People who didn't want to shell out for a PSP just for one good puzzle game were excited by the announcement of Lumines Live, coming later this year to Xbox Live Arcade. That excitement might be tempered slightly, however, by the news that buying the game may not actually mean buying multiplayer.

In an interview with Game Informer, Mizuguchi said that you will be able to buy the basic form of Lumines Live through the Xbox Live Arcade, but if you want to play multiplayer you're going to have to cough up a bit more money.

"At least that's the way we have it planned right now," he said. "We're still trying to determine if we'll package versus in the base package."

Lumines is certainly a worthy standalone game -- I'm sure that's how most people played it for most of their time. But one of the selling points of Live Arcade games is being able to play online against others, and it seems odd to seperate these two modes with different costs, especially given that Lumines isn't exactly the most complex game in the world.

In addition, as was already mentioned at E3, you'll be able to download new music for the game, some of which will run music videos in the background as you play. But here again, you'll be paying extra. I'll be interested to see how (and if) they integrate sound effects into the downloaded music as they did in the original game, because otherwise it's hard to see spending money for new music when you could just stream songs off your iPod while you play instead.

Source: Kikizo