It’s official. Sega doesn’t know what to do with Sonic.

As if working on two versions of Sonic Unleashed isn’t enough (360/PS3 and Wii/PS2) isn’t enough. Sega decided to make another Sonic game too. And it’s this. Sonic and The Black Night. This picture of it was found on the September Issue of Nintendo Power. Apparently, the game is a Wii Exclusive and is a sequel to Sonic and the Secret Rings. I’m not even going to bother ranting on why this idea is horrible, I’m pretty sure everyone can figure it out.

If you wish, you can discuss it here, at the D-Pad Forums:

http://forums.d-padnetwork.com/index.php?showtopic=1615&pid=29583&st=0&#entry29583

Blizzard may not have shared Everything New…

Blizzard Entertainment has recently announced the development of Starcraft II and Diablo III, but is that really all that they have planned? Speaking at the Invitational was Blizzard’s Rob Pardo, who said that “there is still one unknown project” currently under development at Blizzard, which is being worked on by “another development team”.

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Xbox 360 Price Drop Coming in Two Weeks

According to a leaked K-Mart advertisement, the Xbox 360 “Pro” bundle (with 20 GB HD and HDMI) will be getting a $50 (or 15%) price cut on Sunday, July 6. The wording in the advertisement of “New low price” as opposed to “sale” hints that it’s probably a universal price drop.

No word yet on the Arcade bundle, but if Microsoft decides to drop the price it will likely end up costing less than the Nintendo Wii.

This drop is probably in response to MGS4’s console-moving momentum in the US and Japan. The PS3 is widely expected to outsell the Xbox 360 for the month of June, and sales numbers over the past three months haven’t been too favorable for Microsoft either.

Source: “Master X” from Hidefdigest Forums, via CheapAssGamer

Take that, critics: Sonic gets even worse

New information has been released about the Sonic Unleashed, a game that was previously nothing more than a trademark, and gamers are quickly wishing that the game was still nothing more than a trademark. Rather than waiting for Bioware to step in and do damage control on the Sonic universe, Sega has lighted a time bomb called development that looks to ruin the hedgehog even further. What could possibly make Sonic worse than his appearance in 2006’s Sonic the Hedgehog, where he had a disgusting romance (besides the bad camera system)? (more…)

New Street Fighter character! I’m so excited I think I may have just wet myself!

Kotaku reports that the latest edition of Japanese gaming magazine Famitsu is showing off a picture of another new Street Fighter IV character, the snappily-named El Fuerte. What with the name and the fact he’s wearing wrestling tights and mask, it comes as no surprise that he’s a wrestler, carrying on the grand new trend of having Lucha-Libre-influenced characters in fighting games (you know, the one upheld by such luminaries as King, R. Mika and La Mariposa, the true giants of fighters. Ryu? Ken? The Kazama family? Fuck that, my money’s on Rainbow Mika!). This announcement comes hot on the heels of the debuts of Abel and the Crimson Viper, the former being described as a “man without a past” and proudly boasting a full-blown case of amnesia. In his defense, he does look like a badass motherfucker, but I’m not here to praise them. (more…)

Mario Kart Wii at GDC ‘08

Apparantly IGN got a Hands-On Sneak Peek of the new Mario Kart Game. Here’s the link to the full article:

http://wii.ign.com/articles/852/852952p1.html

I will list the most significant things here… (more…)

Microsoft Giving Away Two Games With New 360s

The rumors that have been plaguing the Internets for the past few weeks have come true. All Xbox 360s will now ship with copies of Forza Motorsport 2 and Marvel Ultimate Alliance. Both games are a $90 USD value. This is apparently a “Holiday Bundle” so act quickly to take advantage of the deal before it expires.

65nm Processor Xbox 360s Starting to Show Up?

It’s been a long time since speculation began of the Xbox 360 getting a 65nm processor, which means a cooler and quieter 360. That may have finally come true as there have been Xbox 360s shipped that seem to have the new processor, the first being a set of Halo 3 Edition Consoles.

Xbox 360 Pros Now Shipping With HDMI Ports

Microsoft confirmed earlier today that Xbox 360 Pro consoles will now ship with an HDMI out port. A Microsoft employee said that this will not affect the change over to the 65nm process, as the internal parts of the 360 are constantly being tweaked. Back on topic, the addition of the HDMI port seems to be on Xbox 360s manufactured in and after this past July - the picture in the source post has a manufacture date of July 4th on it. It will still retail for the recently-lowered price of $349.99 US. I guess we should have gathered some sort of conclusion that an HDMI port would be added on to the non-Elite 360 at some point given the recent special consoles - Halo 3 and Simpson’s Movie consoles - both are pro Xbox 360s with HDMI ports.

An HDMI port on a 360 console was previously unavailable until last April when Microsoft released a third Xbox 360 SKU, the Xbox 360 Elite. The Elite is an Xbox 360 with a 120 GB HDD and an HDMI out port with a black matte finish, as opposed to the other two SKU’s white finishes. HDMI stands for High Definition Multimedia Interface, and is a type of connector that transmits digital signals (both audio and video in one cable) providing the highest quality picture possible on modern televisions.

Sony being sued… again.

As reported by Gamespot, Sony is currently being sued by Parallel Processing Corporation over the, well, parallel processing technology in the Cell processor. PPC claims Sony infringes a 1991 patent they made for ’synchronizing parallel processing with shared memory.’

The company is seeking damage and attorney fees, and if it has it’s way, would have Sony remove all products violating the patent. It may just be me, but I think it took way to long for someone to realize and take action. I believe there should be a period of time to respond to a product that’s out there if it violates your patent before you can go all wily-nilly with suing people and if you fail to do so, forfeit your attempt to make money off of it.

However, this case hasn’t yet started up, so we’ll wait and see what happens.