via Canada.com

Eidos is wrapping up all three Hitman games into one package in advance of the Hitman movie, set be be released this fall.
Included in the package will be Hitman: Blood Money, Hitman: Silent Assassin, and Hitman: Contracts along with a bonus preview disk with content from the upcoming Kane and Lynch game.
"Hitman Trilogy is a seriously intense dose of gaming," says David Bamberger, marketing manager at Eidos. "The three game set will show just how controversial and innovative the action and stealth gaming genre remains. Players new to the series are in for quite a shock."
In the Hitman games, players take the role of Agent 47, an assassin-for-hire who uses stealth to take out his targets.
The Hitman trilogy is set to launch on the Playstation 2 and PC platforms on June 20, at the bargain price of $29.95 USD. ...

via Cubed3

Quick News - Speaking in a recent interview, the co-creator of Pokémon, Tsunekazu Ishihara mentioned that the expectations of Pokémon Diamond & Pearl in Europe (coming 27th July) are for the duo to exceed the five million sales already achieved in Japan. Share your thoughts on this ambitious statement in the forum and check out the full interview below:

Interview with the Father of Pokémon ...

via Cubed3

Take-Two Chairman Strauss Zelnick recently discussed the company's positive reception towards Nintendo's Wii and DS, urging their publishers to come up with a DS and wii strategy.

Thanks to NeoGAF reader Starchasing for the tip.

To be perfectly frank, I don’t think it takes a rocket scientist to realize what’s going on with Wii and DS. I will tell you that very quickly we turned to both 2K and to Rockstar and said guys, we need a DS strategy and a Wii strategy and we are working on it. As we get into the next quarter and into budget season for 2008, everybody in this company is completely focused on it.

Having said that, development cycles are long. Sports aren’t as good as games develop for specific platforms but we are looking at all of them across the board for Wii and DS. I will tell you that carnival games that we’ve announced for the Wii have gotten a lot of attention in the marketplace, as well as with our first-party partners. So we are pretty excited about that.

We have some -- some have been announced, some Wii titles have been announced and we are working to put more out on the Wii and DS. ...

via ME

Nokia continues to extoll the virtues of its new N-Gage games platform, having just hosted two special workships for mobile games developers and developers in China and Japan.

The workshops, which took place today, June 14th and earlier in the week on June 12th, disclosed further platform details, including the development environment, tools and business ecosystem.

"We’re excited to grow our relationships with publishers in China and Japan and give them the opportunity to become deeply familiar with the details of our N-Gage offering," says Gregg Sauter, director of games publishing, Nokia.

"The China and APAC regions are full of potential and extremely important to Nokia. The region is also home to a lot of mobile innovation and well established brands that have incredible potential in other parts of the world through the reach of this platform." ...

via Cubed3 (Click the link to see the video)

Square Enix has released some fresh footage from the upcoming Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles DS release, Ring of Fates, as the bearers go portable in an all new adventure. ...

via Cubed3

With the sequel to Paon's DK: King of Swing, re-named DK: Jungle Climber, ready to hit the US later this year in September, plus the Chunsoft-developed successors to the worldwide hit Pokémon Mystery Dungeon due in Japan towards the later stages of 2007, their respective box arts have now been revealed. Check them out below:


...

via VGGEN

Namco Bandai announced on Friday that it will release a limited edition flight stick bundle with its upcoming flight action title Ace Combat 6: Fires of Liberation for Xbox 360.

The flight stick will be manufactured by Japanese-based HORI, and the bundle will also include a collectible Ace Combat 6 faceplate. The price tag for all this? Only $149.99.

You'll find more in the press release below:

Santa Clara, Calif., (June 15, 2007) – Leading video games developer and publisher NAMCO BANDAI Games America Inc. announced today that it has partnered with HORI Co. Ltd., a Japan-based peripherals manufacturer, to offer a limited edition Ace Combat® 6 ACE-EDGE™Flightstick Bundle. The bundle set, retailing for $149.99 and shipping this holiday season will include a copy of the highly anticipated new flight action game, Ace Combat 6: Fires of Liberation, its newly advanced peripheral from HORI, the Ace Combat 6 ACE-EDGE Flightstick, and an exclusive Ace Combat 6: Fires of Liberation collectible faceplate for the Xbox 360™ video game and entertainment system from Microsoft.

The ACE-EDGE Flightstick is the first and only flightstick for the Xbox 360. Taking advantage of Ace Combat 6: Fires of Liberation’s ultra-realistic and immersive flight combat experience, the unique peripheral offers an analog throttle to control speed and a layout that fully utilizes the game’s excellent pad controls. The ACE-EDGE Flightstick will give gamers the ultimate Ace Combat experience as they live the war zone feeling the intensity of being right there in the cockpit as they face the most action-packed aerial combat to date.

“HORI’s long history of quality peripherals for NAMCO BANDAI games can assure gamers that the ACE-EDGE Flightstick will truly live up to its predecessors and enhance the already incredible and intensely realistic Ace Combat gameplay experience,” Makoto Iwai, Executive Vice President and COO at NAMCO BANDAI Games America Inc., said. “We are confident that this bundle set offers gamers the most complete and compelling Ace Combat experience ever.”

The Ace Combat 6 ACE-EDGE Flightstick Bundle will be available in a limited edition quantity at Electronics Boutique, GameStop and Gamecrazy outlets nationwide as well as online at Amazon.com this holiday season. Consumers who purchase the premium set will also receive a custom-made Ace Combat 6: Fires of Liberation Xbox 360 faceplate that will not be available anywhere else.

“In the crowded peripheral market, a HORI product is always unique and well-known for its quality,” said Yuuki Mizutani at HORI Co. Ltd. “The ACE-EDGE Flightstick was designed specifically with Ace Combat 6: Fires of Liberation in mind. Our totally unique and technologically advanced flight stick and NAMCO BANDAI’s newest flight-action game, will be a killer combination and a must-buy bundle for Ace Combat fans when it hits stores this holiday season along with the game.”

About Ace Combat 6: Fires of Liberation:

Ace Combat 6: Fires of Liberation brings together the intensity of large scale aerial warfare with extensive squadron command and photorealistic graphics to offer the most power-packed, realistic experience to date in the renowned Ace Combat franchise. Feel the G’s as Ace Combat soars into the next generation of gaming. Experience expansive and dynamic battlefields full of enemies and allies clashing against each other. Call into action aerial, naval and ground ally units with the innovative Allied Support System, freely tackle missions in any order to cripple different aspects of the enemy’s fleet through the Dynamic Operations System and take the fight online for the first time through Xbox Live™.

ACE Combat 6: Fires of Liberation ships exclusively for the Xbox 360 this holiday season for an estimated retail price of $59.99. The exclusive limited edition Ace Combat 6 ACE-EDGE Flightstick Bundle has an estimated retail price of $149.99. For more information about Ace Combat 6: Fires of Liberation, please visit http://acecombat6.namcobandaigames.com/ ...

via Texyt

Microsoft is paying an unprecedented $50 million for exclusive rights to publish two episodes of the forthcoming game, Grand Theft Auto IV, on its Xbox 360 games console, according to statements from a senior executive at GTA IV publisher, Take-Two Interactive.

Take-Two has already recorded the payments in financial filings as deferred revenue, explained Lainie Goldstein, Take-Two's newly appointed CFO, in a conference call with analysts.

First Xbox episode in March 2008

Microsoft is paying $25 million each for two separate downloadable packages that are expected to expand the Xbox 360 version of GTA IV with new play areas and features exclusive to Xbox 360 owners. The first will be released in March 2008, Goldstein said. Details of pricing have not been announced.

“The first 25 [million] is for the first episodic content package that's supposed to go out and that is in March of 08”, Goldstein said. “The second 25 [million] will be for the second episodic... the episode. That will be later in [the] fiscal year, fiscal 08”

While Goldstein did not specifically refer to GTA IV, Take-Two's most recent financial filings provide a list of forthcoming publications. The only episodic content listed is for GTA IV.

Remarkable scale of exclusive deal

The unprecedented scale of the $50m deal is indicated by the fact that it exceeds Take-Two's average quarterly revenue of $43 million received from all its Xbox 360 titles combined.

Take-Two subsidiary Rockstar, which is developing the game, plans to release GTA IV in on October 16, 2007. The initial release is expected simultaneously for both Sony's PS3 console and the Xbox 360.

Transcript of Take-Two comments

Goldstein made her comments on downloadable content in response to a question from Evan Wilson, a senior research analyst with Pacific Crest Securities' software team, during Take-Two Interactive's Second Quarter Fiscal 2007 Results Conference Call (link to streaming audio, requires free registration). The remarks come toward the end of the conference, at about the 40 minute mark. Here is our transcript of that section.

Evan Wilson, analyst: "And as it relates to the deferred revenue chunk associated with the... episodic content on Xbox 360, [I] can see that [unintelligible, assumed to be 25] million of that moved into short term deferred. Can you give us any sense of when that's going to hit the P and L [profit and loss statement], and will we see 25 million at one time and then the second 25 million or will [there] be a slow bleed onto the P and L?"

Lainie Goldstein, Take-Two CFO: "The first 25 is for the first episodic content... package that's supposed to go out and that is in March of 08; and that's why its moved into current, because its in the next 12 months. And the second 25 will be for the second episodic, [unintelligible] the episode, and that will be later in [the] fiscal year, fiscal 08." ...

First public video released running the Gamecube emulator for Windows.

This is what the beta tester said:

Just to get ride once for all of those people that still think it's fake.

Here's a video I recorded last night using HyperCam (not FRAPS). In this video you will see the main emulator running, it's output console, the folder with the files in the back and th hypercam window.

NOTE1: The video speed isn't the real speed the game would be going. It's slower due to Hypercam running over it (and using some of the CPU).
NOTE2: The video is encoded in xvid. You will need this decoder installed in order to be able to watch the video.

LINK HERE

Enjoy! ...