The news was leaked already, but Sega has now officially announced they are publishing the first group of titles from PlatinumGames, the new studio helmed by former Clover staff. Above is a screenshot from one of those games -- Bayonetta, about a witch with guns on her feet, depicted here shooting the head off an angel. Video games are all the same these days.

Another one of their titles is Mad World, a violent, heavily-stylized Wii exclusive. It has this t-shirt associated with it, which I would wear regularly alongside the MGS4 boxhead from Tuesday.

Industry and multi-console news

• CBS plans to buy CNet, parent company of Gamespot.
• Gamasutra has an interview with Terminal Reality about the Ghostbusters game.
• The London Games Festival is returning for a third year.
• Another Soul Calibur IV character has been revealed, and if you guess tits and swords, you get a cookie.
• The newest Japanese sales chart is pretty much the same as it was last time.
• InfoAddict lists ten things that suck about Grand Theft Auto IV.
• EA has been conducting surveys about Rock Band 2. Features reportedly mentioned in the surveys include online play, recording music videos, and band competitions.
• You knew it was coming: Konami has announced Rock Revolution for the PS3, 360, Wii and DS.
• According to a Google translation of a JeuxFrance article, Michel Ancel says Beyond Good and Evil 2 is in pre-production but Ubisoft has not yet fully greenlit the project.
• Spong talks to the British Board of Film Classification's press officer about what a game examiner's job is like.
• Another researcher has come forward and said that violent games don't lead to real world violence.
• Hidden Path developer Mark Terrano argues that realism is losing its luster, and instead video games should try pushing the limits in other areas like camera techniques, animation and AI. "I thought it was sad that we had to let The Matrix show everybody how much fun Bullet-Time can be. We have control of the camera, we have control of all the content, we're not limited by lenses, we can have some things in sharp focus or in rich saturated color or other things in muted tones, so we can do a lot more things to draw the player's attention and to tell a story that haven't been discovered by movie cameras."

PC and mobile news

New GameTap titles: Five Card Deluxe, Outpost Kaloki
New media: EVE Online The Empyerian Age teaser trailer
New content: Europa Universalis: Rome 1.2 patch,
Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 5.3 unofficial patch

• Wrath of the Lich King is scheduled for release in the second half of 2008.
• Worldofwar.net lists all the undocumented changes in the 2.4.2 World of Warcraft patch.
• GameSetWatch looks at the story behind the five races of the Horde in WoW.
• Gamespot has a Q&A with the Stargate Worlds team.
• GWAP is a website for Games With A Purpose -- a collection of simple browser games that help computers get "smarter." Mostly they involve tagging something like an image or music, so search engines give more accurate results.
• Amazon has 1701 AD for $20.99.

Nintendo news

• Konami has announced Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia for the DS. The link has a few screenshots.
• Nintendo has been ordered to pay a small Texas company $21 million for infringing on their patent when designing the Gamecube and Wii classic controllers.
• Disney has launched the DGamer online service, a multiplayer community for all Disney DS games.
• The Nintendo World Store is no longer taking Wii Fit pre-orders.
• Thank God: Cornholing is coming to WiiWare in the form of Target Toss Pro: BAGS.
• Nintendo has officially announced Pokemon Platinum.
• Nintendo Europe senior marketing director Laurent Fischer doesn't like the term "casual gamer." "For me, you are a gamer or non-gamer. I think most of you know that you can spend ten or twenty hours on an internet flash game and have not realised. The guy who plays these games regularly - he's a core gamer."
• Play Asia is taking pre-orders on plush Mario Galaxy dolls.
• It will no doubt vary from store to store, but Kotaku points out that Wal-Mart stores have some deals on various Nintendo products, including a 2000 Wii points card for $15.
• Amazon's deal of the day is Manhunt 2 for $19.99.

Sony news

New content: Rockmen: It Came From Uranus expansion

• PS3 firmware 2.35 is coming shortly, but it doesn't do anything major beyond improve stability on some games.
• In anticipation of the release of MGS4, the Japanese Playstation Store has gotten Policenauts.

Microsoft news

New content: Dragon Ball Z Burst Limit demo, Timeshift map pack, American Idol Encore tracks, Rocketmen: It Came From Uranus expansion

• Series creator Gregg Mayles says Banjo Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts is 80% vehicles. "I know it is going to be tough for people to accept ... especially the old fans, but I believe they make the old games look limited and very outdated. People are always afraid of change. But change for the better is great, which is what I believe this game to be."
• Shane Kim says he's happy Microsoft didn't release a handheld. "Our content assets don't naturally lend themselves to driving success in that particular market." Does that mean no one wants to be seen playing your games outside of the house?
• There will be a Too Human demo. There won't be a Fable 2 demo.
• Microsoft says they're the first current-gen console to reach a 10 million unit installed base in the US.
• Microsoft's Kudo Tsunoda admits Gears of War's story "wasn't necessarily as robust as it could have been," and for Gears 2 they "want to do a much better job of that."
• Microsoft has explained why they banned the name thegayergamer. "To answer the question another way, yes 'TheStraighterGamer' or 'TheHeterosexualgamer' would have gotten the same treatment and would have been found to be in violation and forced to be changed. We've actually done that to tags like that before."
• Stuff.co.nz is reporting that the 13 year old with his dad's credit card story may be a hoax. I guess it was silly of me to trust "money.co.uk" to be capable of basic fact checking, they certainly sound like a shady organization.