Speaking to Gamasutra, Julian Eggebrecht of Lair (PS3) developer Factor 5 indicated that the independent studio is doing concept work on a new entry in the classic Turrican series of sidescrolling action games. "We've been concepting quite a bit internally," said Eggebrecht. "That's another universe creation thing. I was looking at Metroid Prime's reinventing of a franchise that had been out there for quite awhile, and we're facing the same thing with Turrican."

Factor 5 was responsible for the Amiga ports of Manfred Trenz's original Commodore 64 games Turrican and Turrican 2. The company then fully developed a Genesis game in the series, Mega Turrican (Turrican 3 on Amiga), and two Super Nintendo games, Super Turrican and Super Turrican 2.

During its Nintendo 64 era, Factor 5 was developing a spiritual successor to the Turrican series, entitled Thornado. Development of the reportedly ambitious game was eventually moved to GameCube but was officially cancelled.

"There's aspects of the old games where people will feel betrayed if we don't transform them into the next generation," said Eggebrecht in this week's interview. "On the other hand, there's other stuff which is simply cheesy, let's face it. I don't think gamers will accept those things anymore. It's a fine line to balance."

Eggebrecht did not give any indication of a target platform for the potential new Turrican game, though on many occasions--including this Gamasutra interview--he has spoken very positively on the PlayStation 3's SPU-based architecture.

Following constant rumors and essentially official statements regarding a PSP version of SCE Santa Monica's God of War franchise, SCEA has launched an official site for the game, whose title has been confirmed as God of War: Chains of Olympus. Currently, the site contains only an offer to obtain a free "special edition demo" of the game delivered by mail on UMD for PSP. There is no indication as to when the demos will be sent out or how many are available.

Though the official site hosts no screenshots or videos, a short trailer has surfaced on the internets, consisting of cutscene and gameplay footage. It reconfirms that the developer on the project is Ready at Dawn Studios, which created last year's Jak & Daxter followup Daxter for PSP.

Prior to the release of Realtime Worlds' superpower-tinged action game Crackdown, the studio promised downloadable content for the game but declined to elaborate as to the nature of that content. Today, a community manager at the official Crackdown forums gave the first visual hint as to the contents of the...content, which apparently includes "a new game type and a new type of vehicle." Depicted in the screenshot are four gun-equipped dune buggy-like vehicles, one of which is awkwardly situated on top of another.

According to the forum post, the content will be delivered "soon." There was no word on whether it would fill in Crackdown's 100 missing Achievement points.

A very well-hidden timer on the Sony Computer Entertainment America-owned God of War site IslandofRhodes.org is counting down to something, that is, if you can find it. After clicking the hidden Greek symbols to spell out main character Kratos' name on a certain section of the website, visitors find themselves watching a video, then faced with a sliding block puzzle. Once the puzzle is solved, the next page reveals how to run SCE Santa Monica's God of War II (PS2) in a special high resolution mode--detailed below--and also links to a timer that currently has eleven days left on it. Above the timer, the leftmost section of the God of War logo and the beginnings of a subtitle are visible, igniting speculation that this will lead to the long-awaited unveiling of either Ready at Dawn's God of War PSP or the PlayStation 3 entry God of War II director Cory Barlog hypothetically spoke of at the God of War II launch event.

As for running God of War II at a higher resolution, players can activate this mode by holding down L1, L2, L3 (clicking down the left analog stick), Square and Circle as the game boots, before the white "SCEA Presents" text appears. The "SCEA Presents" text will then have a purple hue if performed correctly. Players wanting the game to output in 480p will still need to activate that setting in the game's option menu.

"Now this in NOT 720P," SCE Santa Monica's director of technology Tim Moss wrote. "Its actually 480P with FULL SIZE buffers, in other words 640*448 resolution. It was tough to get working...it almost didn't make it in and that is why we hid it rather than make it standard. The extra resolution makes the game run a little bit slower, but it's also prettier...it's not going to be for everyone, but it sure does look nice and it made the God of War Art team very happy."

Nintendo and Opera Software have released a new version of the Wii's web browser, referred to as the Internet Channel. Relative to the trial version that was released earlier this year, the latest version features several improvments, including faster start-up time, clearer text, a search button, and the ability to hide the tool bar. Available from the Wii Ware section of the Wii Shop Channel, the revised Internet Channel requires installation of the latest Wii system update, which arrived alongside the browser.

The Internet Channel is a free download for Wii users through the end of June 2007, after which it will sell for 500 Wii Points ($5). Those who download the browser before July will not need to purchase it at that time.

Electronic Arts revealed two new features of EA Tiburon's upcoming Tiger Woods PGA Tour 08, which is slated to hit PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, Wii, Nintendo DS, PSP and PC. The first, tentatively titled GamerNet, allows users to record replays of their shots and putts, which can then be posted online to foster competition. The other, currently referred to as Photo Game Face, lets players upload photos for use in character customization. Details on what versions of the game will offer this functionality were unavailable.

Going by the release of past Tiger Woods games, Tiger Woods PGA Tour 08 should be expected in late September or early October of this year.

Exemplifying some of the most clever in-game advertising in recent memory, Atari is providing the "Free Lexus Collection Volume 2" for Eden Games' Test Drive Unlimited through the Xbox Live Marketplace. The pack adds two new cars to the game, the Lexus GS 450h hybrid and LS 460 sedan. Another pack, containing the SC 430 hard-top convertible and 2008 LS 600h hybrid sedan, is forthcoming.

A free demo of Artifical Studios' top-down action game Monster Madness: Battle for Suburbia is now available for Xbox Live Gold subscribers on the Xbox Live Marketplace. Powered by Epic Games' Unreal Engine 3 and published by SouthPeak Interactive, Monster Madness is set to release May 15, 2007 for Xbox 360 and PC. Screenshots can be found here.

Long-rumored Wii and Nintendo DS editions of Gearbox's well received Brothers in Arms series of World War II shooters were officially announced by publisher Ubisoft today. First up is the simply named Brothers in Arms DS, which eschews the traditional FPS gameplay of the series in favor of a third person perspective. Aiming is handled with the stylus and, like an increasing number of modern third person shooters, the game features a contextual cover system. Frequently used WWII settings such as Normandy, North Africa, and Ardennes will be represented in the game across its three campaigns. Four-player multiplayer will be included, though it was not stated whether the game will support online play. Ubisoft sent over three initial screenshots of the game.

Also in the works from Gearbox is Brothers in Arms Double Time for the Wii. Unlike Brothers in Arms DS, a brand new entry in the series, Double Time is a reworking of the two existing main games in the series, Brothers in Arms: Road to Hill 30 (PS2, Xbox, PC) and Brothers in Arms: Earned in Blood (PS2, Xbox, PC). Double Time takes the 31 combined levels of both games and adds Wii control as well as other features such as enhanced artificial intelligence.

Ubisoft plans to ship Gearbox Software's Brothers in Arms DS for Nintendo DS this summer, with Brothers in Arms Double Time for Wii to follow in the fall.

Sony Computer Entertainment America this week announced that its PSP system has received a $30 price reduction in the United States effective immediately, bringing the machine's suggested retail price down to $169.99. The move roughly aligns with PSP's second anniversary in North America; it launched on March 24, 2005. Along with the news came the addition of Ready at Dawn's Daxter and Sony Bend's Syphon Filter: Dark Mirror to the list of PSP Greatest Hits, conferring upon each a suggested retail price of $19.99.

"We have always been passionate about making great entertainment accessible to everyone, and the new price for PSP, as well as the continued growth of the 'Greatest Hits' library, reflect our ongoing commitment to supporting and expanding the PSP community," said SCEA president Jack Tretton. "We are pleased that we are able to engineer savings for the consumer at this stage of PSP's lifecycle, allowing more individuals to experience PSP for the first time. In particular, we have recently seen a steady rise in the number of teens adopting PSP as their primary handheld entertainment system, and we expect the new price will accelerate that trend."

Tretton's comment regarding teens reflects a revision of Sony's marketing efforts with PSP to more directly reach the 13-17 year old market as opposed to its more traditional 18-34 year old target demographic. Speaking to Wired News' Chris Kohler, PSP product manager John Koller elaborated on the new strategy, which is centered around a new advertising campaign whose slogan is "Dude, Get Your Own."

Koller stated that teens value various aspects of the PSP, including its portability--"I can play it upstairs while my parents are watching the TV downstairs," he said as an example--and its media functionality. Sony plans to continue to focus on new multimedia functions for the device to be released as firmware updates.

On the topic of games, Koller admitted that "Consumers don't want a mobile version" of existing console games--some have criticized the PSP for having a game library too much like that already available on the PlayStation 2. In that vein, he noted that the recently accidentally announced God of War PSP will be "entirely different than anything you can play on consoles." Third party publishers, too, have caught wind of the machine's shifting demographic. "You'll see a lot more teen-oriented titles launching," said Koller.

In a post made to the official Gears of War site and quickly removed (and mirrored here), details on the recently announced new gametype for Epic's shooter were laid bare. Entitled Annex, the new gametype revolves around players taking and holding objectives to earn points. Maps contain two to five objectives situated at weapon spawn areas and each worth a total of 60 points that are granted to the occupying team over time. The first team to accrue the set number of points in a round wins. Unusually for Gears of War multiplayer games, Annex features infinite respawning over a standard 15-second spawn wave.

Today's post concluded with the statement, "Annex became available as a Gears of War multiplayer game mode in the April 9 update." The usage of past tense suggests that the post was released prematurely. According to Microsoft, April 9 is not yet a confirmed release date for the gametype and title update that will accompany it.

Rumors of an enhanced Wii edition of Capcom's acclaimed horror shooter Resident Evil 4 have been confirmed via translations of reports from Japanese publication Famitsu. This will mark the second time the game has been republished with additional features on a new console, with the original GameCube title having been released on PlayStation 2 with additional playable side content. Biohazard 4 Wii Edition, as the upcoming game is dubbed in Japan, will feature the content added in the PS2 version as well as the existing cutscenes rendered by the game engine rather than as pre-rendered movies. Of course, the primary addition is a new control scheme using the Wii remote for aiming and the nunchuk for movement. Protagonist Leon Kennedy's knife is also more readily accessible in the Wii version of the game, with a Zelda-like shake of the remote executing a close combat attack. Presumably, the game will feature native widescreen support rather than the letterboxing of the GameCube version; true 16:9 support was added for the PS2 game.

Biohazard 4 Wii Edition is set to ship in Japan on May 31, 2007; no North American release has been announced. Shacknews sent inquiries to Capcom but had not received a response at time of writing. The Famitsu issue also included confirmation of the continued existence of Biohazard: Umbrella Chronicles, the upcoming Wii-exclusive entry in the series. A trailer of Umbrella Chronicles will be included in Biohazard 4 Wii Edition.

During a speech given at Sony's San Francisco launch event for SCE Santa Monica's God of War II (PS2), game director Cory Barlog let slip that rumble functionality will indeed be added to PlayStation 3 and its Sixaxis controller. Initially, the developer mentioned rumble in passing as a feature that would be implemented in a hypothetical God of War III for PS3. "Rumble coming back to PS3, eh?!" cried Barlog after the slip, inciting the crowd of journalists and developers to cheer.

The semi-announcement comes as little surprise in the wake of the announcement that Sony and force feedback developer Immersion have settled their legal feud, with Sony planning to license Immersion technology for unspecified platforms.

In regards to a still unannounced PS3 version of God of War, Barlog implied that such a game would be presented in 1080p resolution and would be the conclusion of the God of War trilogy. "If we were to do a God of War III on Wii--I mean PS3," said Barlog, "then it would finish this massive story. We've always imagined God of War as a trilogy, but the PSP game very much ties into it."

No further details regarding PS3 rumble functionality or God of War on PSP or PS3 were revealed.

One of the worst kept secrets in recent video game industry times, IGN confirmed once again that Ready at Dawn will be bringing God of War to the PSP later this year thanks to an advertisement on the back of the God of War II (PS2) instruction manual. In actuality, snapshots of the ad first surfaced last week, and prior to that, Ready at Dawn's use of the God of War font on their site provided a strong backing for rumors of the time. Ready at Dawn's previous PSP game, Daxter, drew much acclaim for its technical achievements.

Updated: Speaking at a Sony-conducted God of War II launch event in San Francisco tonight, game director Cory Barlog confirmed that God of War is indeed heading to the PSP. Though Ready at Dawn will be handling development, Barlog will have a supervisory role on the game as the steward of the God of War franchise.

Recently, rumors have begun circulating that EA's upcoming Harry Potter game on the Wii will use the rumored microphone attachment. While EA has indeed announced a Harry Potter game for the Wii, Shacknews can confirm that these rumors are purely speculation and are almost certainly more the result of internet miscommunication than an actual information leak.

Digital Eclipse's rendition of Konami's 1989 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles arcade game will hit Xbox Live Arcade Wednesday, March 14, Microsoft announced today. As discussed last week, the game contains two to four player co-op play over Xbox Live and will sell for 400 Microsoft Points ($5).

Nintendo added three more to its Virtual Console lineup today. Tecmo's Tecmo Bowl (NES, 1-2 players) represents the first football game on the service, going for a meager 500 Wii Points ($5). Sega's Sonic Spinball (Sega Genesis, 1-4 players), which combines platforming and pinball, can be had for 800 Wii Points ($8). Wrapping up this week's offering is Hudson's Double Dungeons (TurboGrafx16, 1-2 players), a role-playing adventure based around dungeon exploration, priced at 600 Wii Points ($6).

Speaking on the trials and tribulations of developing voice and handwriting recognition software for use in Nintendo's Brain Age (DS), Nintendo SDK and middleware head Takeshi Shimada also discussed several updates to the NintendoWare development tool, which allows artists to "view an accurate representation of their special effects [on a PC] without loading their code onto a Wii development kit." Among the upcoming additions, Shimada and his group are working on "easy-to-incorporate fur-shading middleware," tools for predicting a user's input based off past actions, and a potential text-to-speech utility.

Over at Gamasutra, three industry analysts (Ed Barton of Screen Digest, Ben Bajarin of Creative Strategies and Michael Pachter of Wedbush Morgan Securities) mull over the future of exclusive games.

GameJew chronicles his ultimately successful mission to serenade Mario creator Shigeru Miyamoto at this year's GDC.

This week, the full list of nominations for the always high quality Game Developers Choice Awards, hosted every year during Game Developers Conference by the International Game Developers Association, was revealed. Dominating the list of nominees with four nods each were Clover Studio's Okami (PS2) and Bethesda Softworks' The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (X360, PC). The former was commended for Character Design, Game Design, and Visual Arts, and the latter for Game Design, Visual Arts, and Writing, while both games took nods for Best Game.

Strikingly unlike the AIAS Interactive Achievement Awards, which perennially snub titles from non-member publishers, the GDCA honors any game that receives enough nominations from its voting body, which includes professionals from throughout the games industry. Notably, Capcom, whose games have been absent from the AIAS awards for several years, tied with Nintendo for second most total GDCA nominations; each publisher garnered five. Capcom's non-Okami nod was in Technology for Dead Rising (X360). Nintendo's five were split between Wii Sports (Wii) and The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess (GCN, Wii), each of which is up for Best Game, making Nintendo the only publisher to have two titles in the running for the show's top honor. The top performing publisher was Microsoft, which saw developers Rare and Epic take three nods each for Viva Pinata (X360) and Gears of War (X360); the latter title is up for Best Game.

The other games to receive multiple nods were Relic Entertainment's Company of Heroes (PC), Sony Computer Entertainment's LocoRoco (PSP), Rockstar Vancouver's Bully (PS2), and Square Enix's Final Fantasy XII (PS2), each with two nominations. Despite strong critical and commercial success in the portable segment last year, LocoRoco was the only portable game to make the list, though Daxter (PSP) developer Ready at Dawn was recognized in the New Studio category alongside fellow newcomers such as Iron Lore Entertainment for Titan Quest (PC) and Naked Sky Entertainment for RoboBlitz (X360, PC).

The Game Developers Choice Awards will be presented during this year's Game Developers Conference at San Francisco's Moscone Center on March 7 at 6:30pm. Hosting the ceremony will be Double Fine Productions founder Tim Schafer, whose studio last year achieved four nominations and two wins for its excellent game Psychonauts (PS2, Xbox, PC). Mega64 and DJ Chris (by whom the IGDA likely means MC Chris) will be providing entertainment.

Last year, Rockster Leeds' Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories was released a PSP exclusive, following up on the studio's prior PSP game Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories. Liberty City Stories was eventually released on PlayStation 2 as well, though shortly before its release Rockstar representatives indicated that there were no such plans in the works for the second game in the spinoff series.

Today, the publisher officially confirmed via a very brief press release that, as many have suspected, Vice City Stories is indeed coming to PlayStation 2 after all--and soon. The game will be on North American store shelves on March 6, 2007, to follow in Europe three days later.

After announcing record financial results today, publisher Activision held a followup conference call during which company executives discussed the announced figures as well as spoke on the company's plans for the near future. Chairman and CEO Bobby Kotick congratulated the company on its performance on next-gen (ie, current-gen) platforms, noting that Activision was the only company to be within the top three publishers on all three current home consoles. Kotick went on to speak more specifically on Wii, noting that the company plans to strengthen its output on that platform as well as on Nintendo DS. "Activision recognized the Wii opportunity on, and we had one of the largest lineups at launch. In fiscal 08, we will double our product offerings on Wii and DS as we plan to be even more successful on these platforms," he said, adding, "To date, there has been strong consumer response to all three next-generation consoles, which truly are delivering new gaming experiences to broader, more diverse audiences than ever before."

Despite Activision's overall Wii performance, coming in at number two on the platform, Toys for Bob's Tony Hawk's Downhill Jam sold notably below Neversoft's main franchise entry Tony Hawk's Project 8 on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. Perhaps partially as a result, the company revealed that Downhill Jam will be released on PlayStation 2 in calendar Q2 2007. Also likely contributing to the decision was Activision's strong success on PlayStation 2, most significantly by way of the company's star performer, Harmonix's Guitar Hero II on PS2.

Activision noted that it expects PS2 sales to stay strong through 2007, matching calendar year sales for Wii and PS3 and coming in close to sales for Xbox 360. It also projects continued strong sales in the handheld sector.