This is the winner of Gamestop's Smash Bros. Brawl nationwide tournament. He won a TV, a Wii with the entire system library, accessories and $5,000 cash. And, apparently, a fat little man.

Industry and multi-console news

New media: Lego Batman trailer, Saints Row 2 trailer, Facebreaker trailer, Wheelman trailer, Backbreaker trailer demonstrating NaturalMotion's more realistic football player animation

• Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe has been announced for the 360 and PS3, and I'm not kidding. The game won't be rated M, which makes one question what the point is. Games Radar has a brief teaser trailer with even briefer gameplay footage.
• The first downloadable album for Rock Band will be Judas Priest's Screaming for Vengeance, priced at $15. Kotaku asks Harmonix the questions you're probably wondering, like "what took so long" and "what happened to the Who."
• Grand Theft Auto IV has gone gold and is already in transit to retailers. Take Two has already seen some of the early reviews, and "to a one, they are perfect scores. My mom couldn’t write better reviews…"
• Next Generation has new European sales charts and imagine that, Mario Kart Wii is on top of all of them.
• Meanwhile, the March NPD numbers for American hardware and software sales are out.
• At the company's annual shareholder meeting, Take Two again rejected EA's buyout offer. EA responded by extending the deadline and dropping the amount offered (from $26 per share to $25.74), and they rejected that too.
• The Rockstar Games Social Club is now open for pre-registration.
• Soul Calibur IV has been dated for July 31 in Australia.
• The Army of Two SSC Challenge pack is coming April 24.
• Gamasutra looks at the issue of making balanced MMO classes via the exciting world of economics. "Every time a character benefits from what another character does, they're participating in trade with that character. When a tank holds the dragon's attention so that it doesn't attack a teammate, the tank is trading their production of tanky-ness to the other character."
• Kim Pallister writes on his experience of speaking at a middle school about working in the game industry.
• Patricia Vance has clarified the ESRB's stance on downloadable content, saying that if the DLC isn't the same as the core product, it has to be re-rated. But the original game's rating won't change "unless the new downloadable content is part of a required patch."
• Afghanistan is considering a total ban on all video games.
• Weezer frontman Rivers Cuomo doesn't get Guitar Hero. "I’ve never played it. I don’t get those games at all. I mean, I haven’t tried them. But they must be fun because people love them. But, to me, it seems like if you’re going to put that much effort into playing something, you should just play a real instrument."
• The big screen in Times Square at 47th and Broadway now has its own video game program that airs trailers, interviews and previews.
• Koffdrop writes about Kotaku playing to the lowest common denominator, who end up being the people who comment on their stories. "Perhaps if Kotaku exercised greater maturity and stronger discipline in how ran its stories or baited its readers it wouldn’t find itself asking how its kids grew up to be such poorly undisciplined tearaways." He has a point -- to a point -- but you should really know better than to read the comments on a major site anyway. There are plenty of sites that do no sensationalizing and still end up with retards vomiting all over the comment box.

PC and mobile news

• Diablo3.com and Blizzplanet (neither of which are official Blizzard sites) both have a countdown on their front pages, currently sitting at 13 days from now. Diablo3.com labels it as "The number of days until half the web links to Diablo3.com. But why???" Best guess: The launch of their wacky new Diablo-themed webcomic.
• The Bring Down the Sky expansion for Mass Effect will be available on the PC for free.
• Microsoft has filed a patent application on a wearable mouse. That conjures up images of somebody in a bizarre suit, but this is a thing that slips onto your hand.
• Monte Christo has announced Cities XL, a game in which you'll be able to build cities on persistent online planets populated by other players.
• TweakGuides has a tweak guide for Assassin's Creed. Hey, that's like their name!
• Business Week hotlinked the zip file for indie game You Found The Grappling Hook (somebody doesn't know their Internet etiquette), so the game's creator changed the link to a special "pro edition" in which the game is changed to involve finding terrorists inside Business Week's offices and throwing them out a window.

Nintendo news

New PAL Virtual Console title: Phantasy Star III
New media: SPOGS Racers trailer -- for those days when you've just got to have a game that looks like it came on a free CD packed with a box of Cookie Crisp

• Resident Evil 0 for the Wii has been dated for July 10 in Japan.
• IGN has a first look at The Conduit, a Wii-exclusive first person shooter.
• 1up talks to Miyamoto about Wii Fit, including the possibility of DS connectivity and the process of localization. "Early on in developing the balance board we found a rather large American named Reggie to help determine whether the prototypes were big enough for his feet and make changes based on that. Beyond that, there was changing kilograms in Japan to pounds in America. And in fact in the UK, they use 'stone,' which was very strange to me."
• Amazon has the Gamecube version of Twilight Princess for $25.99. They also have Super Paper Mario for $39.99.

Sony news

New media: Siren: New Translation trailer

• The official Playstation blog answers Metal Gear Online beta questions. "We have been getting reports that some of you are receiving partial digit UPVC’s Metal Gear Online Beta on the 'Metal Gear Saga Vol. 2' DVD inserts. We are aware of this issue and are working hard to remedy."
• Hideo Kojima is already saying that MGS4 doesn't live up to his original vision in some aspects. "Game-wise, it's pretty close to the original vision ... But the graphic, side things like motion-blending and the size of the map, totally was not accomplished to my original vision - to my satisfaction."
• PSU has an interview with the people bringing Enemy Territory: Quake Wars to the PS3.
• Gamestop and Gamefly both have Yakuza 2 listed for a September American release.
• The upcoming Cagney update will add custom soundtracks to the PS3 version of Burnout Paradise.

Microsoft news

New media: Spectral Force screenshots -- a strategy RPG published here in May by Atlus
New content: Condemned 2 demo, Iron Man demo

• Call of Duty 4 Variety map pack sales have already exceeded one million after nine days of availability, setting a new record for Live.
• DC and Epic are working on a Gears of War comic book.
• Reminder: The Call of Duty 4 Live Fire Weekend is now underway.
• Nerve designer Greg Stone talks about bringing Enemy Territory: Quake Wars to the 360.