Almost a full two weeks before Microsoft and Real-Time World's highly anticpated game is to be released, a full working image of Crackdown has been unleashed to the internet.

While it's really not unusual to see a game reach the piracy scene one or two days before release, seeing a high-profile one like this leaked so early only happens a few times a year if at all.

While most would immediately scream that piracy hurts sales, I feel that it could go either way. Crackdown is guaranteed to sell a certain amount of copies because of it's inclusion of the Halo 3 Beta offer, and most of the people that pirate games in the first place would have two weeks from now anyways, and still not bought a copy.

Nothing unusual about this scenario at all, as it happens to just about every game on every platform, even Wii and PS3.

The real way that this leak could hurt is by word of mouth. You'll have 20-50,000 people playing this game and posting feedback about it on internet forums everywhere; and if you've ever poked your head into the GameSpot forums, you'll know that people love to complain (loudly) when a product doesn't live up to expectations or it's hype.

At this point in the product's life; three weeks after being sent for duplication, chances are that the leak came from someone in the media who was sent a copy for review. It's kind of sad that someone who supposedly likes games enough to write about them professionally would help to propogate what most believe is the greatest threat to the gaming industry.

As I said, it's nothing new, I'm just sick of seeing it happen time and time again. These companies really need to re-evaluate their distribution and promotion methods. Maybe have testing centres, where a rreviewer could enter a secure facility and play for 8 hours a day. I really don't know, but these leaks are getting bigger and more frequent every year.

/end rant