As before with PGR4, Xboxic has cooperated with OXM again to give the online community an early preview of upcoming material. This month we bring you solid details about recently announced and highly anticipated Beautiful Katamari, the first game in this popular franchise to hit Microsoft’s Xbox platform.

The idea of the game hasn’t changed too much from previous installments in the series: it revolves around a Prince and his Katamari, a rolling clump of objects. Starting out small, the idea is to roll over lots of different objects in the environment to pick them up and grow the ever more colorful ball. Each stage has its own bizarro objective, such as achieving a specific size for the katamari, or collecting a set amount of specific objects onto the ball.

As you roll around, the objects to be collected grow. At first you start off small, picking up matchsticks and the like, moving up to bigger objects like elephants, and eventually getting big enough to collect clouds, planes and skyscrapers. Meanwhile presents are bestowed on you by your kooky dad, that you have to roll up to make them accessible in your virtual closet. These equippable items range from new hats to differently colored shirts.

The all-new VS mode, taking the game online for the first time, lets you take on up to three friends simultaneously to see who has the fastest rolling skills as you try to achieve the same goal for that stage. Don’t worry about variety in what you can pick up either, as the previous games had ‘only’ about 1500 objects available, whereas Beautiful Katamari will increase this number to a whopping 5000 objects for you to pick up. Despite these improvements, at its heart it will remain the same game but bigger, better and more beautiful, following the good old credo that you shouldn’t change a winning concept.

The game should be released later this year on Playstation 3 and Xbox 360, with a Wii version being researched, and if you want more information to whet your appetite you should definitely check out OXM’s upcoming June issue, on stands May 8, with more details and previously unseen screenshots.