Yup, I’m totally doing this. I hate that I’m doing this, my stupid real life has been interfering with my fantasy game journalist life this past week, so I need to get caught up some how. Just click your links and be quiet!

Sledgehammer pounding out Call of Duty FPS [GameSpot]

Project Natal To Launch At $150? [GiantBomb]

Mass Effect: The Movie Is Really Happening [Kotaku]

Insomniac goes multiplatform with EA Partners [GameSpot]

New Splinter Cell forming at Ubisoft Toronto [GameSpot]

Wait, Really? Rock Band 3 To Support A Keytar? [GiantBomb]

Ico, Shadow of the Colossus HD Collection Rumored for Q1, 2011 [1UP]

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It’s that time of year again! Time for wildly speculative E3 rumors to pop up for weeks leading up to the show, with some sure to be true and others to fade into oblivion. I always feel bad about reporting on news that isn’t actually news, like when a Swedish retailer listed Microsoft’s Project Natal at a $200 price point before Microsoft quickly shot the rumor down without providing any information of their own. Common sense would indicate that Natal will be cheaper than that, but there’s no real way to know until this June, when E3 will inevitably unveil everything we need to know about Microsoft’s motion controller. My uninformed predictions? The name will be changed to a catchy, one syllable word and it will sell for around $85. I also think they’ll be revealing a Slim model of the 360 that will come with Natal packed in for $300.

In more wild and unconfirmed gossip, Sony might be taking the wraps off a premium version of the PlayStation Network at E3. This alleged upgrade would apparently go for about $70 a year and offer more content than the free PSN, such as one free PSN game a month. Unless Sony cuts online multiplayer from the standard PSN, I don’t really see many people ponying up $70 for some free crap. And if they do tear online multiplayer away from gamers this deep into the console generation, then PR is going to have to do some major damage control. As always, wait for more word at E3.

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Now I’m putting that video up there just because I want you to see how sketchy of a source this is, but that doesn’t stop this leak from being potentially true. GameSpot is reporting that in an interview on Saudi Arabian state television’s Channel 2, the marketing manager of Microsoft Saudi’s Entertainment and Devices division, Syed Bilal Tariq, let the motion controller’s release window slip.

“Project Natal will be launched in Saudi Arabia on the same date it will be launched in the world,” said Tariq. “That is going to be somewhere in October. We will be in a position to confirm the date after E3, which is in June. But definitely the date is going to be in October 2010.”

U.S. Microsoft representatives neither confirmed nor denied the leak, only saying, “As we confirmed earlier this year, Project Natal will launch this holiday. We have no further details to share at this time.” So yeah…I’d bet on seeing Natal come October. I wouldn’t be completely surprised to see a Slim version of the 360 along with it. Microsoft has repeatedly stated that they’re treating Natal as a new console launch, so I would expect no less. Hopefully we’ll get a look at some actual games for the hardware this E3.

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Sounds like they have some cool ideas for the game, even if they are French. What’s also interesting are rumors that Future Soldier will support Microsoft’s upcoming Natal hardware. If JeuxVideo’s anonymous sources are to be trusted, then the game could allow the player to keep one hand on the 360 controller while giving motion-based orders with the other hand. The feature is said to be optional, but it definitely could add another layer of immersion if done correctly.

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Well, more accurately, they want the money you’ll spend on it. But regardless, they’ve narrowed down that money-gathering time frame to “holiday 2010.” And you should probably read this preview, as it explains all the awesome new things Fable III will be doing. Awesome, awesome things…

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That there image you see above you, that’s a screen-shot from Infinity Ward’s increasingly controversial Modern Warfare 2, courtesy of 1UP. Now in case you can’t quite read those tiny letters, I’ll go ahead and quote the message for you. “This multiplayer session requires that you be in the game chat channel. If you don’t switch, you can’t play. Switch to the game chat channel now?”

What does this mean? This means that at least in select game types, private chats will not be available to Modern Warfare 2 users. Obviously it’s a measure to combat cheaters who exploit private chats to pass on information that they shouldn’t be passing on, but let’s think about this for a minute. No dedicated servers? I can live with that, although I do feel the PC market’s pain. Needlessly wasting resources on a crappy third-person mode? Whatever. But forcing me to associate with random assholes I don’t know when I just want to enjoy some Team Deathmatch with my friends? Now you’re crossing a line. I’m still going to get the game for a single-player campaign that’s sure to be fantastic, but I can tell you right now that I will not be playing much multiplayer if I have to listen to every douche bag 14-year-old on Xbox Live. Really stupid-ass move here, IW.

And in news that could either be just as upsetting or brighten your day depending on personal preference, Rare recently said that they’re working on a Natal-centric FPS.

As part of a feature on the first-person shooter, Rare’s Mark Betteridge told MCV that the company’s “sights are trained on Natal.” Betteridge went on to call Microsoft’s multi-tasking control interface “a great opportunity to break new ground with content and gameplay…[Project Natal is] also an opportunity to exercise some genre evolution, so hopefully we’ll be able to develop something on that front.”

It’s no secret that Rare is set to be one of Microsoft’s poster boys for Natal, and the developer does have a history of awesome FPSs (although we haven’t seen much of that in the past ten years), so I’d at least color myself interested. The obvious assumption is that this Natal FPS will be a continuation of the Perfect Dark franchise, given the company’s moderate success with the launch title Perfect Dark Zero and persisting rumors of an additional Perfect Dark project on the docket, the other being the XBLA remake of the original. With Natal likely launching in Fall 2010 and Rare’s last game (Viva Pinata: Trouble in Paradise) coming out in 2008, it doesn’t seem like much of a stretch for a new Perfect Dark to hit stores congruently with Natal. Here’s to hoping as genre-changing as Rare wants it to be.

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Oh, that Stephen, what a handful.

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News Links

Xbox 720 coming in 2010?

Mirror’s Edge 2 Confirmed

Battlefield 3 Confirmed

Metal Gear Rising Getting a Brand New Engine

iPhone Gaming

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Coming to a home near you in 2010?

So we haven’t really posted all that much this week because the news has been kind of slow. I’m still having trouble determining if it’s really been slow or if it just seems that way after E3 chewed me up and spit me out. But anyways, there have been a few interesting rumors I thought I’d share with every one.

The juiciest rumor of the week comes from 1UP, who are reporting that Microsoft executive Shane Kim may have been hinting at something bigger when he said that Project Natal’s launch will be as big as a console launch. Exactly what Kim was hinting at is rumored to be a brand new Xbox that comes standard with Natal. The console could even drop the “360″ name for the decidedly horrid sounding “Xbox Natal”.

The Natal camera will still work with every Xbox 360, just as Microsoft has been stating, but the new “Xbox Natal” would feature slightly improved hardware that would allow for better graphics, frame rate, and general performance. All 360 games would still be playable on it, but developers could take advantage of the added horsepower in the Natal system and relegate regular 360 gamers to inferior settings, not unlike the PC market of today. The new system would really be more of an evolution of the Xbox 360 than a whole new console.

Now let’s remember that this is all just rumor and hearsay, and then let’s hope it stays that way. The very reason why I’m a console gamer and not a PC gamer is because I know I won’t have to upgrade my hardware every couple of years to get the best gaming experience. It would be a horrible move on Microsoft’s part to split their console market like that. And thinking from Microsoft’s perspective, I can understand why they’d want to launch a Natal focused Xbox, but why the hardware revision? They’ve stated that their market for Natal is people who’ve never owned a video game console, so obviously it’s a good idea to offer a SKU that comes with Natal packed in, but brand new hardware is probably going to cost about as much as brand new hardware. Are total non-gamers really willing to spend upwards of $400 for “Xbox Natal” when they could just get a Wii for $250, or more likely $200 by the time this system would launch? If Microsoft thinks they call sell this thing for anything more than $300 then they’ve already lost the battle.

This one is less of a rumor and more of a case of a company executive confirming a game’s existence before he probably should have. But for fans of 2008′s Mirror’s Edge, Senior VP of EA in Europe Patrick Soderlund has some good news. “You will see another Mirror’s Edge for sure. It’s just a matter of when that time is and what we do with it. We have a small team on it and I’m excited about what we do.”

Considering the game’s underwhelming sales and tepid reviews, a sequel wasn’t exactly a given. But EA appears committed to building the franchise. “Mirror’s Edge was a risky move. It was a bold move, a very innovative and inspiring move,” Soderlund said.

It’s good to know that Mirror’s Edge 2 is in the works and that EA understands that the first one “wasn’t perfect by any means.” I thought the game showed a lot of promise and looked very fresh and new at the time, but it just wasn’t put together well enough to warrant a purchase. Hopefully the sequel will rectify that. But given that there’s only a “small team” currently working on it, it’s likely that we won’t be hearing anything on this title for a while.

And lastly there’s the confirmation of Battlefield 3, the first direct iteration of the Battlefield franchise since 2005′s critically praised Battlefield 2: Modern Combat. EA COO John Pleasants revealed that DICE is hard at work on the title which is expected sometime in EA’s next fiscal year (April 10th, 2010 – March 31st, 2011).

While the game’s setting or theme were not explicitly stated, Pleasants did say that “We have a lot of IP in that [shooter] area, and we have not not noticed that Call of Duty has a significant share of that business.” With Modern Warfare 2 looming, it seems safe to assume that Battlefield 3 will focus on modern combat yet again, which is good news considering how bad Battlefield 2142 was.

Overall, this is great news. The Battlefield series has always set standards for military FPSs and the heavy emphasis on vehicular combat is something that the Call of Duty games never followed through on. But with that said, I do feel like the Bad Company spin-offs are a better direction for the series. Give me a game with personality over a generic military shooter any day.

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Regardless of your opinion of Mr. Fallon, you certainly can’t deny that he’s made good on his promise to showcase video games on his show. The most recent example of this occurred just the other night, when Kudo Tsunoda was kind enough to give a live demo of Natal in Fallon’s studio. Kudo is wearing sun glasses as always, and Jimmy is way too excited, as always. What’s of interest to you, fine reader, is that they showed off the version of Burnout Paradise that utilizes Natal, which was only seen behind closed doors at E3. It seems to work pretty well, although I feel like no controller would be more confusing to non-gamers than specialty steering wheel controllers. Also, for some reason everybody’s wearing bright red jump suits. Hope that’s not an indication that this thing will only work properly under the blazing lights of E3. But anyways, this certainly seems like a head start on Microsoft’s plan to make Natal’s launch as big as the 360′s.

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