The first footage of THQ's action-heavy take on the Warhammer 40,000 property has begun floating around the internet, showing off over nine minutes of the combat game and what the development team refers to as "intimate brutality."

While publisher THQ has yet to officially announce Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine, the Gears of War-esque game is expected to hit PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.

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As Electronic Arts prepares to unleash Maxis' long-awaited life simulator Spore, creator Will Wright has revealed his rather lofty expectations for the game's long-term effects.

"Spore will change the way people look at games forever and change hopefully the perception people have of their own creativity," he told the BBC.

Launching this Sunday in North America and already available elsewhere in the world, Spore (PC, Mac) tasks players with creating their own life form and then helping it evolve from a single-celled organism to a space-dominating race.

The complete game follows the release of the free Spore Creature Creator toolset, which resulted in all sorts of various monstrosities. The full version of... Read more

Continuing its wave of Guitar Hero World Tour announcements, publisher Activision today revealed that beloved bands Tool and The Police will be featured in the game.

Along with the below on-disc tracks, the multi-instrument music title will sport a specially-created Tool venue, made with the help of the band and said to highlight the "art style that has become a staple in their music videos, live shows and album artwork."

• Tool - "Schism"
• Tool - "Parabola"
• Tool - "Vicarious"
• The Police - "Demolition Man"

In addition, The Police vocalist Sting will be a playable character in the game.

Bringing drums and vocals to the once guitar-only franchise, Guitar Hero World Tour arrives on PS2, PS3, Xbox 360 and Wii this fall. Vicarious Visions is handling the Wii release and Budcat is on the PS2 edition, with Neversoft doing the PS3 and 360 entries.

Unleashing a circus of values, Microsoft today slashed the prices on a number of the downloable games add-ons available through the Xbox 360's online Marketplace.

Offering savings of up to 60% on select pieces of downloadable content, the Extended Play Download Days sale will run until the end of October, according to a blog post by Xbox Live director Larry 'Major Nelson' Hryb.

Regularly priced at 400 Microsoft Points ($5), BioWare's Mass Effect add-on Bring Down the Sky now sells for 300 Microsoft Points ($3.75). Some of the track packs for Neversoft's Guitar Hero III are on sale as well, temporarily priced at 360 Microsoft Points ($4.50) instead of 500 Microsoft Points ($6.25).

For a complete list of the sale items and prices, scope out the complete list. To figure out real-world cost, divide the price by 80, as 80 Microsoft Points are equivalent to $1.

Funcom's mature PC MMO Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures today marks the latest game to arrive in Valve's PC digital distribution storefront Steam.

While carrying the same $49.99 price as the retail edition that arrived in May, the Steam release of Conan will sell for 10% off, or $44.99, during its first week of availability.

Ubisoft Montreal's open-world shooter sequel Far Cry 2 (PC, PS3, 360) will hit European retailers on Friday, October 24, the company announced today. The publisher has yet to specify an exact North American release date, though it has previously stated that the sequel to Crytek's Far Cry will arrive in North America this fall.

Friday already? Fantastic. Word from analysts predicts that online game sales will hit $8 billion in 2013, the expectation isn't new but it's significant to see such a number put to it. Speaking of putting numbers to things, it looks like it'll be $5 to import all but 3 of Rock Band's tracks into the forthcoming sequel. And I want to point out we've got a trailer posted for Skate 2, which I know a good number of Shackers have been anticipating. And can we give Bergman a round of applause?

Five years is virtually an eternity in gaming years, but that hasn't stopped analyst Michael Cai at Parks Associates from looking that far into the future and predicting that online-enabled consoles like the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and Wii will generate $8 billion in revenue in 2013, as relayed by Gamasutra.

Cai sees growth in digital distribution services for games and videos as well as "avatar-based microtransactions" for services like Xbox Live avatars, PlayStation Home, and subscription fees for Xbox Live and console MMO games.

Underpinning all that growth will be an ever-increasing user base with broadband internet connections. The report notes that Microsoft currently leads the online market with the successful Xbox Live Marketplace, but Sony and Nintendo may catch up in the near future with their respective marketplaces PlayStation Store and Wii Shop Channel.

Online sales on consoles are currently in the hundreds of millions but rapidly expanding. Microsoft, for example, made $180 million in the last year. Counting digital sales on PCs, Electronic Arts earned $90 million in just three months. Meanwhile, across the entire PC market, digital distribution was worth nearly $2 billion last year.

It's crazy, TV shows are starting to show up again and the NBA season is on the horizon. I may actually watch TV again soon! Too bad the NBA Live 09 demo was quite ho-hum.

• Your name attracts spam
• eBay loves the planet
• File sharing lawsuits at crossroads

As for the the videogame news around these parts:

• New Max Payne movie trailer
• Resident Evil CG movie this year?
• Ninja Blade screenshots
• StarCraft 2 screenshots
• Call of Duty: World at War launches November 11th
• Dead Space release date pushed up
• BioWare Sonic RPG videos
• Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown by January 31st
• Grand Theft Auto: Wii
• Diablo 3 screenshots
• Piracy is overblown
• Midnight Club: LA delayed and trailer
• Skate 2 trailer
• Red Faction: Guerrilla trailer

Lastly, please excuse a bit more of a mess late tonight as I'm going to be attempting to clean up a few loose ends around here.

THQ sends along this new Red Faction: Guerilla (PC, PS3, X360) trailer, showing how the ability to destroy buildings and other environmental objects can be used to take out enemies.

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In development at Volition, Red Faction: Guerilla will be released early 2009.

Another trailer for EA Black Box's skateboarding sequel Skate 2 (PS3, 360) has arrived, which puts amateur skateboarding and set construction action to the tune of Public Enemy's "Harder Than You Think."

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Rockstar San Diego's oft-postponed racer Midnight Club: Los Angeles (PS3, 360) has suffered yet another delay, publisher Take-Two Interactive announced today.

Once slated to arrive on October 7, the game's release has now been pushed until October 21. In a conference call today, Take-Two CFO Lainie Goldstein explained that the delay was due to marketing reasons.

In related news, a new trailer for the latest Midnight Club game was released today as well, meant to highlight the many customization options available to virtual gearheads.

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Piracy is said to be public enemy number one in the games industry, if certain game studios are to be believed. It's been declared responsible for bad reviews, poor sales of PC ports of popular console games, and even shifts in business models. However, one strong voice of dissent has emerged.

"Rampant piracy is no longer the catch-all excuse it's often employed as," rebuts Penumbra (PC) game writer Tom Jubert in a blog for Edge.

Cevat Yerli, CEO of Crysis developer Crytek (PC), recently intensified the spotlight on the issue by claiming there were 20 pirated copies of Crysis for every one legitimate player.

The actual ratio, Jubert argues, is no worse than 1:5 in the Western world. To back up this claim, Jubert cites figures from GameShadow Metrics--a online service that automatically patches games and can detect altered .exe files--which show 1 pirated copy of Crysis for every 5 legitimate copies in the US and a 3:7 ratio in the UK.

"Of course, that's not to say that Yerli is wrong," concedes Jubert, "[it's] only that 1:15 is a potentially misleading statistic." He adds that it's difficult to measure the actual number of high-end gaming PCs in use, so claims like "consoles sell factors of 4-5 more" are equally unfounded.

As promised last week, Sony has delivered another weekly update to the PlayStation Store with new games, demos, videos, and more.

The PlayStation Blog has the details, which we've reproduced here.

Qore Digital Magazine

Qore Episode 04: September, 2008 ($2.99 Issue, $24.99 Annual Subscription)
Episode 04 of Qore: Presented by the PLAYSTATION Network explores a number of upcoming games, including LittleBigPlanet, MotorStorm: Pacific Rift and Prince of Persia, it also includes 30-day exclusive access to the MotorStorm:... Read more

Blizzard has let loose four new screenshots from its hellish hack-and-slasher Diablo III. Included are a number of characters leaping through the air and hitting things.

The new PC RPG, boasting new-and-improved Battle.net functionality, is "heavily in development" and will see release when it's done.

While Rockstar's renowned Grand Theft Auto series will appear on the Nintendo DS this winter, publisher Take-Two Interactive is continuing to remain quiet on the possibility of a Grand Theft Auto entry on Wii.

When asked today about a possible Grand Theft Auto game for Wii, Take-Two CEO Ben Feder refused to specifically comment on the potential project, thought he stressed that Take-Two plans to keep growing its "relationship" with Nintendo.

"We've spent an enormous amount of time and effort working with Nintendo. We're very proud of the partnership," he noted. "GTA: Chinatown Wars is an important step [in that partnership]...and we intend to continue to grow that relationship."

Feder's response marks a curious shift in tone from an earlier comment last December, in which the company apparently denied a GTA entry on the Wii.

"No disrespect," a Take-Two representative said at the time, "[but] I think there are other titles better suited for the [Wii] than Grand Theft Auto 4."

Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars, the Nintendo DS entry in Rockstar's infamous action series, will arrive in retailers between November 1, 2008 and January 31, 2009, publisher Take-Two Interactive revealed today.

Take-Two CEO Ben Feder briefly mentioned the release window, which represents the first quarter of the company's 2009 fiscal year, during a conference call today. At the time of the title's announcement, Take-Two noted that the game would arrive this winter, but did not provide any further details.

Rockstar Leeds, the company behind previous handheld GTA games Liberty City Stories and Vice City Stories, will handle the effort. The company also plans to use the Nintendo DS console's unique features, such as its touch screen, to aid players in their hijacking hijinks.

With BioWare's DS role-playing take on Sonic the Hedgehog slated to hit September 30, the developer has provided new trailers focusing the game's many features.

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EA Redwood Shores' sci-fi survival horror effort Dead Space will arrive in North America even earlier than was once expected, with the game now slated to hit PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 on October 14, followed by a PC release on October 20.

Created in part by Iron Man and X-Men writer Warren Ellis, Dead Space was originally scheduled to hit in late October. However, the game was finished early, prompting EA to reschedule the console versions for an October 24 release in Europe.

It had been speculated that the game would arrive earlier in North America as well, though EA had offered no official word on the subject until today.

2K Games producer and Shack family member Jason Bergman dropped by our forums to announce that the classic 90s tactical series X-COM is now available for purchase on Valve's Steam digital distribution service.

Four games from the series, listed below, have been added to the service:

• X-COM: UFO Defense (1993)
• X-COM: Apocalypse (1997)
• X-COM: Interceptor (1998)
• X-COM: Enforcer (2001)

Each game is for sale for $4.99, or the whole set of four can be bought for $15. Following Steam tradition, there is a ten percent discount in the first week of sales. The games are compatible with Windows Vista, according to Bergman.

While the X-COM series has laid dormant for 7 years, there have been persistent rumors of a new entry from BioShock creator Ken Levine and the 2K Boston crew.