Midway Arcade titles vanish from XBL Marketplace [Update]

Update: Well, that didn't take long. The Major has tweeted that the Midway titles being pulled from XBL Marketplace can be directly attributed to "publisher evolving rights and permissions".

Don't worry though, he says that if you purchased one of the deleted games in the past, you will be able to re-download it again.

The full list of titles are: Cyberball, Defender, Paperboy, Rootbeer Tapper, Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, Robotron, Joust, Gauntlet, and Smash TV.

The Major says that all will be explained in more detail on his show this week.

You can check out his multiple tweets through here.

Thanks, Benjo1981.

Original: Looks like Microsoft has pulled some of Midway's Xbox Live Arcade games off the roster.

Eurogamer looked through the offerings and found that Mortal Kombat 3, Defender, Gauntlet, Paperboy and Smash TV were all MIA.

Sure enough, we checked on the US end as well, and none are to be found. In fact, the only Gauntlet title we found was Seven Sorrows.

Speculation on whether the titles were pulled so that they could once again be on offer for the launch of Game Room on March 17 is currently being speculated.

We'll email MS to see if we can find out, but if this is some sort of big surprise waiting in the launch wings, don't expect to be told anything.