Microsoft reveals new Summer of Arcade
Castlevania and Lara Croft lead five-week promotion
Microsoft has announced details of its 2010 Summer of Arcade promotion on Xbox Live Arcade, led by Konami's Castlevania: Harmony of Despair and Square Enix/Eidos' Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light.
Five games will be included in the promotion, with the new Castlevania title being a multiplayer adaption of the long-running 2D action series. The Guardian of Light is a two-player co-operative adventure featuring a fixed isometric perspective, rather than the free-roaming camera of Tomb Rader.
The third game is Hydro Thunder Hurricane, a remake/reboot of Midway coin-op and Dreamcast water-based racing game Hydro Thunder.
The other two games in the promotion are Limbo and Monday Night Combat, both also published by Microsoft. Limbo is a stylish black & white platform game from indie studio Playdead Games, while Monday Night Combat is a class-based shooter often compared to Valve's Team Fortress 2.
The annual promotion event has previously proven highly successful in highlighting prominent Xbox Live Arcade titles, with the first line-up including Castle Crashers, Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved 2, Bionic Commando: Rearmed and Braid. This subsequently led to a 67 per cent increase in revenues on the online service.
The promotion of Trials HD, 'Splosion Man, TMNT: Turtles in Time Re-shelled and Marvel Vs. Capcom 2 in 2009 was even more successful, with a subsequent 200 per cent increase in revenues.