A pretty decent looking and sounding 2D side-scrolling shooter with a nice twist on co-op multiplayer.

In a somewhat surprising move announced this week – a game called Aegis Wing comes to Xbox Live Arcade today and is made available to all North American Gold and Silver Xbox Live members, for free.  And we’re not talking about the trial-version.  This is a full game.  Complete with 12 achievements worth 200 gamerscore, leaderboards, online co-op multiplayer, as well as offline co-op multiplayer.  Apparently, the game was developed by a team of three interns, with support from Carbonated Games (who gets developer credit) and also from the game’s publisher, Microsoft Game Studios.  It is unclear as to why the game is only available to download for North American gamers.

It’s not completely unheard of to release a game for free, at least initially, as was the case with the 48-hour window in which gamers could get a free download of the XBLA game Texas Hold ‘Em from developer TikGames.  After the 48-hour window however, the full-version went to its current price of 800 Microsoft Points, (USD $10).  The trial-version, as usual is still free.  In this case, rumors have been flying around that the amount of time Aegis Wing will be up for free download is limited. 

A quote from a GameSpot article claiming to have heard from a Microsoft representative reads: “…the company won't ever charge for Aegis Wing, [but] it might not be available forever … it [will] get at least a couple of weeks on the service.”  Only time will tell what the future holds for this game, but in the meantime it’s highly suggested you get it while you can, and while it’s free.

As I have already pointed out, this game was developed by interns over at Carbonated Games, Microsoft’s casual games development studio in Redmond, WA.  They cranked it out in a short 3 months, with a minimal amount of help and direction from some of the staff.  Carbonated Games is also known for their spot-on digital recreation of the classic card game Uno, which released to XBLA back May of 2006.  No word yet on whether intern projects are going to be a reoccurring theme for the Developer each summer, but it is by no means a bad idea. 

Maybe this will open the doors for contest-winner-created games, (such as those at the annual International Games Festival), being made available to XBLA in the future.  One can only hope, as I’m sure most of us are tired of the Atari-age ports and Arcade “classics” that make up a rather large percentage of the 60+ games now available on the service.  Moving towards the release of new content as opposed to remakes and ports seems like the correct direction to go, if you ask me.