Hi there!
We have submitted our game concept to the XBLA team some month ago. We signed the NDA and send them the playable version (Xbox 360 and Windows) of our game including all relevant assets they asked for. In one mail from our contact person (we had very frequent mail contact!), we have been informed that we should get a mail about the review status within two weeks - this was two month ago.
All mails (over 20 now) have been unanswered and the latest have been rejected by the mail server - that means we don't have a chance to contact the XBLA team in any way. We mailed to our contact person - who is unknown to the mail server (!?), to the main address of Arcade team and some other mail addresses we found on the Arcade Developer site.
Would there be a problem with standard Microsoft NDA if we would decide to release the game without using the Live services and without the certification now??? In the meantime the XNACG has been established - this would be a possibility for the Xbox part of the story, too.
We hope you understand our problem! Probably there is someone here who knows someone, who knows someone, who is a member of the XBLA certification team and can give us an answer whether the game is rejected, accepted, lost or what ever.
Thank you in advance and best regards! :)
PS: We don't know if talking about the NDA breaks the NDA rules in any way but we really would like to know about that.