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Most of the game revolves around combat. Wayne can use a variety of weapons, like machine guns, shotguns, and rocket launchers. In addition to hand-held weapons, Wayne can pilot an assortment of robot suits (mechs), called Vital Suits (VSs). Weaponry is used to combat the planet's native species, The Akrid. The Akrid are a hostile, bug-like species, which come in many forms. They can range from smaller than a person to several times larger than a mech. Wayne also fights groups of enemy human soldiers, called Snow Pirates. The Snow Pirates use the same kinds of handheld weapons and VSs that Wayne does. There are multiple Vital Suits available for use. Also, when on foot, Wayne has the ability to remove heavy weaponry from these vital suits for upgraded firepower. For battlefield mobility, some of these vital suits can "Transform" into a faster, more agile form. For instance, one light-weight vital suit can transform into a Snowmobile-type transport with a chain-gun attached to it. As for weapons, there are some of the typical science fiction weapons such as lasers and slow-moving plasma bolt guns. The main weapon in the game is the previously mentioned machine gun and it's quite effective at both medium and short ranges. Wayne can carry a maximum of two weapons at once. He, and multiplayer characters, are capable of using grappling-hook type tool to gain vantage points. In the latest demo from X-Box magazine, a sniper rifle has been added.
The game will have multiplayer support on Xbox Live and Capcom is aiming for 32 players online. Cooperative play and competitive play have been confirmed - with a new video released during X'06 demonstrating the multiplayer component in more detail.
A demo was released on November 23,2006.
At the Game Convention at Leipzig, Germany, which took place from August 21-23 of 2006, one of the Lost Planet producers, Jun Takeuchi, remarked hypothetically to 1up.com that for Capcom as a business company, the potential porting of Lost Planet from the Xbox 360 to the PlayStation 3 was "in the future it's something we might have to do." However, Mr. Takeuchi also said that he will personally "try to keep it as a 360 exclusive."
1up made speculative comments that lower than expected Xbox 360 sales in Japan may lead Capcom to port the game to the PS3. [1] However, the Japanese sales based speculative comments of 1up actually indicate that Lost Planet is likely to remain exclusive to the Xbox 360, because on August 24, 2006, Mitsubishi JFC Securities officially announced that they were reducing the worldwide sales expectations of the Playstation 3 by 50%, to only 3 Million systems sold worldwide by March of 2007. [2]
While talking with 1up, the games producer, Jun Takeuchi, went on to say that as a business organization Capcom, "is trying to appeal to the worldwide audience," and he said "Capcom has a hope that more Japanese publishers realize that there are more markets outside of Japan." [3] Microsoft has already achieved all of its sales goals from the previous year, and the current goal is to sell 10 million Xbox 360 systems worldwide by the end of 2006, and 15 million systems worldwide by June of 2007. [4]
Stronger than expected worldwide sales of new intellectual property Xbox 360 games like Dead Rising and Xbox Live downloads for Lost Planet are the reasons why Jun Takeuchi made it clear that Capcom is doing everything they can to make sure Lost Planet will remain exclusive to the Xbox 360, just like Dead Rising. [5]
UPDATE: On August 31, 2006, the Producer of Capcom's Lost Planet videogame, Jun Takeuchi, made it clear that two Xbox 360 games-- Lost Planet, and Dead Rising--are both developed exclusively for the Xbox 360, with no plans to port the games to other systems. [6] Jun Takeuchi makes it clear while being interviewed that Lost Planet is being created by Capcom for a worldwide audience on the Xbox 360, and it is optimized to take advantage of the Xbox 360 hardware. Due to this fact, Capcom has no plans to port these Xbox 360 exclusive games to other hardware, because Jun Takeuchi makes it clear that this would result in a diluted product on the system it was ported to. [7] In the interview, we learn that free Xbox Live game demonstrations of Lost Planet have been downloaded by over 550,000 Xbox 360 users, which indicates that Lost Planet will be a hugely successful Xbox 360 game from the moment it is released. [8]
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