the many talented development teams who, together,
have created over 112 Xbox Live Arcade games, Microsoft announced
that it will be announcing awards for the top Xbox Live Arcade games
of 2007, later this year. Several of the award category winners will
be chosen by the community itself. The voting for the awards starts
tomorrow at 2:00 a.m. Pacific Standard Time and runs through
Wednesday, January 30
th
at 11:59 p.m. Pacific Standard Time. Microsoft is encouraging fans of
Xbox Live Arcade to cast their votes for the first
ever
Xbox Live Arcade Awards, for 2007, at
http://www.xbox.com/en-US/xblaawards/
.
The finalists in each award category were selected by a panel of consumer and video game industry journalists, and the winners will be determined by popular vote. Microsoft will announce the winners of the inaugural Xbox LIVE Arcade Awards – 2007 at the Game Developer Conference in February.
Below is the list of award categories that will be open for public voting:
•
Best
Overall Arcade Game
•
Best
Classic Game
•
Best
Original Game
•
Best
Family Friendly Game
•
Best
Competitive Multiplayer Game
•
Best
Cooperative Multiplayer Game
Other award categories include the following:
•
Best
selling game
•
Most
played game
•
Highest
rated game
•
Staff
choice
Along
with Microsoft's announcement of the first-ever Xbox Live Arcade
Awards, the company also announced today that Xbox Live members
around the world will be able to download the award-winning
Undertow
free of charge for a limited time, starting this Wednesday, January
23
rd
at 2:00 a.m. Pacific Standard Time. Why the free game? Well, earlier
this year, and late last year, Xbox Live users were subject to
consistent
service outages, and this is essentially Microsoft's way of
saying, “We're sorry”.
The nice thing is that if you already have the game, Microsoft will do something for you, as Kotaku's Mike Fahey found out after calling Microsoft support because he already has it himself. North American Xbox Live members just need to call 1-800-4-MYXBOX if they have already purchased the game. Normally 800 Microsoft Points, Undertow is rated E10+ for Everyone 10 and up.
At
the Digital Life Design Conference (DLD) in Munich, Germany today,
Electronic Arts unveiled
Battlefield
Heroes
,
an all-new Play 4 Free cartoon-style shooter which is set to bring
the classic
Battlefield
gameplay
to a new audience. The game will be available for download at
www.battlefiled-heroes.com
this summer, and is EA's first title to be offered absolutely free.
Wondering why EA would release a game at no cost to the consumer? The
answer is quite simple really. The game is part of EA's new
web-focused free to download and play business model, which generates
revenue through a in-game advertisements and micro-transactions. The
game even features a built-in matchmaking system that ensures players
of equal skill are paired together for fair play.
Battlefield
Heroes
will
be released for the PC as a free download this summer.