Welcome to the long-awaited next installment of This Week in DLC! If you’re a regular reader of the site, you probably realize that I’m possibly the worst person to commit to a weekly column that on the face of the earth. Just pretend the weeks in between I was being held in a Lebanese internment camp.

On the bright side, other bigger sites who decided to swoop in and borrow the concept and title for this column also failed to keep you informed on a weekly basis, so I’m not alone in my embarrassment. But enough about me — on with the content!

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One of the biggest highlights of this years X07 Canada wasn’t the power outage or the illegal street racing (more to come on those later, I promise) but the work of 10th grade student from Toronto’s own Western Technical-Commerical School, David Hu.

WarPong is exactly what it sounds like, and that’s a very good thing. Think Pong, but armed to the teeth. In addition to bouncing the ball back and forth a la Tennis for Two, your paddle is weaponed up and ready to dispose of the opposing paddle as best it can. Power-ups cause the size of the paddles and their weapons to grow, providing a surprisingly fresh experience for a title that until now had been done to death.

The real story though isn’t about WarPong as much as it is about XNA. Microsoft has been beating their chest about the flexibility and accessibility of XNA for a while now, and it seems as though at X07 they set out to prove it. WarPong, one of three XNA demos on show at X07, was developed by a 10th grader. Not only that, but it was designed by a 10th grader to be a multi-platform title. That’s right — WarPong is Games for Windows ready.

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