We wanted to give the community a heads-up on a recent decision to move the launch of Dragon Age: Origins for the PC to the last half of 2009. That’s a change from the previously announced date of March 2009.

Why is this happening? Both EA and BioWare are really excited about the potential of the game on both PC and consoles and we want to ensure we deliver a blockbuster, AAA BioWare-quality title - as the game is shaping up so well already. An incredible amount of time and effort has gone into Dragon Age: Origins and this extra time will ensure we deliver the quality kind of launch you have come to expect from our games.

At BioWare, our fans and community have always been top priority, so we wanted to you to hear this news from us first.

So it's the standard deal. "blah blah. need more time. blah. making best game possible. blah blah. CORPORATE OVERLORDS."

Oh well, it might happen! Who knows!?

Animal Crossing - City Folk

• Platform - Wii
• Release - Later this year
• Looks and plays like previous installments
• Send text messages to friends or the message board with the usual mail system.
• Makes use of the new Wii Speak peripheral, which isn't a headset but a room microphone.

Wii Sports Resort

• Full sequel to Wii Sports, includes the Wii MotionPlus.
• MotionPlus is a new Wiimote plug-in (with pass-through for the nunchuck) which brings even more precise motion control to the Wii, specifically advanced positional and rotational data.
• Beach-resort themed, features tons of new minigames. Three were shown off:
• Disc Dog - Frisbee mini-game. With a dog. Sorta like darts.
• Jetski - Hold the Wiimote & nunchuck like handlebars, twist rapidly to accelerate like real throttle controls
• Swordfighting - Like boxing, but with SWORDS. Controls look really tight.
• Launches next spring

Wii Music

• Makes you look like a complete spaz in BRAND NEW WAYS.
• Far more laid-back than Guitar Hero or Rockband, you just sorta do whatever you want vaguely in time and something resembling music happens.
• It has a cowbell. COWBELL HERO LIVES.
• Unfortunately, it looks like it would only be enjoyable if you're really young or really drunk.
• Launches later this year

Miscellaneous Wii Games

• Shawn White Snowboarding - It is what it says, relies on the Balance Board for primary input. Fall/Winter 2008.
• Star Wars: The Clone Wars - Looks great for a Wii game, will probably give us the proper Wiimote Lightsaber control we've always wanted, even moreso than The Force Unleashed. Winter 2008.
• Rayman Raving Rabbids: TV Party - Yet another Rabbids party game, now with Balance Board input. You have one of those, right?
• Call of Duty: World at War - Coop war stuff, P1 uses the zapper, P2 helps out with the Wiimote

Miscellaneous DS Games

• Guitar Hero On Tour: Decades - Yes, we're getting a sequel this early. No we don't know much about it, but it'll be compatible with the current version and you'll be able to trade songs back and forth.
• Spore Creatures - Stripped-down Spore is still coming, it's got a reworked creature creator and an analog to the early portion of the full game. The ability to trade critters with your friends is still in, just with the usual hoops you'll have to jump through for a DS game.
• Pokemon Ranger: Shadows of Almia - Sequel to 2006's Pokemon Ranger. Like most Pokemon games, it's like those which precede it directly, with some minor upgrades and more things to enslave. Out on 10 NOV 2008.
• Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown - We have no idea what this will be. Top-down old-school GTA? Third-person new-school GTA? It is a mystery. Later this year.
• Cooking Navi - IT'S A COOKBOOK. A COOKBOOOOOOOOOOOK.

No Megaton, Nintendo? Nothing from Square Enix's remake-machine? No real new hardware? No Mother 3? No retooled less-lame online system? For shame.

PS3

• Resistance 2 - Sony's big focus this time around. Unfortunately, to me, it just looks like more of the same stuff. It's a shooter. There are aliens. Big aliens. Who cares?
• Little Big Planet - Now a suitable replacement for Powerpoint! Sony's usual "HERE HAVE SOME NUMBERS" section was presented via a Little Big Planet level. It was neat, but I just don't see how it'll be fun.
• Greatest Hits: They're $29.99 . . but, if you have a PS3 you probably already have all these games. Motorstorm, Resistance, Warhawk, COD 3, Fight Night, NFS: Carbon, Assassin's Creed, Rainbow Six Vegas, Oblivion, Ninja Gaiden Sigma.
• YET ANOTHER FUCKING SKU. New 80Gb model coming in September, identical to the 40Gb model but with a larger hard drive. Sorry guys, still don't have it right. We need backwards compatibility, Wifi, and a user-upgradable hard drive. Give us that at $300 - or hell even $350 - and we'll consider it.
• God of War 3, no surprise whatsoever. No gameplay, just a trailer. Still quite a ways off.
• Infamous. Superhero sandbox, reminds me of Crackdown, but moderately less goofy. Spring 2009.
• Hilariously named "Massive Action Game", large-scale multiplayer shooter, supports up to 256 players, character growth, ongoing campaigns, squad-based combat, PS3 exclusive. You know, like Planetside, but hopefully not terrible.

PS2

• LOL 130 TITLES COMING THIS YEAR, CONSISTING OF NOTHING BUT EXCITING SHOVELWARE AND LOW-RES PORTS!
• STILL MORE SKUs! Lego Batman Bundle coming later this year for $199, features a PS2, Lego Batman, and one of the Justice League DVDs. Who the hell is still buying the PS2 at retail?

PSN

• Ratchet & Clank Future: Quest for Booty - $14.95 short sequel to R&C Future.
• lol trophies lol
• Gran Turismo TV - Racing videos. From PSN. We don't have Gran Turismo 5 for you yet, but we DO have a trip to the Ferrari plant hosted by one of the guys responsible for GT! That's . . sorta the same, right?
• HOME IS SERIOUSLY COMING GUYS OK. REALLY. SERIOUSLY. IT'S GOING TO BE AWESOME. WE MEAN IT. PLEASE DON'T LEAVE US.
• Video content: Like XBL, you've got movies, TV, etc. HD, SD, rental options, streaming preview, tons of stuff. Not as amazing as Netflix integration but the content is portable. You can take anything you get from the PSN Video Store and transfer it to a PSP.

PSP

• Ratchet & Clank pack, $199, includes Ratchet & Clank Size Matters, 1Gb Memory Stick, PSN voucher for Echochrome, and comedy-option UMD of National Treasure 2.
• Resistance Retribution - Third-person over-the-shoulder portable Resistance, developed by Bend Studios
• Also coming: Force Unleashed, Madden 09, Loco Roco 2, Super Stardust Portable, Patapon 2, etc.

Non-Game PS3 Stuff

• PS3 Branded Youtube
• "Life With PS3" coming later this month. Some kind of . . news . . thing? I don't know, Tretton didn't really explain it.

SOE! HEY GUYS, REMEMBER SOE?!?!

• DC Universe Online - PC/PS3. BIZARRO AM LOVING THIS INNOVATIVE GAME.

Conference Shockers

• No showing from Square Enix
• Only 15 seconds of Killzone 2

Games You Care About

• Fallout 3 . . . turns out it's Fallout 3. Shocking. I mean, it's good and all, but it isn't really news.
• Gears of War 2. See above.
• Banjo Kazooie 3 & Viva Pinata 2. Rare makes sequels, film at 11. Ok, no, seriously they look pretty good. Winter 2008.
• Guitar Hero 4 - 85 master tracks, lame stuff we already knew about ("make your own tracks!!!"), lame stuff we don't care about ("WHOAAA GUYS! SUPER SPECIAL TREAT FOR 360 GAMERS . . YOU GET 3 REM TRACKS! NOT FREE OR ANYTHING . . JUST LIKE . . AN EXCLUSIVE PACK. TO BUY.") Also the new Metallica album will be available as DLC for GH3 and GH4 whenever it actually gets released.
• Rockband 2 - 84 tracks on the disc (the leaked list was mostly right), all RB1 content is compatible and transferrable, 360 exclusive at launch (which will be worldwide this time for reals). Shooting for 500 tracks available for RB2 by the end of the year.

Dashboard Refresh
Remember a few months ago when there were leaks from inside Rare saying "Uhhhh, guys, Microsoft is making us rip off Nintendo in a Big Way and it makes us feel dirty." Totally true. The new dashboard coming this fall is all social crap all the time. It's got fake-Miis, fake-photo-sharing-app, fake everything. I would not be surprised if they make us pay a quarter for a shirt like they do with gamerpics right now.

Good news: they're expanding their video stuff. Not only will there be new partnerships for normal video content, but the new dashboard will bring Netflix streaming capability to the 360. It'll work just like That Roku Thing, except you already have one.

Games You Don't Care About

• Scene It Sequel, bleh.
• Lame Camera Stuff, bleeh.
• Partnership with the tools responsible for 1 vs 100, Big Brother, Fear Factor, etc to produce "Live" versions of shows like 1 vs 100, ultra bleh.
• Lips. It's a Karaoke game. From iNiS, the guys responsible for Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan! and Elite Beat Agents. Unfortunately it isn't innovative. It's just Karaoke.

XBLA Stuff

• Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved: 2: Colon: The Game: The Sequel: JUMP IN. It's Geometry Wars, with 4-player MP, and extra crazy stuff.
• Galaga Sequel from the same team as PacMan CE. May be sacrilege. I am reserving judgement until a demo is out.
• Portal - Still Alive. It's a level pack, and if it isn't being released on Steam I will go on a rampage.

Super Secret Bonus Stuff
Square Enix dropped a bomb: Final Fantasy XIII is no longer PS3 exclusive. Sucks to be you, Sony Defense Force. Also, inexplicably, they are releasing Last Remnant on the 360 and PC. Why? No one knows.

That's all for today, Nintendo and Sony are tomorrow. Get your press conference bingo cards ready.

Welp, it looks like the one time I decide to sleep through a Blizzard announcement (I was dead-set convinced all the people saying "NO GUYS LOOK, THE EYES IN THE ICE IMAGE TOTALLY LINE UP WITH THIS DIABLO III BOX ART I MADE" were complete crackpots, and was sure that all the ice was going to mean "aces, more crappy Wrath of the Lich King news"), it turns out to be one worth getting out of bed for. Yes, after eight years of speculation Diablo III is here, ready to consume our social lives and destroy our mice.

Here's what we know so far, mostly condensed from Blizzard's great big Diablo III FAQ:

Diablo III
Genre: 3D Isometric Action/RPG
Release Date: When It's Done
Platform: Simultaneous PC/Mac release

Setting: Still on Sanctuary, the setting of Diablo I and II, 20 years after the vanquishing of Baal in D2X. Only returning character we know of is our good friend Deckard Cain (though he won't be sticking around long enough for us to stay awhile and listen, he's apparently the first casualty of the new wave of hell beasts . . and anyway, shouldn't he be like 90 or something by now? What the hell is the average life expectancy on Sanctuary?). It's unclear right now who our actual enemy will be, but Hell will obviously be involved to some extent. Probably also that glowy bitch Tyrael.

Classes: Five classes total, only returning class we know for certain right now is the Barbarian. The only new class right now is the Witch Doctor, who sounds a lot like the Necro. If they replace the Necromancer outright I am going to get mad on the internet. To make those five classes feel a little less constricting, you'll get to pick between male and female versions, though the difference will be purely aesthetic. This means things aren't looking too good for the Amazon, cause . . uh . . why would you have a male Amazon?

Engine: Brand new engine, fully 3D, features Havok Physics. Will this mean no more randomization, making the game like Titan Quest? We don't really know, they're sorta tight-lipped about that right now, but the handful of screenshots don't look very randomized. Instead they just look like a lot of bridges.

Media: Everything's over here. Blizzard's got about 50 concept art scans, 30 screenshots, 3 different trailers (cinematic, gameplay, artwork) and some random wallpapers for you to examine.

You might want to sit down.

Here's the good news: It's actually finally being released! For reals this time! Also you get nine "exclusive" songs, though you might only actually care about one or two.

And the bad news. . well . . damn, where do you even start? The date they've set is 23 MAY 2008, a smooth 6 months after the North American release. Why'd it take so long? Who knows. Probably the stand-by excuse of "TRANSLATING THINGS IS HARD!", but it probably also has something to do with Licensing Hell.

Then there's bundles & prices. Unlike the US release where you had options of "Everything" or "Just the game", Europe gets to pick from a ton of crap. There's an "Instruments" set which just has all the controllers, there's drum and guitars sold separately, and there's just the game.

And then the real fuck-you from EA: the pricing.
Instruments Bundle - GBP 129.99 / EUR 169
Wireless Guitars - GBP 59.99 / EUR 79.99
Drum Kits - GBP 69.99 / EUR 89.99
Game-only - GBP 49.99 / EUR 69.99

This might not have sounded too bad back when the dollar was, you know, actually worth something, but look at the conversion now: 180 GBP is about 360 USD, over twice what the whole shebang retails for over here.

No firm dates or prices are set yet for the PS2 or Wii versions, the best we've been told is that they'll be out "later this summer", which in EA-speak could mean pretty much anything.

Source: Eurogamer

I will wait a moment for that to sink in.

Got it? Alright. As for why it got delayed, well, it's our good old friend and favourite whipping boy the PS3. Back in August when the delay was announced, the justification was "technological problems", and in a recent interview with MTV Games, Rockstar dev Jeronimo Barrera clarified that, stating "It's really no surprise to anybody that the PS3 was definitely a contributing factor to that." He goes on to explain that it's all cool now, but still. Delays.

But hey, who cares about delays? Game's going to be out in three months.

Right, Take 2? Right? Please? No takebacks this time.

It's all presently on sale.

The whole set will run you $53.99.

$53.99

What's that? You only care about GTA? You're crazy for not wanting Max Payne and Max Payne 2, but fine, that'll be $26.95.

If you were asleep or something for the past decade, you need to buy this. Badly. And how lucky for you, it's ridiculously cheap.

Sale ends next Friday, then they all go up 10%.

So . . . it looks like we're down to three omni-platform super-developer/publishers now. In one corner we have EA, the only company allowed to make sports games, and who will be making sports games with tiny little incremental upgrades every year until the end of time. They also have a stranglehold on the cross-promotional branded shovelware market, and have lately been bolstering their army of developers by buying-up companies like Bioware/Pandemic.

In the next corner we have the newly-formed Activision Blizzard. Activision on their own is already in the middle of a record season thanks to Guitar Hero 3, Call of Duty 4 and Tony Hawk 39, and as for Blizzard, well, Blizzard is always in the middle of a record season thanks to having the MMO industry by the balls. Normally when a company I like (such as Blizzard) gets gobbled up in a large merger like this I get worried, but in this case I'm not concerned at all. I'm pretty sure everyone involved knows Blizzard knows full well how to make mountains of cash without any intervention from whoever their corporate masters are this week. Furthermore, I'm rather sure everyone involved knows not to try and mess with Blizzard's practices.

In the last corner we've got Ubisoft. . . . but really, in light of this merger, Ubisoft is looking kinda weak. I mean, they've only got a tiny fraction of the licenses either EA or Activision Blizzard have rights to, and have only 3 or 4 studios compared to the jillions EA and Activision Blizzard have.

I'd watch your back, Ubisoft. Looks like you might be next.

Out of nowhere, EA has decided that it would be super neat if they went ahead and bought-out Bioware and Pandemic, to build upon their game-development Empire of Doom. If they were another less-established pair of independent developers, sure, this would be pretty decent news, since it would mean stable funding and a guaranteed publisher for whatever projects they come up with.

. . . but this is Bioware and Pandemic. When was the last time either of them had a hard time getting a publisher? And when was the last time EA bought out a developer and then let it retain its unique culture? Look at what's left of Maxis. Look at what's left of Westwood. Sure, it might turn out ok in the end, but the odds are stacked against them. Lets just hope we don't end up with MASS EFFECT '09 w/EA TRAXX.