For those Xbox 360 owners planning to get Mass Effect 3, you should be aware that due to a strange issue that EA has identified you will need to move your Mass Effect 2 save files back to local storage on your Xbox 360 from the cloud if you have information stored there. The process of copying your files from cloud storage back to your local hard drive is pretty painless, but needs to be done prior to any attempted import into Mass Effect 3.

EA is aware of the issue and things get a bit stickier if your save file was created on an Xbox 360 other than the one you are going to be playing Mass Effect 3 on.  Apparently, (from our understanding) if you played the game on Xbox 360 A and then try to move your Mass Effect 2 save file that was created with Xbox 360 A from the cloud to Xbox 360 B’s hard drive and then import it, this will not work.

Currently, there is apparently no work around at this time to address the issue; so if you have to copy it back from the cloud to local storage it will have to be on the same Xbox 360. Once you copy it to a USB drive from the cloud on the original Xbox 360 it was created upon it can then be imported into the new Xbox 360 by inserting the USB drive into the new Xbox 360.

The entire thing is confusing and a real mess, but until EA has a patch or a work around this it is apparently the only way to deal with the issue. If the old console it was created upon is now dead, you will have to wait until some sort of fix or work around is released. A real bummer for some, we would guess.