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After months of silence, LucasArts has recently unveiled a new trailer for Star Wars: The Force Unleashed. The video will be taking a closer look at Darth Vader’s secret apprentice and the sort of dirty work he’ll be doing.

Perhaps more importantly, it will also hint at the sort of choices you’ll be making within the game - you didn’t think you’d be stuck as Lord Vader’s lackey, did you? Just mind the possibility of plot spoilers, and you’ll be fine.

There’s also the hot female imperial officer to look forward to in the clip. Yes - the Empire is not exclusively the realm of nasal, dirty old men. Enjoy the clip, and be sure to be on the lookout for any further news on The Force Unleashed. It’s expected to launch this September 16 for the PSP, PS2, PS3, Xbox 360, Wii, and DS).

Buy: [Star Wars: The Force Unleashed (Xbox 360)]
Buy: [Star Wars: The Force Unleashed (PS3)]
Buy: [Star Wars: The Force Unleashed (Wii)]
Buy: [Star Wars: The Force Unleashed (PSP)]
Buy: [Star Wars: The Force Unleashed (DS)]

Before the E3 news begins flooding in, Sony has released a bombshell, monster-exclusive announcement: PSP firmware v4.05 will be “released soon.” And just what will this earth-shatteringly awesome update bring to the table, you ask?

New music visualizers. That’s right. AND other features, although Eric Lempel didn’t hint at what any of those might be. Chances are that they’ll be very minor if they weren’t noteworthy enough to mention alongside music visualizers.

Am I the only one that’s tired of downloading PS3 and PSP firmware updates for small things that I don’t care about?

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While it was already hinted at by a couple of the bigger retailers, it looks like Microsoft’s finally gone official with their Xbox 360 price cut. The company has released a press wire stating that the console’s 20 GB model will now be selling for just US 299.

While that’s probably been expected, the bigger news of the press release is their announcement of a new Xbox 360 SKU which will carry a 60 GB HDD. This unit will also carry the 20 GB unit’s original price of US 349. Albert Penello, Microsoft’s Xbox director of product management had this to say regarding the company’s big announcement:

We know consumers need more and more space to store the amazing digital content Xbox 360 offers, and we’re giving it to them at no extra charge. No one device offers the depth and breadth of entertainment that Xbox 360 can deliver, and now you’ll have three times the storage to manage all that great content.

While the price-reduced 20 GB bundle is expected to arrive this week, you may also want to keep on the lookout in case the stores start stocking up on the new SKU. With this said and done, it’ll be interesting to see how Sony will reply to the announcement, or what sort of actions they’ll plan to take in the months to come. Drop by again in case we receive any more news.

• Rumor: Major retailer says Microsoft to slash prices of 360 before E3
• Target already slashed US 50 off Xbox 360 Pro?
• Leaked pictures: impending Xbox 360 price drop at GameStop update

I wasn’t expecting this so soon, but Major Nelson just posted word that the demo of Too Human is now available on the Xbox Live Marketplace. It weighs in at 1.09GB, so you might want to get that download going before you head to work this morning.

As such a huge fan of games like Diablo, I’m excited to finally try the game out. It seems like the impressions of it over the past year have been so wildly different that I just need to try it out for myself and decide whether or not to buy it. (Although, the odds are that unless this demo is a complete atrocity, I’ll be buying it on day one.)

After you try it, be sure to come back and let us know what you think of Silicon Knights’ first game on Xbox 360.

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No longer a rumor, it looks like Microsoft will be releasing a higher-end Xbox 360 than the current Pro SKU offers. The Xbox 360 dashboard’s Inside Xbox area has a page with the announcement, which reads:

Microsoft is giving consumers more gigabytes for their buck! Available in August, the upgraded Xbox 360 will include a 60GB hard drive for storing the growing wealth of digital entertainment available from Xbox Live Marketplace, your one-stop digital download center. Now you’ll have even more room for music, movies, television shows, demos, Arcade games, and game content.

This seems like the kind of announcement Microsoft would be making at E3; I’m guessing this was inadvertantly posted ahead of time. Combine that with stores selling the Pro system for $299.99 starting this week, and it looks like the wind is really being taken out of Microsoft’s E3 sails.

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I’m shocked that I’m writing this after I wrote something about Mythos nine hours ago, but it would seem that Hellgate: London and Mythos developer Flagship Studios was closed yesterday, with the entirety of its staff being given pink slips. An anonymous source has told Kotaku, “But there’s also hope that they will all have their jobs back at the end of next week at a brand new company,” so there is some solace to be had, although there’s more bad news, as well.

It would also appear that Flagship owns the IP to neither Hellgate nor Mythos, which will certainly complicate the futures of both games. Secured lender Comerica will take the rights to Hellgate as collateral from a loan, while Flagship’s Korean partner, Hanbitsoft, claims it will obtain the rights to the Mythos IP.

A statement form the lawyers of Hanbitsoft reads in part, “[I]t is unfortunate that Flagship turned down additional investments HanbitSoft offered to make that would have allowed it to keep its doors open, but HanbitSoft hopes to work with Comerica and some of the team at Flagship to see if there is a way to continue to generate content to keep Hellgate online in Asia and to finish the development of Mythos.”

We want to wish the best to the (now former) staff of Flagship. We’ll have more as it develops.

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Konami has announced via press wire that they will be arriving at this year’s Games Convention over in Leipzig. The company plans to showcase several of their upcoming games, including Pro Evolution Soccer 2009 (PES 2009), Silent Hill: Homecoming (PS3, Xbox 360). A large portion of Konami’s spot will be allocated to their DancingStage line.

The company will also be using the event to unveil several of their to-be-announced titles, with room for showings, Q&A sessions, and product demonstrations. Given no other details were announced just yet, I’d wager one would have to be Castlevania Judgment.

The franchise is one of the company’s flagships after all - alongside Metal Gear of course - and it just wouldn’t be a Konami bash without any mention of holy water, whips, or bishie vampire hunters. Order of Ecclesia will hopefully follow along, given that it will be featuring connectivity with Judgement.

Perhaps we might even hear about that mystery title under development between Konami Digital and Mercury Steam. The latter company’s prior experience with Clive Barker’s Jericho hints we might be looking at another romp with the undead, or something similar. Of course most of this is just my personal speculation.

This year’s Games Convention will be taking place at the Leipzig Messe this  August 20 to 24 in Leipzig, Germany. Konami Digital Entertainment GmbH in particular  can be located at Hall 5, Booth F10 of the convention grounds.

After experiencing a much earlier Brewfest run, it appears that World of Warcraft’s Public Test Realms have now set their sights on the game’s next festival: Hallow’s End.

According to MMO-Champion, the PTR’s new build is now testing WoW’s own version of Halloween, bringing with it some new changes.

For one, there’s the matter of  the new Horseman’s Blade, which drops from the event’s Headless Horseman boss over in Scarlet Monastery. Aside from the sword, there are also reports of new Headless Horseman’s Mounts, though these are still unconfirmed for the moment. In the meantime, the readers may want to visit again in case any more updates are confirmed for WoW PTR’s latest build.

Flagship Studios’ Max Schaefer chatted with Eurogamer recently about Mythos, with a question eventually arising that asked Schaefer if he thought Mythos could ever become the biggest MMO in the world. He more or less sidestepped that question, but did offer up the idea that Mythos could possibly take down some of the big MMOs on the market.

Just not World of Warcraft.

“You always hope that something like that will happen, but it’s so unpredictable,” he said about the prospect of being the world’s biggest MMO. “What we really want to do is come out and provide a solid alternative to these games. We’re under no illusions. WOW had ten times the staff we did, took three times as long, had twenty times the budget - and those are pretty talented, hard-working guys as well, so to think that we could go straight head to head is probably unrealistic. However, what we can do is target it better and we can find out what the core gaming experience that people want is and really try to hit that. I think that the free model and the item sales model give us the potential to capture a lot more of an audience than if we had gone with a boxed product and subscription model.

“Can we take down the big boys? I think we can take down some of them. And I’d like to put a dent in the others.”

There were a lot of other interesting topics discussed throughout the interview, such as what Flagship Studios learned from Hellgate: London. He summed up the lesson pretty simply, saying, “[D]on’t try to do everything for everybody.”

As for the microtransaction items (the business model is that Mythos will be free to play, with small item microtransactions sustaining things), Schaefer once again provided some assurance that we won’t see people buy their way to the top — you won’t be buying the best sword in the game. In fact, it’s unlikely you’ll be buying any swords at all, or anything of the sort, for that matter.

“What we’re going to do instead is cosmetic things - funny hats and cool shirts, that sort of thing. We’re going to provide service-orientated things like being able to buy bigger Stashes or shared Stashes among your accounts, but then for gameplay itself what we’re going to sell to people is things like maps to dungeons that have more luck. So you’ll get slightly better drops in that dungeon, and maybe 15 per cent more experience,” Schaefer explains.

Doesn’t sound too bad. And in all honesty, I more than likely wouldn’t mind plopping down $1 or so for a badass hat for my character.

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Sure, you could just use custom soundtracks with the exact music you want while playing a game, but if you for some reason don’t want to or don’t have the ability to do so, Electronic Arts is looking out for you. EA chief music executive Steve Schnur told MTV Multiplayer this week that downloadable soundtracks for your EA games are coming in 2009.

The feature has been promised for years with the Madden series, but it’s been either the game’s included soundtrack or bust up until this point. I can think of a number of EA games in the past that I would have loved a different soundtrack for, as the selections that EA Trax make at times cause my head to hurt. Hopefully that will be a problem no longer.

When I interviewed Schnur yesterday about the soundtrack for Madden NFL 09 he finally named a timeframe. “You’re going to see it in 2009,” he said. He said that by Madden ‘10 gamers can expect some of the “broader-based” EA games (not just any music titles) to be able to “continually recommend” new music that can be downloaded to enhance a soundtrack.

But will that music be free, one has to wonder. I guess we’ll see next year.

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