via gamesradar

Take a good first look at Warner Brothers Interactive's new Roman era epic 300: March to Glory. The game is inspired by the upcoming movie 300, which is, in turn, based on Frank Miller's graphic novel. You'll be able to fight as one of the 300 Spartan soldiers lead by King Loenidas to take down Xerxes and his Persian army in a retelling of the Battle of Thermopylae.

These shots show that the featured weapons, sword, shield and spear, promise plenty of potential for the blood-thirsty gamer to hack, slash, dismember and decapitate his enemies. Look for some brutally intense fight scenes set against an ancient Greek back drop, when 300: March to Glory unsheathes sometime in March of this year.

Screens Via Comments ...

via gamespot

Gothic publisher JoWood has announced it has appointed Pinnacle Software to exclusively distribute its titles in the UK. Among the first titles to be released are the ski sim Alpine Ski Racing 2007, the extreme sports game Freak Out - Extreme Freeride, and the counterterrorist shooter The Mark.

Pinnacle Software was founded in 1992 and is a wholly owned subsidiary of Pinnacle Entertainment. JoWood's UK sales director, Richard Grantham, said, "We have now established a clear route into the UK marketplace...Pinnacle has an excellent reputation for product distribution and sales."

The list of JoWood titles due for release in the UK in 2007 include:

Agatha Christie: Murder on the Orient Express (PC)
Freak Out - Extreme Freeride (PSP, PC, PS2)
Alpine Ski Racing 2007 (PC, PS2)
The Mark (PC)
Flyboys (PC)
Lifesigns: Hospital Affairs (DS)
Neighbours From Hell (DS)
Painkiller (PSP, PS2)
AquaNox: The Angels Tears (PS2)
Atlantis Collector's Edition--The New World and Evolution (PC)
Dungeon Lord Collector's Edition (PC)
Egypt Collector's Edition--The Heliopolis Prophecy and The Fate of Ramses (PC)
Genesis Rising: The Universal Crusade (PC)
Jules Verne Collectors Edition--Voyage and Mysterious Island (PC)
Patriots: A Nation Under Fire (PC)
Safecracker (PC) ...

via gamespot

Gothic publisher JoWood has announced it has appointed Pinnacle Software to exclusively distribute its titles in the UK. Among the first titles to be released are the ski sim Alpine Ski Racing 2007, the extreme sports game Freak Out - Extreme Freeride, and the counterterrorist shooter The Mark.

Pinnacle Software was founded in 1992 and is a wholly owned subsidiary of Pinnacle Entertainment. JoWood's UK sales director, Richard Grantham, said, "We have now established a clear route into the UK marketplace...Pinnacle has an excellent reputation for product distribution and sales."

The list of JoWood titles due for release in the UK in 2007 include:

Agatha Christie: Murder on the Orient Express (PC)
Freak Out - Extreme Freeride (PSP, PC, PS2)
Alpine Ski Racing 2007 (PC, PS2)
The Mark (PC)
Flyboys (PC)
Lifesigns: Hospital Affairs (DS)
Neighbours From Hell (DS)
Painkiller (PSP, PS2)
AquaNox: The Angels Tears (PS2)
Atlantis Collector's Edition--The New World and Evolution (PC)
Dungeon Lord Collector's Edition (PC)
Egypt Collector's Edition--The Heliopolis Prophecy and The Fate of Ramses (PC)
Genesis Rising: The Universal Crusade (PC)
Jules Verne Collectors Edition--Voyage and Mysterious Island (PC)
Patriots: A Nation Under Fire (PC)
Safecracker (PC) ...

via eurogamer

Crazy Taxi's set to make a return this summer - with a PSP instalment mixing the content of the first two Dreamcast games and adding a few new features.

Called Crazy Taxi: Fare Wars, it's being developed by Sniper Studios and offers plenty of single-player content to barge your way through on the PSP's slick wide screen.

Using both original Crazy Taxi maps (arcade and Dreamcast) and the Small Apple maps of Crazy Taxi 2, Fare Wars offers an Arcade mode, where you earn time bonuses by delivering fares quickly, and a Time Trial, where the idea is to collect the highest fares possible in the time allowed.

On top of that there are two mini-game modes, including Crazy Box's original 16 mini tasks and a Crazy Pyramid to unlock the CT2 offerings.

Multiplayer is catered for too, via an ad hoc option that has you racing others and trying to steal their passengers by bumping cars.

Finally, SEGA says you'll be able to save replays of your best moments onto Memory Stick so you can show them off to your mum. Hopefully you'll have better luck than I do - she still refuses to take interest in my best Pro Evo goals. Witch. ...

via eurogamer

Blu-ray DVDs are to include a feature that will allow copies of films to be transferred to laptops or other devices.

It's an effort by Sony to gain wider acceptance of its new format and, more importantly, rival Microsoft's HD-DVD technology.

Speaking at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this week, head of Sony's home entertainment unit, David Bishop, indicated that we'll see this feature soon.

"It's not currently part of anything on our current release schedule, but we'll probably roll it out sometime this year."

Which sounds rather familiar. Take with a pinch of salt.

Blu-ray famously holds more than five-times as much data as a normal DVD, and Sony have already claimed that games are filling the impressive 25GB capacity. What exactly are they filling it with? We can only hazard a guess. ...

via engadget

We had a chance to check out Microsoft's IPTV offering for Xbox 360, announced earlier this week during Bill Gates' CES keynote, and get answers to some of the questions that have been nagging at us since first hearing about the service. Though Microsoft hasn't announced any providers for the service yet, both AT&T and Verizon -- as well as fourteen other telcos around the world -- use Microsoft's IPTV middleware platform to provide television over fiber, so they seem like likely candidates when the service debuts holiday season '07. Of course, if you're considering the DVR functionality, the Xbox 360's anemic 20GB hard drive won't get you very far. A Microsoft rep said the file sizes are dependent not only on the resolution of the feed, but the compression used by the provider; however, one could probably assume that the Xbox Live Video Marketplace's videos would be roughly analogous in size. Regardless, we'd expect an update to the drive before IPTV launches. Because IPTV uses software, not a hardware tuner, to decode the signal, the number of streams that can be simultaneously recorded is limited solely by internet and hard drive bandwidth. In addition, IPTV is capable of offering more HD channels than other platforms, like cable or satellite. Because the service shares the same connection as your phone and internet connection, it can provide telco caller-ID and features like teleconferencing have "been discussed." Perhaps the biggest question we have is whether or not any of this functionality would (or could) be made available to gamers who don't (or can't) get IPTV service in their area. Microsoft isn't saying anything but, considering the small amount of consumers with fiber service to the home, we certainly hope so.

More at link above ...

via engadget

Two sparsely-buttoned large, touchscreen phones: the Apple iPhone, and the LG KE850 (which already won the International Forum Design Product Design Award for 2007). Separated at birth, or possible lawsuit number two for Apple? You decide. ...

via cvg

SCEA's senior director of corporate communications, Dave Karraker, has responded to sniping comments made by Microsoft earlier this week, where MS's Peter Moore and Chris Satchell called Sony's PS3 online service a "disaster", and said Sony doesn't have the "talent" to launch a service matching Xbox Live.

"I would argue that consumers worldwide, to the tune of over 200 million PlayStations, PS2s, PSPs and PS3s, have decided whether or not Sony has the DNA to deliver hardware, software and services to suit this industry," Karraker told Gamepro.com, making sure to note that Gran Turisom HD highlights "the potential of the PlayStation Network and the kind of ground breaking content we plan to offer".

Karraker also took issue with Microsoft's recent announcement that it has sold 10.4 million Xbox 360s, suggesting that MS's touted number is actually the number of consoles shipped, rather than those actually in the hands of gamers.

"Microsoft views 'sold' as what has been sold to retailers but could be sitting on pallets in warehouses or stacked on store shelves," he said.

"'Sold' to Sony has always meant what the consumer has actually purchased, I think many people have incorrectly viewed our competitor's 'sold' figure to believe it was actually sold to consumers, which it was not." ...

via cvg

Gunpey, the puzzle-music game on PSP and DS, has been picked up by Atari which will publish the game in Europe in March.

The colourful puzzle game has players flip rising panels, lining up the markings within the panels to make them explode before they reach the top of the screen. Confused? Check out the DS and PSP screens below.

Both games feature wireless link-up for multiplayer gaming, and platform-exclusive content includes 40 interchangeable skins for the PSP version, while the DS version boasts extra special moves that temporarily disrupt your opponent's screen in versus games, and the option to create your own music.

Screens Via Comments ...