[We round up the top console digital download news of the last week from sister console digital download site GamerBytes, including brand-new game announcements and scoops from the world of Xbox Live Arcade, PlayStation Network, WiiWare, PSP Minis and DSiWare.]

This week is about developers, developers, developers. We've spoken to 5 separate houses of game development to ask them about the past, present and future. We will continue this throughout the month, but definitely have a look at what the developers of WiiWare, DSiWare, XBLA, PSN and Xbox Indies have to say about their current situations.

GamerBytes Originals

2009 Developer Reflections: Capybara Games
2009 Developer Reflections: Arkedo Studios
2009 Developer Reflections: Digital Leisure
2009 Developer Reflections: Over the Top Games

Store Updates

XBLA Update - Serious Sam HD, 0 Day Attack On Earth DLC, Cheap Magic: The Gathering
NA PSN Store Update - Zen Pinball Table, Magic Orbz DLC, Dynogems Minis
EU PSN Store Update - Diner Dash, UNO, Zen PinballDLC And More
NA Nintendo Update - Phoenix Wright, Chronos Twin DX, Jazzy Billiards And More
EU Nintendo Update - Phoenix Wright: Ace Attourney, Electroplankton, Sudoku

For a while now we've been asking a question - just what is Gameloft's Legends of Exidia? We've seen it on the ESRB, the Australian Game Rating Board and Germany's USK system, but we've not heard a peep about it. After enough pestering we made a break through, and today we have some exclusive artwork of Gameloft's upcoming DSiWare Action RPG.

The following is the synopsis for the game's storyline:

The peace of Exidia is being threatened. An army of demos, the Morgost, has risen again and they have invaded Olinor, the kingdom of the princess Sofia, guardian of the power of Spell.

The Morgost have already captured the Orb of Spell and Sofia suspects they are looking for the Orb of Sword. Their intention is the darkest one possible: the resurrection of the almighty Daraka.

The final hope for the world is to prevent the Morgost army from reaching the Orb of Sword, hidden in Minasdril.

Louis, listening only to his heart, decides to leave his villiage to help Sofia drive back this threat. But the path to victory will be long, and his mission will lead him across all of the lands of Exidia, infested by innumerable forms of evil.

From quest to quest and with every passing encounter, he'll get closer to discovering the source of this demonic plague.

Just based on the artwork you can see Gameloft are going for a much more Japanese look than anything they've done previously. They will be revealing the trailer of the game later this week, and the game should be available within the next month.

In the meantime, check out the larger piece of artwork, as well as art of Louis and Sofia, after the break.

There's plenty to be happy about this week - there's something for everybody, and by the looks of it, all it is great!

DSiWare headlined this week with 4 new products - Dark Void Zero, the 8-Bit reimagining of Capcom's upcoming Dark Void game, Star Ship Defense, the latest of Q-Games DSiWare releases, Chronos Twins, the original DS game that never made it to the US, and Me And My Dogs: Friends Forever. The first 3 are 500 Points, the last being 800.

For WiIWare there are two new releases - the super wacky Muscle March from Namco for 500 Points, and The Amazing Brain Train!, which was ported over from the PC thanks to Wahoo aka NinjaBee. Topping off the releases is Shadow Dancer: The Secret of Shinobi for the Genesis, which will send you back 800 Points.

Back in November we revealed that After Burner Climax might be coming to the PlayStation Network thanks to the Korean Rating Board. Now these rumors appear to be true thanks to some leaked direct feed screenshots.

The screenshots, obtained by Gameswire, are actually from the supposed XBLA version and look very, very nice. It looks to be a direct port of the Arcade version released a few years ago, sans the giant cabinet it came in. At the very least it looks better than those leaked Sonic Adventure screenshots.

Look for an official announcement very soon.

Uber Entertainment has revealed a new contender for the Xbox Live Arcade's growing shooter library - Monday Night Combat.

Set in a futuristic combat sport, Monday Night Combat is a class based 3rd person shooter with a cartoony aesthetic. Choose between the Assault, Tank, Support, Sniper, Gunner or Assassin classes and hook up with a bunch of friends online to blow up Robots.

The game supports two modes: Blitz - where you must defend your Money Ball from hordes of Robots with up to 3 friends, similar to that of Gears of War's Horde mode, and Crossfire - where you fight against an opposing team and opposing robots for supremacy.

While it certainly has taken a piece here and there from several other multiplayer titles out there at the moment, it certainly looks unique enough to stand out from the crowds. The Blitz mode itself seems to be the main draw, something that has yet to be made as a standalong XBLA title.

The game is set for a 2010 release, so expect to see more in the coming months.

[GamerBytes editor Ryan Langley examines Decembers 2009's Xbox Live Arcade debuts and continuing successes, with charts and leaderboard data, to find out what digital XBLA titles are doing well at this year's end.]

December was a huge hit for the retail space of Xbox 360, but how has the digital side fared? In the past, December hasn't been a time where big XBLA games have been released, but this month we've seen Call Of Duty Classic, Alien Breed Evolution and Trials HD expansion packs pop in, amongst several other titles.

This month we not only look at how new releases have fared, but also 2009 as a whole. We look at the Top 20 downloaded games of 2009 and see just how many people have played them this year, plus we look at just what sort of effect Christmas day has on Xbox Live Arcade.

Unfortunately, a number of the weekly XBLA charts passed on by Larry 'Major Nelson' Hryb were missing for December, but nonetheless, here's the information released for the week:

[It's been a busy year for the downloadable games business - several new developers have emerged on the scene on the Xbox Live Arcade, PlayStation Network and WiiWare while new game environments have emerged with the Xbox Live Indie Games, DSiWare and PSN minis.

Development teams can be tens of people strong, or sometimes they can be just one guy barely out of school. There's still so much to learn about development, so we contacted developers across the gaming landscape to ask them what they enjoyed about the last year, what was the most troubling, and what lessons they'll be bringing into the new decade.]

Nathan Fouts made the journey across from full time development at Insomniac Games to full time Indie developer back in 2008, and his first title Weapon Of Choice was a critical success but had troubles on the Xbox Live Indie Games space.

Now a year later and two more games on the way, we ask Nathan what he's learned over the past year, and what his plans are in 2010.

What were you most happy with during the game's development?

Nathan Fouts: For Grapple Buggy and Shoot 1UP, I think prototyping the fun parts early has saved us a lot of times, and gotten closer to the most pure interpretation of my designs. Both games employ some unusual gameplay creations which take a lot of time to hone.

Getting some placeholder art into place, and early versions of the code to connect it helps immensely in trying out different variations on grappling mechanics, buggy controls, combat grabs, phalanx maneuvers, fancy powerups, and more. It really can’t be understated how important it is to prototype things then slowly iterate towards perfection.

What were you least happy with, in retrospect?

NF: I hate how making cool games takes so long! Why is that? But seriously, I try very hard to keep my work organized and plan for the future, but also readjust along the way. Still, I find times (days, even sometimes nearly weeks) in which I flounder.

It’s usually after a big milestone was hit (finishing a playable build, showing a game to the media, etc) but afterwards, I just seem to drift about, sort halfway working and halfway dreaming. I wish I had the courage and confidence to simply say “Okay, for these two weeks, I’m off work, and I’m decompressing.”

It seems obvious in retrospect that’s what I needed to do, but with our small business pressure to finish games and have them generate income, it’s hard to justify before it happens. I actually like the pressure, as I think I make more competent and focused games this way, but I think predicting the need for decompression would help a lot.

What is the biggest lesson you're going to apply to the next game you make?

NF: Not every game needs every feature—including powerful though slow-to-perfect engine features. The better we can determine just what is in each game, and what is not, then we can be careful with working on just what each game needs.

I think focus on any game project helps it in innumerable ways, especially in the end game in which players can intuitively feel a game that simply holds together better and even brings about Gestalt-like enjoyment, by virtue of its carefully crafted design.

[Weapon Of Choice is currently available on the Xbox Live Indie Games space, and Shoot 1UP should be appearing very shortly. Grapple Buggy will hopefully be out later this year, either for Xbox Indies or Xbox Live Arcade]

[Of note to GamerBytes readers - there are a number of console downloadable games nominated in the Choice Awards this year, and the winners will be announced at GDC in San Francisco this March - we'll be covering the space both in the main conference and the Indie Games Summit.]

Organizers have revealed the nominees for the tenth annual Game Developers Choice Awards, the leading peer-based video game industry awards. Nominations this year are led by Naughty Dog's Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, with seven nominations.

The acclaimed title is closely followed by five nominations for Thatgamecompany's evocative downloadable game Flower, and four nominations for Ubisoft Montreal's well-received Renaissance action game sequel Assassin's Creed II.

In addition to the aforementioned Uncharted 2: Among Thieves and Assassin's Creed II, this year's Game Of The Year nominations are rounded out by BioWare's Dragon Age: Origins, From Software's Demon's Souls, and Rocksteady Studios' Batman: Arkham Asylum.

Other multiple nominees include notably diverse titles such as PopCap's Plants Vs. Zombies and Infinity Ward's Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2.

The changes in today's game industry are well represented in the Game Developers Choice Awards this year by the inclusion of multiple iPhone titles (including Flight Control and Spider: The Secret Of Bryce Manor) as nominations in existing categories, as well as console downloadable titles such as Q Games' PixelJunk Shooter and RedLynx's Trials HD.

Organizers have also further diversified the awards by adding a Best New Social/Online Games category this year, with both Facebook and free-to-play online games competing for the new prize.

[It's been a busy year for the downloadable games business - several new developers have emerged on the scene on the Xbox Live Arcade, PlayStation Network and WiiWare while new game environments have emerged with the Xbox Live Indie Games, DSiWare and PSN minis.

Development teams can be tens of people strong, or sometimes they can be just one guy barely out of school. There's still so much to learn about development, so we contacted developers across the gaming landscape to ask them what they enjoyed about the last year, what was the most troubling, and what lessons they'll be bringing into the new decade.]

Today we speak to Gaijin Games, who have released three titles on WiiWare during 2009 - BIT TRIP BEAT, CORE and VOID and have been quite successful with their almost "episodic" series. We talk to CEO Alex Neuse about what it's like

What were you most happy with during the game's development?

Alex Neuse: During development of each of the BIT.TRIP games, the prototyping phase is definitely my favorite. As a team, we prototype very well. It's exciting to work with an engineer and bounce ideas back and forth and see stuff happen on screen.

Since the prototype is mostly throw-away work, we're not concerned with best practices and doing things "right", so as an ideas guy, it's a great time for me to quickly see if my ideas are as good in practice as they are in theory. During the prototype phase, everyone also starts shouting out their own ideas and sometimes really great gameplay come from all of us sitting down and getting some hands-on time with the new hotness.

What were you least happy with, in retrospect?

AN: I'm least happy with the development timelines within which we're working. Making a console game in 3 months is just gnarly. Each BIT.TRIP game so far has been developed over the course of roughly 3 months. What this means is that for a team that values proper sprints/milestones, we have a milestone every 2 weeks and then we're on to something else.

Sometimes trying to start, implement, and finish off a feature in a 2 week time frame just isn't enough time. I'd like to take more time to sit and play our games... I'd like to let them percolate and then go back and refine them. But we just haven't had the time to do that yet. I definitely don't want our products feeling like rush-jobs, you know?

What is the biggest lesson you're going to apply to the next game you make?

AN: For the BIT.TRIP series, we're relatively locked down on a lot of our work practices and overall game direction decisions, but once we're done with the BIT.TRIP series, we're definitely going to try something new. With BIT.TRIP, we made a series that I would very much like to play. It is obtuse, heavily stylized, and very challenging.

Now, there's certainly an audience for that out there, but it's not as big as we'd like. We're going to try to apply more mass-marketable ideas into our next game (or game series). Now, of course, we're going to add our own distinct flavor to the game, but retro-action games are not the only kinds of games we want to make. I think with the next game, we're going to try our hand at something everyone can get into.

[BEAT, CORE and VOID are all now available on the WiiWare service, with their next title RUNNER to appear in just a few months.]

[GamerBytes editor Ryan Langley examines Decembers 2009's PlayStation Network debuts and continuing successes, with charts and leaderboard data, to find out what digital PSN titles are doing well at this year's end.]

Last week, just ahead of the release of U.S. NPD console retail numbers, Sony claimed that December 2009 was the single highest revenue month ever for PlayStation Network.

Today we look into how that came to be, using Leaderboard and list data. Along the way, we can gain some insight into how well games like PixelJunk Shooter, Final Fantasy VIII and Revenge Of The Wounded Dragons have done in December, while also taking a look at some of the hits released earlier this year.

Here's the top downloads for PlayStation Network in North America for the month:

Gameloft have revealed the trailer for Legends Of Exidia, their upcoming Action RPG for DSiWare.

For a DSiWare game is looks quite cool, unique for a western company like Gameloft at the very least. The game will be available on January 29th in Europe, February in the US and Spring in Japan.

Konami's semi sequel to their classic PSOne Tactical RPG Vandal Hearts is now available for 1200MSP. If you're into Final Fantasy Tactics you might want to give this one a look.

The second game this week is Death by Cube, the crazy twin stick shooter by Premium Agency and Square Enix, give the demo a try here.

[It's been a busy year for the downloadable games business - several new developers have emerged on the scene on the Xbox Live Arcade, PlayStation Network and WiiWare while new game environments have emerged with the Xbox Live Indie Games, DSiWare and PSN minis.

Development teams can be tens of people strong, or sometimes they can be just one guy barely out of school. There's still so much to learn about development, so we contacted developers across the gaming landscape to ask them what they enjoyed about the last year, what was the most troubling, and what lessons they'll be bringing into the new decade.]

Twisted Pixel burst onto the Xbox Live Arcade in 2009 with the release of two titles - The Maw and 'Splosion Man, both very well received and selling a whole mountain of copies.

We spoke with CEO Michael Wilford about what he's learned throughout last year, and what he has planned for new IP Comic Jumper in 2010.

What were you most happy with during the game's development?

Michael Wilford: With The Maw, we're most happy with the amount of personality we were able to express in Maw. With Splosion Man, we're most happy with the level design and challenge it presents while still retaining a broad appeal and lots of humor. With Comic Jumper, so far we're the most proud of the game's scope, like its visual design, graphics effects, and amount of content that we're able to slam into a downloadable title.

What were you least happy with, in retrospect?

MW: With The Maw, we would have liked to include more levels. With Splosion Man, we would have liked to add more backgrounds and environments. With Comic Jumper, we're taking the extra time to add in everything we can think of, so it's all good so far!

What is the biggest lesson you're going to apply to the next game you make?

MW: The biggest thing that will affect the future development of our games isn't a lesson as much as it is a happy consequence. Now that we're on our third title, we have the elbow room to take a little longer, spend a little more money, improve upon our mature engine, and just make better games in general.

[The Maw and 'Splosion Man are currently available on the Xbox Live Arcade for $10 each. You can also find The Maw on Steam]

Greed Corp is a strange strategy title coming to the Xbox Live Arcade and PlayStation Network, but I've had a bit of difficulty figuring out how it works. Thanks to the above video we now have a better understanding on this quirky strategy game.

W! Games are traveling the United States showing off their title to several outlets, and for Giant Bomb they gave the game a little quick look. It's certainly different to anything I've played before, hopefully we'll get out hands on it sooner rather than later.

Earlier this week we revealed RISK was coming to the Xbox Live Arcade, now thanks to IGN we've got our first look at the wacky reincarnation of the board game classic.

While this is only a teaser of what the game will look like, you can see the style of cartoony havoc they're going for. War against cats? Alright.

You can check out a quick Q&A with the developers over here. We should see more on this game very soon.

GDC 2010 organizers have revealed an initial set of Independent Games Summit talks for the March event, including notable lectures by Ron Carmel (World Of Goo) and Randy Smith (Spider).

The summit, now in its fourth year and taking place on March 9th-10th during Game Developers Conference 2010 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, features lectures, postmortems and roundtables from some of the most notable independent game creators -- including many former and current Independent Games Festival finalists and winners.

Overall, the 2010 Independent Games Summit "seeks to highlight the brightest and the best of indie development, with discussions ranging from game design philosophy, distribution, business, marketing, and much more."

Advisors for the Summit include Independent Games Festival chairman Simon Carless and independent developers such as Flashbang Studios founder Matthew Wegner (Off-Road-Velociraptor Safari), as well as colleague Steve Swink (Shadow Physics).

With a final set of lectures to be announced soon, a number of major talks have been revealed on the Summit homepage. Highlights include the following:

- Indies and Publishers: Fixing a System That Never Worked
In IGS 2010's kickoff talk, 2D Boy co-founder Ron Carmel (World Of Goo) will discuss "the problems with the current model (a tenant farming ecosystem built upon a weak security model), contrast how Valve and Microsoft deal with developers, and propose that creating more transparency in the game industry will give rise to a healthy model for developers and publishers/distributors to work together."

- Increasing Our Reach: Designing To Grab and Retain Players
During his keynote talk, Looking Glass Studios veteran and Steven Spielberg collaborator Randy Smith (Thief) will talkk about the design concepts behind 'immediacy with depth', as applied to his recent iPhone hit Spider: The Secret Of Bryce Manor. He notes: "The indie games movement should be the wellspring of daring and innovative ideas, but we need a sizable and devoted audience to help us realize that potential. How do we reach more players? Is there something we’re doing wrong?", and vows to look at design solutions.

A single game release this week - and a new Mini at that - VectorTD, a new Tower Defense game from CandyStand. It'll set you back £2.49/€2.99. You can check out a preview of it here.

Outside of that you can pick up numerous games for cheap - Almost all of Creat Studios' PSN titles are on sale this week - including Smash Cars (was – £11.99/€14.99 now – £6.29/€7.99), Digger HD (was – £7.99/€9.99 now – £4.79/€5.99 and more. Keep reading for the full list.

[It's been a busy year for the downloadable games business - several new developers have emerged on the scene on the Xbox Live Arcade, PlayStation Network and WiiWare while new game environments have emerged with the Xbox Live Indie Games, DSiWare and PSN minis.

Development teams can be tens of people strong, or sometimes they can be just one guy barely out of school. There's still so much to learn about development, so we contacted developers across the gaming landscape to ask them what they enjoyed about the last year, what was the most troubling, and what lessons they'll be bringing into the new decade.]

Tiny Australian developer Nnooo made a splash onto the scene with Pop! for WiiWare - a simple puzzle game. Since then they've released Pop Plus and MyNotebook on DSiWare, and have recently announced MyPostCards.

As a developer that's been making application software for the DSi, we thought we'd try to get into the mind of Nick Watts, Creative Director at Nnooo to see what they've learned over the past year.

What were you most happy with during the game's development?

Nic Watt: myNotebook was the first project we truly followed the design > prototype > iterate philosophy and we are really happy with how it turned out. We had a streamlined and simple design brief and then jumped into some quick and simple prototypes. Once we had them feeling ok we documented the design a little more and then moved into "full production". As we are self funded "full production" allows us a lot of flexibility in how we tackle the project. We often change and modify the project as we go along by iterating what we are doing.

This worked well for the most part and allowed us to ensure that the project was focused on the end users needs instead of our comfort zone.

What were you least happy with, in retrospect?

NW: There are some areas we could have prototyped more and/or examined in more detail for example the saving structure we were using on the Nintendo DSi was a first for us, and is quite challenging technically, so we spent a while iterating around that. Also using the DSi in book orientation and being able to rotate myNotebook to use left or right handed in book orientation caused some additional complications. However these are areas we just had to learn from rather than major issues.

What is the biggest lesson you're going to apply to the next game you make?

NW: Even though we spent time prototyping we would like to spend a bit more next time. Once you have the core of the game working in areas there is always a desire to rush straight into development. Our plan on our next project is to properly look at the central brief once we think we have finished prototyping and see if we have covered all the bases.

[Pop is currently available on WiiWare, and Pop Plus / MyNoteBook is currently available on DSiWare. MyPostCards should also be out soon, and they're also working on a game that will cross WiiWare, DSiWare and PSP]

If you've been following us for a while you might know of Arkedo and Pastagames. Recently they've made the jump from awesome Europe-only DS titles to the Xbox Live Indie Games channel with the Arkedo game series, with the latest game PIXEL. being a collaboration between the two studios. Now it appears that one of their best DS titles will be making the jump over to DSiWare with Maestro! Green Groove.

The game was today added to the German USK rating board as a DSiWare title. The game, which will also be coming to iPhone, is a mixture of music game with platforming - you tap and strum objects on the screen in order to get music to flow through the level and allow the pink bird named Presto to bounce off strings and earn points.

How different Green Groove is to the original game is unclear, but put this game down as one to watch out for in the coming months.

A few months ago we found Sarbakan were working on something called Dig It Up, today we can reveal that the game is in fact Lazy Raiders, and it's coming to Xbox Live Arcade next month.

Lazy Raiders is an action puzzler where you don't control the character, but the world. Your fat adventurer can't be bothered going through Temples and Tombs, so you're going to have to help him. Realistically it's a game similar to that of the old tilting ball maze you'd pick up elsewhere, but it goes far beyond that. It's got a whole lot of personality and looks great to boot.

It features 80 levels and over 16 relics to find, so there's plenty in the package. The game will be hitting the XBLA Marketplace very soon, so look out for it.

Very small update this week - Vandal Hearts is now available for the PlayStation Network for $14.99, and the PSOne "Classic" Championship Bass for $5.99.

As for older titles, Sony have now put 10 titles out for half price - Gravity Crash, Zen Pinball, Critter Crunch, Braid, Burn Zombie Burn, Tank Battles and UNO are all now available for half price.

In our latest employment-specific round-up, we highlight some of the notable jobs posted in big sister site Gamasutra's industry-leading game jobs section this week, including positions from BioWare Austin, Webkinz, 2K Marin and more.

Each position posted by employers will appear on the main Gamasutra job board, and appear in the site's daily and weekly newsletters, reaching our readers directly.

It will also be cross-posted for free across its network of submarket sites, which includes content sites focused on online worlds, cellphone games, 'serious games', independent games and more.

Some of the notable jobs posted this week include:

2K Marin: Networking Programmer
"2K Games seeks the talents of a seasoned and passionate Networking Programmer who enjoys a collaborative and creative work environment and is looking to work with like minded professionals to create truly amazing experiences.Design, implement, and debug networking code for state of the art current and next gen titles."

Ganz/Webkinz: Flash Developers
"Now is your chance to join the Ganz team that has brought you such products as Webkinz and Webkinz Jr. You can be a part of developing new adventures!! Ganz is seeking talented and motivated people with a proven love of online entertainment for these positions."

Small update this week, but there are some goods to be had - Max & The Magic Marker is now available for 1,000 Wii Points and looks like it could be the one to get, while the other WiiWare release is Fast Draw Showdown for 500 Points.

For DSiWare it's only two pieces of the Electroplankton collection - Nanocarp and Trapy for 200 Points each.