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   As we get closer to the summer of 2007, the games lined-up for release on the Xbox 360 will become more and more resounding, cultimating with an avalanche of really big ones during the pre-holiday season. The most hyped game is still Halo 3, as expected, and after last week's GDC, 1UP has some new hints about a possible September 2007 release for Bungie's second Halo sequel. Unless Project Gotham Racing 4 will step in to take his place, leaving Halo 3 for November.

   Whatever the scenario, it's unlikely that Microsoft would launch Halo 3 in October - since that's when Grand Theft Auto IV is supposed to come out. And the month of December also seems to be taken by Lost Odyssey. Following a similar reasoning based on their talk with Microsoft's Shane Kim (Corporate Vice President), 1UP concludes that Mass Effect could be released in July, between Shadowrun and Blue Dragon in the neighbouring months. So with these assumptions in mind, the monthly Xbox 360 hit-releases for the rest of 2007 could look like this:
- Guitar Hero II - April
- Forza Motorsport 2 - May
- Shadowrun - June
- Mass Effect - July (unconfirmed)
- Blue Dragon - August
- Halo 3 - September (unconfirmed)
- Grand Theft Auto IV - October
- Project Gotham Racing 4 - November (unconfirmed)
- Lost Odyssey - December    Other notable entries in the Xbox 360 line-up for the second half of 2007 are Bioshock (August), Stranglehold (September), Star Wars: The Force Unleashed (November), along with plenty more action games such as Assassin's Creed, Battlefield: Bad Company, Enemy Territory: Quake Wars, Half-Life 2, Mercenaries 2: World in Flames and Unreal Tournament 3, whose release dates are still vaguely set for "(Q4) 2007".

   Backtracking to the beginning of 1UP's talk with Shane Kim, their discussion actually started from BioWare's upcoming Xbox 360 RPG, Mass Effect - one of the centerpieces of Microsoft's RPG Panel at GDC 2007. An interesting thing they found out is that Microsoft actually tried to buy BioWare (currently owned by Elevation Partners), but they were turned down. 1UP also confirmed with BioWare's bosses that the studio is indeed developing for the PlayStation 3, as recently rumoured. So if we add these two bits, we can hope that Mass Effect will be ported to other platforms, as well. One day...

   It would be a real shame not to bring it to the PC, at the very least!