As previously mentioned, the playable demo for Crackdown is now available on Xbox Live Marketplace. The demo features both single and online cooperative play. The demo is available to Gold members only in all regions except Germany and Japan. Silver members can download it in one week.

I just learned that the demo is 1.25 GIG. Be prepaared for a wait.

Also, AceyBongos did a quick interview with Phil Wilson, the producer of Crackdown and received some more details on teh demo:

"We were gutted that the demo got delayed and I should take this opportunity to apologise to people for that, it was really unfortunate. But were really excited about people playing the demo because its kind of a fun game in itself. The way the demo is structured gives you access to one sixth of Pacific City. You get the run of the South Island of the Los Muertos district. Youre completely free to move around that area, not just on the street level but vertically aswell. You can get access to lots of different cars and guns, and really get a feel for the Crackdown sandbox and what it brings to the genre. You can also level up your character really quickly. The demos time limited so we wanted to give people the opportunity to feel what it was like to have a high level character. If you really work hard you can even achieve the highest level character for a moment! Its a lot of fun to mess around with, so were looking forward to people playing around with it.

"The demo is also coop. Unfortunately due to demo restrictions we werent able to include any join-in-progress play or Friends matchmaking, so youll have to wait for the full version to do that. But its still a whole lot of fun, just getting in there with a stranger and doing whatever you want to."

And since Crackdown is all about doing daft things to unlock crazy Achievements, Phil has a special challenge for you to try out when you play the demo:

"The skill-leveling is turned up in the demo, so I know its possible to get a four-star Agent before the demo times out. Ill be well impressed if everyone manages to do that."

Nice. Now, exprohoud asked a very good question the other day about whether Realtime Worlds were worried if the Halo 3 Beta would draw attention away from Crackdown itself, so I asked it to Phil It was better than all my questions...

"We did have some concern that the Halo 3 Beta would draw attention away from Crackdown, but its extremely hard to launch a new game, a new series, at the best of times. Its definitely helping us with that. So while a lot of people will be looking at Crackdown because of the Halo 3 Beta, there will be many more people looking at it on its own merits. Weve made a unique game with a unique look, and in order to garner as much attention as possible for a game that really deserves it the Halo 3 Beta was a great move for us."