Sammy Studios announced that "Iron Phoenix" will support Xbox Live 3.0
when it releases in the first quarter of 2005. Iron Phoenix, the first-ever 16-player online
fighting game, will incorporate features built into the latest iteration of Xbox Live that
allow players to form teams as well as organize and host tournaments. These features are
ideal for "Iron Phoenix," a video game that combines squad-based play and strategies
traditionally found in online first-person shooters with fighting game-style melee
combat.
Developed by InterServ exclusively for the Xbox Iron Phoenix has an MRSP of
USD 49.99.
Iron Phoenix introduces team-based fighting for up to 16 players battling
it out simultaneously in massive indoor and outdoor arenas. Players engage each other in
melee combat using a fight system where moves and combinations are dictated by weapons
rather than characters. Iron Phoenix offers nine weapons, each with a unique arsenal
of
powerful strikes, special moves, range attacks and combinations. The game brings a new
element to the fighting game experience with play modes that rely on team strategy and
cooperative combat, featuring such abilities as combos strung together between team members
or multiple opponents engaged by a single character's combo attack. The game incorporates
fight styles from Kung-Fu and other weapons-based martial arts, and takes inspiration from
popular films of the genre by adding superhuman techniques and wire-fu.
Iron Phoenix
also offers a single-player adventure where players can uncover weapons, characters and
environments, and experience the game's premise set in a mythical
China and inspired by
popular martial arts epics.
The game's online multiplayer mode is designed to be
team-oriented, very much like popular online FPS games, yet 'Iron Phoenix' is a fighter at
its heart, said Tim Hess, producer on Iron Phoenix, Sammy Studios.
Iron Phoenix will
incorporate nearly all Xbox Live 3.0 features into its own online feature set. Xbox Live 3.0
offers team and messaging features that allow players to easily form clans and communicate
among clan members. Iron Phoenix will allow players to form their clan and assign it a
special gamer tag so that all members are automatically
recognized. Clan members can then
use Xbox Live 3.0 messaging features to send updates to existing teammates and even hold
try-outs and interviews to qualify new members. Iron Phoenix will also support video
messaging for those equipped with web cams. For competitions, the game will allow clans to
organize and host tournaments for up to eight
teams, with challengers and their
statistics, as well as tournament results tracked through the Xbox Live
service.
