People are wasting no time making famous characters in Soul Calibur IV's character creation system.

Industry and multi-console news

New media: Midnight Club LA trailer

• Capcom and DC are teaming up to make Devil May Cry and Resident Evil comics.
• An Activision "realignment" seems to have left several games without a publisher, including Brutal Legends, Ghostbusters and 50 Cent Blood on the Sand. The developers of these games have been coming out one by one to remind people that despite this announcement, they're not dead.
• The Australian pricing for Rock Band sucks. As an unrelated aside, have there ever been any "big" Australian rock bands besides INXS? (Men at Work is not rock.)
• Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway has been delayed to September.
• Edge lists the top 20 publishers of 2008, "based on various criteria including revenues, profits, growth and publishing success."
• Blizzard has announced that tickets for Blizzcon 2008 go on sale August 11. The event will also be available for viewing through DirecTV.
• The Wall-E game isn't doing so well despite the success of the film. Which is odd, as Cars was the second best selling game in 2007 in North America, and the movie sucked.
• The ESA is circulating a survey to attendees of this year's E3, one assumes to determine exactly to what extent everyone hated it.
• The ESA raised $2.6 million for charity through sales of its yearly three-game compilation pack.
• Insert Credit pointed out this really nice Street Fighter III spriterip site. It goes beyond simple sprite sheets to provide a full menu of animations to choose from for each character.
• New playlists are coming to Call of Duty 4.
• A GameTrailers user has created a video highlighting the differences and similarities between Resident Evil 4 and 5.
• EEDAR analysts have done lots of number crunching to bring you the revelation that multiplayer modes can produce stronger sales. Or, just as likely, games without multiplayer tend to be more niche titles that naturally don't sell as much.
• Rooster Teeth has opened a new site to chronicle all achievements/trophies for 360, iPhone, PC and PS3 games.
• This is what Joker looks like in Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe. He's very foldy.

PC and mobile news

New content: Legend Hand of God demo, Space Siege demo, Time of War demo, Mass Effect 1.01 patch and DLC, Incredible Hulk 1.1 patch
New media: American McGee's Grimm trailer, Demigod first trailer

• The creative director of Warhammer Online says that successful MMO design is "corrupting," because it leads other developers to not think creatively.
• John Carmack plans to bring one of id's franchises to the iPhone in a "graphical tour de force."
• NCSoft is now selling game cards for City of Heroes, Tabula Rasa and Exteel at retail, which give you access to 30 days of play for a given game without having to use a credit card. Additionally, it also gives you a downloadable copy of the game itself.
• Facebook has shutdown Scrabulous on pressure from Hasbro. Unfortunately, it sounds like the official Scrabble replacement game isn't that great.
• DICE producer Aleksander Grondol admits that Battlefield Heroes is "an experiment" which "involves a certain amount of risk."
• Following up on news of the three teen girl movies turning into games: Pretty in Pink will be a hidden-picture-style game (whatever that means), Clueless will be similar to Jojo's Fashion Show, and Mean Girls will be similar to Puzzle Quest.
• EA plans to sell pre-built PCs in conjunction with the release of Crysis Warhead. The idea is that they can sell you a rig that is guaranteed to run Crysis at a particular graphics setting.

Nintendo news

• Nintendo and 54 game software companies have filed a lawsuit in Japan against companies which import and sell DS piracy devices.
• EA CEO John Riccitiello says they "made the wrong call" by getting behind the 360 and PS3 early on instead of the Wii.
• Comcast is offering a free Wii to new subscribers for people who sign up for their cable, phone and Internet combo package.
• Satoru Iwata doesn't hide the fact that Nintendo is working on a successor to the Wii, but he also doesn't find the topic particularly interesting. “We are always preparing for the next hardware. We are under development. … But the hardware is a kind of box that consumers reluctantly buy in order to play our games.”
• He also admits in his first year as president, he was worried he might be fired before the Wii got off the ground. "I was lucky that it worked so quickly."
• Gamestop is offering a statuette pre-order bonus for Mushroom Men: The Spore Wars.
• GTA: Chinatown Wars will have some kind of WiFi support. Who knows what, though.

Sony news

New media: Thunder Force VI video and screenshots

• Macross Ace Frontier will feature the ability to save replays and screenshots.
• Video has appeared showing a PSP running Shenmue in a Dreamcast emulator -- really, really, really slowly.
• Variety's Cut Scene blog talks to Hideo Kojima, who can't resist continuing to tease the fanbase. "I would like you to think that this good-bye to Snake is a good-bye to this era and represents closure to your old self. If there ever were to be a new Snake (might have a different name), he will be a Snake for a new era."
• GamePro lists their choices for the 36 best PS2 games, and fail right out of the gate for calling Escape from Monkey Island the "best" of anything.
• Sega has announced a Fantasy Zone collection in Japan.

Microsoft news

New content: Rock Band tracks

• Microsoft has confirmed that 360 Silver users are getting free online play for PC/360 cross-platform titles for a limited time. So, uh, if you for some reason bought Shadowrun despite only having a Silver account, this is your day.
• Lionhead has plans for three more Fable games.
• Some people are reporting that their local Target stores have started selling 60 gig 360s early.
• Valve says they will consider bringing other Steam games to Live Arcade.