Microsoft Announces Full 360 Spring Line-up

Microsoft came wading in today with a bullish press announcement outlining the full spring line-up of Xbox 360 software along with news on the much-talked-about downloadable content for its first-party launch titles Project Gotham Racing 3, Perfect Dark Zero and Kameo: Elements of Power.

Well, when we say they ‘came wading in’ what we actually mean is that we received an email from them in our inbox. But you get the gist. Players will be able to download cars and new achievements for PGR3, multiplayer maps for PDZ, and co-operative gameplay and costumes for Kameo.

There's no real shockers or new surprises on the spring line-up list - most of the titles are either out now, or will be out at some point over the next few weeks in time for the Easter hols. The full spring 360 line-up is as follows:

* 2006 FIFA World Cup (EA Sports)
* Battlefield 2: Modern Combat (EA Games)
* Blazing Angels: Squadrons of WWII (Ubisoft)
* Burnout: Revenge (EA Games
* Dynasty Warriors 5 Empires (KOEI)
* Far Cry Instincts Predator (Ubisoft)
* Final Fantasy XI (Square Enix)
* Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter (Ubisoft)
* Lara Croft Tomb Raider: Legend (Eidos)
* The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (2K Games)
* The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-Earth II (EA)
* The Outfit (THQ)
* Top Spin 2 (2K Sports)
* Rockstar Games Presents Table Tennis (Rockstar Games)
* Rumble Roses XX (Konami)
* X-Men: The Official Game (Activision)
* Football Manager (Sega)
* MotoGP 2006 (THQ)
* Test Drive Unlimited (Atari)


Microsoft is particularly putting a lot of emphasis on Oblivion, GRAW and Tomb Raider as the real blockbusting heavy-hitters for the forthcoming holiday season.

The email also informed us that Street Fighter II: Hyper Fighting, Uno and Texas Hold 'Em Poker will shortly be out on Xbox Live Arcade

"With 80 games available worldwide by June, and new content and experiences coming to Xbox Live all the time, there has never been a better time to own an Xbox 360" declared a beaming Peter Moore, Corporate Vice President of Interactive Entertainment Business in the Entertainment and Devices Division at Microsoft (woww! what a title!). We assume he was beaming when he said it, in a kind of beaming yet slightly frightening Ming the Merciless type way.

SPOnG thinks that perhaps owning ten of Microsoft's portable 360 heating units on day one last December might have been a better time to own them, but then who are we to split hairs.