I haven't played the GoW2 Firefight. : \ From what I've been reading, people have been saying that ODST's smokes it though.


The Halo 3 maps are on Disc 2 of the H3: ODST pack. The 2nd disc never surfaced online ... which brings me to my next thought.



I believe the ODST "leak" was done by Bungie on purpose.

1. Halo 2 legitimately leaked back in 2003. It was a French version. ODST leaked. It's in French again. Coincidence? Maybe. A play to make the ODST leak seem more legit? Maybe.

2. The story goes that a French retailer put 100 copies of ODST out early. I can tell you that it's NOT normal for a retailer to get something like this 21 days in advance. If anything, you get your shipment in the Friday before the Tuesday release.

I've been seeing this pattern for years now.

3. The 2nd ODST disc never surfaced. If someone has the capabilities to rip the first, why not the 2nd?

4. A 100MB file is missing from the set of 71. How does a file go missing ... only to have the original uploader not correct the issue? With 100MB missing, you theoretically will run into a hole in the game.



Why leak the game?

1. Word of mouth feeds the ODST hype frenzy. I can tell you guys that this game is fuggin awesome.

2. Modified consoles and be ID'ed easily on Xbox Live. When you play ODST, you earn achievements. Those achievements are bottled up until you connect online again. When you connect online, MSFT will see that you've earned achievements before the release date ... on a foreign version of the game ... that's missing 100mb of data due to bad check sum.

In theory, your console is effectively flagged for banishment.

3. With 100MB missing, you might not be able to finish the game. Even if you were to, this type of positive feed back will push fence sitters to the "buy" side.