icrosoft showed off its holiday 2007 lineup in greater detail at a pre-TGS briefing in Tokyo early this morning. While some of the content was reheated material from the company’s E3 briefing, there was plenty of news—including the official announcement of Ninja Gaiden 2. Takashi Sensui, the company’s general manager of the Home and Entertainment Division headed up the event, joined on stage by acclaimed developers Tomonobu Itagaki and Hironobu Sakaguchi.
When it was all said and done, Microsoft showed off a fairly impressive lineup—with a focus on showing the assembled press that, yes, Japanese developers are indeed still supporting the Xbox 360. We’ll see if their enthusiasm translates into sales this holiday season.
Early in the event, Final Fantasy creator and the mind behind Blue Dragon Hironobu Sakaguchi showed off his latest creation, Lost Odyssey. While Peter Moore told the E3 crowd a few months ago that the game would be released in 2007, he was only partially correct. Sakaguchi-san said that the game will indeed get a December 2007 release—in Japan. The rest of the world will have to wait until 2008 to see Mistwalker’s latest. He did say that the game is 95 percent complete, and showed off the first 10 minutes of the game.
Tecmo wasn’t talking yesterday about a series of supposedly leaked screens purportedly showing Ninja Gaiden 2 in action. What a difference a few hours makes. Team Ninja’s Tomonobu Itagaki took the stage and made the official announcement that the game was slated for a 2008 release—and it will be published by Microsoft. He also said the leak made the team change up their demo plan, showing off gameplay from the Aqua capital stage instead of the Japanese capital stage, which was the location of the leaked screens. The game is definitely bloodier than before, featuring enemies who lose heads and limbs—and can even be cut into two separate, gushing halves. It looks to be as frantic and combo-heavy as before, which should come as good news to series vets.
Kingdom Under Fire: Circle of Doom was shown, too, with six characters from the series making an appearance in the action-RPG. The game features four-way co-op on Xbox Live, random maps and tons of weapon combos.
Aside from the announcements, Microsoft took the opportunity to show off some previously revealed but unreleased games, including Halo 3, Assassin’s Creed, Project Gotham Racing 4 and Viva Piñata: Party Animals and Square’s The Last Remnant.
Namco Bandai also announced that Ace Combat 6: Fires of Liberation will be an Xbox 360 exclusive, hitting this holiday. The company’s Beautiful Katamari is rolling onto the platform in October, too, bringing the series’ quirky ball-rolling gameplay to the Xbox for the first time.
After touching on the platform’s retail SKU highlights, Microsoft spent considerable time highlighting its Xbox Live Arcade offerings.
In addition to releasing an HD version of its classic rhythmic action-shooter Rez on the service, Q Entertainment showed off Every Extend Extra Extreme, a puzzle game based on creating explosive chain reactions. Taito showed another puzzler, Exit, where players rescue people from a variety of emergencies while working through mind-bending obstacles. Exit is due for a year-end release. Braid is a combination puzzle game/platformer, with players performing the now-mundane task of rescuing a princess with a fresh twist—players can manipulate time to solve puzzles. It’s set for an early 2008 release. Schizoid, the debut XNA Game Studio title to appear on Xbox Live Arcade is scheduled for a late 2007 release. The game pits players against waves of glowing enemies and encourages cooperative play.
Shooter fans have a wealth of new games to look forward to, also. Hudson Entertainment’s Omega Five brings HD flair to classic side-scrolling action, with cunning enemies that approach from all sides. Triggerheart Exelica throws tons of enemies at players and features dynamically adjusted difficulty settings that keep things just challenging enough. Finally, Treasure’s Ikaruga is coming soon to Xbox Live. The modern classic includes two-player co-op, slow-mo training and nail-shredding action.
Finally, Castle Crashers could finally be seeing a release in early 2008. The game, from The Behemoth, creators of Alien Hominid, features four-way action with RPG elements and hand-drawn animation.
Microsoft certainly has a lot to be upbeat about with this lineup, even in spite of sluggish Japanese sales. The company showed off a wide variety of games from a diverse group of genres, with the major ones covered by at least a couple of titles. If Microsoft’s patient strategy pays off, perhaps more Japanese gamers will notice the exclusives and check out what the Xbox 360 has to offer.
Get details and the newest screenshots of the games featured at the press briefing here:
We'll have a lot more coming live from Tokyo beginning on Monday!