Wing Commander confirmed for XBox 360

Author: Brett Thomas
Published: 24th February 2007

"Fire when ready" - One of the greatest space combat games of all time is coming to the 360.

When I originally wrote my piece on Games that should be Remastered, several of you were miffed that I had left certain titles off that list. One of the most popular mentions was the space-combat simulator Wing Commander, a franchise which has been dead for quite some time. Well, good news - it's coming back.

Electronic Arts confirmed on Thursday that the Wing Commander series would indeed live again. Apparently, though, it won't be a full title - instead, a "gamelet" is being released on the XBox 360 Live Arcade. It's being developed by Gaia Industries, a studio that's starting to get noticed for its upcoming XBLA releases.

The game will be entitled Wing Commander Arena and will support up to 16 players. It will focus on the multiplayer arcade aspects of the original series, allowing players to compete their personally designed ships in large-scale dogfights. WCA will have four play-modes: single player, co-op, versus, and all-out deathmatches.

All in all, it looks like a great release for Live Arcade, and Gamasutra has noted that the service could be getting even better soon - Worms is up on the docket for Microsoft approval next, and will hopefully get its green light finally.

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