Crimson Dragon demo launched then pulled from XBLA

We hadn't heard anything about Crimson Dragon for a while, which is a shame for two reasons. Firstly, it's one of those rare Kinect games that looks to be targeted at hardcore gamers, and secondly, it's being developed by several former members of Team Andromeda. That's right, this is basically the next Panzer Dragoon game.

So it comes as a quite a surprise to hear that a playable demo appeared fleetingly on the Japanese Xbox Live Arcade. And an even greater surprise to hear that it was subsequently pulled almost immediately and without explanation. Fortunately, it was up long enough for gamers with capture cards in their PCs to download the game and record direct-feed gameplay footage, like the video below. So let's take a look...

Besides looking almost exactly like Panzer Dragoon, the gameplay is also reminiscent of the similarly-Kinect-enabled Child of Eden, only with additional full-body control, allowing the player to control their dragon's on-screen position by leaning in various directions. The classic lock-on laser attack is evident, as is the instantly recognisable Panzer Dragoon music style. It's clearly Panzer Dragoon by another name. Which is fine by us - we love Panzer Dragoon. 

So that just leaves the question of what's going to happen to the game. The last official comment on the matter was given a couple of months ago, when Microsoft told Eurogamer: “Crimson Dragon on XBLA was initially slated for a June 13 2012 release in Japan, however the release has been delayed. We don't have a release date to share at this time, but we're excited about Crimson Dragon's progress, and we are continuing to work on it with the teams at Grounding and LandHo!”

Is the game about to be released? Or is it being held back for... another reason?