welp

Industry and multi-console news

New media: Mirror's Edge screenshots, Soul Calibur IV screenshots, Street Fighter IV English trailer

• Eidos' parent company SCi is cutting 25 percent of jobs and canceling 14 projects.
• The Game Developers' Association of Australia continues to lobby the government for tax credits for developers.
• G4 will be airing its coverage of the Game Developers Choice Awards and Independent Games Festival Awards on X-Play tonight at 8:00 EST.
• Videos on YouTube show Sagat and Balrog in Street Fighter IV, though Capcom says they are AI controlled and not selectable. Whether they're just that way for the location test or if they'll be unlockable is unknown.
• Videogamer.com has an extensive hands-on with Grand Theft Auto IV. ". The 'fantasy' vehicles have all been removed. Gone are the tanks, aeroplanes, parachutes, jet packs and bicycles. Cars, choppers, motorbikes and boats survive the chop. Vehicle damage is detailed and has a real impact on the handling of your car."
• By the way, there will be no GTA4 demo.
• Take Two says that they have received other buyout offers from companies besides EA, but they haven't had any formal talks with any of them.
• The next Rock Band DLC will be six Grateful Dead tracks. And all I can think of is this.
• Bioshock won 8 categories at the Game Audio Network Guild Awards.
• Prof. Michael Hoechsmann from McGill University has complained that the game industry continually chooses "subject matter and adventures that involve guns, violence and warfare." Except all those times they don't.
• 1up interview the head of Mastiff about their upcoming Major League Eating game.
• Southpeak Games has announced X-Blades, an anime-inspired action adventure for the PC, 360 and PS3.
• And Eidos has announced Battlestations: Pacific for the PC and 360.
• Jason Ocampo, who just recently left Gamespot, has signed on as PC editor-in-chief at IGN.
• Joystiq's Law of the Game feature analyzes the legal standing for the suit against Capcom over Dead Rising.
• Destructoid looks at some of the most campy video game characters.

PC and mobile news

New content: Penumbra: Overture and Penumbra: Black Plague demos, Conquest of the Aegean version 3 patch
New media: Battlefield Heroes screens and debut trailer

• NPD has released a chart for the top selling PC games in January.
• Activision CEO Bobby Kotick says that you'd need half a billion dollars just to get an MMO on equal footing with World of Warcraft. Trion World Network CEO Lars Buttler says Kotick is just trying to scare the competition.
• Titan Quest developer Iron Lore Entertainment has closed down
• Sins of a Solar Empire has sold more than 100,000 copies in less than a month.
• Microsoft plans to cut the price of Vista later this year.
• GameSetWatch has video of Trism, a simple puzzle game which makes use of the iPhone's touchscreen and accelerometer.
• That I Can End Deportation game has drawn at least one critic, though it's fairly clear he is a crazy person. "The game is more practically geared toward an effort to inculcate middle class Americans into the belief that illegal immigration is a human rights issue, never mind open borders and the influx of third world people is a globalist plot to turn the United States, soon to become part of a North American Union, into a feudal slave labor gulag based on the China model."
• Kotaku has video of Firefly, the first game made for Microsoft's Surface.

Nintendo news

• Japan will soon be getting a Neo Geo arcade stick for the Wii.
• Datel's Freeloader has been released for the Wii, allowing for region-free gaming.
• At Kelly's you can rent-to-own a Wii for a mere $79 a month for 12 months! (That's $948 if math is difficult for you.)
• Brian Ashcraft at Kotaku writes about his experiences with Wii Fit. "When I saw Wii Fit at E3 last year, I hated it. Really, really hated it. And when I bought it for this feature, I still hated it. Then I started using it, and the hate started dissipating. Nintendo's doing its own thing now, for better or worse. And taking Wii Fit for what it is, the game works."

Sony news

• The previously reported bundle made it pretty clear, but now Konami has officially announced a June 12 worldwide release date for Metal Gear Solid 4.
• Now it turns out that the version of MGS1 in the Metal Gear Solid Essentials Collection isn't a PS2 port but in fact comes on PSX discs. It's likely then that you will need a PS1 memory card; hope you kept yours around.
• The PS3, in Japan at least, is getting Initial D Extreme Stage, a port of the arcade title Initial D Arcade Stage 4.
• Rocketmen: Axis of Evil is coming to PSN next week.
• The American and European versions of Metal Gear Solid 4 won't contain the Japanese language track due to space issues. Space? What happened to the power of Blu-ray?
• If you're really obsessed with hearing people say "Su-nei-ku", you may already be considering getting the Japanese version. No luck there either, as it won't have English subtitles.
• Game Trailers has a video interview with David Jaffe.
• Amazon's deal of the day is Syphon Filter: Dark Mirror for $19.99.

Microsoft news

• John DiMaggio, voice of Marcus Fenix, talks a little about what to expect in Gears of War 2.
• A guy with an Xbox 360 covered in signatures and artwork from people at Bungie and Rooster Teeth sent it to Microsoft for repairs and got the system back... with everything on the case scrubbed off.
• One indie developer gives his take on the recent changes to Live Arcade royalties and XNA.
• Games Are Fun has scans of the Xbox World 360 on Goldeneye -- actual scans, not just photos of the pages. According to the article, Reggie Fils-Aime was behind the plan to release the game, but Satoru Iwata pulled the plug.
• Call of Duty 4 has been patched to add host migration and new killcams.
• Rocketmen: Axis of Evil is coming to Live Arcade next week.