There she is -- the Guitar Hero IV drum kit as scanned in from the next issue of Game Informer. The accompanying article is filled with a lot of "Rock Band isn't so big, we were gonna do that anyway, and better too!" kinds of talk, but I suppose that can't be helped when you get beaten to the punch like they did.

Industry and multi-console news

New media: Resident Evil 5 concept art

• EA CEO John Riccitiello claims that the next Madden game will use a "holographic interface", and no one really knows what that means.
• GTA4 has set new Guinness World Records for Highest Grossing Video Game in 24 Hours and the Highest Revenue Generated by an Entertainment Product in 24 Hours.
• Rock Band Track Pack Volume 1 for the Wii and PS2 will be a standalone disc that doesn't require the original game to play.
• Tomonobu Itagaki says that he's not planning on making any more games in the Ninja Gaiden series. He wants his next game to be something totally new, adding: "I think it would be cool to work with an American developer and do a game based on the Pacific Theater."
• Gamasutra talks to Stubbs the Zombie and Hail to the Chimp developer Alex Seropian about the state of the union for indie games.
• They also have a summary of the Traveller’s Tales keynote at the Nordic Game 2008 conference, talking about making Lego Star Wars and designing games for kids.
• To round out the triumvirate of Gamasutra game design columns you won't read, they have an article about the pros and cons of player-set difficulty levels vs. dynamic difficulty adjustment.
• The release of GTA4 has raised the prices on old GTA games a bit.
• This week's Zero Punctuation review is for, what else, Grand Theft Auto IV.
• The release of Velvet Assassin has been set for this fall.
• Denis Dyack says there's a "strong chance" they'll return to the Eternal Darkness series.
• Capcom's blog is holding a poll asking which Street Fighter characters you want to see made into figurines.
• Playboy's Cyber Girl of the Year is a big game player, especially RPGs. "I'm 100 hours into FFXII and I'm not even done with the game yet. I'm doing all the hunts and the sidequests - I'm probably a third into the game and my guys are at level 60. I hold my characters high so when I go through the game it's a lot easier."

PC and mobile news

• Nine more Ubisoft games are now available on Steam, including cult favorite Beyond Good & Evil.
• A panel at the ION Game Conference advised that developers should design MMOs with gold famers in mind. "You'll always have a black market conversation rate for your game, so bring it in and use it to your advantage. The game demographic is growing up and having more money than time, and you should take that on from the start."
• Gamer director Gaute Godager it will take about 250 hours to reach the max level in Age of Conan.

Nintendo news

New media: Skate It demonstration videos showing how to play the game on the Wii and DS

• EA has announced My Sims Kingdom for the Wii and DS.
• The Australian release date for Brawl is set for June 26.
• Game of the Blog points out the number of crosswords and brain training DS game clones currently available.
• There's a trailer on YouTube for Mad World, a Wii-exclusive, violent, black-and-white Sin City-esque title created by the former Clover devs at PlatinumGames. Neither the trailer nor even the game's existence have been officially announced yet.

Sony news

• Gamespot has a Q&A with the developers of LittleBigPlanet.
• Sony has released their hardware sales data for the last fiscal year. PS3 sales totalled 9.26 million units, while PSP sales hit 13.39 million.
• There's already question as to whether Konami is hinting at another MGS sequel.
• Amid the growing casual games market, Hideo Kojima says "we shouldn't forget about the hardcore gamers." He also laments, as Miyamoto did recently, that Japan's role as a leader in the game industry is "becoming a thing of the past."
• The official Playstation blog answers questions about Haze.
• New user-created Echochrome levels are coming between May 15 and 21.
• PSU has a feature on the guns of Killzone 2.
• Now that MGS4 is done, people are asking Hideo Kojima what he has planned next. He says "Zone of the Enders is quite near the priority list."

Microsoft news

New Live Arcade game: Assault Heroes 2
New Xbox Originals: Stubbs the Zombie and Gauntlet: Seven Sorrows

• Kotaku has an "alleged and wholly unconfirmed" list of changes supposedly going into the spring dashboard update. Microsoft has told Joystiq that they don't comment on rumors and speculation, but "what we can tell you is we've never seen this list before."
• Joystiq has an interview with CliffyB about Gears 2.
• They also talk to Tomonobu Itagaki about Ninja Gaiden II, including why easy mode is called "Path of the Acolyte" instead of "Ninja Dog" this time around. "The first Ninja Gaiden was a hardcore game for the hardcore gamer. There wasn't really any way to make it easier except to make a mode where you artificially dumbed down the difficulty ... Whereas for Ninja Gaiden II, the philosophy is, now that we have enough bandwidth with our game design, we can make it not only accessible for casual gamers, but also include the higher difficulties."
• One Consumerist reader reports that her boyfriend has tried repeatedly to get a faulty copy of Mass Effect replaced, but Microsoft keeps sending French versions.
• Stephen Totilo noticed a prompt to press a "What's Up" button in the Gears of War 2 demonstration run for reporters recently, but CliffyB wouldn't say what it was for.
• Somebody with the Gamertag "thegayergamer" has been told that he'll have to change his tag because "the greater Xbox community" finds it offensive.
• Amazon has Virtua Tennis 3 for $19.99.