Rumors of a Torchlight release on a console have been swirling for a long period of time. It looks as if Geoff’s initial observations about where Runic Games was taking the game are indeed true. And now, almost exactly a year after our first post on the matter, Torchlight will see the light of day on March 9th on the Xbox Live Arcade as part of Microsoft’s “House Party” promotion, which also includes the likes of Beyond Good and Evil HD and Bejeweled Blitz. Runic’s well-received action-RPG will be sold for 1200 MSP ($15) and has been revamped for a stronger console experience.

These upgrades include: the user interface has been “COMPLETELY overhauled from the ground up.” There are no more item slots, but simply a maximum number of items you can hold. Players can have a total of 8 mapped skills and — as Runic has admitted — “Most of us actually find it easier to use a variety of skills on the console vs. PC, oddly enough.” Furthermore, no skills have been removed but some have been altered to meet the demands of the console variation. Some goodies from Torchlight 2 have also been added to the XBLA version of Torchlight. Finally, there is confirmation that a PS3 version will not be in the works as Microsoft is publishing the game. Anyhow, a whole slew of updates and improvements to the game have been made and you can read all about it (and see a set of mouth-watering screenshots, I might add) on the official Torchlight website.

One thing’s for sure, I’m super excited to see how the game plays and — although I doubt I’ll have the time to play it again — the demo will be a good indicator of whether the Microsoft-published arcade version is indeed better than the original.

[Runic]