Midway Games just released its total sales for Q1 of 2007 and despite having lower numbers than last year's, CEO David Zucker commented that they still exceeded their earlier expectations.

The official also added that their big guns will start appearing later in the year that's why sales were down to US$ 11.1 million from 2006's US$ 15.4 million. Zucker mentioned too that most sales were generated by the unique pre-order program for MMO video game The Lord of the Rings: Shadows of Angmar.

Downloadable titles also did great Zucker imparted, enumerating Gauntlet, Smash TV, Root Beer Tapper, and Ultimate Mortal Kombat III as games among those that performed well on Xbox Live.

Likewise, Championship Sprint, Mortal Kombat II, and Rampage World Tour are doing good on the PlayStation Network (PSN). Also, the CEO revealed that a demo of BlackSite: Area 51 will be available at the Marketplace to help generate curiosity and excitement among players.

For Wii, lastly, Zucker promised three more unannounced titles for 2007 in addition to the forthcoming Mortal Kombat, two of those exclusive to the console.

A gamer known as C4Lukins has compiled a list of Xbox Live Arcade sales stats. Because Microsoft does not release any official numbers, he decided the best way to look at Live Arcade sales is to go to the leader boards and see the last name on the list and their ranking. Pretty much the only way to do this is to try and get the lowest score on each game so that you do not have to scroll through tens of thousands of people to see the bottom one with only one chance to really try per account.

Some of the crazy things that were discovered from the research is that over 20,000 Uno players have not managed to win a single single player game. Somehow people are managing to get a lower score then 200 on Joust, despite the fact that they get 4 lives, and 50 points each time they die. The worst finishing time on the first level of Marble Blast Ultra, is over an hour. Over 40 people purchased Geometry wars between 1am and 2am Central time while he was compiling this list. Cloning Clyde sold 8500 copies on its first day, and 5410 on its second day.

Is this accurate? Probably not. It should be pretty close. Some people have multiple accounts on a single 360 which will fudge up the numbers, and some people have bought these games and for one reason or another not posted a score on the leader boards. This is probably as close as we can get without Microsoft making any sort of announcement.Remember games with a question mark after them are games I do not own, and need numbers for.

Astropop- 21,321
Bankshot Billiards- 35,136 ???
Bejeweled 2- 50,994 ???
Cloning Clyde- 14,063
Crystal Quest- 29,557
Feeding Frenzy- 50,229
Frogger- 43,416 ???
Gauntlet- 77,394 ???
Geometry Wars- 188,428
Hexic HD- 566,230
Jewel Quest- 18,091 ???
Joust- 45,010
Marble Blast Ultra- 107,886
Mutant Storm Reloaded- 38,726
Outpost Kaloki X- 23,732 ???
Robotron 2084- 22,887
Smash TV- 78,790
Uno- 143,223
Wik Fable of Souls- 15,591
Zuma- 70,264

According to Next-Generation, Microsoft is planning to bring the success of Xbox Live Arcade to retail. Xbox chief Peter Moore is pushing to extend the Live Arcade brands to stores, arguing internally that original games like Geometry Wars, retro hits like Smash TV and casual games like Hardwood Hearts will extend Xbox 360's appeal to non-hardcore audiences.The company is seeking to offer the games to the 'other 50%' of gamers that have not signed up to Xbox Live, while using the titles to showcase the platform as a welcoming destination.

Moore recently told industry sources that a retail SKU is being planned. Whether this will  take the form of low-priced series of individual titles or, more likely, a compilation of some sort is yet to be determined. Microsoft today said it was not ready to discuss the plan, so issues such as pricing, packaging, and timing are unknown. But this is good news for people that like to have a tangible version of their console games. When more news becomes available we'll be sure to keep you informed.