Castlevania, Lara Croft anchor Summer of Arcade

LOS ANGELES--Microsoft's 2010 Electronic Entertainment Expo press conference this morning came replete with announcements concerning the Xbox 360, not the least of which was a new, slimmer hardware revision and a November 4 ship date for Kinect--formerly known as Project Natal. In a lesser bit of Xbox 360-related news, the publisher took the lid off its latest Summer of Arcade initiative for Xbox Live Arcade, which will begin in July.

The third annual Summer of Arcade lineup will be headlined for many by Konami's Castlevania: Harmony of Despair. Unfortunately, the publisher offered no details for the latest installment in Konami's long-running vampire-slaying franchise. Likewise, Microsoft offered no information on Square Enix's Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light, which was announced in March and will see release during the Summer of Arcade window.

The remaining two games--Limbo and Monday Night Combat--will be published by Microsoft. And as with the previous two titles, no details on the downloadable arcade games were offered. Microsoft did not reveal pricing information or exact release dates for any of the aforementioned titles.

The Summer of Arcade program follows on from March's Block Party, which saw the release of Toy Soldiers, Scrap Metal, Perfect Dark, and Game Room. According to Microsoft, the monthlong release slate resulted in "the highest number of downloads for the month of March to date in Arcade history."