Microsoft has announced the winners of the 2008 Xbox Live Arcade Awards, with The Behemoth’s Castle Crashers walking away with Game of the Year.

Castle Crashers actually won three categories in the Xbox Live Arcade Awards, the annual awards voted on by the players themselves. Along with Game of the Year, it was also awarded Best Co-op Mode and Best Original Game. Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix was the other big winner, taking home three awards for Best Remake, Best Versus Mode, and Best Graphics. The final three categories were one-offs, with A Kingdom for Keflings winning Best Family Game, Braid taking Best Innovation, and Portal: Still Alive winning Best Single Player.

So how do those results look to you guys? Fair? Completely off? Too Street Fighter-y? Discuss.

Capcom’s VP of Business Development and Strategic Planning, Christian Svensson, says the company is far from done making high def Remixes of its old-school games.

So if you liked Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix, make with the jumping for joy. If you liked Marvel vs. Capcom enough to want a third one, tough luck: Svensson says it’d be a lot harder to do a full-blown sequel than it would be to crap out lovingly fashion an HD Remix.

Here’s what he had to say to VideoGamer.com on the subject:

“I won’t say it doesn’t need it. Marvel would be great to do. There’s obviously a fan base for it. It’s probably our most requested title. Unfortunately, I wish I had news to share on that front but I don’t.”

“I would never say never [to MvC3] but I would say the barriers to doing that are much higher than the barriers for MvC2,” said Svensson.

The ESRB rated Marvel Vs. Capcom 2 for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 last October. Make of that what you will.

Capcom: We’re not done with HD Remixes [VideoGamer.com]

Were you one of the lucky folks to get their hands on a SSFIITHDR Press Kit? No? Well get ready to pony up!

Like the Mega Man 9 press kit, which went for insane amounts, the Street Fighter kit has become yet another rare eBay-able item.

The highest auction recently went for US$262, and it seems like US$200-US$300 will be the sweet spot. No, it doesn’t have the charm of the Mega Man 9 kit, but it’s still worthy of taking a spot on your collection shelf.

I’m not ready to sell my Mega Man 9 kit, yet. I’m saving it for emergencies, like if I have to make rent in a pinch, or buy a new flatscreen TV.

eBay (Thanks, Kyle!)

Capcom reveals that Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix is well on its way to becoming the highest grossing digital title of all time, with 250,000 units purchased since the game’s release.

In a post over at the Capcom Unity Blog, the company reveals that the redone version of everyone’s favourite 2D fighter broke both day-one and week-one sales records, and could very well break 30-day sales records as well. They then go on to thank everyone who worked on the game, looked at the game, bought the game, and thought about the game in passing while waiting in line for a latte at their local coffee shop.

Not bad for a title that was very nearly cancelled.

Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix achieves record breaking sales! [Capcom Unity]

Back when Magic the Gathering first got big I used to joke about magazines including rare Uno cards as pack-ins. Apparently I was just about 15 years ahead of my time.

Street Fighter Uno….more devious than you can imagine. [Capcom Unity]

Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix (Or ‘SSF2THDR’ – a rare case where the abbreviation could do with its own abbreviation) has been priced at 1200 Microsoft points on Xbox Live Marketplace and $US14.99 on the Playstation Network.

Actually, we only sort of knew when – the actual release dates are November 25th for PSN, with Xbox owners getting a dose of SSF2THDR (no, still too long) on the 26th.

SSF2 Turbo HD Remix Pricing – Official! [Capcom Unity]

Sure it may not have the grid-like precision of its Nintendo counter-part, or the obsessive content (yet), but the first thing I thought of when I laid my eyes on Capcom’s “branded experience” for Super Street Fighter II Turbe HD Remix, was Nintendo’s Wii Channels.

The Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix “destination experience” looks to be a hang-out spot, a “channel” if you will, for fans of the game on the Xbox 360.

The “channel” will feature updates about new content, new trailers, and access to downloadable content. That includes the picture packs and themes you used to find running loose in the Marketplace on the Old Xbox Experience.

“With 1080p high-definition art and graphics, and the ultimate user feature set, Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix is the perfect game to compliment the New Xbox Experience,” said Christian Svensson, VP of Strategic Planning and Business Development at Capcom Entertainment Inc. “Capcom is dedicated to providing captivating content to the digital space and we’re proud to participate in this new era of Xbox LIVE.”

What Capcom isn’t totally clear on is exactly where this “channel” will show up in the New Xbox Experience. Hopefully it will be something you have to dig down to and not something that could clutter up the experience. I can’t wait to see how else Msoft plans to monetise, and perhaps, clutter up their recently stream-lined interface.

I first wanted to find out just when the hell this game was coming out and how much it’ll cost. I’ve read “very soon” to “sometime this year” for the past couple of months now. I’ve even heard a few bits about a possible November release date. I asked Killian if we should expect it sometime next month.

“That’s what we’re looking. I think you’ll see it before Christmas. I don’t know the price, I think it’s going to be more than $10, but I don’t know where [Capcom] is going to put it,” he said.

Killian also added there are no plans right now to release DLC, and he wasn’t sure if the PSN version would support trophies. Since the game was in development before trophies were announced, it’s looking like they might not be there. We’ll have to wait and see.

By far the biggest hurdle for this game has been the art. Re-drawing all the sprites and animation takes a lot of time and costs a lot of money. But Capcom wasn’t concerned so much with the release date as they were making it look good.

“On one of the FTP’s some of the art leaked out and everyone was ‘Oh my God, look how bad this art is!’” Killian said. “We responded to it on our blog saying the bad news is, yes this is actually the art from the game, but the good news is we know it’s shitty, and it’s so shitty we actually fired the company before it leaked.”

So how does it play? Well, it’s Street Fighter, but it looks great on a HDTV. Everything is crisp and clean looking. They’ve refined the gameplay a bit by making some of the moves easier to pull off. Not much else to say other than you have to see it for yourself. There are some fun options, too, like being able to turn on the hit boxes or play the non-HD version of the game.

With Street Fighter IV planned to ship to consoles this Winter, I think a lot of fans will overlook it or have simply just given up on it. For as sexy as HD Remix looks, SFIV has the graphical “wow” factor. I asked Killian if he felt Capcom missed an opportunity by not being able to release the game earlier this year to get fans hyped for Street Fighter IV.

“Yeah, we definitely intended to release it earlier, hopefully this won’t be a missed opportunity because I think Street Fighter IV got people hyped up for Street Fighter in general,” he said. “The fan anticipation was very high for this game, so hopefully those people who were excited about it will still be excited. The extra time it’s taken has been put into making it a better product and, frankly, it really is better than it was.”

So what about the online? Street Fighter II Hyper Fighting had wonky online. He even agreed with me saying it was “shitty” as well. But he reassured me HD Remix would be the best online fighter yet.

“This game actually feels like Street Fighter. This game online is crackin’. They’ve sunk a lot of time and had a lot of specialists involved in that,” Killian said. “I actually think it’s the best fighting experience online. For anyone that likes Street Fighter and wants more competition, I think the game will sell itself.”

Capcom loves to do re-releases and remakes. This much we know. I suggested to Killian the idea of doing Final Fight HD with online co-op. It obviously interested him, too. But right now they’re going to see how HD Remix does and, who knows, maybe that’s something they’ll consider later on if fans demand it.