With the PSN starting to pick up some steam with releases such as Warhawk, Calling all Cars and Echochrome and the recent launch of Nintendo’s WiiWare for the Nintendo Wii, many people are looking to Microsoft to expand on what is already a great service in Xbox Live Arcade. Well according to David Edery, Xbox Live Arcade’s Worldwide Portfolio Planner, XBLA is about to “leapfrog” its competitors thanks to XNA-created games.

First announced back at GDC 2008, XNA created games will allow professional and amateur developers the ability to add their very own created games using XNA to Xbox Live Arcade for the whole community to play.

"I certainly think from an innovation perspective it’s going to help us leapfrog the competition, effectively until they find a way to duplicate it, assuming they ever do," stated David Edery.

"To some extent it will certainly help us have more innovative content than either of them, just by definition. With all this random stuff coming from the community, every once in a while there’s going to be a real gem in there that you just couldn’t have found otherwise, it wouldn’t have found its way on to a console,"

He went on to say: “The example I always like to give is will someone finally make that scuba diving game, where there’s really only 15,000 people interested in a hardcore scuba diving simulation, but they really, really want one? And maybe through XNA someone can profitably get one out there."

"Today, there’s not really a venue for that. I’m not going to green light a hardcore scuba diving game for Xbox Live Arcade today because there are not enough people who are interested in that. But with XNA it’s perfectly possible.”

The service is expected to be released come the end of the year with some announcements made soon regarding the structuring of the program. With this kind of user generated content, we could see Xbox Live become the home of upcoming developers and a house of some really good Arcade games. Be sure to check back for more information about XNA right here at TheGameReviews.com