Need For Speed Carbon has joined the list of downloadable game demos on Xbox Live Marketplace, although it's 1GB so you'll probably want to put the tea on before you start downloading it.

Should be useful for gauging whether you can be bothered with this year's update to EA's increasingly successful racing game series, due out on 360, Xbox, PS2, Cube, PSP, DS and GBA on 3rd November.

As you'll know if you've been following it, NFS Carbon sees you racing around a city trying to take over neighbourhoods one at a time, with the action eventually heading to Carbon Canyon where there's, you know, more racing. ...

LucasArts' Chris Williams has declared that next-gen gaming is about more than "pretty graphics" - conceding that games have yet to reach the level of movies when it comes to visuals.

Williams, who is project lead on LucasArts' new Indiana Jones game, made his comments in a speech at GDC London this morning. He talked extensively about the studio's relationships with sister company Industrial Light & Magic, observing, "Film and game technology really compliment each other."

However, he went on, game developers still have "a lot to learn from film". As an example, he cited the CGI character Davy Jones from Pirates of the Caribbean 2. According to Williams, it's highly unlikely that such a high level of character detail could be recreated in a game "for next-gen, or even the generation after that".

For LucasArts, he continued, "Next-gen is not just about pretty graphics, and we're okay with that." Instead, the studio is looking for ways to change the gameplay experience - for example, by simulating instead of scripting characters.

To demonstrate this, Williams showed a level from the Xbox 360 version of the Indiana Jones game. He highlighted the many different and unpredictable ways enemies will fall when hit, or grab out for something to hold onto when falling.

"There are different payoffs for every action in the game," Williams explained, adding, "When you are creating these moments that are truly your own, you are telling your own story."

Williams then demonstrated some impressive physics effects in a new, as yet unnamed Star Wars game from LucasArts. R2-D2 was shown being repeatedly thrown into planks of wood, which broke in realistic and different ways depending on their thickness, and a similar demo followed featuring the character of Jar Jar Binks encased in carbonite ("arguably where he belongs"). To conclude, Williams played a short video highlighting 'force power', which allows gamers to release bursts of power, pick up enemies and objects and slam them into walls.

According to Williams, LucasArts' "core underlying simulation technology, we think, is really going to change the way people play games". However, he continued, "We think this is just the tip of the iceberg." ...

There's so much pre-rendered content in Dead Or Alive X2 that it's filled up an entire DVD, according to Team Ninja's Tomonobu Itagaki.

Speaking in Famitsu Xbox 360, in an article partially translated by IGN, Itagaki also said that the game was now 80 percent complete, with start and end sequences finalised.

The preview also revealed for the first time that the game will feature multiple hotels, with your choice of character sending you to a particular location based on their personality. Elena, for example, prefers the five-star Gemstone Suite, but there's also the Seabreeze Cottage hotel near the beach and Moonlight Reef, which appeared in Kasumi's Dead Or Alive 4 end sequence.

DOAX2, which features jet-ski sections as well as volleyball and a host of mini-games, is very much about the characters and their interaction with you and one another, and Itagaki revealed that if they really get to like you, they may even get changed into new bikinis in front of you. Calm down though, because you're unlikely to see anything.

With the game nearing completion, ahead of its US and Japanese launch dates of 15th and 22nd November respectively, Itagaki confirms that they're down to bug-testing, with approximately half the work done there, along with translation of the huge volumes of text that make up item descriptions, which need to be rewritten in nine languages.

Expect more on the game around the time of its US launch. ...

Sony chose not to include force feedback in its PlayStation 3 controller because it was worried how much it would have to charge for the resultant product.

That's according to SCEA boss Kaz Hirai, who told UK games website Kikizo that the decision not to include rumble features in addition to motion-sensing was a strategic, not a technical one.

"The issue is trying to isolate the vibration feature from the motion sensors," he said. "Is it technically feasible? Absolutely. But the balancing act that you need to do, is to be able to present the controller to the consumer at an affordable price."

Despite facing a backlash at E3, Hirai reckons that the extra cost involved in putting both in the same pad would have been "doing the consumer a huge disservice". You can make your own jokes about PlayStation 3 pricing here if you like.

Individual PS3 controllers, named "Sixaxis", will be sold for 5,000 yen in Japan, which is about 22 Hermajestycoins or 33 Euran-out-of-funny-ones-yesterdays. ...

TotemBall, the Xbox Live Arcade game designed to make use of the Xbox Live Vision camera, has been released for download - and as promised it's available for free.

You'll need to spend some money on the camera to play it though, as TotemBall - which puts you in control of Pterry the Pturtel on a quest to uncover musical totems - uses a gesture-based system of control.

Along with a story mode, TotemBall promises a co-operative juggling game, pinball, freeplay (infinite lives, no time limit), super challenge (one life, severe time limit) and TotemJam (for mixing and matching totems).

We'll be taking a look at Xbox Live Vision soon, and we'll also be talking to its creators - when we do, we'll be sure to ask more about Microsoft's answer to EyeToy, what else they have planned for it, and how they can legislate against the clever people who buy a web-camera and then get offended by the sight of other people on their screens.

Xbox Live Vision goes on sale this week, and in the meantime you can download TotemBall now - it's a shade over 40MB in size. ...

There's been no official announcement regarding Pro Evolution Soccer coming to Wii from Konami, but PES producer Shingo 'Seabass' Takatsuka has confirmed to CVG it's in development and testing right now.

According to Seabass, the game is playable on Nintendo's next-gen system and they're experimenting with various controller options.

The team is said to be looking at using the Wii remote and Nunchuk for throw-ins, passing and even shooting.

Seabass also revealed that he's heard whispers of EA getting busy in R&D, by looking at strapping a remote device to a player's foot for shooting. Quite what that turns out to be we don't know, but you can bet that it'll have FIFA in the title. ...

Fresh off the screenshot conveyer belt, we've got new screens of Rockstar's junior-GTA, Canis Canem Edit

You can checkout our recent hands-on impressions here, where we wax lyrical on the first and second chapters of the game which lead through all kinds of playground mischief, including classics pranks such as student egging, teacher sling-shotting and flaming-bag-of-dog-poo related shenanigans.

Canis Canem Edit muscles into the shops on October 27 for PS2.

Full details at CVG ...

Microsoft's Xbox Live Vision Camera allows you to transplant mugs shots onto the faces of in-game characters, so you can, for example, really shoot your mates in multiplayer showdowns. Well, kind off...

Simply capture a portrait and side profile of your face using the Vision Camera and then, via the wonders of technology, a computer rendition is mapped onto a game character's head. Apparently, the level of detail in the end result is impressive, hitting close to photo-realism.

One of the first games to use this feature of the Xbox Live Vision Camera is Ubisoft's Rainbow Six: Vegas, where you'll be able to use it to personalise multiplayer avatars.

Perfect Dark on N64 nearly got there first though, using the Game Boy Camera to do pretty much the same. The feature was pulled at the last minute as parents and MP-types didn't like the idea of kids shooting their teachers in the face.

The Vision Camera officially launches in the UK this Friday and comes in two packages. One for £34.99 that includes the camera, one month's Xbox Live gold membership and a head-set. And one for £54.99, which features 12 months Live membership and three Live Arcade games. ...

The only thing going for Superman Returns (the game) at the moment is that it was delayed a good six months for some extra tweakage. That means it'll be a bit better than what it would have been if it came out alongside the movie in May.

EA has been super quiet about the movie-tie in for some time, but the silence has been shattered with five new shots.

The game's now slated for release next to the DVD movie release this November on pretty much every platform out there. All things going well...

Check out what must be 360 shots right here. ...