First-ever Xbox Live Arcade Awards

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

Free XBLA game this week

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.

Free games? Sounds sweet to us!

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.