British "men's lifestyle" magazine Front has done what needed to be done by sticking a half-naked woman into screenshots of Devil May Cry 4.

Industry and multi-console news

• John Carr of the UK's Children's Charities Coalition for Internet Safety argues that games should dis-incentivise long periods of play to, I guess, protect children from enjoying something for more than a couple hours. He also raised the issue of kids "dying at their consoles," so you can just imagine the rest of his argument from there.
• At the same Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee hearing, Microsoft's Matt Lambert argued that the PEGI ratings were better than BBFC classification.
• EA will be releasing Dead Space on October 31. That link also contains the game's first trailer.
• EA has also announced NFL Head Coach 09, after the series didn't get an 08 installment.
• Gamasutra has some advice for people looking to get into video game voice acting from David Sobolov, an actor who has done work in Call of Duty 4, Everquest II, and more.
• SNK will be releasing Samurai Shodown Anthology on the PSP, PS2 and Wii in quarter four. Among the games included is Samurai Shodown VI, which never had an American release beyond arcades.
• Phil Harrison and Peter Molyneux have both said that modern game controllers have too many buttons (obviously they don't mean the Wii) and can put off new players.
• EA says it's "too early to discuss plans" in response to the question of whether they would kill off the 2K Sports brand if they do eventually acquire Take Two.
• Salon has an article on the quest for a perfect game face. I really don't think you can say The Casting was "greeted, instantly, as a resounding success" when most people thought it looked terrifyingly ugly.
• The Entertainment Consumers Association website has added an advocacy section.
• Cnet warns that the possible R18+ rating for games in Australia could take months or years to go through.
• If you found the Final Fantasy VII pirate Famicom port mentioned a couple days ago to be interesting, Insert Credit points out a Japanese website devoted to pirate game hacks and remakes, with many screenshots of anything from Chrono Trigger on the Famicom to a bizarre Lord of the Rings fighting game for the Mega Drive.
• Over 1000 Japanese women between the ages of 50 and 69 have been surveyed about their gaming habits.
• Ninja Gaiden developer Tomonobu Itagaki says "Violence is not about cutting an enemy into pieces or seeing a lot of blood. In the Japanese warrior tradition you would shame an opponent. A real sword expert would aim his slice at the first four fingers of his opponent's sword hand. This would cost a warrior his livelihood and someone suffering this wound would normally commit suicide rather than live without their sword hand. That's what I consider to be real violence."

PC and mobile news

New media: Starcraft II gameplay footage

• Mass Effect has been given a May 6 release date for the PC.
• The Guild Wars series has sold a total of five million units worldwide.
• Ubisoft's Charles Beauchemin says that Assassin's Creed will perform better under DirectX 10, though it will look the same as under DX9.
• Gamespy lists the top ten PC games they'd like to see remastered.
• Wired has a short article talking about the upcoming Lego Universe MMO.
• The Sims Online is back as part of EA-Land.
• At GDC, Eskil Steenberg showed off an exploration-based mini-MMO called Love featuring a procedurally-generated universe.

Nintendo news

• Wii homebrew continues to take significant steps forward.
• D3 is bringing Bangai-O Spirits on the DS to America. The game features the rather interesting ability to "swap customized levels, high scores and game footage over the internet using sound files dumped from the handheld's headphone jack."
• Two Pokemon spin-off games -- Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Time and Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Darkness -- are shipping for the DS on April 20th in America.
• Doug Lombardi says “If Valve were to develop in-house for another format, it would be the Wii. It’s growing, there’s already a huge user-base, and it’s fun. Source is really scaleable. We can do that.”
• The Wii Menu has been updated to 3.2. It doesn't add any features, just improves system performance.

Sony news

• Ubisoft has set a May 20 release date for Haze.
• Sony will be releasing a red PSP bundled with God of War: Chains of Olympus in June.
• But that's not all! There will also be a 80 gig PS3 bundled with MGS4 and a Dual Shock 3 for $499 in June.
• The Dual Shock 3 alone is due out April 15 for $54.99.
• A beta test for Metal Gear Online will begin in April, with a pre-order of MGS4 giving "guaranteed access."
• Sony says that their PlayTV set-top box digital TV recorder has no restrictions on recorded footage. "All we're doing is moving it out of PlayTV and to the cross-media bar as if it was any other recording. So hopefully users won't do stuff they shouldn't do with it."
• A writer for the BBC says he was shown a trailer for an unannounced PS3 game due out in 2009 that means "we could be on the brink of a step change in what games consoles are capable of in terms of story-telling and immersion." He claims that he mentioned seeing the game to Phil Harrison, and Harrison "was unsure at first whether even to admit the title existed."
• A fan translation of Namco x Capcom is now in beta testing.
• Amazon has Unreal Tournament III on sale for $49.99.

Microsoft news

New content: Rock Band tracks

• Gamasutra lists the top ten Peter Molyneux quotes from his presentation at GDC. "The engine isn't finished. Her buttocks are wrong."
• The owners of the Dawn of the Dead license have finally gotten around to suing Capcom over Dead Rising.
• Meanwhile Kotaku has heard a rumor that Dead Rising 2 may be coming from the Bigs team.
• On Wednesday you can challenge Korn frontman Jonathan Davis to a Halo 3 match as part of Microsoft's on-going Game With Fame series.
• It's becoming a big question as to which party is full of it here -- Microsoft says the Goldeneye XBLA project never existed and they never talked to Xbox World 360 about it, while the people behind the magazine say their upcoming issue has "No rumour. No speculation. Oh, and contrary to reports, comment from Microsoft too." Until this can get sorted out, CVG has added two more screenshots of the game.