Xbox Live Arcade has updated, and we have the full rundown of what has been released this week.  Full details after the jump.

Scrap Metal

Price – 1200 Microsoft Points
Availability – Available in all Xbox Live regions
Game Size – 130 MB

Drift around corners with guns blazing and take out legendary competitors in the fast-paced, top-down racing game Scrap Metal™. Fight your way through explosive, action-packed missions and defeat cunning bosses to add their vehicles to your garage. Customize your newly-acquired cars and then return to the track to blast through more enemies. Jump online with Xbox LIVE ® to race against your friends and crush their cars with the wheels of your monster truck in pulse-pounding online multiplayer matches.

This week only, Xbox Live Gold Members are getting a special treat! Click on through to find out what it is…

Call of Duty: World at War – Map Pack Bundle, will be the Deal of the Week for this week. Normally priced at 2000 Microsoft Points, it will now run you only 1600 Microsoft Points.

Call of Duty: World at War Map Pack Bundle features the nine multiplayer maps and three co-op Zombie maps from Map Packs 1, 2, & 3. Fight through war-torn Berlin in “Nightfire,” battle through the waterfalls of “Banzai,” and defend an armored island in “Battery,” plus much more. Zombies and Hell Hounds attack in “Verrückt” (Zombie Asylum), “Shi No Numa” (Zombie Swamp), and “Der Riese” (Zombie Factory). Survive against the Zombie horde with the help of Perks-a-Cola machines, Monkey Bombs, and the powerful Wunderwaffe DG-2. This bundle features the 20 Achievements from Map Packs 1, 2 & 3.

Check out the latest details for the next major installment in the Sonic series from Sega.

Every year or so we get word that Sega has a Sonic game in the works. Suddenly, everyone gets excited and announce that it will be Sonic’s triumphant return to glory only to see a mediocre game be released and fail. Now, we’re all holding our breath to finally get that true Sonic game we always wanted with Sonic 4. Here are the latest details on what seems to be a series of episodic titles from Sega.

• Episode 1 is a prologue to the main story
• Tails and Knuckles are teased to return in Episode 2
• Moves include: Spin Dash, Rolling Attack, Homing Attack and a fourth mystery one
• Classic special stages will be returning
• The graphics aren’t 3D, but CG pre-renders
• If you don’t get all the Chaos Emeralds, you’ll receive a classic “Try Again” ending. Getting all the emeralds results in a cliffhanger tease for Episode 2

You’ll notice that the homing attack going to be featured in Sonic 4, something that was absent from very early 2D Sonic games. The head of Sonic Team, Takashi Iizuka, says he wanted Sonic 4 to have an easy-to-play feeling, as well the ability to find “fun routes in the air” as well as saying that this is the Sonic game “you have been waiting sixteen years for.”

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A new batch of Fallout: New Vegas screenshots are available to you. Come see them.

Looks like Fallout 3. If were expecting anything radically different, you won’t find it here.

The developers of the popular shooter Black on the original Xbox are back with a new game titled Bodycount.

Bodycount can be summed up as “a spectacular and frankly mental first-person shooter”, with “ridiculous levels of destruction.” Destruction huh? That is something Battlefield: Bad Company 2 did a nice job with, so we can expect to see the same from this game it seems. Here’s a capture of the OXM issue that will feature the game:

It should be noted that this game will not be developed by the entire team that made Black. The game will be handled by Codemasters’ Guildford team. The team features several key members from Criterion’s Black team, and is headed by Stuart Black who was the co-creator of Black. Joining him will be Tom Gillo (executive producer) from Sony London and Andrew Wilson (senior producer) from Black Rock. That’s a lot of black.

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Bizarre Creations speaks out on DLC for it’s upcoming racing game Blur.

Gamers these days have qualms with developers and their post-launch DLC. Sometimes, it is speculated by many that content may have been taken out of the full game to be sold as DLC. Other times, developers might lock content on the disc and make gamers pay for it. All have been sneaky tactics to garner more money from the already $60 gamers pay. Bizarre Creations has insisted that this is not the case with Blur and it’s plans for DLC.

Lead designer Ged Talbot says that there won’t be any post-launch DLC, but there will be a lot of it down the road:

“I don’t have any dates for DLC, but what I can say is it’s always been a massive part of the strategy to support the game with DLC,”

He also insisted that “no one has worked on it yet,” referring to the Blur’s DLC.

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Ready to sing to your favorite 80’s songs? Lips has you covered in their next installment with Lips: I (Heart) the 80’s.

The fourth installment in the Lips series takes you back to the 80’s with hits such as The Police’s “Roxanne” and Rick James’ “Super Freak.” No official box art or images have been released. In fact, there hasn’t been an official announcement yet. The game was recently rated by the ESRB, so as of now, we’re going to assume this is legit.

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Vehicular gameplay is coming back to the Mass Effect universe in the upcoming Firewalker DLC for Mass Effect 2.

A lot of people still remember those nightmare Mako missions in the first Mass Effect. BioWare was kind enough to get rid of them in Mass Effect 2, but now it seems vehicular gameplay is making a comeback in the form of a different vehicle other than the Mako. In the last episode of GameTrailers TV, the Hammerhead vehicle was shown off and probably changed a lot of people’s take on the use of vehicles in Mass Effect.

The Hammerhead will be available in the upcoming Firewalker DLC via the Cerberus Network, later this month.

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During a Q&A session at the University of Washington, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer hinted that additional “form factors” for the Xbox 360 are being considered.

Ballmer continued on to say:

“We actually have a TV implementation in some senses built into Windows. It works really well for small screen TVs that you might call a PC, but for that big screen device here’s a piece of hardware that we build, there’s no diversity. You get exactly the Xboxes that we build for you. We may have more form factors in the future that are designed for various price points and options, but we think it’s going to [be] important.”

This opens the door to the possibility of an Xbox 360 slim or even an Xbox 360 without a disc drive to be used for digital distribution only sort of like the PSP Go. Whatever it is, we can expect to see the Xbox 360 to go through some aesthetic changes in near future assuming what Ballmer says becomes a reality.

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Little is known about New Vegas, but that will soon change as OXM is about to unleash new info on the upcoming Fallout game. Plus, an 8-page Halo Reach blowout.

The April issue of the Official Xbox Magazine is set to be released next week. Included will be cover stories on Fallout: New Vegas and Halo: Reach. The disc included with the magazine will contain some exclusive gamer pics.

Is it just me or does that thing on the cover look like a Combine soldier? This looks to be an issue worth picking up, so don’t miss it.

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The once free and hard to get accessory now being made available to all.

You can now buy an Xbox 360 Hard Drive Transfer Kit at Microsoft’s online store. Normally, you would be able to get one by calling a toll free number and ask for one to be sent to you free of charge. After a while, they started charging you $12 for one to be sent to you. Now it seems as they’ve had enough with the calls and officially released one at a price of $14.99.

Note: You still get a transfer kit if you buy a brand new standalone 120 GB HDD.

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Still not sold on the Xbox 360? Microsoft is giving you more reasons to pick one up by dropping in two great games.

Amazon is listing a brand new Xbox 360 Elite bundle which includes two signature exclusives from Microsoft. The “definitive racing game of this generation” Forza Motorsport 3 and Halo 3: ODST. The rest of the bundle includes everything else that is packed in a regular Xbox 360 Elite SKU like the 120 GB HDD. This bundle will retail for $299.99 and makes its debut March 9th.

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Famed developer Peter Molyneux has insisted that countless revisions have been made to Project Natal since it was first shown to the public.

It’s been said by many who have tried it, that Project Natal still has some latency issues to be resolved. In response to some comments made by Jonathan Ross on Project Natal’s lag, Peter spoke up and responded:

“It’s always a huge frustration as a designer when you see somebody play a version when you know it’s been exceeded many times over,” he said. “It so often happens, because you do a version for a show and then you don’t do another version because you’re too busy developing the game.

“So very often you get a position that what a person’s looking at is two, three, four months, a year old and you kind of want to go, ‘no, no, it’s 10 times better than that!’ So it is very, very frustrating; it always is – there’s just countless revisions of cameras since the one at X10 and countless revisions of software.”

Microsoft is expected to show the final version of Project Natal as well as some games for it at this year’s E3. Project Natal will be out this holiday season.

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A sequel to the hit game Portal from Valve is coming and will be getting co-op treatment.

Portal was a unique take on your average FPS. It incorporated a puzzle element that had gamers traversing through portals to get from point A to B. Later this year, we will be getting another dose of Portal goodness with Portal 2. It is set to incorporate co-op gameplay and introduce two new characters as well as have it’s own camapign.

Portal 2 will be featured in next months Game Informer and will be out later this year. A price point was not specified.

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The Xbox Live Code of Conduct gets an update that allows for a more free form to express yourself.

Microsoft’s Marc Whitten has put out an open letter to all Xbox Live members simply stating that they are now able to express their race, nationality, religion and sexual orientation in their gamertags or profiles more freely. Terms such as lesbian, gay, bi, transgender and straight are now allowed. Here’s a part of that letter:

I’d like to announce an update to the Xbox LIVE Terms of Use and Code of Conduct which will allow our members to more freely express their race, nationality, religion and sexual orientation in Gamertags and profiles. Under our previous policy, some of these expressions of self-identification were not allowed in Gamertags or profiles to prevent the use of these terms as insults or slurs. However we have since heard feedback from our customers that while the spirit of this approach was genuine, it inadvertently excluded a part of our Xbox LIVE community. This update also comes hand-in-hand with increased stringency and enforcement to prevent the misuse of these terms.

I truly believe that our diversity is what makes us strong: diversity in gaming and entertainment options, and diversity in the people that make up this amazing community. I look forward to seeing you on LIVE soon.

I advise all Xbox Live users that if you will go through with this and indeed express your sexual orientation on Xbox Live, prepare for some nasty things to be said.

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