It's been an interesting week for gaming news, all kinds of rumours and mysterious release dates near and far!

Mass Effect
Some fantastic new screen shots are available. There will also be a Mass Effect novel released next week... have any of you ever read a game based book before (Halo, WarCraft, etc)? The Mass Effect preview chapter was pretty cheesy Sci-Fi, but I'm on holidays that week so I'm liable to be unable to resist the temptation of purchasing something related to Mass Effect.

Halo 3
Not sure then the release date is ("when it's done!"), but there will be an update for the press in two weeks on May 11.

Project Offset
New screenshots that look fantastic. The Red 5 guys have licensed the Offset engine, I can't wait to see the results of either project!

More Bioware Goodness
There are rumours that Bioware's Austin studio are making an MMO based on the excellent Star Wars: Knights Of The Old Republic game.

Xbox 360 Elite
The new black 360s are almost available. I'm likely to pick to pick one up because of the increased drive capacity (120 GB) and the HDMI connectors. My HDTV has 2 component (Xbox, cable box), 1 VGA (Xbox 360) and 2 HDMI connectors (currently empty). With the elite, I'll be able to move the 360 to HDMI, the Xbox to VGA and free up a component input for the PS2. There are some partially confirmed rumors that you'll be able to trade up your old 360 for credit towards a new elite system.

J
Time to stop hiding in the corner: pick up an elite and get in the game!

I got a great demo of the 360 as media extender and live arcade from John today. Thinking about it... but will have to see if the new dashboard update brings divx/xvid support.

But does it really matter whether it has divx or whatever? You're missing out on the weekly Xbox nights which are a lot of fun...

Oh yeah and it plays great games... We actually didn't get around to a full gaming demo. I doubt that the update will play divx, but you never know. I'm pretty happy with my current transcoding solution BTW so it is less of an issue for me.

Here's the official procedure for upgrading to an elite.

StarCraft 2 announcement next month? Oh man, I spent a lot of time playing the original StarCraft... I can still remember the soundtrack.

Lets hope they fixed the path finding algorithms this time. Moving more than 5 units over complex terrain was akin to herding cats. More than half the time, stragglers from a large group that got bottlenecked would wander off in some completely random direction. Was still loads of fun, though.

StarCraft 2 has been officially announced.

After reading about Assassin's Creed and watching a few trailers, I think I'm more interested in this game than Mass Effect. I just hope the resolution of goals is truly open ended. I didn't like HitMan so much because there was usually only one way to kill your target and it took many tries to find the right path. Not fun.

I'm looking forward to AC as well, but I feel that fantasy based games are inherently more limited than sci-fi games... the universe of things you can do seems larger in Mass Effect (which is actually goin g to be a trilogy of games).

Gavin pointed me to this: http://media.xbox360.ign.com/media/902/902336/vids_1.html. The teaser looks cool, anyone know more about it?

It is supposed to be a big RTS designed specifically for next generation consoles. Apparently it is going to use speech recognition along with the controller to make up for the lack of a keyboard. There is talk of being playable online against lots of players.

Here is a quote from one of the Ubisoft guys: "A strategy game like no other, EndWar will allow gamers to lead their own armies against hundreds of others online in real global locations on the massive battlefields of World War III."

So now that you can access your PS3 files anywhere using a PSP, Sony needs to make a change. At the current PS3 price, they should bundle a PSP with every PS3.

Given their low sales, they should probably bundle a PS3 with each PSP.

Check out a behind the scenes look (~290 MB) for Fable 2 that includes some sweet in game footage.

Halo 3 Heroic Map Pack is now free. Get it on XBox Live. It was supposed to be available last night at 2AM, but I didn't see it then.

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