As a prelude to the marathon, they're running a charity auction with a chance to win a sealed copy of Halo 2 signed by an assortment of Bungie staff.

Bidding is currently running at the low, low price of £81. Which is just about the going rate for a non-signed copy of Halo 2. If this takes your fancy then hop over to their ebay auction and place your bid.

Dig deep, guys. Those kids deserve it.

http://www.littleeng...for-signed.html

Images courtesy of the Sideshow forums.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=K6c554Jauiw

http://www.littleeng...llectibles.html

Bethesda is adding mounted combat as part of a new update for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. The update is currently part of the Steam Beta Update for PC.

"While we can’t share details on Dawnguard yet, we’re excited to announce another new feature making its way into the game… Mounted Combat! Like the recently added Kinect support (360) and new kill cameras, this highly-requested feature that was teased in the Skyrim Game Jam video is arriving by way of a free title update," Bethesda said on its blog today.

Details about when the update will go live for consoles will be announced at a later date.

1.6 Update (all platforms unless specified)

NEW FEATURES

• Mounted Combat - Skyrim now allows you to do melee and ranged combat while riding a horse
  

BUG FIXES

• General stability and memory optimizations
  
• General AI pathfinding optimizations and bug fixes
  
• Optimizations and crash fixes for data leaks
  
• Fixed rare crash with lighting
  
• Fixed crashes related to loading and saving games
  
• Fixed crash with summoned creatures/NPCs
  
• Fixed rare issue where saves would be corrupted
  
• Improved logic for when ranged kill cams are played
  
• Fixed issue with ranged kill cams while killing a dragon
  
• Fixed rare issue with certain ranged kill cams not playing properly
  
• Fixed issue with nirnroot lighting not properly cleaning up
  
• Fixed issue where bow damage was being calculated incorrectly
  
• Fixed rare problem with werewolf kill moves would not finish animating properly
  
• In “The Break of Dawn” fixed rare issue where Meridia’s Beacon would disappear from player’s inventory
  
• Fixed occasional issue where followers would disappear after player pays off a county after committing a crime
  
• Fixed issue where certain creatures and NPCs would fail to respawn properly
  
• Fixed rare issue with dialogue subtitles not displaying properly
  
• Fixed issue with water appearing blurry when loading a saved game after creating a save underwater
  
• Fixed issue where map cursor would occasionally disappear after closing a message box with Kinect enabled (Xbox 360)
  
• Fixed rare issue with shouts only performing the first level and not other unlocked levels with Kinect enabled (Xbox 360)
  
• Fixed issue where the shout buttons would stop working properly if users mashed LB and RB during cooldown with Kinect enabled (Xbox 360)
  

http://www.gameinfor...ted-combat.aspx

FROM GAMESPOT

Czech developer Vatra Games' parent company Kuju Entertainment conducting "strategic review" of studio; no decisions have been made.

Vatra Games' days may be numbered. Eurogamer Czech today reports that the Silent Hill: Downpour developer is now under "strategic review" by parent company Kuju Entertainment.

"The new management team at Kuju have been conducting a strategic review of all aspects of the business," a Kuju representative told Eurogamer. "As part of this process, the ongoing business activities of the Vatra studio are currently under review. However, at this stage, no decisions have yet been made."

Vatra Games' most recent title was Silent Hill: Downpour, which shipped in March to a generally favorable reception. Prior to that, the studio released Xbox Live Arcade and PlayStation Network action side-scroller Rush'n Attack: Ex-Patriot.

Eurogamer reports that Vatra was working on a God of War-style project, though the outlet claims this game has been canceled.

Vatra Games, located in Brno, Czech Republic, was established in 2009 and currently boasts a staff of around 50. Up until last summer, it was led by former Take-Two Interactive and Microsoft Game Studios developer Matthew Seymour.

INFORMATION FROM G4TV

Ubisoft is apparently planning to support Assassin's Creed 3 with enough DLC to warrant a Season Pass, based on a letter that the publisher reportedly sent to GameStop locations. A photo of the note, snapped by a store employee, is posted at Kotaku and it appears to be legit given its resemblance to other materials that Ubisoft has sent out in support of the game.

The letter confirms that Ubi created a "complementary development team" that has been tasked with building "post-launch episodic content," DLC that fans will be able to buy either a la carte or in one go, via a Season Pass. That Season Pass will apparently be available for pre-order soon, provided of course that this letter actually is the real deal. I find the mention of "episodic content" noteworthy though; it certainly suggests that the DLC plans involve more than just multiplayer maps.

We'll all find out soon enough. Assassin's Creed 3 comes to PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and PC platforms on October 30, 2012.

Check out the video below to catch some behind the scene footage as well as find out what it takes to create an epic story.

(When the video becomes available on youtube i will post it here)

Click here for the Source and the Video. http://www.g4tv.com/...e-small-screen/

If you're both an Xbox 360 owner and a fan of free things, then you're going to love this upcoming promotion that Microsoft is running to celebrate five years of Summer of Arcade releases on Xbox Live Marketplace. Starting on July 18, 2012, players will be able to nab free DLC for Trials Evolution andMinecraft: Xbox 360 Edition, Major Nelson confirms.

On the Minecraft side, the DLC amounts to a Summer of Arcade skin pack, with character skins inspired by 2012's five Summer of Arcade releases. The Trials Evolution DLC, on the other hand, amounts to a new track for the game that is inspired by -- you guessed it! -- 2012's five Summer of Arcade titles. Fun times. The first game to be released for this year's promotion is Tony Hawk's Pro Skater HD, which arrives next Tuesday, the same day as this free DLC. You can check out the full line-up right here.

http://www.g4tv.com/...e-xbox-360-dlc/

Danger Close is going to be including a multiplayer mode in Medal of Honor: Warfighter that it hopes will make the game more appealing to the eSports crowd. The mode, known only as "Sports" right now, is also the subject of a contest in which player are encouraged to submit their suggestions for the mode's name in the finished game.

Creative director Kristoffer Bergqvist lays out the basic details of how "Sports" works on the contest'sFacebook page. It's a flag capture mode in which one team must fight its way through narrow choke-points to retrieve one of the defending team's two flags, and then escape with it. That's the gist of it anyway. You can read the description from Bergqvist yourself after the jump.

The mode dubbed “Sport” was one of the first game modes we started to prototype. The idea was to create an arena for the players who were searching for the most competitive type of gameplay—an arena that fit traditional clan structures well. We knew that we wanted a game mode that was as rewarding to play as it was exciting to watch. Quick rounds with no respawn abilities were established early, and getting the national flags to be a central part of gameplay was a given once we saw the overwhelming response to the Global Tier 1 concept.

The end result is an explosive game mode with the attacking team trying to force its way through narrow choke-points in hope of grabbing one of the two flags set on the defenders’ side, then bringing it back to the starting area. The majority of the combat happens at the beginning of the round while the attackers are fighting to cross the defensive lines. If the defenders fail and let the attack through, they’ll need to switch tactics when closing in on the attackers’ escape routes. Fail a second time and they’ll lose that round.

The attackers, on the other hand, need to focus on either slamming through one choke-point or splitting up the defending team using diversion tactics. Stick close to your Fire Team buddy and coordinate the attack to break through the defensive perimeters! Our vision is to create a tense, violent, and addictive game mode—one that makes its way onto the E-Sports scene and takes the Medal of Honor franchise to the next level of competitive warfare.

http://www.g4tv.com/...-friendly-mode/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=dbNjU611ldA

http://www.littleeng...d-director.html

If you’re not paying attention, you’ve probably missed Dead Space’s rich lore. In the space of two games, Visceral Games has left fans with a lot of questions. Who created the Markers? What was their original purpose? Why do they create Necromorphs? We talked with creative director Ben Wanhe about how the studio plans to answer many of these questions in Dead Space 3.

After you guys finished Dead Space 2, what did you start looking at when you first started working on the sequel?

Ben Wanhe: We kind of wrote a backstory for the whole franchise, in a way. Its not a completely detailed story for everything to begin with, but as we started fleshing it out, we started figuring out what the entire arc of this whole thing would be. And what we really thought was important for the third game was to start answering some questions. So, we did get some feedback on the second game where people were like, “you know that was a great game, but what is the marker and why does it do what it does? What is its ultimate purpose?” We thought that for the third one it would be really important to really give people some concrete answers and really start to get into a lot of that lore that we’ve usually been kind of hazy with in the past. I think its just really important that we deliver a solid understanding of what it was they’ve been through in the last two games and give them a foundation of where it could go in the future.

Is there any history to that planet that you can share? What’s the story there?

I can’t tell you what the history is because that is a large part of the plot of the game, but the planet is very important to the Dead Space universe. Everyone is drawn there very specifically because they were looking for a way to stop the markers, this epidemic that has gotten out. What they end up finding there is going to be extremely important and very revelatory for this series. This is where they get all of their answers, so as you can imagine it’s a very important place in the entire mythology. They’re going to find some stuff on the planet that is going to lead to some really interesting reveals. Just know that it’s sort of a mystery that you’re unraveling and you’re kind of venturing into the unknown and finding out, revealing what’s happened. And what’s happened in the past and how this whole thing ties together and why everything points to this place.

Can you talk a little bit more about Carver and what his deal is? Where he comes from?

Carver is an EarthGov soldier. He’s actually a pretty interesting character. On the surface he’s just a soldier guy, he’s more of a grunt, he’s a sergeant in EarthGov Special Ops. But underneath all that he’s a family man who is just not good at it at all. He’s a horrible father; he’s a horrible husband. A lot of that has to do with his experiences in the war. He’s kind of torn up inside, but he’s not the kind of guy that’s going to wear his emotions on his sleeve. He keeps it all inside, much like Isaac finds it very difficult to express himself, Carver has his own past buried inside. As you play through the game you’re going to start dredging up some of what it is that makes Carver who he is and kind of what his place is and what his role is in the story.

I know there is some fighting with Unitologists. How do they get involved in the story? What’s their motivation here?

The Unitoligists are a branch of Unitology called The Circle and they are a violent and fanatical group of Unitologists. The typical followers are natural, church goer-type people or whatever. This group, The Circle, has a very specific agenda and they have a man in charge that is leading them on this crusade. They have a very specific purpose in the story, which will be revealed later. But yeah, there is quite a bit of interesting background on these guys, why they formed and what their purpose is and what they want to achieve ultimately, but that all plays a very important part of the story.

When we were at E3 we got a chance to see some of the feeders, I believe? Those little scavenger-type creatures. What’s their deal? How were they created?

Those guys are basically people who have eaten infected flesh. The story there is that the people there were starving to death and they didn’t have any food and they managed to kill one of these creatures. They just couldn’t resist themselves and they started eating it and they started getting sick and a lot of stuff started happening to them.

Eventually, they became, in a different way than you normally become a Necromorph, they became a sort of Necromorph that we call the Feeder. Because they have been trapped in the dark so long, they have trouble seeing, bright lights hurt their eyes. They get around mostly by sound so that’s why you can throw things in the environment and trick them into looking for it and try and sneak around the other way. If you do manage to enrage them, they just won’t stop. It pisses them off and they start screaming and they all start streaming out of the vents, all of their friends show up for the fight. So it becomes an interesting strategic element for the player: you can decide if you want to take them on head-on if you brought enough ammunition, but if you’re smart you’re going to start using the environment and learning how to get the best angle on the fight. Either to lay and wait for them, put some traps down, or whether or not you’re going to try and sneak by and ignore the fight altogether so that you don’t get destroyed by them.

Can you explain at all what has happened to the markers since two? The ones we know about?

Well, what we know from the end of two is that there have been quite a few of the out there that the government has been building. We don’t know how many are out there, but this overseer in the radio broadcast at the end of the last game, he explicitly talks about the other marker sites. That becomes an important element in the story of Dead Space 3. It is an extension of that that ultimately causes the situation that we end up in in three.

But there is also a past to the markers which I thought was really important to tie into. If you remember the marker from Dead Space one that they found on Aegis VII was a man-made marker and it had been buried. The government had been searching for it and they sent Kendra over to go get it. Well she ended up dying and the marker got lost and then in the animated movie, Aftermath, Nolan Stross and his team went there and they found a shard. They didn’t bring back the shard, but they managed to bring back the blueprints on how to build markers encoded in Stross’ head.

They also found the same blueprint in Isaac’s head. Isaac was used along with Stross to build a marker on the Sprawl, and now the government suddenly has the technology to build markers on their own. So by the end of that story you find out that they have built markers extensively, or at least they have plans to build them extensively at sites all over the galaxy.

The marker that was discovered on Aegis VII was also man-made, so was that a different government that made that one? Why did they have to get the blueprints from Stross?

I can’t answer that exactly, but you can look through the logs and you can read through and make your own conclusions, but somebody built that thing and it got buried and it got put on a planet that was blacklisted, nobody is allowed to go there, nobody is allowed to mine there. So you’ll have to draw some conclusions as to why it was there, who put it there, and why did they make the planet off-limits. All of that history comes full-circle and becomes important in Dead Space 3.

Click here for source and a video. http://www.gameinfor...-interview.aspx

Gears of War: Judgment will arrive during March 2013, Epic Games director of production Rod Fergusson told game-centric television show X-Play (via the program's Twitter account). Previously, the game was expected sometime in early 2013.

Gears of War: Judgment goes to war in March.

March 2013 is gearing up to be loaded with big-name games. Projects already confirmed for launch during that window include the Tomb Raider reboot, South Park: The Stick of Truth, and God of War: Ascension.

Gears of War: Judgment is the first entry in the series since last year's trilogy-capping Gears of War 3. Developed by Epic Games in conjunction with Bulletstorm studio People Can Fly, the project focuses on series soldier Damon Baird and will not use Kinect. For more on Gears of War: Judgment, check out GameSpot's previous coverage.

Article @ Gamespot.com

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xIwYdnA1qYI

Mass Effect: Paragon Lost, the animated prequel story for Mass Effect 3, will be available in November.

Paragon Lost follows the exploits of James Vega and his tussle with the collectors. Henry Gilroy, best known for his work on Star Was: The Clone Wars animate film and subsequent TV series, wrote the script, with animation being handled by the studio that produced Ghost in The Shell.

The movie will be available on DVD and Blu-ray on November 13. Check out the trailer below.

Article from ----> http://www.gameinfor...-a-trailer.aspx

INFORMATION FROM GAMESPOT

Blizzard announces Mists of Pandaria for September launch; details Collector's Edition and Digital Deluxe Edition.

World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria, the latest expansion to Blizzard Entertainment's massively multiplayer online role-playing game, will launch on September 25. The fourth add-on will be available in stores and online two months from today for $39.99 (£29.99 in the UK), with a Collector's Edition on sale for $79.99 (£59.99 in the UK).

The World of Warcraft expansion introduces a new playable race and continent to the seven-year-old MMO game: the Pandaren, a race of panda-like martial artists, and Pandaria, their homeland. It also bumps the level cap to 90 and adds a new monk class.

Pandaria lands in September.

The Collector's Edition includes a behind-the-scenes DVD and Blu-ray, a soundtrack CD, an art book, and a mouse pad, as well as a special in-game pet and mount. In a bit of Blizzard game cross-promotion, the edition also features Starcraft II Battle.net portraits (infested orc and night elf templar) and a Diablo III banner sigil and accent with Pandaren markings.

Players can prepurchase the digital download version of the game now on the official site. Blizzard is also offering a Digital Deluxe Edition ($59.99, £39.99) in which players receive the same digital bonus items that come in the Collector's Edition alongside their download of the expansion. If players pick up the standard version of the game and change their minds later, they will be able to purchase the extra in-game enticements of the Digital Deluxe Edition for $20.

In addition to the English version, Mists of Pandaria will be localised into Latin American Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese, French, German, European Spanish, Russian, Korean, traditional Chinese, and Italian. Blizzard says the availability of Mists of Pandaria in mainland China will be announced later.

Mists of Pandaria opened its doors to player-testers in March with its ongoing beta testing phase, called "our most extensive beta test yet" by Blizzard chief executive Mike Morhaime.

Creator Markus Persson reveals Xbox 360 version of open-world creation game goes triple platinum since launch in May, generating $60 million.

If its record-breaking launch wasn't proof enough, Minecraft for the Xbox 360 is now a bonafide commercial success. Creator Markus Persson announced on Twitter today that the game has now sold 3 million copies on Xbox Live, generating $60 million since launch in early May.

Minecraft for the Xbox 360 has dug out commercial success.

"I got told Minecraft for XBLA passed three million sales today!" he wrote.

Upon launch on May 9, Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition became profitable in just one hour, selling over 400,000 copies during its first 24 hours on sale, and breaking all previous Xbox Live arcade digital sales records. The game reached 1 million in sales in just five days, and recorded more unique users on Xbox Live than Call of Duty: Black Ops for the week of May 14.

Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition was developed by 4J Studios, the Scotland-based shop that built Xbox Live Arcade titles Perfect Dark, Banjo-Kazooie, and Banjo-Tooie. It retails for $20.

By the time 2022 rolls around, graphics will have advanced to a point at which they are "indistinguishable from reality," claims Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) visual effects supervisor Kim Libreri. ILM is working with LucasArts on upcoming third-person shooter Star Wars 1313, and in a new video interview with CVG (embedded below) Libreri said it will one day be nigh impossible to spot the differences between real-time rendering and live action.

“It’s an interesting time because with modern computer graphics hardware, the way it's going, it’s gonna be pretty hard to tell the difference between something that is interactive and rendered in real time, and something that was done for an animated TV show, or even a live-action thing,” Libreri said.

Libreri further explained that at present, real-time rendered graphics are able to match the quality of animated movies from seven or eight years ago. And in another decade, they will be "indistinguishable from reality."

Libreri has been involved with computer graphics for a long time. Prior to attaining his current position at LucasArts, he served as vice president at visual effects and animation studio Digital Domain. Libreri is also credited as a visual effects supervisor for movies like Super 8 and The Matrix.

If graphics do become on par with reality in the next decade, 2K boss Christoph Hartmann will have gotten his wish. Last week, the executive called for photorealism in games, saying such advanced capabilities are needed to help designers tackle emotions like love and sadness.

Star Wars 1313 is a collaborative project across the Lucasfilm organization, which includes LucasArts, ILM, Lucasfilm Animation Ltd., and Skywalker Sound. In the game, players travel deep beneath the surface of city-world Coruscant to uncover the truth surrounding a criminal conspiracy.

No release date or platforms for Star Wars 1313 have been announced.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ttR1VcDD4w&feature=player_embedded

Information found at gamespot.com

http://www.gamespot....ars-dev-6390719

After significant speculation spread over the span of years, Microsoft has finally spoken on-record about its next Xbox. During an interview with The Verge focused on Microsoft's new Outlook email service (embedded below), general manager Brian Hall name-dropped a "new Xbox."

“We’ve had Hotmail and operated Hotmail for about 16 years, we obviously have Exchange, and Outlook, that people use at work. We just decided it was time to do something new and bring the best from each of those and put them together and release it right in time for the new wave of products that we could have coming out with Windows 8, with the new version of Office with the new Windows phone and the new Xbox,” Hall said.

Hall did not share further details on the next Xbox. Windows 8 will launch on October 26 alongside Microsoft's new Surface tablet line.

[uPDATE] Following the publication of this story, Microsoft issued a statement to GameSpot on the matter.

“Xbox 360 has found new ways to extend the console lifecycle by introducing controller-free experiences with Kinect and re-inventing the console with a new dashboard and new entertainment content partnerships," reads a line from the statement. "We are always thinking about what is next for our platform and how to continue to defy the lifecycle convention.”

The analyst consensus is that the next Xbox, as well as the PlayStation 4, will be on store shelves for holiday 2013. A recent 56-page document supposedly originating from Microsoft said the next Xbox would launch in 2013 at $299 bundled with the second iteration of Kinect, among other updates. As for the PS4, PlayStation executive Andrew House said in June that Sony's new console would not be shown until a "significant leap" over the PlayStation 3 could be demonstrated.

Information found at gamespot.com

http://www.gamespot....ew-xbox-6390614

Gameinformer released news about this game device today, this is what they reported.

SNK Playmore revealed a worldwide December 6 release date for the Neo Geo X. It costs $199.99 and comes with 20 games pre-installed.

The handheld features a 4.3" LDC screen, expandable game card slot, internal stereo speakers, 3.5mm headphone jack. It also includes the Neo Geo X Joystick and Station, allowing you to charge the device and output the video and audio to a television or monitor.

The full list of Neo Geo X handheld pre-installed games is as follows:

3 COUNT BOUT

LEAGUE BOWLING

ART OF FIGHTING II

MAGICIAN LORD

ALPHA MISSION II

METAL SLUG

BASEBALL STARS II

MUTATION NATION

CYBER LIP

NAM 1975

FATAL FURY

PUZZLED

FATAL FURY SPECIAL

REAL BOUT - FATAL FURY SPECIAL

THE KING OF FIGHTERS '95

SAMURAI SHODOWN II

KING OF THE MONSTERS

SUPER SIDEKICKS

LAST RESORT

WORLD HEROES PERFECT