Week in Xbox 360: News on Gears of War 2, Alone in the Dark piracy and JRPG mania!
By Mike Ferro
It’s been a busy week for the Xbox 360 with a plethora of exciting news out for the system. There is news concerning Gears of War 2 multiplayer and a slew of JRPG games ready to hit the system very soon.
Gears of War 2
Gears of War 2 is the most anticipated game of 2008 on the Xbox 360. Fans are hungry for a AAA game to hit the system after months of a long dry spell the Xbox 360 fans are getting antsy for a good game to come out.
The first Gears of War game was a AAA top notch game with a decent multiplayer mode to complement the single player campaign. However if you ask anyone three things did mar the multiplayer mode: host advantage, bullet lag and chainsaw duel.
According to Play, Cliffy B. has verified the correction of host advantage. No longer will the host have a lag free experience while the other players lag. I suppose this means if the other players lag the host will lag also, giving a balanced playing field. Also implementing a button mashing chainsaw duel gets rid of the randomness of who kills who first, it’s all thumb-skill based now.
However the third issue of bullet lag has not yet been verified as fixed yet but we should find out more as it gets closer to launch.
JRPG Mania!
Microsoft has went on record and voiced how important the Japanese market is. So important is this market Microsoft has expended all of their exclusive dollars on garnering many JRPG exclusives or timed exclusives as humanly possible.
According to Xboxic Just recently in Microsoft showcased their JRPG lineup in Tokyo starting with:
Tales of Vesperia so far announced to the Xbox 360 only, will also come in a Xbox 360 bundle in Japan. No word if this will hit Europe or America, but my guess is it won’t hit these shores.
Next Star Ocean: The Last Hope was unveiled by Square Enix. This game was rumored to be in development for quite some time, finally it has been confirmed by Square Enix, with no mention of a PS3 version. This leads me to believe it may most likely be a timed exclusive.
Next Square Enix showcased Infinite Undiscovery an RPG that was already announced previously so no surprise there.
Lastly Last Remnant was announced by Square Enix, and to the surprise of many it was announced to be a timed exclusive with the Xbox 360 version launching winter and PS3 version later on.
Wow, Microsoft has a ton of money tied into JRPG games. Square Enix is no slouch either considering Microsoft paid Take Two $50 million for exclusive DLC you have to wonder how much Square Enix was paid for three of these exclusives.
The better question would be will Microsoft’s big gamble work? Will the Japanese population have a change of heart and start buying Xbox 360s? Only time will tell.
Alone in the Dark Piracy
Alone in the Dark – Atari’s last stab at hardcore gaming was launched today in Europe. However many people have been playing it around the world before the game officially went on sale today. How was this possible? It was all made possible through the magic of the Internet. According to Kotaku the Xbox 360 version of Alone in the Dark’s iso image has already shown up on bittorrent sites on the Internet.
This event brings back memories of the same thing that happened with Grand Theft Auto IV for Xbox 360 before it’s launch. It seem’s like there is huge piracy issue on the Xbox 360 and Microsoft needs to do something about it quickly before it turns into the next PC.
The PS2 was also another system that was hacked by having a special mod chip soldiered into it’s motherboard causing rampant piracy of games on that platform.
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