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It may be half a year late, but Xbox 360 owners will finally get their chance to play Unreal Tournament III when Midway brings Epic Games' online multiplayer shooter to the system this summer. Will all that extra time mean that the 360 version is the ultimate UT? According to Tanya Jessen, the game's Senior Associate Producer, while this version has more official content than the PC and PlayStation 3 editions, it doesn't have the unofficial stuff. At least not yet.

Crispy Gamer: I think I speak for 360 owners everywhere when I ask: What the hell took so long?

Tanya Jessen: Well, we had to finish the PS3 version, but we added some new stuff to the 360 version.

Crispy Gamer: Did you do that because you felt guilty?

Jessen: No! We actually have a very small company, and we wanted to focus on one platform at a time, so we focused on the PC version, then we focused on the PS3, and then we focused on the 360.

Crispy Gamer: What have you added to the 360 version?

Jessen: There are five new maps, as well as all the maps we added to the PC and PS3 versions later on; two new characters; and a split-screen mode.

Crispy Gamer: Do those two new characters actually bring anything new to the game?

Jessen: No, it's just something different.

Crispy Gamer: Has there been any talk of bringing the five exclusive maps to the PC or PS3 at some point?

Jessen: Right now we're considering them exclusive.

Crispy Gamer: How many maps will the 360 version have at launch?

Jessen: Hmmm...it's over 50 for sure.

Crispy Gamer: For people who haven't played the game on the PC or PS3, what are the major differences between UT3 and the last game in the series, UT2004?

Jessen: Well, one thing we did is consolidate the Onslaught and Assault modes into a new one called Warfare, which is a team-based mode where you have a base and the other team has a base, and you're trying to connect nodes from one base to another. Every time you capture a node, something different happens, depending on the map. Your spawn points might move, or it might unlock different weapons and vehicles. Every map is different.

Crispy Gamer: How many different modes are there in the game?

Jessen: There's Duel, Capture the Flag, Vehicle Capture the Flag, Warfare, Deathmatch and Team Deathmatch. You can play them multiplayer, or with bots, and then there's the single-player mode.

Crispy Gamer: What's the difference between the single-player mode and playing the game with bots?

Jessen: The single-player mode has an objective-based ladder system, and you unlock new areas as you go. There's also a story, and you can actually play it four-player co-op.

Crispy Gamer: I assume, if you're just playing with the bots, it's like playing online, just by yourself.

Jessen: Right.

Crispy Gamer: In the course of playing the single-player mode, how many of the different game types do you end up playing?

Jessen: All of them.

Crispy Gamer: How many of the maps do you end up playing?

Jessen: It depends on the path you take. You can take a path where you play every single map, but you can also take a different path and only play about 23 of the maps.