The Spike-Xbox 360 New Years Party event, held on Saturday at Microsoft's Daitabashi office.

Spike made a couple of surprise announcements at its "Spike-Xbox 360 New Year Party 2009" event on Saturday. Accompanying download content details for Midnight Club Los Angeles, the company made first mention of an all new publishing label that will specialize in quick localizations of sports games.

The new label is titled "Spike World Major Selection." As detailed by Spike producers Yasuhiro Iizuka and Daisuke Yamamoto, the label promises to offer high quality sports titles at a reasonable price and with an emphasis on getting the games out as close as possible to their overseas versions . Games under this label will retain their original text and voices. Only the instruction manuals will be in Japanese.

Two of the playable titles at the event will serve as the first two entries in the series. NBA 2K9 and NHL 2K9 are due for PS3, PS2 and Xbox 360 release on March 26. The high end versions will carry a 5,800 yen price point, with the PS2 version costing 4,800 yen. Both titles have the word "Eigo-ban," or "English Version," in their titles, which is often seen in PC games to indicate a similar partial localization.

The other major announcement at the event was for Midnight Club Los Angeles. Iizuka revealed that download content would be offered for the game. Details will be announced later.

NHL 2K9 screenshots

NBA 2K9 screenshots

Held at Microsoft's Daitabashi office, the "Spike-Xbox 360 New Year Party 2009" offered 50 pre-registered users a chance to sample the Xbox 360 versions of Midnight Club Los Angeles, NBA 2K9, NHL 2K9, Tomb Raider Underworld, and Way of the Samurai 3. Spike CEO Mitsutoshi Sakurai lead attendees in a raffle offering up sets of games and a steering wheel cockpit. Also in attendance for a Way of the Samurai 3 demonstrations were idol Azusa Takagi and Tokyo 03's Akinaga Toyomoto, Satoshi Iizuka and Akihiro Kakuta.