Sega has revealed that it is working on a new game for Wii, which is currently going under the title of Bleach.

The game will be based on the anime series of the same name which focuses on the exploits of the flame-haired Ichigo Kurosaki, a 15-year-old high school student with the ability to see ghosts.

This won't be Sega's first Bleach game as the developer/publisher is currently working on Bleach Advance for GBA and Bleach: Souten ni Kakeru Unmei for DS. The latter is a fighting game so we can probably expect a similar action-based title for Wii.

Via Gamesradar ...

For years, the WWE SmackDown! vs. RAW and Day of Reckoning series have been the top wrestling franchises in the United States. However, their developer, Yuke's Company, Ltd., has never had a North American office in its 13-year history. Since 1999, SmackDown publisher THQ, which partially owns Yuke's, has instead acted as the primary point of transpacific contact for the shop, which has also developed Rumble Roses for Konami.

THQ recently announced a long-term partnership with Yuke's that will see the two companies making games together for years to come. Today, though, Yuke's announced plans to establish its own North American office. Inventively titled Yuke's Company of America, the subsidiary will publish games for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 2, and PlayStation Portable systems. No location for the office had been made public as of press time.

Via Gamespot ...

Last November, Midway announced that it was stepping into the ring with the up-and-coming federation TNA Wrestling and going after THQ's undisputed US wrestling game championship. But instead of the wild, chair-throwing, body-slamming, pull-apart brawl that usually follows such a revelation in the world of pro wrestling, there's been very little movement on TNA iMPACT! (working title) since.

However, grappling gamers looking forward to the title will be pleased to learn that development on the game "geared up in a major way" last week, according to a news post on the official site of TNA Wrestling. According to the federation, Midway is set to brainstorm ideas for the game with Samoa Joe and AJ Styles, a pair of stars from the company's high-flying, hard-hitting "X-Division." According to TNA, both are hardcore gamers.

The visual side of the game is also set to be defined soon, as Styles and Jeff Jarrett will be undergoing motion-capture sessions for the game at Midway's Los Angeles studio. Styles and Jarrett will be the first characters designed in the game, with "many more" to come.

The news post also mentions that the game "will be available for all new generation systems including Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3." Midway's original announcement of the game also mentioned that it had the exclusive rights to publish PC and handheld games based on the federation as well.

The game is currently being developed at Midway's LA studio, which worked on Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks. Before it was acquired by the publisher, it was known as Paradox Development, creators of the Backyard Wrestling series of games.

Via Gamespot ...

Senior developers working on PlayStation 3 titles have told GamesIndustry.biz that reports of serious problems with the system's Cell and RSX hardware are "misleading and uninformed."

Earlier this week, technology news site The Inquirer reported that the PS3 was "slow and broken", with a correspondent for the site claiming that massive flaws with the console's hardware mean that it is "hobbled" compared to Microsoft's Xbox 360.

The site based its assertions on a claim that the NVIDIA-designed RSX graphics unit has a slower triangle setup rate than the ATI-designed part in the Xbox 360, and on a slide from Sony's Devstation event a few months back showing the memory access speeds within the console.

However, speaking to GamesIndustry.biz this week, several developers who are familiar with the PS3 hardware have rubbished the claims made by The Inquirer - describing both sets of figures as "entirely meaningless."

Although our sources declined to be named due to the continuing secretive and NDA-laden nature of PlayStation 3 development, they were unanimous in claiming that the figures, while they may well be true, have been grossly misinterpreted.

The contentious triangle setup figure, which The Inquirer claims to be 270 million triangles per second, compared to around 500 million per second in the Xbox, came under fire first.

"It's just a pointless measurement," one programmer told us. "Where's the context? How were these numbers measured? There are loads of different ways you can measure tri performance, and just putting up headline figures like that tells you nothing."

"In fact, the PlayStation 2 had better tri performance than the Xbox, on paper," he continued. "Everyone knows that the Xbox was more powerful at running real games, but if you just wanted to fill a screen with 2D, flat colour, unlit triangles, then the PS2 was much better at that, so it looked great in benchmarks. That just shows how meaningless this measurement is - it's really pointless."

However, particular scorn was heaped upon the claim that the Cell is being "hobbled" by slow memory access - based on a Devstation slide which shows Cell having only 16Mb/s read access to "Local Memory", compared to the 10-25Gb/s access figures for other component and memory types in the PS3.

"They've got the wrong end of the stick grasped firmly in both hands," said another source regarding this claim. "I'm not even sure if they're holding the right stick."

Each developer concurred that the slide in question was referring to local memory on the RSX - the graphics memory, in other words, and not the local memory on the Cell processor which The Inquirer claimed was in question.

"I didn't see that slide at Devstation, but all the numbers add up," one coder said, "and it's a total non-issue. You never, ever need to access that memory from the Cell - I can think of some useful debugging things you might do with that access in the testing stage, but that's about it. In fact, on the PS2 you couldn't access that memory from the CPU at all, and it was never really a problem!"

"I can see a couple of reasons why you might want to use it," another developer told us, "but really, they're pretty obscure, and you could probably do them on the RSX anyway, since it's quite flexible. Besides, if you really need to access video memory from the Cell, you can use the RSX to copy it over into main memory really quickly - it's all there on the slide."

"I doubt a single person in the room batted an eyelid when they showed that slide," continued the first source. "It's exactly what we'd expect, and the bits that we actually need to use to make games are perfectly fast."

While dismissing The Inquirer's claims as entirely spurious - and pointing out that even if they were true, they would be flaws so serious that Sony would simply not be able to release the Cell chip in that state - at least one of our sources admitted that PS3 was taking some time to get used to, but perhaps not as much as some parts of the media have suggested.

"I'd say PS3 was a challenge to work on," he said, "but every new platform takes a while to get used to. Put it like this, I worked on early PS2 games, and those were a real nightmare - we're getting code up and running on PS3 much faster than we did last time around."

"Once people start doing really impressive stuff on PS3 and Xbox 360, they're both going to be much the same [in terms of difficulty]," he concluded. "Sony's giving us better tools this time around - they're still not great at communicating and there are some weird holes in their developer support, but they've learned a lot of lessons from PS2."

Via Gamesindustry ...

The long-awaited unveiling of the price point and launch date for the Wii console looks likely to happen at the Game Convention, which takes place from August 24th to 27th in Leipzig, Germany.

The timing of the announcement has been the subject of intense speculation, with many anticipating that it would come at the Tokyo Game Show in late September - but this week the firm revealed that it plans to announce the date by September.

Meanwhile, Nintendo president Satoru Iwata has said that the company is not expecting to make a loss in the year following the launch of its next-generation console - unlike rivals Sony and Microsoft.

Speaking at a Tokyo press conference, Iwata said: "It is a strange notion that a game console always leads to mounting losses in the beginning."

"We can't promise we won't have even a one-yen loss, but we are not expecting an enormous loss... We are working to make the Wii business a healthy one from the first year."

Nintendo has forecast a growth in operating profit of 22 per cent this business year, thanks at least in part to the huge popularity of the DS handheld. Sony, however, has warned that the operating loss for its games subsidiary is due to stand at YEN 100 billion (EURO 691 million) due to costs associated with the launch of the PS3.

Via Gamesindustry ...

Eidos has confirmed that Tomb Raider: Legend is due out on PSP this Friday across all PAL territories.

Tomb Raider on PSP is said to be largely the same as its excellent home-console equivalent, except it also boasts a few exclusive new modes - including a Wi-Fi head-to-head game and two-player treasure hunt.

PSP owners can also look forward to hunting down a lot of bonus reward content.

Via Eurogamer ...

Sony Computer Entertainment Ireland MD Niall O'Hanrahan has declared that the company faces tough competition in the next-gen console cycle - adding that there's no guarantee it will retain the position of market leader.

Speaking to the Irish Times, O'Hanrahan said: "We have a marketing challenge from now until launch. This is not a done deal. It will require a lot of effort from us."

"We would never say we cannot fail," he added.

And it's not just the Xbox 360 and Nintendo Wii Sony has to worry about, according to O'Hanrahan: "Competition is now not limited to direct competition. We compete with MP3 players. We noticed at E3 that games for PCs are back."

O'Hanrahan's comments make a nice change compared to some of those we've been hearing from Sony execs lately, which have led to the company being accused of arrogance. Earlier this week, Sony US boss Kaz Hirai said he was "confident" Sony will win the battle, stating: "With the PlayStation 3, we are keeping to our belief that we have the true next-generation console."

Via Eurogamer ...

If it wasn't yet clear to you that the age of the DIY mashup is upon us, a new set of toys from a company called BlueBox -- which let even iPod-toting tweens "enhance" their tunes by dropping beats and sound effects -- should remove any lingering doubts. The three members of the new miJam series, which all attach to standard headpone jacks - a guitar, mixing board, and electronic drumsticks -- bear little resemblance to their non-toy counterparts, as all of the effects are triggered by buttons instead of real drumming or thrashing. Even the mixer sounds like it would be a letdown for budding DJ's, delivering canned scratches that will in no way prepare them for the beat-matching they'll being doing in a few years on their Numarks. Still, kids are pretty easily entertained, so the flashing lights and loud noises should probably hold their interest for a few minutes longer than your average gimmicky accessory. Like so many other pre-release products we bring you, we have no idea when these are coming out nor how much they'll sell for.

Via Engadget ...

Speaking at the Wall Street Journal's 'D: All Things Digital' conference, Sony's CEO Howard Stringer let slip that he's more than a bit preoccupied with Microsoft's Xbox 360.

While talking about the success of Sony's Da Vinci Code movie, Stringer revealed, "It also beat Xbox 3 in Europe in its second weekend", of course meaning to say "X-men 3". Apparently, when his mistake was pointed out, Stringer laughingly replied, "There's an obsession!"

However, as the interview went on, Stringer elaborated on his respect for Microsoft's next-gen console and Bill Gates in particular: "God I walked into that, didn't I [...] Look, the skill of Bill Gates is he's so brilliant at his detail that when he slips in the salesmanship, most of us think: oh my God, he must be right. [...] He talked on the one hand, and I loved it, he talked about Vista [being] delayed as if the delay was normal, and then he started mocking me for delaying PS3."

On a more serious note, Stringer also found time to address the high price of Sony's next-gen console. "It's got more bells and whistles than a 747", Stringer explained. "That Cell processor is extraordinarily powerful and you have nine hours of high definition on the Blu-ray disks alone [...] The reason it's expensive, instead of concentrating on just the games player, which would have been done in the past, PlayStation 3 is designed to go somewhere else, where it's the center of the living room".

It's a slightly more direct response to the question that's been on gamer's lips everywhere. Rather than the usual glib "Well, it's cheap for a Blu-ray player"-type statements we've been hearing from Sony execs recently, Stringer laid his cards down, explaining Sony is keen to reach beyond the traditionally limiting games machine/gamer model. "It's part of the new digital strategy," Stringer continued, "to try and create a new software mentality in Tokyo because it's quite clear that we've been an analog company migrating to digital with some difficulty."

Via CVG ...