Voting is now open for the second annual Xbox Live Arcade awards. The voting gives Xbox Live users the ability to vote for their favorite Xbox Live Arcade titles that were released during the 2008 selling season.

To vote, users only need to go to the Xbox Live Spotlight channel between March 3rd through March 10th for the chance to vote for their favorite titles in nine different categories. A total of six games are nominated in each of the nine categories.

Nominations were dominated by Braid, which was developed by Number-None and which received a total of five nominations in different categories. Capcom is well represented, as well, with a total of three titles being nominated, which were Street Fighter II HD Remix, Bionic Commando Reamed, and Mega Man 9. With these three titles combined, Capcom received a total of eight nominations across the categories, which makes them the leading developer represented.

Fan favorite Castle Crashers was able to rack up a total of four nominations spread out across the categories and it is likely that they are the odds-on favorite to win in the Co-op multiplayer category. The nominations this year are split fairly evenly between larger commercial developers and smaller independent developers, with a slight edge perhaps to the larger commercial developers.

The category that will likely be watched by many this year will be the “Best Innovation in XBLA” category, where the nominated titles will battle it out to determine who made the best innovation in the XBLA titles released for 2008.

Out of the six nominated titles we see it as a dead heat between Braid’s time travel in game technology going head to head with A Kingdom for Keflings, which was nominated based on its use of Avatars. The sleeper in this one might, however, be Fable II Pub Games for retail game integration, which was a big favorite among players. We look for A Kingdom for Keflings’ use of avatars to walk away with this one in the end, but it will be close.