Frogger hits Live Arcade

It's exactly the sort of news that Xbox 360 owners have been waiting for - Microsoft is planning to release one new Xbox Live Arcade title each Wednesday for the next five weeks, starting with Frogger.

The games that make up the "Xbox Live Arcade Wednesdays" campaigns are Frogger (today), Cloning Clyde (July 19), Galaga (July 26), Street Fighter II: Hyper Fighting (August 2) and Pac-Man (August 9). Each will go live at 8AM GMT.

Obviously this means that Frogger is already available. It costs 400 Microsoft points (£3.40), weighs in at 23.07MB, and allows you to choose between classic and updated artwork, features new sound effects, and introduces multiplayer modes - "Co-op vs Speed" and head-to-head offerings - along with all the requisite achievements. These include things like completing the various levels of the arcade mode and "Well Ordered", where the idea is to fill the five frog home slots in order from right to left.

There's a demo version too, as with all Live Arcade titles.

Announced at an '80s-themed party in San Francisco last night, Xbox Live Arcade Wednesdays will also see a few US-centric promotions that allow you to put on your own little '80s-themed-gaming night - details for our American friends can be found at www.xbox.com.

The news that Microsoft plans to release five Live Arcade titles in the space of five weeks will be warmly received by fans of the service - although some will also question the whereabouts of the highly anticipated Lumines Live from former SEGA developer Tetsuya Mizuguchi's Q Entertainment studio.

Although the service boasts a broad range of titles, it has been over two months since the release of the last game - a version of popular card game UNO - and there have only been seven other new releases since the turn of the year.

One of the reasons it's taken so long to bring such small games to Live Arcade at a regular rate, Microsoft said recently, is that publishers weren't originally convinced of Live Arcade's merits.

However, with the platform holder now claiming that it has registered five million downloads (though the figures may be inflated by the inclusion of trial versions), and a groundswell of popular opinion on its side, the number of sceptics is starting to dwindle.

This week's announcement is also the first sign of the titles promised by Microsoft during its E3 showcase, when it revealed that publishers including Namco, Konami and Sega - working on a version of Sonic the Hedgehog - had pledged elements of their back catalogue to the burgeoning digital distribution service.

Prior to that, Xbox Live Arcade titles had generally been culled from the catalogues of independently made web and mobile titles from the likes of Carbonated Games and PomPom - with Midway (Robotron, Smash TV) and second-party developer Bizarre Creations (Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved) the only major labels to get involved prior to that.

The full catalogue of Xbox Live Arcade titles can be found on Microsoft's website.

We'll bring you our take on each of Live Arcade's new additions as soon as possible.