Insomniac has revealed that it's full steam ahead on a Ratchet & Clank game for PlayStation 3 at the studio.

Reportedly dishing the dirt in a fan newsletter and saying the game is in "full production", the developer refused to spill further beans but did hint that more on the sequel will be unveiled soon.

Insomniac, of course, is also behind PS3 game Resistance: Fall of Man, an alternate reality-themed FPS. ...

Star Fox Command, the latest in the long-running series of space shooters, will land in UK stores on DS on January 26.

Star Fox Command does away with the usual linear Star Fox-style shooting levels and replaces them with free-roaming action stages split up by a new strategy element.

Using the touchscreen, players draw paths on an overhead map screen for their Arwings (airships) to fly. Full 3D battles initiate when an Arwing comes into contact with an enemy unit or base, at which point you jump into the cockpit and fight to destroy the enemy.

Star Fox Command is one of many great titles due for release soon after Christmas, so make sure you save any money you get from Santa.

Screens Here ...

Lionhead boss Peter Molyneux has revealed how he would have loved to have developed for Nintendo's Wii. "[It is] something I would've loved to have got my teeth into," he said in an interview with CVG, part one of which is hitting these pages imminently.

When asked if under different circumstances he'd like to develop for Nintendo's console, Molyneux said: "I'd love to play around with it. You know, it's a pure design challenge and the biggest change you can make in a designer's life is changing the controller".

"Not thinking about 'oh we're not going to put this on the X button and that on the A button' but having to do a complete re-think is quite an exciting challenge and something I would've loved to have got my teeth into, yes."

Lionhead was recently bought out by Microsoft and is now developing Fable 2 for Xbox 360 and another undisclosed title that Molyneux also mentions in our interview.

You can checkout the first part right now, and look out for the second sometime tomorrow. ...

Nintendo is going crazy with the Twilight Princess videos. Yesterday it put four gameplay videos of Link fighting in a field on the official Wii website.

Now there are two new direct-feed videos on the same page, revealing the game's full title-screen sequence - which is strangely reminiscent of Ocarina of Time's intro sequence in places - and a huge trailer showing Wolf Link and many of his new powers.

Get yourself over to Wii.com right now and watch those damn videos. Then start counting down the seconds to its December 8 release.

http://uk.wii.com/software/01/ ...

Final Fantasy XII producer Akitoshi Kawazu has questioned whether games should be targeted at different global markets - something Square Enix doesn't practice.

Speaking in an interview with GamesIndustry.biz, Kawazu said, "When we're making [FFXII] we really don't think in terms of Japanese players, American players, European players. I think if you stop and start looking at features, and saying, this will work in Japan, this won't work in America, this will work in America but won't work in Japan - then it's very difficult to make anything at that point.

"Ultimately, we're making all of our decisions based on what we think will make for the best game," he continued.

"I think this is something that's true not just in gaming, but in general when you're creating something - you have to make something that first and foremost, you think is appealing and is going to have an interest to people. In that regard, we really don't think about what particular market group we're developing something for."

However, Square Enix does treat markets differently with regard to when games are released - Final Fantasy XII, for example, won't be out in Europe until nearly 12 months after the Japanese launch.

"Naturally, in a perfect world, we would also love to have the game released simultaneously worldwide. Realistically speaking, there are a lot of reasons that make that impractical," Kawazu explained

"There is very much a movement within the company to try and shorten the time it takes to do that, but there are a lot of practical things that make it difficult, and hopefully in the future it can be made a little bit shorter." ...

Just days after news emerged that Sony has cut its shipment target for the Japanese launch of PS3, it's been announced that the console will hit Hong Kong and Taiwan on November 17.

According to an article on Digitimes.com, the announcement was made by Tetsuhiko Yasuda, managing director for Sony Computer Entertainment Asia.

He said the 60GB model will be priced at TW$17,980 (EUR 425) in Taiwan, while the 20GB version, which won't go on sale until December, will cost TW$14,980 (EUR 355).

Although Yasuda did not offer any shipment projections for Hong Kong and Taiwan, he did say that SCE intends to sell 1 million PS3 units in the territories. ...

Microsoft has released the second beta version of its XNA Game Studio Express toolst, claiming it's a "near final version of the tool".

XNA Game Studio Express is designed to allow anybody - from fans with zero programming background to academics and seasoned hobbyists - to develop their own little games for Windows and Xbox 360.

The new beta version adds a number of new features, and also coincides with the closed beta release of GarageGames's Torque X, a toolset designed to fit on top of the XNA platform and allow users to create games using a drag and drop interface.

More technical additions to the second beta include the XNA Framework Content Pipeline, which lets users pull in content from other creation packages like Autodesk, 3ds Max, Autodesk Maya and Softimage |XSI, and content importers for .X and Autodesk FBX 3D asset formats.

It also allows users to preview game design for Xbox 360 and pre-compile games ahead of the launch of the XNA Creators Club and the final XNA Game Studio Express on December 11.

XNA Game Studio Professional, which will allow developers who want to profit from their creations to do so, will be released in summer 2007.

Membership of the Creators Club will be available via Xbox Live Marketplace and will allow users to migrate games to 360 and play them there - but at a cost of US$ 49 for a four-month trial of US$ 99 for a one-year membership.

For now though, it's possible to experiment with creating Windows games by downloading the tool from Microsoft.com. ...

A confident Nintendo has reaffirmed its commitment to the launch of the Wii, reiterating its promise of four million units for retail before the end of the year, as it expects unprecedented demand from consumers.

Bolstered by pre-orders and retailer feedback, the company aims to pull out all the stops to supply demand in a retail environment it expects to dominate this side of Christmas.

"Wii is for both experienced and uninitiated gamers, and it will be available for the masses," said Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime.

"Because of demand, we're urging shoppers not to get complacent. The level of demand we're seeing goes beyond the ordinary."

"Retailers are telling us a significant fraction of customers pre-ordering Wii are non-traditional gamers - people looking for a better way to play. And that's exactly what Wii is designed to provide," he added.

Clearly confident of its manufacturing capabilities and supply chain, the format-holder has promised to fill retail shelves with product with a launch strategy that can be deemed more efficient that its competitors.

Last year Microsoft struggled to supply retailers with enough units of the Xbox 360 leading to a shortage of hardware well into the new year.

And Sony's launch of the PlayStation 3 later this month has been hampered by poor manufacturing capabilities, with shipment targets missed and a delay to the release of the console in Europe.

Wii is due to launch on November 19th in the US, December 2nd in Japan and across Europe on December 8th. ...

Silicon Knights president Denis Dyack has said he believes the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 are on the same level when it comes to performance.

Speaking to Dean Takahashi of the Mercury News, Dyack said, "Maybe the PS3 has more processing power. The 360 has more available memory. It's pretty much a net, net.

"The public perception of the PS3 was that it was much more powerful. To developers, they look even."

Dyack did go on to say that their could potentially be more power in the PlayStation 3 - but that it's harder to harness. "You have to get the timing right," he said, referring to the challenge of keeping all the Cell's sub-processors running.

Dyack is also less than sold on the platform holders' favourite resolution, 1080p, arguing that the difference between it and 720p is "questionable".

"All of our games are likely to be 720p because of the faster refresh rates," he told Takahashi. "There are all kinds of trade-offs. It takes a lot more RAM to do 1080p. You'll reserve RAM for the textures. 720p is just less pixels. [But] There is definitely a huge difference from 720p and analog."

Silicon Knights is currently at work on the first game in the Too Human trilogy for Xbox 360, which is being built using Unreal Engine 3. The studio has yet to consider making games for the Nintendo Wii, with Dyack stating that it remains to be seen whether the "controller stands the test of time".

On the question of who will win the next-gen console battle he said, "It's a tough one. Microsoft is looking really good. Everyone is looking pretty good. At the beginning, everyone thought Sony would walk away with it. We won't know for sure for two years." ...