Nintendo has announced that all three games in its Metroid Prime series will be released as Metroid Prime Trilogy on one Wii disc.

Metroid Prime Trilogy launches August 24 in the US, and will contain updated versions of Gamecube games Metroid Prime and Metroid Prime 2: Echoes with new Wii motion controls. Metroid Prime 3: Corruption, which was released as a stand-alone Wii game in 2007, will also be included in the compilation.

"Metroid Prime Trilogy puts the best first-person adventures all in one place, with a host of new additions that make these three timeless titles more engaging than ever," said Nintendo of America executive VP of sales & marketing Cammie Dunaway in a press release. "A great deal of care and detail has gone into Metroid Prime Trilogy, providing longtime fans with new ways to experience the games they love."

The compilation disc is being developed by Retro Studios, the team behind all three original games. In addition to new Wii motion controls in the series' first two entries, Metroid Prime Trilogy also promises a "unified main menu," a new achievement-style system, in-game rewards, and widescreen support.

A Wii version of the original Metroid Prime was released exclusively in Japan earlier this year under its "Wii de Asobu" line of games that have been re-coded to take advantage of the Wii's unique game controllers. Though most games in the product line have been released in North America and Europe under the "New Play Control!" monicker, the Metroid Prime series was noticeably absent prior to this announcement.

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/article...-coming-to-wii ...

Sony Computer Entertainment will bundle its upcoming action-adventure inFamous with PlayStation 3 hardware, according to an online retailer listing.

According to a product listing on Amazon UK, the game will be bundled with the 80GB version of the console. The package will be available for the game's May 29 launch at GBP 279.99.

Sony has a long tradition of releasing its high profile first-party titles in hardware bundles, with similar packages available in the UK for Gran Turismo 5 Prologue, Little Big Planet and Killzone 2. The company has also experimented with "movie pack" Blu-ray bundles, which include popular films such as Batman Begins and I Am Legend.

inFamous is an action-adventure game developed by Sly Cooper creator Sucker Punch Productions. The game combines the open world sandbox of games like those in the Grand Theft Auto series with superhero-inspired powers and abilities.

Earlier this month, Sony referred to the game when discussing its important titles for the rest of its current fiscal year.

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/article...amazon-listing ...

Final Fantasy will not be released in North America until 2010, a billboard advertisement has confirmed.

The billboard, plastered on a building in Los Angeles in preparation of next month's Electronic Entertainment Expo, reveals the date with a simple "Coming 2010" message.

Final Fantasy XIII is scheduled for release in Japan for both the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 consoles in the fourth quarter of this year. While it was widely believed that localised versions would not be out until 2010, such speculation was not confirmed until this advertisement's appearance.

Last month, publisher Square Enix revealed that its Final Fantasy series has sold 85 million units to date worldwide. Square Enix has just acquired UK games publisher Eidos, and expanded its catalogue to include franchises such as Tomb Raider, Hitman and Deus Ex.

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/article...leased-in-2010 ...

Final Fantasy will not be released in North America until 2010, a billboard advertisement has confirmed.

The billboard, plastered on a building in Los Angeles in preparation of next month's Electronic Entertainment Expo, reveals the date with a simple "Coming 2010" message.

Final Fantasy XIII is scheduled for release in Japan for both the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 consoles in the fourth quarter of this year. While it was widely believed that localised versions would not be out until 2010, such speculation was not confirmed until this advertisement's appearance.

Last month, publisher Square Enix revealed that its Final Fantasy series has sold 85 million units to date worldwide. Square Enix has just acquired UK games publisher Eidos, and expanded its catalogue to include franchises such as Tomb Raider, Hitman and Deus Ex.

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/article...leased-in-2010 ...

There's little question about which platform holder has the most riding on its E3 performance. Certainly, it will be fascinating to see how Nintendo plans to maintain its success for another year, while Microsoft's rumoured motion controller and future software line-up is of great interest - but it's Sony whose conference will be watched most closely.

The reasons for that are twofold. Firstly, Sony - having led the market for over a decade - is now struggling. The PS3 is in third place behind Nintendo and Microsoft and while it's selling remarkably well considering its high price point, it simply isn't building installed base at the rate it needs to challenge its competitors. The PSP, although a success by many measures, has sold less than half the units of its rival, the DS - a rival it was widely predicted to crush when both devices were announced.

Secondly, and perhaps as a consequence of the first, Sony's intentions at E3 have been widely speculated about. The PSP is seen as a likely candidate for a major hardware overhaul, while the PS3's much discussed price drop has now been overtaken by rumours of a hardware redesign which would significantly slim down the big black box. Unusually for a mid-cycle E3, the indications are that Sony's conference will be as much about hardware as it is about software.

For my part, I'm extremely dubious that we'll see any immediate change to the PS3 strategy in the coming months. Were I a gambler, I'd place my bet on a price drop to the hardware this autumn, rather than at E3. If a slim PS3 is to be introduced, I'd also expect to see that in autumn - potentially being introduced at a relatively high price point, allowing the existing hardware to remain on the market at a reduced price level. By reshuffling the hardware line-up in autumn, Sony would be able to keep the new system and price points looking fresh as we head into the vital pre-Christmas market.

The PSP, however, looks like a shoo-in for a refresh at E3. Changes to the PS3 at the conference would surprise me - it simply seems too early. However, if the company doesn't announce a change of direction for its handheld console, that'll be an even bigger surprise.

Despite managing to sell around 50 million units to date, the PSP is a console which presently finds itself beset by problems from all sides. While some of those problems relate to the astonishing success of the Nintendo DS, others are of the platform's own making. The system's design, praised for its fantastic screen, suffers from a variety of crippling problems.

It's too big, for a start. Sony would like people to see the PSP as the portable media device of choice, but the form factor - while relatively comfortable for gaming - just doesn't lend itself to being popped into a pocket and carried around as a replacement for an iPod.

Part of the reason for that form factor, and one of the PSP's other huge problems, is the UMD drive. UMD has been, as its critics predicted from the outset, a disaster. UMD movies were overpriced, low quality and unappealing. The drive is noisy and sucks away battery power when in us. The discs are bulky (for a portable device), fragile and slow, contributing to terrible load delays on many PSP titles.

The PSP has piracy problems, the scale of which it's tricky to estimate. Some of those problems simply arise because the pirates can crack the system and get games for free - but Sony hasn't helped matters by designing its hardware and software such that pirates actually get a better, more enjoyable user experience than paying customers do.

This is a perfect example of some of the foolishness which has done so much to promote piracy in this industry and others. For years, customers who would happily pay for music ended up downloading illegal MP3s because, for customers who were using digital music players, the experience of downloading from a pirate site was better and more convenient than the experience of buying from a legitimate retailer. On the PSP, if you want good battery life, fast loading and the ability to carry around several games without a big case of discs, you have to crack your console and pirate the software.

This isn't the sole reason for piracy on the system, nor is it a defence of piracy. There will always be those who wish to simply get things for free. However, that's no excuse for allowing a situation where pirates get a better experience than your paying customers do. The piracy issue highlights a set of problems which Sony needs to solve if the PSP is to prosper as a platform - both from a consumer and a publisher perspective.

That's why the noises being made about the next PSP are so encouraging. Removing the UMD drive will kill backwards compatibility, which is problematic (especially since a system for transferring your existing UMDs legally onto the new system seems highly unlikely) but far less so than retaining the drive hardware would be. The addition of high-capacity memory stick slots and, presumably, a chunk of ...

Christian Pearce, illustrator extraordinaire, sees no limits when it comes to his hot rod art, proving that even the touchscreen-enabled Nintendo DS and the homebrew app, Colors can be a deadly combo for imaginative creation.

http://jalopnik.com/5263651/drawing-...-a-nintendo-ds ...

Ubisoft kicks off Assassin’s Creed 2 push with TV campaign and Play.com pre-order deal
The game may not be out until the end of the year, but marketing has already started for Assassin’s Creed 2.
Ubisoft is looking to engage both fans of the best-selling original plus a wider audience in a promotional push that includes TV ads, a retail deal – and even more revelations to be made at E3.
A debut trailer for the game was aired last week on UK terrestrial channel Five during the premiere of The Da Vinci Code, following on from the game's unveiling in April.
Play.com has already started a pre-order campaign for the game, even though its release isn’t expected until winter 2009. The original arrived in November 2007 and eventually sold in excess of seven million units globally.
“We wanted marketing to work alongside communications initiatives to help drive a strong start to the campaign,” Assassin’s Creed 2 brand manager Jan Sanghera told MCV.

The online debut of the game last month included the use of Augmented Reality technology. Fans were asked to find cryptical symbols that the game’s website would recognise via web cam.
“We’d really like the campaign to be as fun and interesting as possible; with Assassin’s Creed fans at the heart of it. In addition, we’d like the message about AC2 to reach out to a wider audience,” added Sanghera.
“We will continue marketing AC2 in the same way we’ve started. Our next step is E3, when we’ll reveal further details and even a surprise or two.”

http://www.mcvuk.com/news/34392/Earl...eed-sequel-ads ...

While direct movie and TV show downloads on the iPhone certainly seems like a reasonable enough proposition (over WiFi, at least), we're not completely convinced that a rogue ad in the Twitterfon app is the first place such a feature would leak out. According to a report on Open Salon, however, that's just what has happened, and there's even a few not immediately dismissible pics to back it up. Of course, the ad in question is now seemingly nowhere to be found, but it supposedly did once point to some movie and TV show listings broken down by genre, and even to the individual, non-working titles that would apparently be available. Head on past the break for a glimpse of the ad itself, and feel free to let us know if you happened to see it yourself.

http://www.engadget.com/2009/05/25/i...d-in-rogue-ad/ ...

You might recall that this happened right about this time last year when we were all patiently waiting for the iPhone 3G to be announced, and once again, it's been discovered that the latest beta of the iPhone SDK has icons for an unreleased version of Cupertino's finest. We've been able to verify that two icons tucked away in a deep folder refer to black and white versions of the "iPhone2,1" (black is pictured above), which is one of the internal model codes we've been hearing get thrown around for a while now. Thing is, the icon is identical to the one being used for iPhone1,2 -- better known as the iPhone 3G -- so Apple's either smartly using a placeholder until the final SDK build, or the latest and greatest model is a dead ringer for the old. We're betting on the former.

http://www.engadget.com/2009/05/25/i...d-model-again/ ...