Yesterday we posted pictures of guys who got their hands on Soulcalibur IV, 10 days before its release date of July 29. Today, we have video. I guess you can just walk into any store and ask them to break the street date and get your game. Here's Yoda vs. Ivy, Yoda taking it 4-1 with a lot of button mashing and bad camera work. If the game looks repetitive, I think these guys' admittedly bad technique (" I hadn't played a Soul Calibur title since Soul Calibur 2 a couple years ago, so our match is pretty bad.") might be to blame, not the game. If any of you manage to snag this, we'd appreciate a more informed breakdown of gameplay in the comments.

Soul Calibur [sic] IV Gameplay [Youtube]

In an age where 20 hour games are long, Valhalla Knights 2 is an anomaly. It takes between 60 to 80 hours to complete and up to 135 hours if you want to fully complete it. The game was penned by the scenario writer for Final Fantasy XII so it does have a very involving story. Good news is that you won't spend most of that 135 hours grinding as there's even sneaking abilities so you don't have to constantly engage in battle. Also, no random encounters. Yay!

Up to now, the only occurrences of a platinum blonde wig and a PSP in the same frame could be found in someone's cosplay Photobucket album. Sony probably saw that and, in the interest of portraying the real people who would really use its Go!Explore GPS gadget and service, came up with the above promo shot. Other photos (found by Pocketgamer.co.uk) are on the jump. Wherever the hell this entourage is going, I half expect them to meet the Dos Equis World's Most Interesting Man when they get there.

PSP Out There, Go!Explore [Pocketgamer.co.uk]

This is not a game. I repeat, this is not a game. Based on the Korg MS-10, Korg DS-10 is a music tool packed in DS software. It allows up to eight DSes to connect by ad-hoc wireless. The soundboard interface looks like an actual Korg synthesizer soundboard with knobs that can be rotated and turned and jacks that can be plugged into and switch by simply drawing lines. And since it is a straight up synthesizer on DS software, the chart of full scale musical notes might seem intimidating. It's possible to create full, rich layered tunes that range from a minute and a half to five minutes. Developer Cavia included a "Chaos Pad" that simply lets users "draw" on the touch screen and it maps out corresponding notes. Perfect for noodlers.

The latest issue of Nintendo Power reveals, via cover story, that Sonic the Hedgehog is back! After a painfully long absence, the "Blue Blur" is returning to the Wii with Sonic & The Black Knight which the mag pitches as a "big new Wii-exclusive adventure" in which Sonic "swings cool steel." Yep, the Sonic drought is over.

We have little info beyond the cover details for Sonic's third Wii outing, but can imagine a Sonic themed adventure with the compelling gameplay of Red Steel or Dragon Quest Swords will fit the series like a glove. Hey, we'll take it (begrudgingly) over gunplay any day.

To sum up... :\

Sonic and the Black Knight (Wii) revealed in new Nintendo Power [NeoGAF - thanks, Carlos!]

OK, and after this, I promise no more bashing on Nintendo's press conference. But I used to work in internal PR for a very large software company (that may or may not have produced products that rhyme with Shmorton Shminternet Shmecurity) and we'd go to RSA, host our own user conference, all that stuff. What I mean to say is that I've seen some eye-rolling moments in keynotes, when top executives try to get hip. But I've never seen anything close to this.

The -Minus World sums it all up with the five most embarrassing moments. Yes, No. 1 is DJ Ravi flailing away like a toddler batting at a mobile. But the other four are alternately hilarious/pathetic too, and I think any one of them, by themselves, would have made it a trainwreck.

Anyway, enjoy. See you back here tomorrow.

The 5 Most Embarrassing Moments of Nintendo's E3 Conference [The -Minus World, and pic]

Message boards and forums are livid at EA and NCAA Football 09, whose problems apparently go well beyond EA Locker corrupting the roster files. AOL Fanhouse went through the boards and made a full accounting, and it's grim.

• Sliders are borked. The CPU sliders do nothing. Human sliders affect both CPU and human. Level playing field!
• Online dynasty mode is borked. It sometimes simulates games that have been played by humans.
• Super-sim is borked: Using it to fast-forward through a blowout can add many more plays than would actually happen in the football game, and produce extremely lopsided final scores.
• Kick returns are borked.
• The new player speed model is causing huge problems with pursuit angles by CPU-controlled players.

I have the game but I have not played it intensively enough to discover these issues. But if these issues are on the level and, worse, if some gameplay mechanics are not patchable, then it's an almost unforgivable shame. Especially regarding sliders — how can something like that get through QA? How can the super-sim glitch go unnoticed?

And that's to say nothing of the rosters fiasco, for which EA says a patch is coming soon. The roster editing community is equal parts anxious and furious. Two for-profit sellers have put out files that they say are workable, but there is a good chance EA's patch could invalidate any file that predates it, screwing both the sellers and anyone who bought it.

While not Madden, I've always felt NCAA Football was in many ways a better game, because of the deeper catalog of teams and the richer offseason activity of recruiting. But on the next-gen titles it's been a wipeout, starting with versions that had fewer features than the Xbox and PS2 versions, and today still have nowhere near the level of cinematic detail that made it such an immersive game. Following that with a game that has this many bugs is, for devotees of the series, frustrating to no end.

NCAA 09 Plagued with Bugs [AOL Fanhouse]

Damn, does this count as simulating a "war economy" too? Gamepolitics picked up an item out of Tacoma, Wash. that a former technical advisor on the original Metal Gear Solid faces a federal charge of attempted parts smuggling. The parts in question are "sophisticated holographic night vision gunsights," bound for Japan.

Capt. Tomoaki Iishiba, a Japanese national who joined the U.S. Military in 1993, faces one count. He basically acquired the sights and then mailed them to others without an export license. The sights cost more than $600 each.

He's scheduled to enter a guilty plea at the end of the month.

Metal Gear Solid Tech Advisor Busted By Feds for Shipping Weapons Parts [GamePolitics]

Penny Arcade nails it in three panels. Then F@NBOY$ goes and re-nails it in seven. Well, they re-nail Nintendo's cringe-inducing presser, anyway.

Both full size strips are on the jump. Sorry to do that, but at front-page width you can't make out the words.

It's Just Like Being There [Penny Arcade]
Eeee Threeee [F@NBOY$]

I've read a number of thought-provoking pieces over at Only a Game, and this week Chris Bateman has a meditation up on Nintendo, the 'mass market,' moving away from games, and what this could spell for the industry at large. Is it really all it's cracked up to be? Unlike most of my favorite essays from Bateman, this one is pretty short and digestible — he points out that aggressively pursuing the 'mass market' (casual market) is working out splendidly for Nintendo, but he wonders if aggressively targeting that market inherently means moving away from games. And what about the industry at large? Well, that's not so clear:

I've suggested before that for the videogames industry, the mass market is our long tail. The centre of cashflow in videogames are the hobbyists, the players who buy and play many games over the course of each year. Even with the outrageous sales figures that a mass market game can rack up (tens of millions, versus the old familiar game styles that top out at a few million units at best), the mass market doesn't look like an attractive option for most game developers: they don't know how to develop for it, they don't have a marketing spend big enough to skip over the hobbyists, and even if they made the perfect mass market product there's every chance it would sink without a trace.

The change at Nintendo is apparent: games are only part of Nintendo's focus now. What is less clear is what this change means for the rest of us. Because if this new wider market can only be hit by Nintendo first party software, which may be substantially the case, most developers would do better to continue to compete for a tiny share of a successful hobbyist marketplace, such as the first person shooter market, or the RPG market, even if most of the titles in these over-competed markets do fail miserably. And in that respect, the change in Nintendo is really 'business as usual' - because Nintendo's problem has always been that it can make and sell its own 'first party' software in large numbers, but third party developers struggle to make a profit on a Nintendo platform.

It does suck to be left out in the cold, and that goes for many of us — even those of us who don't have the time to game as we once did. Diversification isn't a bad thing, but it can be troubling at times.

The Change at Nintendo [Only a Game]

Wasn't there to see it, don't know, as this is the E3 Gameplay Trailer for Lego Batman, but it has no sound. Not sure if that's a bug or intentional. But it begins with Lego Riddler sitting on a toilet, and if I see that I have an ethical obligation to report it to you mature people. (Snicker). Then Riddler and Mister Freeze go out, drive a cop car into a lot of smashable minikits, and Freeze goes apeshit with the gun, freezing Riddler in the process.

This video is 15 minutes long. I'm pissed there's no sound, because I love the Lego speak in the cutscenes, and God only knows what they're "saying" in that opening. It looks like a delightful game, with tons of LOL potential.

LEGO Batman: The Videogame E3 2008 Gameplay Trailer (HD) [GamersHell]

Ever wanted to decimate the world's population or see if you could develop a super-bug that would leave the globe in utter pandemonium? If the answer is yes, browser-based Pandemic 2 is your game; even if the answer is 'uh, no,' it's an interesting way to while away some time. Watch as your customized disease of choice is let loose on the world, then use your 'evolution points' to mutate the perfect delivery method for a global pandemic — the goal is to have a trail of devastation (and bodies) left in your wake. There are two different modes, 'realistic' and 'relaxed,' so if you're not sure you're ready for a realistic onslaught, you can try your hand with the easier mode.

Pandemic 2 [CrazyMonkeyGames via IndieGames]

This is absolutely parody. It could be unintentional self-parody. Or it could be someone masquerading as a PS3 fanboy to parody that particular constituency. But it's parody. A guy who gives the announcement of Final Fantasy XIII for the 360 equal weight to Asperger's is, shall we say, having a disproportionate reaction. (Full text on the jump). Still, we had a video earlier of an angry, ticked off PS3 fanboy who claimed to know Japanese culture about as well as Marcus Brody could [teeth clenched] blend in [/teeth clenched] in the Middle East of the late 1930s. That guy turned out to be a Something Awful goon.

The fact the text is available only as a screen capture (full version after the jump) leads me to be skeptical someone actually feels this way. But, if you're a Microsoft partisan and want to gloat, here you go. And if you are four-square for Sony and want to rage, here is a comrade-in-arms. And if you invest your emotions and identity in pro bono advocacy for multinational corporations with billions in market capitalization and brigades of PR professionals, you need some perspective. Like this guy.

Video Games are Fun to Play. I Enjoy Them [The Internet is Terrible]

Lest anyone missed this little gem among the E3 hubbub, Blizzard has scored a victory against WoW bot maker Glider. Don't remember that whole kerfluffle? Blizzard sued Glider over EULA infringement for copying code, as well as the ancillary issue of pissing WoW users up and gobbling up resources. Glider shot back with 'But grinding your way to level 70 is boooooring.' Probably unsurprisingly, this argument did not go over very well in court and Blizzard won its summary judgment motion. All's well that end's well ... or is it? Over at PlayNoEvil, there's some interesting analysis on what this judgment could mean and why it may not be all that it's cracked up to be:

1. This ruling is very dangerous to any third party utility provider. Especially security companies like Symantec, who load programs and "check them out" to see if they are malicious. Ironically, it would seem that Blizzard's own security program, Warden, would be imperiled by this notion of copyright ....

3. What if Blizzard wins? After a long fight, Blizzard defeated the unauthorized Battle.Net server developers, BnetD, which simply drove the system outside the US where it is still available. It is actually surprising that MDY didn't move its business offshore to a country where this suit could not have been effectively tried or did not have a copyright treat with the US.

4. Legal solutions to business and technical problems are terribly inefficient an expensive. While they may be able to shut MDY down and even bankrupt the company (and perhaps its owners), how much will this have cost Blizzard and how long until another equivalent product is made available. Might MDY simply publish the source code to Glider as a "finger in the eye" gesture at Blizzard? (or "leak" it onto the Internet?)

No doubt this case hasn't been put to bed quite yet — any future developments should be pretty interesting.

Blizzard Wins Key Judgments Against WoW Bot Maker MDY on Copyright and Tortious Interference Claims [Virtually Blind] and A Pyrrhic Victory? Blizzard vs. Glider [PlayNoEvil]

Not sure what to make of this. Bullshit radar says "proof of nothing" because there's no reason for tech support to be looped in on a game in development. That said, two guys worked up an extremely patient, social engineering prank that had 2K Games support believing, or at least suspicious of the possibility of a hacked Grand Theft Auto IV demo on pirate sites. And in the back-and-forth, it turned up this reply from tech support:

"The PC version of GTA IV has not even been announced for release and is still in development so is not about to be released on a website."

The entire conversation is very long and almost takes on the scope of a 419 baiter thread. But they do provide screenshots (granted, those can be faked too.)

Basically, these two guys concoct a detailed tech support problem with a free demo of Grand Theft Auto IV, and see if Take 2 will bite. Of course, they do, but only to a point. After getting that little nugget above — which they're convinced was copypasted from some higher-up's response to befuddled tech support — they get another tech who is less fun and a little more circumspect about their claims.

While the last message does say, "We are unsure when the PC version of the game will be released," that does not mean, "We are sure it will be coming out, just not when." I am likewise unsure of when I'll win the Publisher's Clearing House Sweepstakes.

ComputerandVideoGames.net reported rumors back in April that a PC GTA IV was due out in October, citing European retailers. That didn't bring a denial from Rockstar UK, just "no comment." So unless and until Rockstar wants to lay the rumor smash, this remains rumor only. I wouldn't get my hopes up, but you never know.
How We Pranked Rockstar [Blog, thanks reader Matt]

With an aging gaming population comes more gamers with money, which means ... money to spend on travel. Bonnie Ruberg takes a look at where gamers would go given $1,500 for expenses for a 'game-related' vacation. PAX? E For All? Tokyo Game Show? ... Disneyland? I can't remember the last proper vacation I had, but I can say definitively I wouldn't be planning it around a convention or expo. In fact, a weekend off with time to do nothing but hang out would be a treat right now:

Not everyone's so ready to move from the sofa and fly across the country though. Chris Furniss, a 26-year-old Web site designer at Microsoft Game Studios in Redmond, Wash., feels $1,500 won't get him far. "Since flights anywhere are so expensive and I already live in Seattle, I'd go to PAX and live it up," he says. "I'd stay at a nice hotel downtown, get tickets for all three days and go on a shopping spree on the show floor. PAX is the gamer destination of choice and always a really fantastic time."

Short piece with a nice little slideshow and worth a looksee on a lazy, overcast Saturday like today.

Top Travel Spots For Game Fans [Forbes via Heroine Sheik

Reader Paul from Australia sends in this pic (and two others) of his homebrewed homage to Pyro from Team Fortress 2. Naturally, because this is how my mind works, I thought "well if Pyro is a female character, this dude is running around in girls' clothes." I kid! I keeeed! The mask is right on, but the suit's not the same texture as Pyro's rubberized get-up, which in addition to being expensive would also look like fetish gear. What. What?!

No really, I think I have a strange form of Tourette's, that causes me to blurt out wildly inappropriate, if not profane, things. Fahey and Leigh can attest to that. So can my girlfriend from my senior year of high school. We saw "Ghost" on a date and, while she was crying during the scene where Patrick Swayze possesses the mystic's body so he can hold his wife one last time, I leaned in close to whisper, "You know, what's really going on here, is Demi Moore is actually dancing with and kissing Whoopi Goldberg." And I wondered why I was a teenage virgin.

Wow, that was a digression. Hit the jump for the images.

Paul also advises that it's available for sale if you want to buy it. You can e-mail him, just be sure to remove the ATs and DOTs.

Danc at Lost Garden has another take on the utility (or lack thereof) of game reviews in today's gaming landscape, this one looking at the 'expertise bias.' He points out the disparity between reviewers and players when it comes to looking at new games — especially ones that have a gentle difficulty curve. His basic operating premise is that because game reviewers have plowed through so many titles and mechanics, they're looking at 'difficulty' in an entirely different light than vast portions of the audience. What will the future look like? He posits observation of other players is going to become increasingly important to developers, and if reviews can't keep up with that, they will really fall by the wayside:

If you are serious about providing objective insight into a game, either a title you are building or one your are reviewing, your expertise is not enough. In fact, your vast mastery of game related skills is mostly likely causing a giant bias in your judgments. You need to fight this bias by observing other players over and over again. They will do things with the game that are a source of wondrous insight. Your expertise becomes a tool for making great changes based off these insights, not one for predicting a priori exactly how all users will react to the game.

As for the current review industry, it is built on the unstable foundation of expert opinion in the absence of actual player observation. As games evolve and become ever more about first time learning experiences, the traditional game review will become increasingly irrelevant. It is arguable that they've already stopped informing most buying decisions and now serve as little more than entertainment for the hardcore niche. As the value proposition of reviews falter, the vast, churning, capitalist forces of creative destruction will replace them with a much richer set of game criticism that offers real value to its readers.

We've heard a lot about why the reviewing structure is broken, but this is an especially thoughtful take on the problem. I'm not sure it's one that can really be gotten around (critics — of the game, film, food, or book variety — tend to get those positions by being 'experts'), but it makes for interesting reading to be sure.

Soul Bubbles: A classic game ill treated by expert reviewers [Lost Garden]

Reader Sourside21 found four Photobucket images of Soulcalibur IV breaking the street date by about 10 days. Well, maybe. It looks like these guys are playing it in the back of a store, so maybe they're employees (or friends) playing with the stock after hours. Naturally, we don't see any gameplay. But we do see the character selection page and Kratos ain't on it. "We'll probably be getting a lot of information on how each of the characters play soon," Sourside21 surmises. Good bet. All the full size photos are on the jump. Officially, Soulcalibur IV drops on July 29 in North America, July 31 in Japan, Australia and Europe, and Aug. 1 in the UK.

Beijing Perfect World is launching Perfect World International, an English version of the MMORPG that's built for English-speaking spots in North America and Europe (you won't have to play the Malaysian version if you don't feel like wading through other languages!). The closed beta will be coming next month with anticipated release in September of this year. It sure looks pretty — I may just have to fire up the game this weekend to see if it's actually that pretty on my computer.

So Rainbow Six Vegas 2 was patched earlier this month with a slew of upgrades and gameplay changes, all of it free. Unfortunately, it also inserted a disc check — big problem for those who got the game via digital download.

The fix? I mean the official frickin' fix? The Register says an Ubisoft employee uploaded a fix to the company's support site that was actually a hack written by software pirates to defeat the disc-check. Yeah, Ruh-roh, Rubi. And presumably that guy has stepped in Ubi-doo, as the company removed the executable and is "thoroughly investigating the matter."

Users on Ubisoft's official forum — where discussion of these cracks is forbidden and punished — alerted the company to the fact that R6Vegas2_fix.zip was actually a cracked version of the executable modified by piratcy group Reloaded. That begat some ironic, if not amusing, responses.

We're looking into this further as this was not the UK Support team that posted this, however if it is an executable that does not need the disc I doubt it has come from an external source. There'd be very little point doing so when we already own the original unprotected executable. As soon as we find out more about this we'll let you know.

[Jeopardy music]

Then, later Friday:

The file was removed from the site over a week ago now and the matter is being thoroughly investigated by senior tech support managers here at Ubisoft.

Needless to say we do not support or condone copy protection circumvention methods like this and this particular incident is in direct conflict with Ubisoft's policies.

How about that! They used a freaking file that was, technically, someone else's IP. So they pirated from pirates to defeat their own copy protection. There's a hall of mirrors of irony here and, to say the least, it's some major stank on Ubisoft. It would be for any game company

Ubisoft Pirates Game Fix from Pirates [The Register via GamersReports]

You know, when some of us decide we're starting all over and the place needs a new look, we take some cheap furniture or knicknacks to the dump or have a yard sale. Lara Croft packs her home with explosives and goes for the extreme makeover. Speaking of, she looks completely different, like a Bratz biker, almost. Where are the trademark shorts?

Looooong trailer for the subject matter (and being entirely a pre-render.) But it's out Nov. 8, on PC, the next-gens, PS2 and DS. And I suppose then, or before, we'll get the story of why she went and blew up her own manor.

Tomb Raider: Underworld E3 Exclusive Trailer [Gametrailers]

This being the E3 week, we churned out a huge amount of reporting and you consumed it in record-breaking numbers. Knowing that this post would serve as an E3 recap of sorts, I've categorized some things out in the jump. This covers stories that we tagged original; there might have been some others from the conference that didn't get that tag. Either way, this is our comprehensive E3 coverage list, so if you're not seeing something below, check that.

As a part-timer and the least experienced game writer on this staff, I had my own impressions of E3 which I will write up later, from an outsider's perspective. (I was only there Sunday and Monday). We all work in separate cities, and this event allows us a time to work together, in person. And the Kotaku staff of Fahey, Bash, McWhertor, Leigh, Adam, Maggie and of course, Crecente — with help from Gawker managing editor Noah Robischon in Los Angeles, and Jim Reilly working offsite on multimedia assets — came together like a team of superheroes to put out one hell of a report for you this week. They're all recovering this weekend, but show the Supa-Kotakufriends a little love in the comments.

Highlights
Nintendo Introduces Wii Motion Plus
Xbox Division FINALLY Reports Profitable Year
Tretton: Sony Considering PSP with Harddrive
Mario & Zelda Teams Both "Hard At Work" On Wii Games
The New Xbox Experience: Just The Facts (And Maybe Some Conjecture)
Ladies And Gentlemen, We Have Booth Babes

Much more after the jump.

Liveblogs, News Conferences and Fact Checks:
Liveblogging Microsoft e3 2008 Press Conference
Fact-Checking Microsoft's E3 Presser
Nintendo E3 08 Press Conference Liveblog
Fact-Checking Nintendo's E3 Presser
Sony E3 08 Press Conference Liveblog
Fact-Checking Sony's E3 Presser
Liveblogging Konami's E3 2008 Press Conference
Liveblogging Take-Two's 2008 E3 Press Conference
Capcom E3 08 Press Conference Liveblog - Lost Planet The Movie
Ubisoft E3 08 Press Conference Liveblog
The EA E3 2008 Press Conference In Pictures

Page K Blind Items

New Game Announcements
PS3 "Massive Action Game" Announced; Promises Battles Up to 256 Players
Ratchet and Clank Future: Quest For Booty Announced For PSN
Galaga Gets First True Sequel
Fable II Coming In October
Is Final Fantasy XIII Xbox 360 Coming To Japan? "Ask Them"
Tretton Says No 360 Final Fantasy XIII Coming to Japan
GTA Coming To The DS With China Town Wars
It's Official - Animal Crossing Wii Is Coming

Statements and Executive Speak
Miyamoto: Wii Music Is "Better Than A Video Game"
ESA: This Is The "Golden Age" Of Gaming
ESA Prez Gallagher: Industry Must Not Abandon Its Base
CEO Ben Feder On Turning Things Around At Take-Two
Texas Governor Perry Encourages Game Biz
Exchanging Words With John Schappert
Interview: Catching Up On Microsoft's Big Announcements
Interview: Riccitiello Doesn't Fear Activision Blizzard
Interview: EA Boss Riccitiello Aims To Win You Over
Tretton Explains the Long Road to Home

Non E3
Coming To XBLA: My Frequent Death, Castle Crashers
NCAA 09 Glitch Corrupts Pre-Release Roster Files
Game Marathons: Fad, or Going the Distance?
The Meaning of Ninjy
PS3 Video Service Is Region-Locked

General Coverage:
The Miracle Of Science: Checking Out Monster Lab
DC Universe Online - Opening The Door
Fun With Trivia: Passing Around Buzz! Master Quiz
Bionic Commando Has Control Issues
Damnation - One To Watch
Portal Still Alive Will Include New Puzzles, But No New Plot
MadWorld - Black, White, And Red All Over
Silent Hill: Homecoming Gets Pyramid Head, PC Version
How Power Outages and WTO Protests Influenced inFamous
Alpha Protocol - Mass Effect For The Solo Spy Set
Flock: Sheep Death In A Toy World
Sonic Unleashed: Half Classic, Half Stretchy Werewolf
Rethinking Kids' Games: Disney Interactive At E3
Jizz Mopping Through The Dildo Wonderland
Bayonetta - Beware The Hair Dragons
Resident Evil 5: Killing Zombies WIth My Best Girl
Not Excited About Lips? Maybe You Should Be
Wii Sports Resort Will Sell Like Hotcakes, Hands-on Impressions
Free Realms - The Best MMO At E3?
Funcom - Age Of Conan Reviewable In A Month
Flower - Petals On The Wind
Rock Band 2: Perfecting The Game
Left 4 Dead May Get Machinima Maker Post Launch
Hands On: Spore On iPhone Is Pretty Much FlOw
Sega: No Plans For Shenmue III, Seaman 2
John Riccitiello, Little Sister Killer
Sony Announce New $200 PSP Bundle
PS2 "Family Value Pack" Is Indeed Good Value
Wii Music Impressions
The New 80GB PS3: Just The Conjecture (And Maybe Some Facts)
Why A Castlevania Fighting Game? Ask Iga!
Dead Space Producer Chuck Beaver Talks Survival Horror In Halo's Era
Hands On With Castlevania Judgment
LittleBigPlanet Sorta Dated, Slightly Delayed
Carmack Talks: From id/EA to Mac gaming and PS3 Programming
More DS Strumming - Guitar Hero On Tour Decades
id Leave Activision For EA
Microsoft Releasing LE Red, Green 360 Controllers
Guitar Hero News From MS Presser - Van Halen, The Eagles, Metallica
Fallout 3 Getting Exclusive Downloadable Content For Xbox 360 And PC
Visited E3 Hall... In Intensive Care
First Peek At E3 2008 (Boxes And Furniture Crap)
Microsoft Announce 60GB 360, Confirm 20GB Price-Cut

Either my teeth are rotting from the sugary, sugary visuals, or my heart is hurting because they went for the fat-headed cartoon look instead of the sweaty Eliza Dushku look. Either way, this trailer hurts.

Some details to go with the raw announcement from the other day. The Dead Rising Wii port will be known not as Dead Rising Wii, but as...drum roll...Dead Rising: Zombie Sacrifice. Brilliant. The changes extend past the name, however. For starters, Otis' real-time missions are gone. Instead, you'll get 3-4 sub-missions to tackle before taking on one of the major "plotline" quests, a much more linear - and less frustrating - system than that found on the 360 version. The camera's also been changed, from behind-and-above-Frank to the view/style employed in Resident Evil 4. Because of this, they've removed the photo mode, as apparently it just wasn't working. Finally, they've added new enemies, new weapons, and new waggle controls to make the most of both of them. And that's it! No release date info or anything like that, so for now, that's all you get.

What's New in Wii Dead Rising [1UP]

Using a rather clever browser hack, someone's programmed a playable Defender clone into a favicon. If you don't know what a favicon is, it's that little 16 by 16 pixel graphic that appears in address bars and browser tabs. See that pink and chartreuse "K" up there? That's what I'm talkin' 'bout.

And if you don't know what Defender is, it's a classic sidescrolling arcade shooter released in 1980. Head on over to the Defender of the Favicon site to check it out. Won't take but a minute and fellow web developer types might just get a kick out of it.

Defender of the Favicon

Most of us at Kotaku were busy worker bees when Microsoft and Silicon Knights unleashed the Too Human demo on the Xbox 360 owning masses. Speaking to Microsoft Games Studios folk at E3 this week, we heard nothing but glowing reception to the game. Universal acclaim we did not expect, so I was personally curious about the Kotaku readership's opinion of the demo.

Looks like some of you have already weighed in with your opinion in the comments of the original post, but for those who've spent a bit more time with part one of the planned epic adventure, tell us (dammit) what you think of the Too Human demo.

Kotaku Tower was all but empty thanks to E3, but does that mean everything just ground to a halt? No. Trash had to be taken out, decks had to be scrubbed, pool filters cleaned, hamsters fed. And with everyone off at E3, who was going to do it all? Our sponsors. Bless them. So a big thank you this week to Atari, Coors Light, Sony Crackle, Eve Online, Everquest Living, Legacy, Final Fantasy, Gamestop, Mighty Leaf Tea, Starwood Hotels, Top Spin and T-Mobile.

Interested in advertising with Kotaku? Click here to find out more.

Remedy's Alan Wake was noticeably absent at E3 2008, a void left even more dark and encompassing by the inclusion of titles like You're In The Movies. Fear not, fans of mysterious mysteries, as the Xbox 360 and Windows Vista title is going to make its next public appearance at Tokyo Game Show at the latest, according to one web site.

A Windows branded contest — one that actually dates back to March of last year(!) — tells us that we'll be seeing Alan Wake in Tokyo, at least in trailer form. It's entirely possible that we'll see the title as Games Convention, PAX or some other big gaming get together. But for now, pencil in a date with Mr. Wake for October. That's pencil, not pen.

"WOW" Be A Face In The Game [Microsoft - thanks, SS!]

We had a hard time finding anyone overly excited about this week's E3 Media and Business Summit. From lackluster media briefings from the Big Three to a booth babe count that numbered in the single digits, it was hard to find much in the way of raw thrills. Even the highly paid executives hated it!

The San Francisco Chronicle reports that EA CEO John Riccitiello said "I hate E3 like this," hinting that a return to spectacle or the complete abandonment of the show were two viable options.

Laurent Detoc, president of Ubisoft North America is quoted as likening the event to a "pipe-fitters show in the basement." He may have just been referring to the Imagine, Petz and Ener-G portions of his own company's press conference, though.

Event may try to recapture luster [SF Gate]

You've seen images, but for the dim-witted, images may not be enough to get across just how the 360's new dash update is going to work. So here's a couple of videos, showcasing not only what it looks like in motion, but what Microsoft's Larry Hryb looks like in a snappy Xbox 360 track-top. There's another longer, drier, more informative clip after the jump if sitting through Microsoft's own special brand of miscued lifestyle commercials isn't for you.

Before Kojima Productions and Konami get Hideo Kojima that editor he so desperately needs, perhaps the company should hire someone who knows how to launch an online multiplayer game. The Metal Gear Online "Gene Expansion" was released yesterday and promptly melted Konami's servers, resulting in the closure of the game's MGO Shop and Reward Shop and difficulty logging in to the service. Some MGO players have reported paying for the new expansion and getting nothing in return.

Konami's solution to some of these issues was to restrict random IP ranges from accessing the shops, in an effort to lighten the load.

The company has also cancelled all Metal Gear Online "Survival" battles planned for this weekend, promising to have a new hamster wheel installed to power the servers as soon as is technically possible.

Metal Gear Online Support [Konami - thanks, Shakir!]

We were mere feet from Messrs. Mattrick and Wada as the two execs wrapped up the Microsoft E3 2008 press conference with a bang. I believe Leigh's words, at the time, were "HOLY SHIT!" when it was revealed that Microsoft had chipped away at the PlayStation exclusivity armor and Final Fantasy XIII was announced as an Xbox 360 release (in North America and Europe). There was laughter, tears, applause and so much more. We'll never forget we were there.