Beyond Good & Evil HD, Torchlight Anchor Winter XBLA 'House Party' Promotion

The March releases of Beyond Good & Evil HD and Torchlight sit in the middle of a five-game "Xbox Live Arcade House Party" schedule of weekly Xbox 360 downloadable game releases starting next week and extending into March. The promotion begins with February 16's release of Hard Corps: Uprising, a new entry in Konami's 2D run-and-gun Contra series with a price of 1200 Microsoft points ($15). The first console port of PopCap's PC and mobile gem-matching hit Bejeweled Blitz arrives one week later for 800 MS points ($10). March 2 sees the long-anticipated HD update to Ubisoft's 2003 action-adventure cult hit Beyond Good and Evil, which previously had a more nebulous 2011 release target, for 800 MS Points ($10). The Xbox 360 conversion of PC dungeon crawler Torchlight hits on March 9 for 1200 MS Points ($15). The House Party promotion concludes on March 16 with Krome and Microsoft's multiplayer-centric Full House Poker for 800 MS Points ($10). Being in a major XBLA promotion can make a big difference to sales for certain Xbox Live Arcade titles. However, Gamasutra sales analysis shows similar XBLA promotional vehicle Summer of Arcade seemed to create less of a sales bump last year, compared to strong performance for 2009's summer downloads.