Will Wright gave a keynote at Comic Con about Spore. It didn't contain any major revelations (other than the announcement of an e-card creator thing that I'd rather just ignore), but it does give me an excuse to use this photo of him discussing weighty science matters with a kid at some dinner event last month.

Wright ended up talking with the kid for a few minutes, and then they moved outside to sit down on a bench and continue their conversation. They spoke for a good amount of time; the boy clearly hanging on Wright's every word. I snapped a picture and was impressed with just how Wright was able to speak to the child about the complex business of play. This wasn't a lecture, Wright got down and spoke on the child's level, taking the conversation seriously.

Industry and multi-console news

• Telltale Games will be making an episodic adventure series starring Wallace & Gromit.
• The Prison Service in England and Wales is banning 18-rated games, and also requiring inmates to buy their own consoles and games from now on.
• Peter Moore describes the most recent E3 as "soulless," arguing that the show should involve the community to "bring back some of the raw passion the event has lost."
• Midway is delaying The Wheelman to the first quarter of 2009.
• At a recent Comic-Con presentation, Street Fighter IV producer Yoshinori Ono said "You may remember a character from a previous April Fool's joke – so maybe you'll see something about that [in the console version]." Is he hinting that Sheng Long is going to be in the game?
• Gamasutra has an interview with Indigo Prophecy and Heavy Rain creator David Cage about maturity in gaming.
• Next week's Rock Band tracks will come from Scars on Broadway, Testament, Staind and The New No2. Man, just go back to the days when you were releasing Police tracks all the time.
• Bionic Commando Rearmed has seen a delay in Japan, but it's not yet known how or if this affects the game in other countries.
• YouTube has a clip from the Australian TV show Q&A in which an audience member raises the question of Australia's lack of an R18 rating. The questioner gets points for the t-shirt, then gets them immediately taken away again for agreeing with the host that Fallout 3 involves injecting drugs to kill more people.
• New characters have been announced for Tatsunkoko Productions Versus Capcom: Hurricane Polymar and Gold Lightan from the anime side, and Morigan and Onimusha's Kaijin no Souki on the Capcom side.
• Activision says the supposed leaked Guitar Hero World Tour setlist is "wishful thinking and pure speculation."
• The Street Fighter II HD beta has been extended to September 5.
• Porn star Tera Patrick has been named as a "special producer" on Saints Row 2. I don't know what that is.
• The Quixotic Engineer provides examples of bloom gone wrong.
• A short LA Times interview with a couple Frag Dolls suggest they make between $15,000 and $30,000 a year.
• Ars Technica talks about the Dark Knight and how it relates to game ratings. "Can you imagine what would happen if a game with similar content to the Dark Knight was released with a Teen rating? The government, using laws like the one in New York, could conceivably claim the ESRB isn't working, and take control over the ratings process, or pull the game from the shelves."
• In a speech last year that apparently no one until now has gotten around to noticing, a Republican congresswoman claimed that terrorists were "sending training and recruitment videos over Japanese video game Web sites."
• The AV Club has an interview with Mike Patton about his video game voice work.
• Stan Lee had nice things to say about games at Comic Con. "I marvel at the fact the games look as good, and in some cases better, as the most expensive movies. [Those] guys are just geniuses. Now you watch one of these games and it's like watching the greatest superhero movie, except you're part of it. It's indescribable."
• Sega says one of the reasons you haven't seen many System 16 and System 24 arcade titles on Live Arcade and PSN is because they have trouble finding the original source code and ROMs.
• Michael Ironside's manager says that no decision has yet to be made regarding his return to the role of Sam Fisher. He also claims that Ubisoft is still working on the script for Conviction.

PC and mobile news

New content: 1701 AD 1.04 patch
New media: The Sims 3 screenshots

• Nickelodeon has announced an online multiplayer game called Avatar: Legends of the Arena.
• The cover of the next issue of PC Gamer confirms a PC release for GTA4.
• A new Spore prototype has been released, called BIOME.
• Steam's player statistics have been updated to track every game on Steam. Now you can know that, at this very moment, exactly one person is playing Juiced 2.

Nintendo news

• Q Entertainment will be developing a port of Peggle on the DS.
• Wii Music is coming to Japan October 16.
• Koji Igarashi is considering the possibility of a 2D Castlevania on WiiWare. He says he's watching Mega Man 9 "very closely" to see how well it goes over.
• Harmonix says they considered air drumming for the Wii but dumped the idea because "we found that the tactile element of actually hitting a surface when you're drumming is a fairly critical part to the visceral feel of actually playing drums."
• Wired finds out how the WiiSpeak microphone works.
• Amazon's deal of the day is Dragon Quest Swords: The Masked Queen and Tower of Mirrors for $16.99. They also have Blast Works for $19.99.

Sony news

• The PSP continues to lead in the Japanese hardware chart, boosted by the release of the Metallic Blue value pack.
• A recent MGM press release says Brett Ratner is attached to direct the God of War movie.
• Midway has announced the Mortal Kombat Kollection for the PS2, containing Deception, Armageddon and Shaolin Monks. So, uh.. all the hits.
• Kaz Hirai would rather take a bullet to the head than pick a 360 exclusive to bring to the PS3. Or more accurately, he'd rather be shot than admit the 360 has exclusives worth having.

Microsoft news

• Bungie says they have three game projects underway -- "some familiar, some not."
• Ubisoft has announced Naruto: The Broken Bond exclusively for the 360.
• Microsoft's former XNA community manager says there is a concern in the lack of quality control with XNA games.
• Vehicle sharing in Banjo Kazooie is a possibility, "if we think it's a definite worthwhile improvement on it."
• Legendary Pictures will be co-financing and co-producing the Gears of War movie.