Sierra revealed details on three titles coming to XBLA this fall. Switchball, Commanders: Attack! and Battlestar Galactica will be gracing XBLA in the coming months. PC owners can play Switchball already, but the other games everyone will need to wait until the fall.

Switchball is like Marble Madness with an ever changing ball. Sometimes it's light, sometimes it's electric, sometimes it doesn't know what it is. Players lead the ball through various labyrinths. Commander: Attack! is a turn-based strategy war game featuring '30s art deco. There is a 15-mission single player campaign and you can compete against three friends. Last, but most important, Battlestar Galactica is a top-down space combat game. You'll be able to compete against eight players online or through a single-player campaign as either a member of the Galactica or the Cylons. We'll have more information later in the day.

The Hollywood Reporter, uh, reports that a new partnership between NBC Universal and Vivendi's Sierra Online division will yield a digitally distributed Battlestar Galactica game. The space shooter (you know, a shooter ... but in space) is expected to be completed this fall, after which it will be promptly shot in the head to initiate the download onto your PC or your Xbox 360. Australia-based Auran Games has been named as the developer, though its history of railroad simulations makes it hard to gauge whether it'll be able to do the modern television series justice. Can anyone?

"We wanted to bring a more intense combat experience to gamers," explains NBC Universal's Bill Kispert. "From a story standpoint, fans will be able to relive key battles from the first two seasons of the show, and then we'll add new content and missions outside of that." The overarching plan is to continuously inject new challenges into the game, much in line with the episodic nature of the show itself. Kispert (who sounds more like a snack than a Cylon) also notes that Sierra Online has paid a visit to the show's sets and hopes to incorporate everything from sound effects to pilot chatter.

Given the fracking hole currently residing in the spot where the space sim genre used to be, we're eminently open to the idea of piloting Vipers and Cylon Raiders in an all-out, Xbox Live dogfight. Let's just hope nobody at Sierra Online makes the obvious, in-game advertising connection. "Thanks for saving my six, Starbucks! I can always count on your finely roasted skills." (We spent nine hours developing that joke. FACT.)

[Via CVG]

If you were to take the opening sequence of Battlestar Galactica and make your own version of it with World of Warcraft in-game machinima, well then you'd have today's video. If they could pull off a Battlestar MMORPG, we'd be in there all day long, even if the subscription fee was $29.99 a month. There'd have to be enough copies of Number Six to go around, right?

An enterprising fan of both put this together proving once more that the world does indeed have a lot of extra time on its hands. The Egyptians built the pyramids, and we make wacky videos for the web. Check out the mashup after the jump and join us in trying to patiently wait for the next episode to come out.

As we reported earlier this month, the Sci-Fi Channel offering Battlestar Galactica: The Story So Far is now up for download -- for free -- on Xbox Live Marketplace. The good news? It comes to us a lot earlier then what was anticipated.

The bad news? Well, according to some commenters on Major Nelson's blog, the download is only available to fans who reside in the United States. The other bad news? It's in standard definition. We say boo to you Microsoft. While the idea of a downloadable TV feature such as this is a giant leap in a positive direction, we high-def cronies demand that our content always be available in HD quality. Oh well, at least it's free.

We know a lot of you out there love you some Battlestar Galactica. Nay we say it's the best show on television? You better frakkin' believe it! Well get ready for more of the Sci-Fi Channel's hit series as it prepares for a PR offensive that includes the "first longform program ever to be offered" on Xbox Live Marketplace, according to GameSpot.

The content being offered up, titled The Story So Far, is in preparation for the third season of Battlestar and more or less sums up everything that has happened in the series. There was no concrete date set (but the new season starts in October) or price. We can only hope because it is basically an advertisement, that the content will be free. If it is, we'd say this is a good sign of varying entertainment options being made available to the 360 and Xbox Live.

[Update: NBC Universal reps told GameSpot that the Battlestar Galactica episode would be free of charge and available in mid-September. The rep was unclear as to the size of the download.]

Joystiq's very own Christopher Grant is not only posting from the 2006 Game Developers Conference, he's also starring in a podcast.

Okay, so technically he's just co-hosting an episode of an ongoing podcast with Gaming Steve, but you can't miss this opportunity to hear Chris's laid-back, sweetly smooth voice. (There are reports that Chris also sounds somewhat like a stoner, but we wouldn't be able to tell you what those kind of people sound like anyway, so what can we say?)

As for the podcast itself, Chris and Steve go into the events of the last day, enthusiastically sharing about Microsoft's bloggers breakfast with Peter Moore (inset), Phil Harrison's PS3 keynote, what the new Battlestar Galactica might have to do with games, and everything else that they saw in San Jose. And, hey, maybe if we're lucky, we'll get another guest Joystiqer co-hosting with Steve today. More from GDC as we get it...

See also:

• Direct download link for the podcast in question [55 minute-long MP3]
• Gaming Steve's "Day 3" report on GDC 2006 [where we got the pic]
• Joystiq @ GDC: In the beginning... [w/a little bloggers breakfast info]
  
• GDC: The PS3 keynote blow by blow