It has appeared that info on the upcoming Prince of Persia has been released, and Ubisoft weren’t joking about them leading the franchise in new directions. It seams that they have dumped the Prince and the sands of time for starters. The game is made my Ubisoft Montreal, so it is the same hands as the first three games. They are also using the engine used for Assassins Creeds, but the team want the style to be “fantasy, but credible” like those found in the new Street Fighter or classic animated film like Princess Mononoke.” And as for the story, You’re thrown into a conflict between two gods: Ormazd and Ahriman, light and darkness respectively. Ahriman has released a plague on mankind or something like that, so you decide to meddle in this war and stop it. This game is set to be non-liner, unlike the others. I’m not too sure what to make of this, but I’m sure they can pull it off. If you want more info, pick up Edge on Thursday, as it has more info on this. 

The Wii has gone through a number of ports since its release, even one developed by Nintendo themselves (Twilight Princess.) However, one port you can expect never to appear in the future on Wii is the next-gen Prince of Persia.

“We ported Two Thrones to the Wii. It was a quick and dirty port, I can say. With that we saw a lot of potential. The controls were not fully optimized, did not take full advantage of the Wii, but a lot of people saw the POP universe could certainly have a home on Wii. Since then people have been looking into that, but there’s no formal announcement. We are investigating it very seriously. You would never see a port of the game we’re making however. That’ll never happen.”

Although I’m pleased that Wii owners will not have to sit through another lacking port, it’s impossible to say what can happen in the future. Publishers/developers have previously promised certain games to be exclusive to Wii, yet they’ve ended up on other systems. So, it does seem plausible that the same could happen with a Price of Persia port.

Those who are familiar with the Half Life series will know that there’s something not quite right with the G Man. And now we’ve finally found out what:

According to a report in the Economic Daily News, Asus’ Pegatron Technology has secured a deal from Microsoft to assemble Xbox 360 systems with a built-in Blu-ray Disc (BD)-ROM drive. Furthermore, the newspaper even claims that these new systems will begin shipping in the third quarter of 2008.

Not so long ago, there were reports claiming that Lite-On will manufacture a Blu-ray Disc drive for the Xbox 360, but Microsoft quickly denied such rumours, therefore it’s highly unlikely that this is true.

Writing in the Sun, British car show presenter Jeremy Clarkson (Top Gear) has said that playing Grand Theft Auto didn’t make him feel violent.

“This week the latest version of video game Grand Theft Auto hit the shelves — and pretty soon it will be cited as the reason why people feel compelled to lock their children in cellars, why Israel cannot find peace with the Palestinians and why everyone in Britain has been stabbed.”

“It was annoying. Not dangerous.”

At least Jeremy is trying to clear up that video games have no impact on a person’s decision to commit crime, if only the rest of the media thought this way.

E3 is just around the corner and people are eager to know what news will be released, here is a list of the companies that will be attending, so it looks like we will be hearing from them. Strangely, it appears that Activision will not be attending the high profile event, although the company has confirmed that a special event of its own which will be taking place during the E3 time frame.
Here is the list of those attending:

Unsurprisingly, Grand Theft Auto IV debuts on number one on both the Xbox 360 and PS3 charts, on it’s first week of sales according to Amazon. Also we see Mario Kart Wii debuts on number one in the Wii chart. Assassins Creed: Directors Cut Edition hits the PC top spot. Mario Kart DS returns high on the DS chart after renewed interest in the franchise. And lastly Pro Evolution Soccer 2008 gets first place on the PSP list.
The charts are as follows:

After weeks of mediocre European PSN updates, it’s about time we got something good. And we have, in a double dose of updates. This double update is due to Playstation Day. This is a press event only and will be held in London on the 6th of May. It will be hosted by hosted by Kaz Hirai and David Reeves. No doubt we will be seeing some big announcements. Hopefully a solid release date for the Home public beta. This press conference will be downloadable on the second day of updates. These updates will be on Tuesday and Thursday next week. List of things being added after the jump.

With the release of Grand Theft Auto IV this week, it was pretty obvious that the news would be all over it. And, well the American news station CNN has gone ape shit about it. The say ‘We are training our kids to be killers’, and many other things. But they always fail to mention that most of the things you can do are completely optional. They also got good old JT on the show. View video clips of the piece after the jump.

Until recently all items within the Mario Kart series have been designed to help you progress within tense races. And any form of hindrance to your race was left down to human error and other players using the same weapons on you.

Thanks to Mario Kart Wii, the above is not entirely true any more since someone thought it would be a great idea to introduce the Thundercloud item. While it may have been an awesome idea at the brainstorming sessions at Nintendo HQ, in reality it’s probably induced more cursing from gamers than any weapon since the blue shell was introduced in Mario Kart 64.