Heres the summarised List:

360: Lost Planet, Crackdown, Medal of Honor: Airborne, Assassin's Creed, Kane & Lynch: Dead Men, BioShock
PS3: MotorStorm, Formula One Championship Edition, Assassin's Creed, Burnout 5, Alone in the Dark, Heavenly Sword, Warhawk, Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots
Wii: Super Mario Galaxy, Super Smash Bros. Brawl, Metroid Prime 3: Corruption, WarioWare: Smooth Moves, Wii Play, Mortal Kombat: Armageddon

What games are you jonesing to play this year?

via joystiq ...

via joystiq



Flickr account holder 'g3n3101' has posted a mighty collection of Xbox 360 case mods, highlighted by this WWII-themed diorama assembled atop a Call of Duty 2-plated console. Microsoft has long touted 360 as a customizable unit, and fans have taken that theme and run wild. Think that extended warranty is still valid? Think again.

More screens ...

via gamespot

Accolades are nothing new to the storied New York Yankees. However, for a team so used to winning (and spending so much money), the team is going through a major drought. Yankees owner George Steinbrenner can at least take solace in one thing--his players own the covers of the 2K series of baseball games.

Though the series has undergone different publishers (Sega, 2K Sports), different developers (Visual Concepts, Kush Games, Blue Shift), and different names (World Series Baseball, ESPN Major League Baseball, and Major League Baseball), the past five years have seen the familiar overlapping NY on the cover. Jason Giambi covered the 2003 and 2004 editions of the series, and Derek Jeter covered 2005, 2006, and now 2007.

2K Sports today confirmed that the Yankees captain and All-Star shortstop will be the cover athlete and spokesperson for the annual baseball game for the third year in a row. In 2006, Jeter batted .343 and won his third consecutive Gold Glove.

Major League Baseball 2K7 will be released on the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Xbox, PlayStation 2, and PlayStation Portable in "late winter." 2K Sports will release more information on new features and enhancements to the game closer to the game's release. ...

via gamespot

It doesn't take a scientist to figure out that playing a heated game of Dance Dance Revolution will burn more calories than sitting on the couch with a controller in hand. However, Mayo Clinic obesity researcher Lorraine Lanningham-Foster wanted to find out exactly how much more energy dancing games require, and her findings were recently published in the medical journal Pediatrics.

"In this day and time, children really love to play video games," Lanningham-Foster told GameSpot. "And even though we might want children to be outside and engaged in more traditional children's play, I don't think that children are going to abandon video games anytime soon...It's important to look at it this way because video gaming may potentially be a better way for obesity researchers to develop better interventions for children."

Led by Lanningham-Foster, a group of researchers measured the amount of energy expended by 25 children (10 of them mildly obese) in five states of activity. The children were tested sitting while watching television, sitting and playing a traditional game, playing two different types of games that require activity, and then walking on a treadmill at 1.5 miles per hour while watching television. The traditional game was Disney's Extreme Skate Adventure on the PlayStation 2, while the games requiring activity were the EyeToy-compatible Nicktoons Movin' on the PS2 and Dance Dance Revolution Ultramix 2 on the Xbox.

The researchers found that children that watched television and played a traditional game used the same amount of energy, while those that played the Jellyfish Jam game on Nicktoons Movin' tripled the calories burned. However, the obese children used five times as much energy as they had when playing a traditional game. For both groups, the most energy-intensive of the activities studied turned out to be Dance Dance Revolution, with the obese children burning six times the calories of sitting still while playing the song "Samba" on speed setting 3 in the game's training mode.

"Activity-promoting video games have the potential to increase energy expenditure in children to a degree similar to that of traditional playtime," the researchers concluded, adding, "We think that converting seat-based screen time to activity-associated screen time is an essential approach for promoting an active environment that is also fun for children."

The study was completed months before Nintendo released its activity-oriented Wii, so Lanningham-Foster and her team couldn't include it in this round of research. However, she said she's fascinated by the system.

"I haven't had a chance to do some studies with it, but it's something I'd love to have the opportunity to do," Lanningham-Foster said. "The technology there is actually quite similar to some of the technology we use to monitor physical activity in children."

The researchers acknowledged that the study group used was small, but they consider the findings sufficient to warrant further studies in randomized trials. ...

One of the frontrunners for PlayStation 2 game of the year was the well-received (and in some minds, controversial) Bully from Rockstar Games. The publisher fended off critics of its prep-school survival story to release a finalist in many critics' "Best of" lists for 2006, including GameSpot's Game of the Year.

Gamers looking forward to steering the destiny of Bully protagonist Jimmy Hopkins through another year at Bulworth Academy may not want to scope out back-to-school sales just yet. According to Michael Pachter of Wedbush Morgan Securities, Bully fans should not expect a sequel.

Citing sales performance for the game, Pachter flat-out told GamePolitics.com, "I would NOT expect a sequel [to Bully]." (emphasis in original.)

Pachter estimates that the game will create revenue of about $24 million before it's off store shelves, and that the three-year development time cost about $15 million. Including other expenses, the analyst predicts that Rockstar will do no better than break even with the game.

When asked for comment, a representative from Rockstar Games told GameSpot, "Rockstar does not comment on rumors or speculation."

via gamespot ...

via /.

A new series of articles is out on IBM DeveloperWorks on programming the PS3. The first article is up, discussing the installation of Yellow Dog Linux and first steps in programming the Cell BE Processor on this platform. From the article: ' It is unusual for gaming consoles to allow foreign operating systems to be installed on them. Since consoles are usually sold at a loss, they are usually locked down to prevent games from running on them without the publisher paying royalties to the console developer. Sony decided to open up the PS3 console a little bit, and allow third-party operating systems to be installed, with the caveat that they do not get accelerated graphics. Because of this, you can now install Linux on the PS3. You have to jump through a few hoops, but it definitely works. ...

Just check out the first screenshots from the upcoming Burnout 5 - vehicle pile-ups have never looked prettier.

Developed primarily for the PS3 - although an Xbox 360 version is also in the pipeline - the fifth Burnout is sporting an entirely new game engine and apparently has "the best crashes ever in a game," according to series developer Criterion's Alex Ward.

"If you don't believe the crash is real, then it's not going to frighten you," Ward recently told MSNBC. "The first crash you see on PlayStation 3 has got to go way beyond everything you've ever seen, beyond anything that we've ever done. Because every time we put our game out, people say, 'It's the best crashes ever in a game.' We've got to go beyond that now. We have to go beyond a game, and we have to go beyond a game car crash. That's what all of our work is focused on right now."

There's no official release date yet, though Criterion has hinted that it'll be out on PS3 before the end of the year. Screenshots are from the PS3 version of the game, but we're assuming the Xbox 360 version will look pretty much identical.

News/screens at CVG ...

As predicted, Dark_Alex's newest firmware features a new popstation compiler that messes up a bunch of the other GUIs that added a billion features over the course of a week.
I had to update mine, AND recompile popstation.exe in order to make sure anyone who used this ugly little tool I whipped up last week will still be able to continue with their usage from today onward.

There's a custom popstation.exe included in the zip, with the checks removed for "SLUS/SCUS/etc", so you can keep using custom IDs to help organize your save folders

Again, it's not the prettiest and most feature packed. And again, I don't really care, since it works for me.

Smiths' Popstation Frontend v1.2.3
--------------------
http://mywebpages.comcast.net/gbatoo...ont.v1.2.3.zip
--------------------
*History
v1.2.3
+ updated for latest popstation (and firmware 3.03A)
+ includes custom popstation.exe, removing SLUS limitation
- my FF9's SLUS was "FFIX-00001", using the stock popstation.exe would have made me unable to play disc 4 when the time came
- everything else in popstation.exe is the same
+ Game title limit expanded to 37 characters
+ Confirmed compatible with existing saves
- Had a Jumping Flash save, SLUS renamed to "JMPF-12345" from old version
- Used new version on ISO, changing SLUS to "JMPF-12345", compression level 9, and changed game title as well
- All good in the hood
+ Modifying existing EBOOTs should still be okay, addresses all good

MAKE SURE YOU OVERWRITE YOUR OLD POPSTATION.EXE WITH THE CUSTOM ONE INCLUDED IN THIS ZIP ...