Saints Row XBLA aiming to be 'more unique,' says THQ's Bilson

Not much is known about THQ's downloadable Saints Row title, save for the fact that it's in development for Xbox Live and is also likely to land on Nintendo's 3DS in some form. In a new interview with Shacknews, THQ's head of core games, Danny Bilson, alluded to some changes made to the title's direction and its dependence on a larger game.

"That one is changed. It's changed," said Bilson. "It's going to be a different--we actually changed the design and are doing something more unique. This is just creative but we wound up feeling the game we were building was too much like a section of Saint's Row that you could play in Saint's Row." Bilson added that this Saints Row would feature an "original game mechanic" that would aid it in supporting the larger franchise.

THQ's approach, then, seems to diverge from the one that spawned Dead Rising 2: Case Zero, a downloadable prequel to Capcom's zombie masher, Dead Rising 2. Capcom called its $5 teaser, composed of gameplay similar to that found in the retail follow-up, its "most dynamic sales weapon" ever, having sold over 500,000 units by the middle of September.

Bilson, however, believes "you don't want to play something that you can play within the main experience." You might be inclined to agree, but only because there's another dynamic sales weapon pointing at your head.