Bellevue, WA (December 30, 2009) – Those playing the award-winning Defense Grid: The Awakening on Xbox LIVE Arcade will receive an automatic title update when they launch the game on their Xbox 360, starting today.

The update addresses issues that have affected some users, and also addresses the game’s overall balance and scoring. This opens up the leaderboards to new competition for those looking to attain the highest scores and perfect their strategies across all of the maps and modes of the game.

Additionally, the ability to download DLC packs has now been exposed in anticipation of downloadable content coming in the near future. More on DLC will be announced in 2010. For more discussion on the title update, visit the Defense Grid forums at http://defensegrid.hiddenpath.com

Here are the details on the Defense Grid update:

Issues Fixed:

- A game hang on start-up that affected some users has been fixed. If a user profile was stored on an MU, there was a chance of the game locking up with a solid white screen as it communicated with Xbox LIVE to verify the profile. This has been fixed such that there should no longer be a hang, and workarounds are no longer needed to start the game for those users. The Xbox LIVE Arcade logo screen of the updated game now has a black background rather than a white background in order to make it easy to visually identify that the game has been updated to the new version.

- Surround sound audio drop-outs have been fixed. The audio stream from the game would pause for milliseconds at certain times over optical or HDMI connections, causing some models of Audio/Video surround systems to stutter when playing back surround audio. This has been fixed.

- Cannon tower firing rates during fast forward have been fixed. Previously cannon towers would fire at twice their intended rate during fast forward. This made them twice as powerful as they should have been when fast forward was held down.

- Several Leaderboard fixes. Games played, damage done, and aliens destroyed leaderboards would at times not update when the user played a game. They now will. Mission specific leaderboards would also update the number of towers and power cores even if a new high score was not attained and this has been fixed. Borderlands modes beyond campaign or campaign challenge modes did not write to the leaderboards and now do as well.

- Some voice commentary could still be heard in the game even if the voice volume was set to zero. This has been fixed.

- The resource counter in the mission summary screen now displays more than 6 digits.

Game Changes & Updates:

- Game scoring has been changed. Because the current leaderboard entries are affected by the cannon fast forward bug, the scoring system has been updated and scores going forward will be calculated giving 2000 points per saved core rather than the previous value of 1000. For many leaderboards this will significantly change the value of the highest scores.

- Game scoring has also been updated for practice and fixed resource challenge modes so that more efficient play is rewarded. Previously those modes did not reward spending fewer resources.

- Level unlocks changed. The second mission is unlocked to the first time user allowing them to skip the first tutorial mission if they desire. The Borderlands maps also now start unlocked rather than waiting for the user to complete the 16th Awakening map in story mode.

- Support for downloadable content is now exposed to the user. In-game DLC is planned and coming soon.