Dead Rising 2 Multiplayer and how many zombies on screen?

*Update* Capcom is now stating that Laura misspoke and multiplayer is not confirmed, though it may still be in the game.

Some news regarding Dead Rising 2 slipped out at GDC today.  We had the big scoop on the Dead Rising 2 news a while back which has the game taking place in "Fortune City", seemingly a Las Vegas clone full of zombies, hookers, slot machines and cocktail waitresses. 

During a "Making of Dead Rising 2" panel today Laura Scholl, the Product Manager of mental mill, let slip a few interesting details.  Mental mill is a program used to help code the game and its use of shaders for graphical details.  She happened to note that "players could experience as many as 6000 characters onscreen during multiplayer sessions".

6000 characters is a pretty impressive feat.  I will be impressed if they can actually pull off such a feat as that must take some serious horsepower under the hood.  Hell I would say even a 1/6th of that would probably be a record for on screen individually detailed characters. 

Possibly the even bigger news was the confirmation of a multiplayer in the seemingly throwaway line.  You can tell she probably slipped up as she doesn't work for Capcom and they confirmed nothing of the sort, yet.  So it seems we will have multiplayer in Dead Rising 2.  Of what sort?  Your guess is as good as mine.  A survial/horde type mode maybe?  I supposed a death match type thing wouldn't be impossible either with random zombie A.I. trying to thwart your conquest of other players.

I can't wait for this game and I really hope it makes it out this year.