xbox.com

​The biggest announcement of the new year is already attracting rumor and speculation from fans, outlets, and pundits all over the place. So I'm here to propagate some of that rumor and speculation for all of you faithful readers out there.

From the looks of it, according to Xbox.com, Resident Evil 6 will feature six-player cooperative online play. Great, right? Possibly. Co-op was awesome in Resident Evil 5. But before you get all excited, you need to consider this: what does a snippet of information like that mean, exactly?

Here's my speculation: this will be Resident Evil's first real attempt at a "Horde" mode. Since Gears of War 2, Horde Mode is practically obligatory for a multiplayer-intensive game. And six is sort of a bizarre number for straight-up narrative cooperative play.

Lastly, consider this: from the video, which I've posted again, it looks like three serious narrative threads are going to make up the game's story: Leon (which looks survival-horrory), Chris (run-n-gun action), and the mysterious short-haired blond dude & his companion. That last one, to me, will probably be cooperative, with the others residing in the solo campaign.

Again, just speculation, but that's how I see this thing shaking out. These sorts of screenshot guesses have been wrong in the past, but a more robust cooperative mode is certainly not out of the spectrum of possiblity. Keep an eye out for lots of news before the 11/20/2012 release.