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I’ve written before about Earth Defense Force X (now Earth Defense Force 2017) and it’s absurdly fictional city-destroying, giant-size-bug-splattering gameplay and how it was on it’s way to the Xbox 360. At the time, I had wished for the game to be published in the United States. Looks like D3 Publisher of America has decided we’re worthy of bringing this over from Japan.

Over at Siliconera, Spencer posts an interview he had with Brian Etheridge, the United States producer of Earth Defense Force 2017. You can get the lowdown on the bugs and giant robots you’ll face, along with a few descriptions of some of the weapons and vehicles you can use in the game. Brian talks a little about the decisions they made in the localization, such as ultimately choosing English voice acting for the AI-characters in the game instead the original Japanese track. Brian also goes on to suggest that the title might be a lower priced title than the premium many pay for “next-gen” titles, by saying that Earth Defense Force 2017 won’t cost as much as something like Gears of War. I can’t wait until March.

Over at IGN, Atari put up a blog detailing their localization efforts along with writing about the marketing strategy and tactics they’re using for the US release of Bullet Witch. I like that Atari seems to understand that Cavia’s quirky title and gameplay might not have a real mainstream audience, but that it could sell well to the more “avid” (aka hardcore) gamer, and have catered to them a bit with their marketing and PR. This is best exemplified with the fact that the game is going to have a reversible cover that lets the gamer decide if they want the US or Japan/Asia cover art.

Go check it out, it should be interesting to read for the next month until the game’s release.

After a million downloads of the E3′05 and multi-player demos, who picked up Lost Planet on Friday?

I know I did. Along with over 1 million other people worldwide.

So it’s pretty clear that Capcom’s second Xbox 360 title is going to follow Dead Rising as a success, despite various gripes from critics like 1Up and Gamespot. It even sold some 20,000 copies at launch in Japan and that’s with only an install base of just over 290,000 consoles. Impressive (the sales, not the install base).

Anyhow, seeing as there are potentially some 20,000 and growing players from Japan, Brian Dunn at Capcom’s Lost Planet Community blog decided to post a Japanese language lesson so you can properly communicate with (and insult) anyone who speaks Japanese. I could see how this lesson could come in handy for Ridge Racer 6, Dead or Alive 4 and Chromehounds multi-player, among other games I’m sure.

Kakatte koi!

Image courtesy of Brian Dunn/Lost Planet Community

Having trouble coming up with a strategy for Clocktower? Want to know all the standard weapon spawn points for Tyro Station? At one point, German Xbox clan Evil Axis thought it was a good idea to have maps and weapons sketched out for all of the Gears of War multi-player maps. The resulting maps (which do not include the recently released Raven Down or Old Bones… yet) which are available at http://www.evilaxis.de/gow_maps/ are incredibly clean-looking and well-done reference material. Hopefully an update with the two new maps will be up in short order.