• Major game released this week were: Don King Presents: Prizefighter for the 360; My Pokemon Ranch for WiiWare; Dig Dug for the Wii VC; The Incredible Hulk for the PC; NASCAR 09 for the 360, PS3 and PS2; Blast Works: Build, Trade, Destroy for the Wii; Dragon Ball Z: Burst Limit for the PS3 and 360; My Fashion Studio for the DS; Backyard Baseball 2009 for the Wii; and Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots for the PS3.

• The Entertainment Software Association, or ESA, has been losing a lot of it’s members lately, starting with Activision and Vivendi, soon after being joined by LucasArts and id Software. Reasons have been given, ranging from rising membership fees to issues with the association’s president.

• Rumors have been confirmed: Call of Duty 5 will be called Call of Duty World at War, and will, once again, go back to the days of World War II. They’re planning on using battles not often used in the WWII age. For the 360, you will also be able to have four-player co-op campaign. CoD:WaW is set to be released this holiday season on every system.

• Guitar Hero: On Tour, the DS version of Guitar Hero, is set to come out on June 22nd, but not only might you be able to get just the game, but you can also get your hands on a special edition bundle. This bundle includes a silver and black DS with the Guitar Hero logo on it, also with Guitar Hero: On Tour. The bundle was initially listed at being priced at $180.

• Electronic Arts is now being sued by another party, this time your everyday game player is taking a shot. Football game players in DC and California have filed a suit against EA stating that they are making an anticompetitive market in the football genre, a monopoly. EA currently owns exclusive rights to make games based off of the NFL, Arena Football, and NCAA Football. The suit states that they lowered the price to be competitive when Take-Two, currently trying to be bought out by EA, released NFL 2K games, but when Take-Two didn’t release an NFL 2K game, EA raised the price of Madden back up to standard price. The lawsuit is asking for restitution and damages for all who bought an EA football game since August of 2005.

• Major games released this week were: Stronghold Crusader Extreme for the PC; Grid for the 360, PS3, and PC; Hot Shots Golf: Open Tee 2 for the PSP; Kung Fu Panda for all systems; Lego Indiana Jones: The Original Adventures for all systems; Ninja Gaiden II for the 360; Robert Ludlum’s The Bourne Conspiracy for the 360 and PS3; The Incredible Hulk for all systems; and Fatal Inertia EX for the PSN.

• Even before Guitar Hero: Aerosmith has been released [June 29], Activision has already announced, and confirmed, that they are in the making of Guitar Hero: Metallica, which is set to be released in Quarter 1 of 2009. In addition to this, they’ve also announced that within the fiscal year of 2009, they’ll be releasing Guitar Hero: On Tour for the DS, and Guitar Hero IV across multiple platforms.

• Nintendo has been running with supply shortages on everything, from the Wii system itself, to it’s latest release, Wii Fit. Unfortunately, reports have shown that this shortage, at least in the U.S., are intentional. Since the dollar has a weaker value than the euro at the moment, Nintendo is shipping most of it’s Wii Fit units to Europe instead of to the U.S.

• Not even a year after it’s release, Infinity Ward announced that they have sold over 10 million copies of Call of Duty 4 worldwide, with the Xbox 360 version being it’s top seller.

• Former Minnesota Timberwolf and now Boston Celtic Kevin Garnett was announced to be the cover athlete for NBA 2K9 this fall. This announcement was made right before the beginning of the NBA Finals Game 1 earlier this week.

• According to reports across the board, Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures has become the biggest MMO launch since World of Warcraft. The latest announcement that Funcom released stated that they had shipped one million units worldwide. This doesn’t mean one million subscribers, but rather units shipped to retailers.

• Once again, Electronic Arts has postponed it’s Take-Two takeover. It seems, though, that there might finally be a deadline for when they can make this hostile takeover. At the earliest, this means that July 18th would be when EA can make their first move towards taking Take-Two over.

• Major games released this week were: Metal Slug for the Wii VC, Mass Effect for the PC, Enemy Territory: Quake Wars for the PS3 and 360, and Death Jr.: Root of Evil for the Wii.

• Funcom’s newest MMORPG Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures hit their first milestone a week after their launch. According to Funcom, more than 400,000 players have entered their world in the first week, and while the Collector’s Edition is sold out indefinitely, they expect more to continue to join as retailers restock with more copies of their game.

• After it’s huge success on the Xbox 360 and PC, Take-Two and 2K Games’ sci-fi FPS BioShock is finally coming to the PlayStation 3. Announced for October, Take-Two said that it would be adding new features and content in order to make up for the wait that PlayStation 3 owners have had. 2K Marin is currently at work on BioShock 2, which is expected to be released in 2009.

• While it may be Hideo Kojima’s last game in the series, he’s gone on record saying that this may not be the end for the franchise. While Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots, releasing on June 12, will close all open plot lines from the previous games, Kojima has said that “Metal Gear will always be around.” No news has been released on if another MGS game is to be made yet.

• Steam, the widely used PC digital download, update, and overall game system made by Valve, is expecting to get a face-lift of it’s own soon. One new program announced was Steam Cloud, which will take all game saves, profiles, preferences, settings, etc. and save them all server side instead. The games that will begin to use this first will be Half-Life, Team Fortress 2, and Counter-Strike. Valve also released details on some upcoming updates for Steam, including an automatic downloading driver updater, an automatic system requirements check, and more. According to rumor, this will all begin being released by the end of this year.

• Major games released this week were: Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures for the PC, Haze for the PS3, SingStar for the PS3, Penny Arcade Adventures: On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness for the 360 and PC, and Wii Fit for the Wii.

• The ongoing battle for ownership of Take-Two continues, as this week EA extends the deadline for shareholders to June 16. This is the third extension EA has made in the offer to buy out Take-Two from under them. Take-Two released a statement soon after saying that they had begun formal discussions with EA, although EA was not the only interested buyer in Take-Two’s dramatic roller coaster.

• The newest MMORPG to hit the shelves became a huge hit, overselling what they had originally expected that they would. Age of Conan, one of the first “M” rated MMORPGs, completely sold out of their Collector’s Edition, even after running a second print of them, totaling out to 110,000 copies. 700,000 copies of the standard edition were also shipped out on day one to retailers everywhere.

• Even though Nintendo boasted through their advertisements that Wii Fit was to come out on May 19, retailers were unable to sell their copies until Wednesday May 21. The May 19th release date was found to be the release at the Nintendo World Store in New York City, and that was to be all. Following this was still a shortage of units at retailers throughout the nation. Replenishment has been lacking still after the initial sell-out on day one.

• Sony released information that they would be releasing a special limited-edition Madden NFL 09 Bundle for the PlayStation Portable, which includes the blue PSP, a copy of Madden NFL 09, a 1GB Memory Stick Pro Duo, and a UMD disc, “NFL: In Just One Play”. This bundle will be available on Madden 09’s release day of August 12, and will cost $200.

• Activision, creators of the widely popular Guitar Hero series, confirmed this week that they would be adding functionality for a microphone, and a unique drum kit, which features three drum pads, two raised cymbals, and a bass kick pedal. All of these items will be wireless, unlike Harmonix’s Rock Band peripherals. Also coming in this will be Music Studio, a music-creation software where songwriters can make their own music which can be uploaded and shared via GHTunes.

• Capcom has been silent about information, and even a release date, for it’s popular horror action adventure game Resident Evil 5, until now. Capcom announced that they are planning on releasing RE5 by March of 2009, and they projected that sales would be around 2.3 million copies. March 2009 is the end of the fiscal 2008 year for Capcom, and many other game publishers.

• As with previous weeks, another game publisher has added their name to the list of companies not attending this years E3 convention. id Software, creators of sci-fi FPS Doom, which recently announced Doom 4, said that they would not be attending this years E3. Three other companies: Activision, Vivendi, and LucasArts; also pulled out of attending this year, though LucasArts says that they may still attend to show off some of their new works.

While many people have asked what is so great about a Balance Board, more people around the ages of 25 and older don’t care to ask that question, as they are all heading out to purchase the newest phenomonom for the Nintendo Wii: WiiFit.

While many retailers were not expecting a mass rush, many were sold out of this new exercise game for the Wii before the noon hour had even arrived. Many Target stores became a popular spot, as by 11 AM, 8 out of 11 stores in the metro area of Minnesota had sold out of the game. Lines had even formed before the store had opened, while for games like Halo 3 and Grand Theft Auto IV, no lines were made at store opening for the Target store.

While this game looks to be a lot of fun, it seems that the age range has been targeted towards older folks, rather than the younger generation, which usually takes on to games such as Dance Dance Revolution Hottest Party and Guitar Hero III. The majority of people buying WiiFit were around the ages of 25-85, including many grandparents.

It will be intersting to see if Nintendo can properly stock this game on retailer shelves, unlike the Wii console itself, or some of it’s more popular games. Until then, rumor has it that many Best Buys and GameStops also sold out of this new hit sensation to take the family game world by storm. We’ll be watching to see how well this continues to fly off of the shelves in the coming future.

• Major games released this week were: WiiWare games for the Wii, Deca Sports for the Wii, Myst for the DS, Rocketmen: It Came from Your Uranus for the XBLA and PSN, and The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian for the 360, PS3, PS2, Wii, and DS.

• Blizzard has been in the news a lot lately, after the almost $19 billion merger, and the announcement of Blizzard Worldwide Invitational ‘08 in Paris. Now, they’ve announced their next major convention: BlizzCon 08, which will take place in Blizzard’s home state of California in October. Tickets are set to run at $100, and some of the games that are said to be featured are Starcraft II and World of Warcraft’s newest expansion: Wrath of the Lich King. Rumor also wonders that, after Blizzard acquired diablo3.com, if anything new from the Diablo franchise will be announced at this event.

• EA has also been in the news a lot lately, after making an offer to buy Take-Two Interactive, then leading into a hostile takeover. With another deadline approaching fast, it was confirmed that EA has gained the ability to secure a $1 billion loan to aid in the purchase of Take-Two. Take-Two still has yet to have answered to any of EA’s newest offers and claims.

• Konami’s revolutionary dancing video game Dance Dance Revolution is setting up for it’s 10th anniversary this year by announcing three brand new games for many different systems. DanceDanceRevolution X will be coming out on the PlayStation 2, DanceDanceRevolution Universe 3 will be coming out for the Xbox 360, and DanceDanceRevolution Hottest Party 2 will be coming out for the Wii; all this holiday season.

• Konami also announced during Konami’s Gamers’ Day this week that they would be releasing a Rock Band-esk take-off called Rock Revolution in the U.S. While Guitar Hero and Rock Band have been huge hits int he U.s., Konami originally came out with Guitar Freaks and DrumMania in Japan, which got the hype for music games started. Rock Revolution is set to come out on the PS3, 360, Wii, and DS, all containing different unique play-styles.

• Guitar Hero 4, recently announced for every system by Activision, was also announced that they would be copying Rock Band’s instruments and adding in drums and vocals, the drums which are to have three pads and two cymbals, making a total of five pads to hit instead of Rock Band’s four. In addition, Activision announced that players would be able to create their own songs and beats, and upload a limited amount of them so that their friends can play them as well.

• LucasArts joined the growing number of game companies who have decided to leave the Entertainment Software Association (ESA). Unlike Activision Blizzard though, LucasArts said that they would still be attending this year’s E3 convention in July. Other publishers including NCsoft and Foundation 9 also said that they also would not be attending this year’s E3.

• After former Sony Computer Entertainment Worldwide Studios President Phil Harrison stepped down earlier this year, it was confirmed this week that Shuhei Yoshida, former vice president, would be taking over the SCE WWS reigns. Yoshida has been with SCE since 1993, and is well versed in the PlayStation business.

• Konami announced this week that they would be releasing a “Highly Limited Edition” gunmetal gray 40GB PS3, with DualShock 3 controller and the Collector’s Edition of Metal Gear Solid 4 for $599.99. This system goes on sale EXCLUSIVELY on the Konami online store on Monday, May 19th, and is highly limited. In addition, Metal Gear Solid 4 was set golden this week, confirming it’s release date of June 12, 2008. Coming with this announcement was the opening of their new official website, as well as many other events that are to take place in celebration of Solid Snake’s final battle. More details will be announced closer to it’s release date.

• Major games released this week were: Crosswords DS for the DS, Boom Blox for the Wii, Speed Racer for the Wii and DS, Neverwinter Nights 2 Gold for the PC, Iron Man for the PC, and Wits & Wagers for the XBLA.

• While Rock Band has always had downloadable content for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 versions, the PlayStation 2 and Wii versions have never had that option. Harmonix has decided to change that by releasing a new disc which they are calling the Rock Band Track Pack Volume 1, which includes 20 tracks and will be for sale for $30 on July 15th.

• EU PlayStation Day took place this week in Europe. Sony showed off a way to download videos using the PSP, a Motorstorm Pacific Rift demo, a Resistance 2 sneak peak; and announced that Killzone 2 may be delayed a bit, possibly until 2009.

• id Software announced that they are looking for employees who could work on the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and the PC for their newest horror shooter in line: Doom 4. No release date was announced at the time, nor was it confirmed that it would be released on all of the aforementioned systems, but id’s jobs page noted looking for hires on all platforms, so one can only assume.

• Nintendo opened up a new channel for American users this week: the Nintendo Channel, which has been available in Japan since late last year. The Nintendo Channel will allows Wii owners to download videos, trailers, interviews, game demos, and more. If you are a DS owner as well, you will be able to turn your Wii into a Wi-Fi download station to transfer demos to your Nintendo DS.

• 10-year-old racing guru series, made by Polyphony, hit a major milestone, selling their 50 millionth unit this week. Gran Turismo 5 Prologue was the setting stone in this record that aided them in finally overturning the 50 million mark. Gran Turismo started with it’s first edition in 1997 on the PlayStation console, and has been renowned as the most realistic driving and racing game made yet.

• Take-Two once again made it into the news, this time suing the Chicago Transit Authority, who pulled their ads for Grand Theft Auto IV for showing “unlawful content”. The CTA has backed up their decision stating that they “[have] the right to regulate and establish guidelines for advertising on its properties”. Take-Two is suing them over freedom of speech rights and also breakage of contract. Take-Two is asking for $300,000 in damages.

• Rockstar released a patch for PlayStation 3 users, saying that it will help peoples’ games from freezing and locking up their system. This issue was caused by the online servers that they are using becoming overloaded. No word on a patch for the Xbox 360 version as of this time.

• Grand Theft Auto IV, toted to be one of the best games in history, had what was said to be the “largest launch in the history of interactive entertainment”. GTAIV sold 3.6 million units on day one, and a total of over 6 million units at the end of the first week, making their revenue approximately $500 million. This beat out Bungie’s popular shooter, Halo 3, by at least $200 million in week one sales.

echochrome is a very unique puzzle game that was revealed back in July of 2007 by SCEI, SCE, and JapanStudio at E3, and was released on May 1st for the PlayStation 3 on the PlayStation Network as a downloadable, and the PlayStation Portable, also able to be downloaded from PSN.

echochrome is a very unique puzzle game, taking on the simplistic look of the monochromatic tones. The basic premise of the game is to take your mannequin character that you play as, and capture your echoes that are scattered in the maze of paths, holes and jumps that litter the playing field. Controlling your character is as simple as tilting the analog stick. By moving the analog stick, you move the maze in whichever direction that you push it. This is definately mandatory, because you’ll need to move the maze so that you are able to connect paths together to make the maze one unit, to cover holes so that you don’t fall through, to cover empty spaces so that you are able to traverse an impossible opening, or to jump to a platform that is positioned above you.

While this game may not look like anything special, with the colors being very monotone and simple, it offers a lot of space when it comes to creation of maps. There are a couple of different modes you can enter on how you want to play the game. In freeform, it randomly chooses mazes for you to have to solve. In atelier, you can choose from stages ranging from a to g, and 1 to 8 within that. Or you can enter the canvas mode, in which you can create your own maze for you to play, or for you to send to your friends to play.

The music is very easy listening, and very calming. The simple piano music invites you to settle down with the game and relax, while giving you enough of a challenge to keep you interested. With the free addition of new downloadable maps that other users can create at any time, you can continuously be playing a new maze every time that you play if enough people make them.

All-in-all, this game doesn’t offer a huge variety in what you are supposed to do, and you are limited to the laws of the world, and the laws of direction and rotation. But for $9.99 on the PlayStation Network, this game seems like it’s worth the small investment in the long run.

Score: 9 out of 10

After downloading and installing the two updates required to be able to now play the Metal Gear Online Premiere Beta, I was finally able to get my hands on some of the greatest multiplayer online shooting that I have ever played. Please note that this story is the opinion of the editor, and may not express the same feelings as the other editors of the site.

After I had made my Konami ID and was able to log in, I was greeted with an elaborate “Create a Character” dialog, in which I was able to create the person who I was to kill my fellow soldiers as. The options were limited, as I would expect since it is just the Beta, but to be honest, there was enough there to distinguish my character out from the others.

When I was able to finally be able to get into some gameplay, the first thing I noticed was a Training Mode, in which I could learn to use my weapons, move my camera, and shoot some fake targets to get myself accustomed to the game’s control scheme. MGO actually has a quite easy to learn control scheme that works well, so I was able to get the hang of it quickly.

After finishing my training, I was ready to play. The first thing I noticed was the ability to do either Automatchmaking, or to create or join my own or someone else’s created match. That is something that PlayStation 3 owners have been waiting for for quite some time, and finally got to use. After entering a match and hitting that I was ready to play, the match began.

So far, MGO has five different game modes, ranging from Deathmatch, to Team Deathmatch, to a very unique mode called Sneaking Mission, which I did get the chance to participate in. In Sneaking Mission, one player gets to play as Solid Snake and use the Octocamo to be able to neutralize other players and steal their dogtags. I actually did better in that than I had done all night I must admit, when I got the chance to play as Snake.

In-game voice chat was working successfully when I was using it, and there were nothing but very minor bugs in the system it seemed. Load times were minimal, and everyone was having a great time. One more feature that I would like to point out is the easy in-game friends list. If you are in a match and want to add a friend, all you have to do is click the “AddFriend” button and scroll to their name. It will instantly put them on an in-game list, which you can use to find them later on and join whatever match they may be in, as well as send in-game “e-mails” through a Private Message client also built in to the game.

All in all, I would say that Konami and Kojima Productions did an excellent job on Metal Gear Online so far. Even for just a Beta, the gameplay was very smooth, and for someone who is not a major shooter game fan, it has me hooked. If they add more, we’ll be sure to update you all on how it all works, and what it looks like. And for those of you who don’t own a PlayStation 3, this game may be JUST the reason you were looking for to get one.

I’ve not seen something so painfully broken in quite some time, and while I can understand why, it’s still painful to watch.

This weekend is really the first weekend of the Metal Gear Online Beta. While it theoretically was supposed to be opened at the beginning of this week, it was delayed due to the massive traffic that they received as everyone began to log on, crashing their servers. Since the Beta only reopened on Thursday night, this is the first real test of it’s ability to run.

For the past hour now, I’ve been attempting to get on to play MGO. Due to their updates, there are two patches that need to be downloaded to be able to play, and they need to be downloaded and patched seperately. MGO offers two ways of downloading though, one by P2P and one by HTTP.

I attempted both of them with quite terrible results actually. When trying to connect to the P2P, which is recommends, it basically doesn’t do anything, even after making sure to open up the port on my router. And the HTTP basically times out and says, “There has been a network error” after barely even 2% every time. It seems like the issues that they were having with their servers still hasn’t been resolved.

I’m glad that they extended the end of the Beta period, but I am still unable to get anywhere close to being able to play yet. Hopefully Konami can get their servers repaired. I must admit, I am still quite excited to try out the Beta and provide you all with details on how it is.