360s get COD2 demo-lition

Activision and Infinity Ward apparently aren't too happy with just having the number-one selling Xbox 360 game on the market. Like a general bent on utter destruction, the two companies want to dominate the battlefield known as retail. They fired another shot in that war today with the release of the Call of Duty 2 demo on Xbox Live.

The demo, now available for free download from Xbox Live Marketplace, won't crowd hard drive space, either. The file is a mere 331.11MB, roughly a quarter the size of the Project Gotham Racing 3 demo, which is 1.25GB.

The news won't be essential to all Xbox 360 owners, as an overwhelming majority of gamers who have a 360 already own the game. Weeks after the 360 was released in North America, numbers from NPD revealed that nearly three out of every four Xbox 360 owners also brought home a copy of Call of Duty 2. Still, the numbers appear to be getting even better as more Xbox 360s find their way to stores--COD2 was the top-selling console game in January.

While Xbox 360 owners who don't own the wargame are rejoicing, some members of the Xbox Live community are protesting.

Says one gamer who goes by the handle "Roland Dobbins" on MajorNelson.com, "Rather than wasting time and resources putting out a demo of the single most popular game for the XBox 360, with an attach-rate of 70% or better, it sure would be nice if Microsoft and Activision/Infinity Ward concentrated their resources on a patch for the many performance and playability problems with the XBox Live-enabled multiplayer mode; currently, the game is all but unusable."

Infinity Ward has issued one patch for the game, which addressed a game-save glitch, and has promised that a patch to fix multiplayer issues is in the works.

Call of Duty 2, which was released with the Xbox 360's launch in November, is rated T for Teen and retails for $59.99. For more on the game, read GameSpot's review.