Jonathan Blow, creator of Braid and The Witness, has shown more of his new puzzle game. It's a game inspired by (and even, it seems, codenamed) Sokoban, the old Japanese game about pushing boxes in specific orders to cover all the marks on the floor.

Blow showed footage during his talk at Spanish conference Gamelab, which I popped along to a few weeks ago. It's taken a little while for the videos to appear online.

In the footage, the viewer looks down into a leafy kind of compartmentalised level to see three characters and six doorless rooms. There's one big crystal which needs moving but when you move around, blocks pop up barring the way. What to do? That's the puzzle. Character abilities will help you out - in the video a wizard uses a kind of teleportation spell to move the crystal - and there's an undo mechanic to keep your experimentation swift.

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Has Xbox Live Arcade really peaked, as World of Goo creator Ron Carmel yesterday argued? No, analysts have told Eurogamer.

"But Microsoft should take a look at Ron Carmel's piece," declared Billy Pidgeon of M2 Research, "which eloquently makes the case (and backs it up with data) that XBLA has peaked for a specific group of independent developers who are responsible for high quality games that outsell the average XBLA game.

"Sony is acquiring more unique content for PSN, and in many cases it's exclusive content, which will cost Sony more but will clearly differentiate their online games store from XBLA and other competition."

"In terms of digital games delivered through a home console, Microsoft will continue to be the market leaders," stated Jesse Divnich of EEDAR.

"I am not disagreeing with Mr. Carmel, I believe some of his points are valid and any digital service provider has its own restrictions and hurdles. Not every game is the right fit for every service.

"We certainly are seeing some fracturing among developers, and Xbox Live and PSN are no longer the only option for game distribution."

"That doesn't sound right to me," said Michael Pachter of Wedbush Morgan, responding to Carmel's claim. "If anything, there are more titles than ever, but we haven't had a Braid or Limbo so far this year.

"As the 360 price comes down and the installed base continues to grow, there should be a significantly larger addressable market for XBLA games, so I think it continues to grow."

Ron Carmel surveyed 200 independent developers. His results, which he admitted weren't sacrosanct, showed dwindling support for Xbox Live Arcade. Part of this is due to laborious XBLA constraints. The other part can be attributed to the rise of PC, Mac, iOS and Android gaming. Billy Pidgeon said that "viable alternative marketplaces" are "good news for developers and gamers both". Whereas Xbox Live Arcade and PSN are "predictable", he said, other markets can be "risky".

World of Goo developer 2D Boy believes Xbox Live Arcade "peaked" last year (2010) and that "Microsoft is not yet aware of this".

Studio co-founder Ron Carmel surveyed 200 independent game makers, some of which are responsible for significant - but undisclosed - XBLA titles.

He discovered that more developers want to make PSN games now than titles for XBLA. He also found PSN and XBLA seventh and eighth in a list of target platforms for 2011. The most popular was Windows, followed closely by Mac, iOS, Linux, Flash/browser and Android platforms.

Nearly three quarters of the developers surveyed said ease of working with a platform holder was paramount - followed by installed base and platform suitability.

When asked about specific platform holders, the majority deemed Steam, Facebook and Apple "very easy" to work with. Sony's PSN majority, like Google's Android, was "so-so". Most people found WiiWare "difficult", whereas Microsoft's XBLA was "excruciating".

"Given that ease of working with the platform owner was voted the most important factor in choice of platforms, it becomes perfectly clear why XBLA, despite being a very strong channel with a large audience and huge earning potential, is dropping in popularity among these developers," observed Carmel.

"But if things keep going the way they are, and XBLA keeps losing talented developers, I believe the diversity of games available on XBLA will diminish, quality will suffer, and revenue numbers will drop as players start to move away from an unremarkable portfolio of games. We will see a lot more 'genrefication' and big publisher franchises."

Pinball FX developer Zen Studios has jumped to Microsoft's defence after Super Meat Boy maker Team Meat savaged the Xbox 360 manufacturer.

In a podcast published on Gamasutra, Team Meat recounted its difficult experience with Microsoft and doubted it would ever work with the company again.

Zen Studios, however, feels the Microsoft bashing isn't fair, and told Eurogamer not all developers feel the same way about the company.

"They [Team Meat] totally have the right to talk about it," Mel Kirk, Zen Studios Vice President of Marketing and Public Relations told Eurogamer this morning. "It's terrible they had a bad experience like that. Where we're coming from is, when is enough enough? Let it go already.

"There are good things happening there and we're a company willing to stand up and stick by Microsoft. They were a great partner for us. They've done wonderful things with helping us with Pinball FX 2. If we can just get a message out there that we're willing to stick up for them, that's really what I'm trying to do."

A Twitter row of sorts erupted after Kirk sent press an email questioning Team Meat's motivation for speaking out about its experience with Microsoft. Braid developer Jonathan Blow waded in, telling Zen Studios directly: "trying to discredit Team Meat's negative experience is not cool."

Kirk rejected this accusation, however. "I'm really not trying to discredit their experience," he said. "The email left our press box without the 'not for publish' on it. It was meant to get inbound requests to do controlled interviews and control the message. Obviously this turned into something totally different. I'm not trying to discredit it. I'm just trying to put it in perspective. I'm not saying they're lying. I'm not trying to say they're making it up."

Zen Studios' experience with the Microsoft Game Studios' published Pinball FX paints a different picture.

"It's not evidence of a trend," Kirk continued. "I'm at liberty to speak for [Gunstringer developer] Twisted Pixel. They absolutely had the same type of experience as us and have a great working relationship with Microsoft. They would totally second our sentiments and echo what we have to say. There are a bunch of other studios as well. We've maybe broken the ice here. Hopefully there will be others.

"There are a few companies that had a bad time, and then there are a whole bunch of us over here who are having a great time and will continue working with Microsoft."

Kirk concluded: "Game politics are notoriously messy. We're a very negative industry at times towards each other. I don't want to be negative to Team Meat. I don't want to belittle their experience. I just want to simply say, Zen Studios has had a very good experience with Xbox Live Arcade, with our producers, with our team there. We're grateful for that experience. We feel like we owe it to them to stand up and just say, hey, we had a good time with you."

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