Microsoft Entertainment and Devices Division France and the town of Lyon, supported by the Lyon Infocité - Lyon Game association and Imaginove, have announced the winner of a XBOX Live arcade contest.

The contest was aimed at the Lyon region developers. Its goal is to sustain the economic growth of Lyon digital projects and to promote the winner of the contest by helping in the developement of an XBLA title and be eventualy downloadable on the XBOX Live MarketPlace.

Concept originality, creativity and a design appealing to the whole family were criterions used by the jury to choose the winner.

The winning project called Petanque Party ! was awarded the first prize for its simplicity, its solo and multiplayer modes, and its ability to bring together the whole family around a fun french game: Petanque
(more info on petanque on wikipedia )

Pascal Ginda and Ludovic Texier declared:
"We are very happy to have won this contest and are going to keep working hard to ship a quality game that is both simple and fun to play. We'd like to thank: the jury for their warm welcome and their sense of humor, Microsoft for supporting small business talents. And our extra-terrestrial friends for their technical, creative and moral support".

( Full press release in french: here )

The PC casual game market is blooming. The Wii showed that it could attract a lot of non-gamers with quality and entertainment at reasonable prices. The Xbox Live Arcade has never been so popular with millions of suscribers downloading games and add-ons. People are even playing on their phone while waiting or commuting.

UFO Games is a small independantly-owned company based in Lyon, France. We believe there is a place for simple and fun games everyone can enjoy using today's technology.

Welcome to the UFO!