[We round up the top news and interviews of the last week from console digital download site GamerBytes, speaking to Capy, Arkedo, and more about their work in 2009.]

This week's big push for us was our sales analysis for Xbox Live Arcade and PlayStation Network - December 2009 was good for some, bad for others, but we also take a look at the top selling games of the year, and see where the downloadable space has come in the last few years.

But we also continued our tracking of developers and their reflection on 2009, chatting to developers of Xbox Live Indie Games, Xbox Live Arcade, WiiWare and DSiWare to see what they've learned over the last year.

And there's also our regular news on fresh announcement and games for each of the console systems - here are the top stories for the past seven days:

Originals: Sales Analysis

In-Depth: Xbox Live Arcade Sales Analysis, December 2009

In-Depth: PlayStation Network Sales Analysis, December 2009

Originals: Developer Reflections

2009 Developer Reflections: Mommy's Best Games
2009 Developer Reflections: Gaijin Games
2009 Developer Reflections: Twisted Pixel
2009 Developer Reflections: Nnooo

Store Updates

XBLA Update - Vandal Hearts: Flames Of Judgment, Death By Cube
NA PSN Store Update - Vandal Hearts, Championship Bass, Weekly Deals
EU PSN Store Update - VectorTD And Deals Aplenty
NA Nintendo Update - Dark Void Zero, StarShip Defense, Muscle March And More
EU Nintendo Update - Max & The Magic Marker Electroplankton And More

MS Xbox World has gotten its hands on some early footage of the Xbox Live Arcade version of NeoGeo Battle Coliseum, complete with widescreen presentation and tidied up sprites.

They've got several videos over at their site - achievements, the character select screen and more. It looks good - certainly better than SNK's previous XBLA games. Let's hope it turns out well.

Konami Digital Entertainment appear to be taking digital distribution quite seriously - today they've announced that they'll be bringing the popular Ben 10: Alien Force license to Xbox Live Arcade and WiiWare.

Ben 10 Alien Force: The Rise of Hex is an action-puzzle platformer where you'll have the ability to transform into 10 different aliens. Players will utilize each alien to battle through 15 levels to save the Earth from destruction.

It's interesting to see that Konami got the license to Ben 10 - previously all Ben 10 games were released by D3 at retail. Even stranger is the distinction of being for XBLA and WiiWare and missing the PlayStation Network entirely.

Not quite sure who the developer is, and no screenshots are currently available, so who knows what it might end up like or whether the two versions will be vastly different. Guess we'll have to wait and see.

After a few great weeks of WiiWare and DSi titles, this week comes up a bit slim - not because of the amount of games, but because we just don't really know much about the new releases.

For WiiWare there is Bittos for 800 Points, UNO for 1,000 Points, and "Aha! I Found It!" Hidden Object Game for 500 Points.

For DSiWare we have Number Battle for 500 Points, AiRace: Tunnel for 200 Points, and Escapee GO! for 200 Points.

Finally this week is Ghoul Patrol, semi sequel to Zombies Ate My Neighbours for 800 Points.

Kydos Studio have just released their newest title on Xbox Live Indie Games - Soul, a game where you must bring the soul of a dead man to heaven through a variety of mazes, but with a freaky and surreal art style to go along with it.

Be warned - under the valor of nice art and interesting premise lies a game that is a) balls-to-the-wall difficult and b) may freak you out a little bit. You can check it out right now. What are your thoughts?

Ronimo Games jumped onto the stage this year with the release of Swords & Soldiers on WiiWare. Today we ask Jasper Koning about what they've learned with their first full release, and what their plans are for 2010 and beyond.

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

Jasper Koning: The best thing about developing Swords & Soldiers was the clarity of our vision. We've known what the game would end up like from the very beginning. That really helped us moving forward during development.

What were you least happy with, in retrospect?

JK: The menus could've used a bit more polish. The clear vision I mentioned only involved the main game itself, so the menus were a bit of an afterthought. They work, and they're nice, but they could've been a bit better.

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

JK: Using playtesting to test the learning curve and tutorial elements of the game offered such valuable feedback, that it's definitely a tool we'll be using again for our upcoming game. So thanks again for playing, guys.

[In this editorial and analysis, console digital download site GamerBytes' editor Ryan Langley looks at sales for Xbox Live Indie Games in 2009, with real data on how the top games are performing and a conclusion that the Xbox 360 service is becoming a much more promising way to get your hobbyist title out there and seen by console gamers.]

For a good while now, we’ve been talking about the Xbox Live Indie Games scene. It had a bit of a rough beginning but since we’ve seen numerous additions to the service – a ratings system, Avatar support, an entirely new name, and new pricing tiers. Finding the sweet spot for hobbyist and user-submitted indie games has been a long process, but there's definitely been some progress.

Major Nelson may have released the Top 20 XBL Indie games for 2009, but it’s thanks to the participants of the official XNA forums -- including many of the developers -- that we have sales data for their games over the year, and thus a much clearer picture.

The below graph shows the sales of the games, the amount of trial versions of the game that were downloaded, the conversion percentage from trial to sale, the price and the money made by the developer itself. The money made by a developer on any XBLIG game is 70% of its selling price – Microsoft picks up 30% of each sale:

The Win Of ZOMBIES!

It’s not much of a surprise to see James Silva's GAM3 W1TH ZOMB1ES become the top selling game of the year. It’s an incredibly simple game, but also follows numerous traits of the top tier Indie games – a bizarre style, a weird song and a priced super cheap. All of these points brought the game to the attention of gamers and game blogs everywhere – Kotaku, Joystiq, and many major news sutes mentioned it. And it had a personality, alongside being a pretty decent game.

French developer B-Software have been releasing little indie games on the PC for a while - one of them being a series of side-scrolling shooters called Lethal Judgment. Now they've released a new title for the Xbox Indies, now in HD.

It's a pretty good shooter, all things considered. Lots of things on the screen but not horrifically difficult, at least based on the demo. Check out the trial version now, the full version is 400MSP ($5).

Matt Davis of Barker's Crest Studio hit the Xbox Live Indie scene with Easy Golf, a neat little golf game that was far surpassing any other indie game on the service at the time. Now he's found the use of Avatars, and has found tremendous success using Xbox Avatars with Avatar Golf and Home Run Challenge.

We ask what he's found about developing for the Xbox Live Indie Game scene, and where he plans to go in 2010.

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

Matt Davis: As a coder the most enjoyable aspects of building a game, or any project for that matter, are the little victories. For example, when conceptualizing each game I try to pick out a few coding challenges I have never done before and incorporate them into the game.

For Easy Golf, one of the challenges was building a course designer and then implementing a peer-to-peer sharing system where gamers could share their created courses with others through Xbox LIVE. Another concept I was interested in tackling was online multiplayer, which turned out really well.

Eventually Microsoft released the XNA Framework version 3.1 which gave us the ability to render avatars. This feature gave way to Avatar Golf, which was a natural extension of the Easy Golf code base. Animating and rendering the avatars turned out to be a pretty fun and rewarding experience.

As for the Home Run Challenge, I wanted to see what it would be like to create a game with an extremely short development cycle and release it onto the marketplace for the lowest price. My coding challenges for this game were rendering a large, animated avatar crowd along with peer-to-peer high score sharing. I am really pleased with how the crowd component worked out. At any time there are just over 10,000 individual crowd members in the stadium.

What were you least happy with, in retrospect?

MD: There really isn't anything I'm not happy about development wise. XNA is a relatively easy technology to learn and with the Xbox there is very little hardware constraints to worry about. Your imagination is your only limit.

One thing that bothers me a little bit is that I wish a lot more developers who release games onto the service would take a little more pride in their work so Indie Games as a whole would have a much better reputation. I've been seeing a lot of evidence lately that gamers are warming up to Indie Games as we've been releasing quite a few quality experiences in the past few months. Hopefully we can get some more top shelf developers, artists, and musicians involved and keep this trend going.

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

MD: Time management. With each new release I build up a stronger code base that helps reduce time on future projects. Anyone interested in releasing a polished, fully featured Indie game should make budgeting time a high priority especially if you have a full time job and a family.

Random Thought?

MD: For quite some time Indie Games had a pretty bad reputation. Developers were angry because they weren't swimming in cash and gamers were angry because 9 out of every 10 games on the service were absolutely terrible. The good news is that the situation today is much different. There is plenty of money to be made if you put out a unique, professional, polished, and interesting experience that isn't otherwise currently available on the Xbox 360. More and more quality games are being released onto the service and the gamers are noticing. Now is as good of a time as any to build that game you always dreamed of making. If you make the right game there is a large enough audience of Indie gamers to make it worth your while financially.

We've spoken about KrissX (pronounced Kriss Cross) before, but it's a game that was never officially announced. Now suddenly it's available on XBLA. It's already a puzzle game, so it's probably not gonna go gangbusters, but to not announce the release at all is crazy. Grab the demo here.

Also this week is a new Pinball FX table - the Excalibur table.. It's so nice to see this 2007 Pinball title is still getting new content. Only 200MSP too - check it out here.

Finally, this week's Deal Of The Week is Portal: Still Alive. Instead of the regular 1200MSP price it'll be 800MSP for Gold members. Download it here.

Ska Studios, also known as one-man money making machine James Silva, has announced his next upcoming title - Charlie Murder.

This 4 player side-scrolling beat-em-up follows Charlie Murder, a punk band who's got beef with rival metal band Gore Quaffer. Battle it out against metal heads as you bash your way though levels to retrieve the lead singer's girlfriend.

The game will be coming out in "March. probably." Could an Xbox Live Indie Game stand a chance to lure the Castle Crashers crowd out once again?

Click here for more screenshots of the game in action.

While our Developer Reflection series has been quite popular since its inseption, Creat Studios decided to go a step further - three separate reflections for three of their titles.

Today we speak to Sasha Alexandrov, Producer of Smash Cars and an upcoming, yet-to-be-announced action title, and some of his team about the development of their racing game, and what they plan to do in the future.

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

Sasha Alexandrov: The feeling that the game is becoming FUN and team consisting of highly experienced professionals.

Lead Game Designer: There were a lot of things: designing the tracks, vehicles and AI physics balancing, and a lot more!

Art Director: Certainly the best thing was designing the car bodies and inventing various graphical solutions for them.

Lead Engineer: I participated in Smash Cars development for PS2 back in 2003… as a junior programmer :). Now that we were working on the PS3 title, I was determined to make a game that would be better in every respect. We had a great team and we achieved our ambition!

What were you least happy with, in retrospect?

SA: Time pressure and feature cuts. In the middle of the project, we realized that what we making was just another racing game and we had to concentrate on thinking up design features which would make Smash Cars to stand out among other titles. We got stuck on it for a while and time became pressing.

To stay within reasonable budget and meet deadlines, we had to cut some features which were almost implemented. For example, in the middle of the island there is a playground for tricks: it is modeled and textured and ready for use, but the players never see it because game modes for this playground were removed from the game. We also had to remove some modes from Multiplayer.

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

SA: There is no arcane knowledge I am going to reveal now. J But there is a set of basic rules everyone is aware of but almost everyone breaks in the hope to getting away with it.

So my lessons were the following:

Production team should start working only after all main features defining USP are prototyped and tested. We changed design in the middle of production and as a result had to change and balance the game physics and some elements of art….

Any game should have a phase of Polishing. Smash Cars had it and as a result the game looks and feels, well …polished!

[Smash Cars can be purchased for $14.99USD on the PlayStation Store. It is currently on special in Europe for half price.]

Today's European PSN update includes two new titles - Thexder Neo for the PS3, which as you can see from the above video has been given an additional lick of paint compared to the PSP version released last year, and also includes the very original Thexder game. This game will set you back £6.29/€7.99.

The other release is Polar Panic. Released last year in North America, this block pushing puzzler is now available for £7.99/€9.99. Both games include demos.

Unfortunately no PSN Minis this week. It's getting a bit crazy.

After about a month's wait from the European release, Hustle Kings is now available on the North American PlayStation Store. For a lowly $9.99 you can play the shiniest snooker game ever.

Alongside the release are two more titles - Assault Heroes for $9.99, a port of the classic XBLA game, and Thexder Neo - highly enhanced version of the PSP downloadable title, both also $9.99 each.

Two new PSOne titles as well - Extreme Pinball for $5.99 and Hi-Octane for $5.99.

Finally we have a bunch of PSN minis after a long drought. Dracula – Undead Awakening for $4.99, Pinball Dreams for $6.99, Route 66 for $3.99 and Deflector for $3.99. Two earlier minis - Bloons and Brain Pipe have now had permanent price drops to $2.99 each.

This week's WiiWare is a little light - only 530 Eco Shooter today for 1,000 Wii Points. It's also coupled with the first Virtual Console release in a while - Street Fighter Alpha 2 for 800 Points.

DSiWare this week brings 3 titles - Legends Of Exidia from Gameloft for 800 Points, which may not be as original as we originally thought, and two Electroplankton pieces - Luminarrow and Sun-Animalcule

Spyn Doctor Games have announced their latest entry on the Xbox Live Indies marketplace - Your Doodles Are Bugged!, a mixture of Lemmings with a drawing application.

Each level is made up of artwork, doodles if you will, in which tons of little gnat like creatures roam. Your jobs is to take your trusty magic pen and draw lines (ala Line Rider) to help them reach their destination.

It's simple, but the game seems to be filled with charm.The little gnats just walk around like Lemmings of old, and it's your job to point them in the right direction. The video shows that between 9 to 150 bugs can be on screen at once - that's a lot.

The game will be a single dollar when it's released and promises lots of levels and, through some elaborate backwards engineering, will also feature online leaderboards for Xbox Live Gold users. Look for it in February.

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 38 Studios, Vicarious Visions 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:

38 Studios: User Interface Engineer
"Would you like to become part of the team that includes the creative visionaries behind Drizzt Do’Urden and Spawn? 38 Studios is currently seeking a User Interface Engineer to join our Engineering department. This is a full-time position with competitive salary, full benefits and 401(k), and the chance to be part of online gaming history!"

Bungie: Gameplay Design Lead
"Do you love the challenge of designing great gameplay? Do you have 10 ideas on how to make Halo’s player interface better? Do you hate that moment in a game when you realize that you’ve found the ultimate powerful weapon, making all others pointless? Are you an experienced game designer looking to work on AAA games with talented and passionate people in a team environment? If so we have the job for you! Bungie Studios is looking for a passionate, creative and hard-working Gameplay Design Lead for our next project."

Some might say that Nintendo's Virtual Console is "free money" for publishers. While true for games that are very popular and guaranteed to sell, lesser known titles may end up costing publishers if only a few people buy them.

The reason for this is rating systems - every game costs money to be rated by the ESRB, PEGI and so forth. [EDIT: Games with a lower budget cost around $800 to rate, apparently, not $2500-$3000, as we said before.] It's not much money for a publisher, but it is a barrier with a minimum sell through rate for them to break even.

But it appears that Microsoft are doing something quite different, something that skips all of it and makes Game Room an incredibly cheap deal - they've rated the Game Room application itself.

Game Room has been rated E10+ by the ESRB for its initial set of 30 games, an interesting concept. So what's going to happen going forward? If it's an ever expanding compilation disc, will each individual addition need to be rated as it is added? We don't think so.