The eagle-eyed folks at D-pad picked up on a curious little bit found on the back of the official UK box art for the Xbox 360 version of Resident Evil 5: "System link 2-16."

Yup. Definitely says that. If our eyes don't deceive us and this official render of the box art is to be believed, Resident Evil 5 will indeed contain some sort of offline multiplayer mode for up to 16 players. The box shot makes mention of online multiplayer for two players only. 

As ridiculous as this sounds, this is not the first time we've caught wind of this. We've heard whispering late last year that Capcom's survival horror game would contain some sort of competitive multiplayer game beyond the already announced cooperative mode. The details of this weren't revealed to us.

With Resident Evil 5 coming out March 13, Capcom doesn't have much longer to spill the beans on this if this is the case. We'll of course be making the appropriate calls today, and will report back with the full "no comment" response after we do. 

[Via VG247]

[Update: Here's the official word coming out of Capcom Europe, sent directly to us this afternoon:

"It has been brought to our attention that the recently issued packaging for the Limited Edition version of Resident Evil 5 on Xbox 360 contains an error.  It wrongly stated that the game supported 2-16 players via system link. The correct number of players supported via system link is in fact two. Please accept our apologies for this mistake and any confusion this may have caused.
We will issue final packaging shortly."

Carry on.]