In the midst of Microsoft revealing Xbox Live Arcade's delisting policies, most missed that Microsoft is also constructing a formal first-party XBL Arcade studio.

Microsoft has aided a number of studios in publishing XBL Arcade games, but mostly avoided the development stream. That's apparently changing in 2008.

We don't know much about the development initiative yet, but Aaron Greenberg, Microsoft's product management director for Xbox 360 and XBL, teased their plans in a recent chat with MTV Multiplayer.

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Achievements just don't make themselves up. They had to come from somewhere.

First we had Robert Bowling, Community Manager at Infinity Ward, explain to us how the development studio came up with the Achievements for "Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare."

Now continuing our on-going Achievement series, Cliff Bleszinski (a.k.a. "CliffyB"), Lead Designer at Epic Games, gives us a brief rundown via e-mail on the Achievements for the best-selling title "Gears of War" (which recently came out for the PC).

While Bowling was a fan of skill-based Achievements in "Call of Duty 2" and "Call of Duty 4," Bleszinski wanted to spread the Gamerscore love to not-so-skillful "Gears" players:

"A good achievement is one that rewards experimentation or unique behavior. Even giving players an award for even attempting to play a game in a cooperative fashion at its most rudimentary level is a great motivator for inexperienced gamers to share a title with others."

He also talks more about the hardest "Gears" Achievement and how there should be real-life rewards for high Gamerscores...

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