Almost a month before its scheduled release, Halo 2
has surfaced on a variety of newsgroups and websites for download. The game, a PAL version
with French dialogue, has followed a route taken by many popular games which sees them
available for download immediately following the Gold announcement.
Although illegal,
this is the fate of most popular games, in recent months The Sims 2, FIFA 2005 and even as I
write these lines, Tribes : Vengeance have all found their way to the same
websites.
Most developers and/or publishers however, continue to rave on about the
successful sales of their titles, with the most recent example being Konami claiming that
1.5 million units of PES 4 were needed for the European launch, even though the game has
been up for download for over a week. In some cases the online element of the game is enough
to make most gamers buy the original since online play is (usually) not possible in pirated
copies. This is always the case when the highly regulated environment of XBox Live is
involved.
Even though the emergence of pirated copies is unlikely to do Halo 2 sales
any serious damage, Microsoft has issued a very strong-worded comment regarding the
available copy:
Microsoft has learned that a version of Halo 2 has been posted to
various newsgroups and web sites. We consider downloading this code or making it available
for others to download as theft.
We are currently investigating the source of this
leak with the appropriate authorities. Pending the result of our investigation, we do not
have further comment. Microsoft takes the integrity of its intellectual property extremely
seriously, and we are aggressively
pursuing the source of this illegal act.
The
launch of Halo 2 worldwide remains unaffected.
