We won't have to dig like madmen for any scans of some Hungarian preview, after all, because Electronic Arts have just announced Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3 in a nice big press release, complete with screenshots and a trailer. The first surprise we get is that EA's Los Angeles studio is developing this RTS sequel not only for the PC and Xbox 360, but also for the PlayStation 3. Next up, Red Alert 3 boasts a fully co-operative campaign set in "a breathtaking alternate future spawned by time travel run amok", while adding "an astounding new faction that will shake-up the Red Alert universe as we know it", and "bringing naval combat into the heart of the game design". Not to mention they're already hinting at the beta! But let's take them one at a time, right after these pics.


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God of War: Chains of Olympus went gold a couple of days ago, and today we have some bloody new screenshots from this divinely brutal PSP game - the second one completed by developer Ready at Dawn (after Daxter, and ahead of Okami for Wii). You can also watch last month's trailer here, by the way. The final version should be out in the US on March 4.


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- Red Faction 3 is no more... But relax, nothing is fu... cancelled, dude. They just renamed it to Red Faction: Guerilla, apparently.

- Likewise, the Aliens FPS announced by SEGA at the end of 2006 finally has a title - Aliens: Colonial Marines, "invading consoles and PCs in 2009". The devs from Gearbox had better make aliens playable as well, at the very least in an expansion. Or else!

- NCsoft has "something to announce - not only announce but to show - by the second half of this year"... their very first console (PS3?) MMO game. They're "pretty psyched" about it. I'm not. Not yet, anyway.

- Epic's CliffyB loses faith in PC games, thiking that "the PC is just in disarray". So right now they're focusing on making Gears of War 2 console games. Can't say I blame them.

- Speaking of Epic, their Unreal Engine 3 also got licensed by Korean MMO maker Devroot Studio, for a new game codenamed "BK Project". They're a division of SONOV Corporation, who made that MMO with hot chicks, Shaiya: Light and Darkness.

- The Xbox 360 fails at a rate of 16.4% (give or take), while only 3% of the PlayStation 3 and Wii consoles fail. Should be interesting to see some sales figures for Microsoft and Sony's consoles in actual working condition!

- Wii hacked once again (and once again without much use), this time through an exploit in The Legend of Zelda. Great, wake me up when there's something worth seeing.

- Final Fantasy XII: Revenant Wings for the DS is being released tomorrow in the UK (and presumably the rest of Europe). We got the latest trailer here, in case you missed it.

- The Witcher, CD Projekt's debut RPG, has sold over 600,000 copies in 3 months. They're still aiming for 1 million in the first year, and at this rate they're going to shatter it. Grats!

THQ and their internal team from Rainbow Studios are breeding a new action thriller game for the Wii, called Deadly Creatures, the publisher announced today. The game - described by Rainbow's Nick Wlodyka as a "creepy, cinematic thrill ride (...) with brutal motion-controlled combat, a dark, compelling story and some of the best visuals to date on the Wii" - is planned as an exclusive release on Nintendo's console in 2008. Here's a bit more about it.

"Deadly Creatures throws players into a venomous world of desert terror, where the greatest victory is survival. Players will follow the entwined adventures of an armored scorpion and a stealthy tarantula as they struggle against a variety of creatures including vicious Gila monsters, tarantula wasps, black widows, and the most dangerous predator of all - Man. Deadly Creatures takes full advantage of the Wii's unique motion-based control scheme and allows players to fully experience every pounce and tail sting."

In case you give a damn about Volition's non-Red-Faction projects, here are some screenshots from their Saints Row 2 sequel, coming this year on the PS3 and Xbox 360.

The folks from Cryptic Studios will just have to pardon (or ignore) me if I'm wrong, but this sounds an awful lot like the Marvel MMO that was confirmed as cancelled just a couple of days ago. They may have lost Microsoft's support, but the makers of City of Heroes / City of Villains are still determined to waste our time with another superhero MMO game of super-dubious quality - renamed called Champions Online. Game Informer will have the first look at the game in their March issue, and they say it's coming on PC and consoles. That doesn't really fill you with hardcorish feelings, now does it?

Well, gank me silly and call me a gnome! Plans for some kind of World of Warcraft mobile functionality really are underway over at Blizzard. Mind you, the idea of an actual WoW MMO on cell phones still sounds just as ludicrous as before, but that's not what they're aiming for at all. In fact, they don't seem to be aiming for anything in particular right now, just idly fiddling with a small team of mobile developers, to see what they can come up with. That, according to Blizzard co-founder Frank Pearce, quoted in an MTV article yesterday:

"We want to look at the mobile devices as something we can use to enhance the experience of our existing games. So we're going to have to look at ways to use the mobile device to enhance their 'World of Warcraft' experience. We'll see what kind of applications we can come up with.

(...) So as an example, one thing I think would be really cool - and whether we're going to be able to do this, I don't know, but it would be really cool - is if we could have a client on your mobile device like [Google Chat] that hooks you into your guild chat in the game. That would be really cool. Or the ability to view your in-game mail or view your in-game auctions. We probably wouldn't allow you to actually buy or sell via the mobile device, but you could certainly monitor."

If there's no hope for buying / selling at the Auction House, then seriously, what's the point?

- 4 years later... Final Fantasy XI product site launched. I bet you didn't see that one coming!

- Jack Keane demo unveils the first four levels of this allegedly funny adventure game by Ankh developer Deck13.

- PlayStation 3 sells 1 million units in UK, after 41 weeks on the market. That's 3 weeks longer that it took the Wii to reach the same figure there, and 9 weeks faster than the Xbox 360. Above average.

- Moroes' Lucky Pocket Watch just dropped for me in Kara. Upon closer inspection, I noticed it's time to call it a night.

Great week so far, with plenty of games revealed out of the blue, like Red Alert 3, a new KotOR RPG or, by the way, a new Lord of the Rings game in the works at Pandemic (probably something more action this time). And the list goes on, as we learn from Eurogamer, with some new titles included in Atari's quarterly earnings report. And then some!

First off, there's a new expansion planned for Obisdian's RPG sequel, Neverwinter Nights 2. The second add-on should be relased between this April and March 2009; or to narrow that down a bit, let's assume it comes out in October - one year after the first expansion Mask of the Betrayer (which in turn came out one year after the original NWN 2).

Also during the next fiscal year, Atari intends to release a certain PC, PS3 and Xbox 360 game called Airborne Rangers. Right, like the classic "action simulation" game by MicroProse. That was two decades ago, so I don't think anyone would mind a shiny remake, or something.

There are several other gamelings listed in Eurogamer's story which don't sound worthy of our time, and they say Atari also has one or two "hardcore" projects which were not mentioned in the report. All of these will start getting proper announcements in the weeks to come, the publisher promised. Great, that should give me plenty of time to forget about this, and fake getting excited all over again.

I'm sure this won't come as a surprise anymore, but Microsoft is full of bullshit. And especially the company's senior VP of Interactive Entertainment, Don Mattrick is (no wonder, he used to be president of EA after all). Speaking on the latest Major Nelson podcast, he outright proclaimed that Grand Theft Auto IV will have "downloadable content and online multiplayer support (...) unique to [the Xbox] 360". That doesn't leave much room for interpretation, if you ask me. It's like saying that GTA IV would not playable in online multiplayer on the PS3. Which, with the risk of repeating myself, is utter bullshit.

Responding on this matter to GI.biz, a Rockstar spokesperson clearly explained that "both versions will support online multiplayer capabilities". So there you go, put down that hammer and leave your poor PS3 live to see another day. Or even 75 days, until the April 29 release of Grand Theft Auto IV on the Xbox 360 and PS3 PS3 and Xbox 360.