Infinity Ward's first game since the headline grabbing sackings of early 2010 will be a prequel to the first Modern Warfare, according to insider chit-chat.

ThisisXbox's source claims that the game will be set immediately before the events of Infinity Ward's 2007 shooter. It will delve into the backstory of the Ghost character and explain how he was recruited into Task Force 141.

Apparently, narrative cues will be cribbed from David Lapham's comic book series and you'll be revisiting locations from the other two Modern Warfare titles, albeit from a different perspective.

The source, who apparently has a track record of being spot-on with these sorts of things, also revealed that the shooter will use the Modern Warfare 2 engine, rather than sporting new tech.

There's no word on when it'll see the light of day though. However, seeing as speculation points towards Sledgehammer Games' possibly intergalactic series debut being your 2011 fix, a 2012 release might be a safe bet.

But with Singularity developer Raven also rumoured to be working on Activision's FPS juggernaut, who can say?

Infinity Ward's last effort, Modern Warfare 2, stormed the high street in 2009, winning a 9/10 rave from Eurogamer. Then it all royally kicked off early last year when owner Activision gave studio heads Vince Zampella and Jason West the old heave-ho for reasons that remain not entirely clear.

The various, increasingly expensive, lawsuits surrounding that snafu are ongoing.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/20...equel-rumoured ...

The official Gran Turismo 5 steering wheel, the Thrustmaster T500RS, goes on sale today in Europe, Africa and Australia with an eye-watering RRP of £450/€500.

To celebrate, Sony's put out a video of the wheel in action, which you can see below.

The Thrustmaster T500RS is only the second ever wheel to be officially licensed for use with Sony's simulation series, apparently.

The T500 RS wheel and pedal set is said to be optimised for GT5. The wheel weighs 4.6kg; the pedal set 7.3kg. The gearshift levers, the wheel's central spokes section (30cm in diameter) and the pedal set are all entirely metal.

The wheel itself offers 1080° rotation. A motorized stop means the three full turns are adjustable. The magnetic sensor-based H.E.A.R.T (HallEffect AccuRate Technology) is incorporated into the wheel's steering mechanism. The wheel has 16-bit resolution and 65536 values on its steering axis.

"The goal that I set for the Thrustmaster team was to design for me the most precise wheel ever developed, without any latency – to accurately reproduce the sensations of GT5, and let users truly feel the emotions experienced by drivers on real racing circuits," said Polyphony Digital boss Kazunori Yamauchi.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/20...l-costs-GBP450 ...

Don't ever knock the SD Association for lagging behind. A scant seven months after the aforesaid entity revealed the UHS-I specifications, in flies the predicted successor at CES. UHS-II is a newfangled bus-interface system that promises high-def recording speeds of up to 312 megabytes per second, enabling pro shooters and videographers to actually consider an SDHC or SDXC-based camera rather than relying solely on CompactFlash or SSD. The protocol will be an integral part of the SD 4.00 specification that's going out to members later in the quarter, and naturally, it'll only be useful to SDXC and SDHC cards. We're looking at a 3x increase in transfer rates, and these same upticks will be gracing UHS-II microSDXC and microSDHC cards, too. Best of all, UHS-II cards will be fully backwards compatible with older devices and readers, as the speed increase simply relies on a new row of pins on a familiar form factor. In related news, a new eBook SD application has been announced, though the details surrounding it are murky at best. So far as we can tell, eBook SD cards will have their content pretty well contained, giving publishers the ability to rest easy while still getting content out to the myriad products that can understand SD. Peek the full release after the break.

http://www.engadget.com/2011/01/05/s...s-ii-standard/ ...

Well, look who just oozed into being, Google's latest flavor of Android, the tablet-friendly 3.0, Honeycomb. We heard talk that 3.0 would be exclusively for tablets, as in not for phones, and that looks to be played out with the text "Entirely for Tablet" seen early in the video. Perhaps the best thing to say is that this looks more or less nothing like Android. Sure, the browser is the same, and the Gmail app will be familiar to iPad users, but trust us when we say there's a lot of lovely UI in the video above to admire...and a lot of glowly blue lights, too. Apparently we weren't the only ones who saw Tron:Legacy on opening night.

http://www.engadget.com/2011/01/05/g...blet-honeycom/ ...

A number of Xbox 360 owners have reported suffering console failures shortly after buying Kinect.

According to the BBC, users are blaming the motion sensing peripheral for new instances of the dreaded red ring of death - although the possibility that their systems could have red ringed anyway obviously looms large.


"We plugged it [Kinect] in the day we got it but only played it a few times before we got the red lights," Adam Winnifrith told BBC Radio 4's You and Yours.

"The next day when we tried it again we still had the red rings of death and haven't been able to use it since."

Online gaming forums are carrying similar stories.

"I have never had a single issue with my Xbox," one poster wrote. "i got Kinect for Christmas and the screen starting freezing randomly. Then on New Year's eve... BAM I got the red ring. Very sad."

Another read: "Yep, I got the Red rings of death on Christmas day The very same day my kids got a Kinect."

Responding to the report, Microsoft denied any link between Kinect and Xbox 360 failures.

"There is no correlation between the three flashing red lights error and Kinect," the firm said in a statement. "Any new instances of the three flashing red lights error are merely coincidental."

Microsoft claimed last month that its 2011 will "ultimately be all about Kinect" - as the device spearheads a "brilliant" line-up on 360.

http://www.computerandvideogames.com...VG-General-RSS ...

Sony has detailed the next PlayStation Plus update - and apologised for one title not making the cut.

Due to some unspecified "last minute problems", Colony Wars didn't make the cut for the period from January 5 to February 2. Sony apologised over on the PS Blog.

Cheer up, however, because there are plenty more goodies where that came from - including a free trial of the full game of Borderlands.

The full list reads:

PSN:

*Shatter

*Samurai Showdown (continues from the end of December)


PS Minis:

* Pipe Madness (two weeks earlier than expected, exclusively for Plus)

* Kahoots

PSOne Classic:

* G- Police

Full Game Trial:

*Borderlands (also includes a full game and DLC bundle if you purchase after the trial - available for two weeks only)

Exclusive Discounts:

* PlayTV Live Chat (25 percent discount) - valid until 6th July 2011

* Breath of Fire (PSP) - 40%

* Dark Stalkers' Chronicles (PSP) - 40%

* Megaman Maveric Hunter (PSP) - 40%

* Monster Hunter Freedom Unite (PSP) - 20%

* Fate Unlimited (PSP) - 60%

* PowerStone Collection (PSP) - 40%

* Capcom Classics Reloaded (PSP) - 40%

* Capcom Classics Remixed (PSP) - 50%

* Capcom Puzzle World (PSP) - 40%

* Street Fighter Alpha 3 Max (PSP) - 20%

* Battlefield 1943 - 40% (until Jan 18th)

* Costume Quest and DLC Bundle - 20% (from 19th Jan)

* Modern Combat Domination - 25% day one discount (coming mid Jan)

Dynamic Themes:

* Exclusive Fire Theme

* Exclusive 'Year of the Rabbit' Theme

Premium Avatars:

* Eat Them avatars

* Super Street Fighter 4 exclusive bundle (all avatars released to date for €4.99)

http://www.computerandvideogames.com...VG-General-RSS ...

Capcom has shipped four million units of PSP title Monster Hunter Freedom 3 over its first month on sale, and purely within Japan.

The publisher claims this makes the game the PSP's fastest selling title ever, though has yet to reveal what proportion of shipped titles extrapolated to sales.

Capcom nonetheless claimed that Freedom 3 takes Monster Hunter series total sales to 17 million. It also projects that the game is on course to be Japan's best-selling title for the 2010 financial year.

Monster Hunter Freedom 3 was released in Japan on December 1, and will arrive in Western territories later this year.

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/article...in-psp-history ...

EA has outlined plans to turn off online support for a raft of its games over the next few months.

The cull begins on 11th January, when EA will shut down the online service for The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-earth II for Xbox 360 and The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-earth II: The Rise of the Witch-king for Xbox 360.

"Our licensing deal with Middle-earth Enterprises has expired, forcing us to shutdown the online services for The Lord of the Rings games," EA wrote on its website.

"We hope you have enjoyed playing these games online and appreciate your patronage. There's still time for one last epic tower rush!"

Next in-line for the virtual chop is The Sims Carnival, which will not be available from www.simscarnival.com after 16th January.

Then, on 8th February, a raft of EA Sports titles will have their online service terminated, including FIFA 07 for Xbox 360, EA Sports FIFA Manager 10 for PC, FIFA 09 Ultimate Team for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 and Tiger Woods PGA Tour 09 for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.

Explaining the decision, EA said, "As background information, the EA Sports games scheduled for shutdown in February and March 2011 represent roughly one per cent of all peak online players across all EA titles.

"Despite some people's perception, there is a lot of behind-the-scenes work involved with keeping these older games up and running. We would rather our hard-working engineering and IT staff focus on keeping a positive experience for the other 99 per cent of customers playing our more popular games.

"These decisions to retire games is never easy. The development teams and operational staff pour their hearts into these games almost as much as the customers playing them and it is hard to see one retired. We hope you have gotten many hours of enjoyment out of the games and we appreciate your ongoing patronage."

Sniff.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/20...s-of-its-games ...

Silver-haired EA overlord John Riccitiello finds it "really hard to imagine" a future where he's "hiding behind my couch, making a gun out of my finger" and shooting baddies in Call of Duty or Medal of Honor.

"I've had a number of people ask me, 'Will gesture-based gaming replace controllers?'" Riccitiello told IndustryGamers.

"I don't think so.

"There will be genres where the gesture-based gaming, however delivered (Kinect, Move or any other device that comes down the road), will actually be the superior way to play: dance games, music games, exercise games. It's really hard to imagine [playing] an exercise game with your thumbs.

And, he added: "It's really hard to imagine that I'm going to play a future edition of Medal of Honor, or Call of Duty, or Battlefield, hiding behind my couch, making a gun out of my finger. I've tried driving with gesture-based controls; I don't really like it."

But he reckons sports games could successfully incorporate gesture controls for scrolling through menus, picking teams or "calling plays" - "that's very possible".

"The more interesting thing for Kinect and Move," he went on to say, "is going to be what happens late next year in terms of how we see them, and then what new genres sprout up to support those control systems.

"I mean, if it weren't for plastic guitars, the music sector never would have happened. In the same sort of way, what's going to trigger the hot game? What's going to use Kinect in just that way?"

Riccitiello also questions how "long lived" the popularity of Kinect and Move will be, and draws on his family's past experience with Wii as evidence. There was a console that typically housed a single game, whereas PS3 and Xbox 360 had "three or four games going at any given time". The latter were longer-play experiences, too, eating up multiple hours, compared to the short-play thrills of Wii.

Kinect and Move were both released towards the end of 2010. Analysts predict sales numbers are "neck and neck" despite the first-glance disparity between Sony's 4.1 million shipped Move tally and Microsoft's 2.5 million actual sales of Kinect.

All analysts agree with Riccitiello, however, that 2011 will be a pivotal year for Kinect and Move. Will they sink as novelties or swim as Wii-style successes? And how will Nintendo counter that?

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/20...ard-to-imagine ...