Dead Rising: Case Zero Sets Xbox Live Arcade Record

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Capcom’s strategy for Dead Rising 2 is certainly interesting. As most of our readers surely know, they’ve released a small prologue to the upcoming game’s story as a standalone downloadable game on the Xbox Live Marketplace. It’s dubbed Dead Rising: Case Zero and costs a meager five dollars. It’s a unique marketing trick and definitely more than the usual cheap demo that publishers release. And now it’s breaking records.

The mini-game’s publisher and developer Capcom announced that it has broken the Xbox Live Arcade record in week-one sales. They didn’t opt to tell how many units had been sold, but gaming news site Gamasutra reports that 300,000 players are listed on the game’s online leaderboards, leading to speculation that 300k units have been sold.

Although some of the message board faithful have decried Dead Rising: Case Zero as a “paid demo”, most players seem satisfied with the game’s content that allows you to sample the gameplay and features of the upcoming Dead Rising 2 while offering an original part of the story that won’t be in the full game. Another  reason that Case Zero stands out among free demos? You can take your character progress from the pint-sized game to the full Dead Rising 2 when it comes out.

For those who can’t get enough zombie slashing, Dead Rising 2 comes out in just a few weeks on September 28th.