Late Night Consoling

Activision announced today it has acquired Vicarious Visions, a developer that the company has been working with very closely. However, the decision wasn't based solely on a strong relationship status; in truth, Activision revealed it was most interested in Vicarious Visions' middleware program, Alchemy. It will make hefty use of it for its slew of next-gen titles. GameSpot pointed out that oddly enough, because of the acquisition, Activision is now developing a title for Electronic Arts: Batman Begins.

In a recent press release touting its success with Xbox Live, Microsoft revealed that it has sold 6.4 million copies of Halo 2 since its release in November. Combine that with the sales of the original Halo, the series has sold 12.8 million units. As for Xbox Live, it currently has 1.4 million members around the world and Xbox Live Arcade will be releasing in Europe this spring.

The PC hit Delta Force - Black Hawk Down will find a new home on the PlayStation 2. Novalogic announced their plans today to bring the title over to the console, giving it a redesigned single player mode and adding new multiplayer features, such as online games up to 32 players. They hope to ship it sometime during the Q2 of 2005.

As if the game wasn't fun enough, LucasArts revealed some interesting unlockables for its smash-hit title Mercenaries. By collecting 20 national treasures throughout the game, you will then be able to play as either Han Solo or Indiana Jones, depending on which console you are playing the game on (Han on Xbox, Indy on PS2). However, both characters are unlockable for both games, it's just that LucasArts won't tell us how to do it... yet.

Ubisoft has released its second Assault Pack for Rainbow Six 3: Black Arrow. For $4.99, gamers can download four new maps. The four locales are a pumping station, winterbase, harbor, and prison. Prison is actually a smaller version of the map with the same name from the original Rainbow Six 3. The pack is available for download right now.

Sony president Ken Kutaragi told a group of foreign correspondents that the company is planning to seriously rev-up PSP production. Currently, Sony is producing anywhere between 800,000 and 900,000 units a month but want to bump that figure up to two million a month for the summer, even jacking it up to five million for the holidays. He also hinted at a few potential future updates to the handheld; things such as a web browser, cell phone functionality, and the ability to download movies.

A new RPG is on the horizon for the GBA as Namco revealed that it plans to release Sigma Star Saga for the handheld in June of this year. It's described as an action-RPG, where you play a human acting as a spy, trying to prevent the eventual domination of an alien race called the Krill. A couple key features are the ability to collect "Gun Data" to create a multitude of weapons and it will feature multiple endings.

Capcom updated their website for Killer 7 recently and changed the release date for one of its highly anticipated titles. Originally set for release on February 15, it now appears it has been pushed back four months, all the way to June 7.

A French publication recently had a chat with Camelot Software Planning president Hiroyuki Takahashi and tried to find out what the company had in store for the future. He stated that the company is hard at work on Mario Tennis for the GBA and it does not have anything in development for the DS, but did add that Camelot is"not devoid of ideas for utilizing the touch screen on the DS." It was rumored that the company had a GameCube version of Golden Sun in development, but at this point anything is possible. Their role at E3 may be to show strong support for the Nintendo Revolution, as the Big-N will use the show to unveil its next console.

In an effort to increase support of its proprietary format, Sony Computer Entertainment (SCE) is sharing the technology behind its UMD disks. The goal is for hardware companies to make UMD-compatible players. They will not, however, share information on using the format for making games.

GameSpot talks with a couple Majesco Games execs about the PSP.