A sudden boom in leaked console titles has put a new spin on the issue of game piracy.

Since the news of Fallout 3's leak for the Xbox 360, several other high profile titles found their way to the Internet torrent sites. The highly anticipated Fable 2 and Far Cry 2 products were both leaked last week to the Xbox 360 piracy community in the past week, however we were in for a surprise twist. It was just this week that one of the more vocal critics of PC game piracy lately, Epic Games, have had their console exclusive Gears of War 2 product leak for the Xbox 360 platform several weeks prior to release day.

Last month, Epic's Cliff "CliffyB" Belszinski told Total Video Games that piracy "Here's the problem right now; the person who is savvy enough to want to have a good PC to upgrade their video card, is a person who is savvy enough to know bit torrent to know all the elements so they can pirate software. Therefore, high-end videogames are suffering very much on the PC." Perhaps some would argue that the very same people that could upgrade a video card could also modify their consoles.

Each game that's been leak so far this month has been released by completely different groups, and many of the group that populate torrent sites vie to release big name titles and software first, creating a very competitive environment. Some may argue that there may be a growing connection between the manufacturing industry and pirate release groups. Just this past Saturday, a Technicolor employee was found to be in possession of over $100,000 worth of product taken from music, movie and games publishers (including Gears of War 2 and Fable 2), indicating that perhaps security is too light at warehouses and facilities that hold pre-release content.

Is the recent rash of leaked console titles a rebuttal to publishers like Epic, Ubisoft and others that have pulled back from the PC because of piracy concerns? Many gamers have taken issue with such a stance and have long argued that console piracy is just as bad if not worse than PC gaming piracy. Perhaps the recent publisher push to find a safer home on the console platforms in order to avoid piracy may be unleashing an unintended consequence. After all, neither the PC versions of Far Cry 2 or Fallout 3 have been reported on torrent sites yet (Fable 2 and Gears of War 2 are Xbox 360 exclusives). One can only wonder if this trend of console piracy will continue or worse, and if it will give second thoughts for publishers who considered the consoles a safer haven from pirates.

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