Today marks the first day following the wrap-up of the GDC 2010
interview series. So first things first, thanks to all the developers
who took the time to chat. You’ve probably noticed that we’re still
missing Tuning and Today I Die, but I’m still
waiting to hear back from those devs regarding interviews. Interested
readers are invited to cross their fingers, but warned that held
breath can result in anoxia and disappointment.

As cool as it was to cover these interviews, we’ve missed a hell of a
lot of interesting news during the interim, so I thought I’d spend
today on the highlights reel.

When 2D gaming was king, the streets ran red with brawlers. You couldn’t swing a sharp stick without hitting a musclebound high-schooler out to save his kidnapped girlfriend from local gangs of unreasonably skilled martial artists. Then 2D gaming went dormant, and notable brawlers all but ceased to be, with only God of War to mark their passing. Now that the rise of casual gamers has emphasized portable systems and downloadable content, tiny games are big again, and brawlers like The Dishwasher: Dead Samurai have returned to wreak their bloody vengeance on our thumbs. Despite the superficial similarities to erstwhile brawlers, The Dishwasher inherits more from God of War than Double Dragon, and is all the better for it.

With the advent of the Xbox 360′s NXE dashboard interface, a bizarre corporate game of telephone resulted in Sony’s intellectual property (films from its subsidiary, Columbia Pictures) being sold on competitor Microsoft’s online service (via NetFlix). In a move that could be uncharitably characterized as a childish tantrum, Sony last week delisted its Columbia Pictures films from the service.

This week, however, Sony has changed its mind and decided to do business again with NetFlix. Although it might be possible to explain away the sudden withdrawal without appealing to financial skullduggery, the sudden and rapid reinstatement of the titles is a bit suspicious.

Underperforming Live Arcade titles can breathe a collective sigh of relief today because they’ll live to see another day. In response to complaints that it’s just too difficult to sort the wheat from the chaff, Microsoft had earlier promised to cull underperforming games from its download service.

Microsoft has conditionally rescinded the threat, releasing that they have developed a list of exclusion criteria and are content with that for now. This announcement comes in advance of an Xbox Dashboard update intended in part to improve the accessibility of Live Arcade. However, uncharitable analysts have no doubt noticed that the company now has a gun to the heads of some of its developers.

When VentureBeat reported on the failure rate among XBox 360 consoles, they interviewed a temp game tester, Robert Delaware, who consented to having his name revealed. In what Evil Avatar is already calling the wrongful firing of a whistleblower, Delaware has been terminated for violation of NDA. The firing occurred within a week of the [...]

The Seattle Times has reported a class action lawsuit against Microsoft over Xbox Live downtime during the holidays.

It’s interesting to note that Microsoft’s response was to salve the wound with a free Xbox Live Arcade download rather than by granting a free extension to the Live contracts commensurate with time lost. Even if different gamers lost variable amounts of time, it seems that awarding all Live users a service extension of a week or two would be unlikely to wreck the Microsoft financial dreadnaught.