Industry and multi-console news:

• Mexico is beginning an anticrime initiative in which they will offer consoles for guns.
• Yuji Naka says his new studio, Prope, will not do ports or sequels.
• EA has renewed its Lord of the Rings license through 2008. But they almost screwed up on the "one does not parallel park into Mordor" test.
• Rumors say that Paul Anderson has left the Castlevania movie project.
• Crave has unveiled Pinball Hall of Fame: The William Collection for the PS2, PSP and Wii.
• Directors of Denver's Regional Transport District have voted to allow M-rated game ads on public transit. They don't actually want it, they just knew that they would "face an uphill battle in court" if they carried through with the ban.
• Mad Money host Jim Cramer recently gave his opinion on a few video game stocks.
• The Girl Gamer Award nominees have been announced (awarding games, not girls). The list is indistinguishable from a list that "boy gamers" would make, rendering the whole thing rather pointless.
• Burnout 5 will make use of the HD Eye Toy and Live Vision Camera for something "important."
• Further casting has been announced for the Hitman movie. I don't know who any of them are, but maybe you do.
• Jeremy Parish says they were unable to record a System Shock Retronauts podcast with Ken Levine because 2K Games would not allow them to talk about EA titles. "Never mind that the games are ten, fifteen years old, out of print, have a direct bearing on Bioshock and reflect the work and evolution of the man they're dragging around for their press tour."
• Japan has plans to ban wireless gaming on flights due to the possibility of interference with plane instruments. PSPs and DSes aren't banned outright, but they have to have their wireless transmit modes turned off.
• A new Dark Sector video demonstrates how a wide variety of fruit is used to create gooey foley effects.

PC news:

• 2K Games has announced Beyond the Sword, the second expansion pack for Civilization IV.
• The first Command & Conquer 3 patch is already available.

Nintendo news:

• Mario and Sonic will star in an upcoming Olympics-themed Wii and DS game.
• Tomonobu Itagaki has announced Ninja Gaiden: Dragon Sword for the DS. Thank God Nintendo didn't call their new handheld the Nintendo ZX or who knows how developers would manage to subtitle their games.
• Online importer Play-Asia has Gyakuten Saiban 4 listed as Japanese language only. Previous installments had been bilingual.
• Pocket Gamer has a little feature explaining how the DS' 3D graphics work.
• Jeux France has a bunch of new Ouendan 2 screenshots.

Sony news:

• A demo for Ninja Gaiden Sigma will arive on the Playstation Network in Japan on April 27. There's no word if or when the demo will come to other territories.
• A new PSP firmware upgrade finally allows for full-frame video.
• For their part, Sony responded to Microsoft's Elite announcement by saying that it "legitimises Sony’s PS3 strategy," and "moves us closer to adopting universal standards in the area of high definition gaming."
• If just hearing about the hardware difference in the Euro PS3 wasn't enough, now you can actually compare the American and PAL PS3 circuit boards.

Microsoft news:

• Microsoft has officially announced the Xbox 360 Elite. No one could have seen this coming!
• The 360 Elite will not replace the other models -- Major Nelson calls the 20 gig model "the sweet spot."
• In addition, the Elite news doesn't apply to Japan at the moment. The 120 gig HD will be offered, but Japanese gamers wanting the Elite should "wait for a future announcement." IGN adds that the package may be tailored to Japanese tastes.
• Unfortunately, Microsoft has a lot of rules about data transfer to the 120 gig hard drive -- data can only be transfered to the 120 gig unit and not from, the transfered data is deleted from the 20 gig unit afterwards, and so on.
• The fun doesn't stop with a black 360, kids. Microsoft's Channel 10 said there were going to be two big announcements, and one of them was last night -- obviously the Elite. The other is midnight tonight, but what might it be? Something about the Halo 3 beta? GTA4? Public apology for the Zune?
• New video content is coming to the Live Marketplace, ranging from Snakes on a Plane to Dog the Bounty Hunter to some as of yet unnamed anime.