Industry and multi-console news:

• A trailer for Grand Theft Auto IV will be released on March 29. The official website has a countdown on it if you'd like to be precise.
• EA has released gameplay footage of their next-gen skateboarding game Skate. There's skating involved.
• The Collective has been pulled off development of the Dirty Harry game and has had 30 staff members laid off. The project will continue in another studio's hands, though who that will be isn't known yet.
• Out of nowhere, it's been announced that a new Ready 2 Rumble is in the works. Me, I can't help but always associate the series with the Dreamcast in my mind.
• Scientists are using VR to map out depression in the brain.
• Concept art for the Prince of Persia movie has been released.
• GameVideos has a new Shadowrun trailer.
• Joystiq has video and impressions of the Conan action game, also known as God of War With a License.
• Game Informer runs down the list of ten common gaming cliches.
• BSM has conducted a new study which finds that "more than a third of young drivers are more likely to go faster on the roads after playing on-screen driving games."
• I don't know quite what to tell you about Gaming in the Clinton Years. It's a library containing hundreds of half strategy/half review videos of games released between 1992 and 2000 made by The National Association of Video Game Testers and Reviewers, an organization few people seem to have actually heard of. These appear to have been made at the time of the games' release, leading one to wonder who or what they were made for. The reviews are all pretty much awful (they didn't review Goldeneye's multiplayer because they only have one controller), but you may find it worth the nostalgia kick to look back on a time when Cool Spot could be described as "strikingly realistic."

PC news:

• A study of 100,000 disk drives conducted by Carnegie Mellon University finds that drives fail much more often than vendors claim.
• The United Nations has released a serious game called Stop Disasters, teaching children how to "respond to and mitigate disasters." One of the scenarios has you charged with halting production on Leonard Part 6.
• ZDNet has photos of ATI R600 prototypes, while [H]ard|OCP reports that just one of these graphics cards (it's more like a graphics brick) will require 300 watts of power. "Add in a CPU to that mix and you overtake most power supplies’ peak ratings on the retail shelves today."
• Blizzard has introduced a site called the Armory that provides a database of World of Warcraft characters, along with their profession choices, skill levels and more. Some players are complaining that this exposes too much information about them to other players.
• S.T.A.L.K.E.R. has gone gold.
• Vanguard: Saga of Heroes is getting its first major content update this Tuesday.
• An intelligence expert has said that terrorists could use MMOs to meet and recruit new members.
• The concept for Hellgate: London came from a failed Warcraft II pitch.
• Freeware favorite Tower of Goo is getting a sequel called World of Goo.

Nintendo news:

• Pocket Gamer names 10 games they'd like to see on the DS.
• 1up has a preview of Prince of Persia: Rival Swords on the Wii.
• Next-Generation has an article about the rise in popularity of user-generated content in games, using Miis as an obvious example. However, they note that Nintendo still hasn't provided the necessary tools to third party developers to put Miis into their games.
• Scarface will be coming to the Wii this summer.
• Amazon has Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin marked down to $20.99.

Sony news:

• Sony has reached a settlement with Immersion over their rumble tech suit. That in itself isn't a guarantee we'll see rumble back in the Sixaxis, because Sony was going to have to come to some kind of settlement over the suit anyway, but they do say they've "reached a cooperative agreement" and they "look forward to working closely with them as we explore new and innovative ways to utilize this technology in PlayStation products."
• The other big Sony story is that they blackballed game blog Kotaku after the site ran with a rumor (linked yesterday) that Phil Harrison might announce a Mii/Achievements-type system called Playstation Home. (This, naturally, just makes the rumor all the more likely to be true.) Happily, Sony and Kotaku made-up soon after, so Kotaku can still go to Sony's GDC meetings, their kids can play together, all that stuff. Still, Game Politics notes that this is a troubling sign of how journalism works in the game industry. Or doesn't work, in a sense.
• New details have been revealed on Final Fantasy XIII's battle system.
• 1up keeps their feature rolling with the ten most wanted PSP games of 2007.
• Newsweek's four part interview with Phil Harrison is complete. In this final part, he admits that Sony should share more information about their plans earlier. "I think in order to engender trust in our users, we have to share some things that might be not quite perfect, but are ready to give you an indication of what's coming." In this new spirit of giving, he says the the PS3 will have DVD upscaling at some point, but doesn't know exactly when.
• This isn't really relevant or useful, but just so you know, you can draw a pretty realistic PSP in MSPaint. If you've got as big a bucket of time as you have talent.
• Amazon has Shin Megami Tensei Devil Summoner marked down to $27.99.

Microsoft news:

• Faster than the initial estimates of "a few weeks after certification," Worms HD will be available on Xbox Live Arcade next week.
• An Armored Core 4 demo is available now for Japanese gamers.
• Gamespot declares that recent rumors of a two phase Halo 3 beta are false.
• The April issue of the Official Xbox Magazine will come with a free GRAW download pack. An old one that was released back in June, but hey.
• The first homebrew code for the 360 has been released, and appropriately it's a Hello World program.