Gamesindustry.biz is reporting that a cracked Xbox 360 version of Resident Evil 5 has been leaked to torrent sites today, 10 days ahead of its retail release. All 6.71 GB of it. It's not yet known if it's a final build of the game or an earlier one, but we'd have to assume that the full single-player experience is included. We hit up Capcom for comment, but have yet to hear back.

Update 2:45 p.m. PST: Capcom's Chris Kramer replied to us with the following:
Resident Evil 5 is the amazing end result of hundreds of people around the globe contributing tens of thousands of man hours to production, design and publishing, along with tens of millions of dollars invested by Capcom. It is unfortunate that there are those few who choose to disrespect the time, effort and artistry that has been put into this game by embracing software piracy, thereby jeopardizing both the future of the Resident Evil franchise and Capcom as a publisher and developer of interactive entertainment. We'd like to thank all the fans who are eagerly anticipating the release of Resident Evil 5 in North America and Europe on Friday the 13, March 2009 and promise them that their patience will soon be rewarded.


Miguel says: I guess the inevitable question is, does piracy impact sales? Arguments abound on both sides. In his DICE keynote this year, Gabe Newell from Valve made some interesting comments about this. His thrust: Pirates aren't so much interested in getting things for free so much as they simply want to get things sooner. He was mainly referring to the logistics of selling PC game, of course, but perhaps the analogy applies. In any case, food for thought.

The larger question, assuming that piracy does indeed hurt sales: will this deter big publishers from making big games, like Resident Evil 5? What would the industry look like if massive investments like that were, from here on out, written off as too risky?