I would prefer to see gameplay, but hopefully the upcoming Brink from Quake Wars developer Splash Damage will deliver a multiplayer experience as diverse and exciting as what's on display in this latest cinematic trailer.

While it is not one of my rare must-haves, Brink is one of those games that I am intensely curious about, and am crossing my fingers that it will deliver the goods and live up to its potential. Of particular interest to me is the game's complete merging of single-player and multiplayer experiences: whether you are playing by yourself or with a full party, the game plays exactly the same. Rather than having a single-player campaign and a separate multiplayer mode, Brink is designed with a consistent structure that doesn't change because it's being played by more than one person. It's an interesting premise, to say the least.

For the first time since 2007, the Xbox 360 came out victorious against the Wii. The last time that happened, a little game called Halo 3 was releasing. Seems like the Xbox 360 could have had a sales boost due to the release of Bioshock 2, which came in number one on the software top ten list. Overall though, retail sales in the U.S. video game market are down 15 percent, falling to $1.26 billion from $1.48 billion.

"Sales came in slightly better than we anticipated (privately, we were forecasting down -19 percent)," says EEDAR analyst Jesse Divnich. Divnich also noted that Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 hardware sales exceeded expectations. "Of course, stronger hardware numbers do influence software numbers as PS3 and Xbox 360 hardware purchasers typically purchase at least 1 software SKU attachment," he added.

While the Xbox 360 version of Bioshock 2 topped the software list, the PS3 version was nowhere to be seen. It was not all bad news for the PS3 though. PS3 exclusive Heavy Rain came in at number ten on the list, selling 219,000 copies in five days. We will see if the momentum keeps rolling for Quantic Dream's latest. And in another small victory, the PS3 version of Dante's Inferno outsold the Xbox 360 version 242,000 copies to 225,000.

Continue reading after the break for the complete rundown of hardware sales as well as the top ten list for software.

Sony was kind enough to give an official name to its motion controller during its GDC event yesterday. The motion controller, which is set to release in the fall, will now be known as the PlayStation Move.

Sony is planning an "aggressive" marketing campaign and will ship the PlayStation Move in several bundles. You will be able to pick up the Move solo, bundled with a PS3 or in a starter kit which includes the Move, a PlayStation Eye camera (required to use the Move) and a currently unnamed game for under $100.

Socom 4 (funny how Socom: Confrontation doesn't count), LittleBigPlanet and EyePet were all demoed with the Move. Sony also announced that "in fiscal year 2010, SCE Worldwide Studios will also release more than 20 games that are either dedicated to or supported with the PlayStation Move platform."

Continue reading after the break for some pics of the PlayStation Move in all its glory. Does Sony have it in them to continually support a peripheral? Time will tell.

After taking a year off to create The Beatles: Rock Band, Harmonix is back to focusing on the next evolution of the Rock Band series. Today they announced (via their Facebook page) that Rock Band 3 is in development and that we should be able to play it this Fall.

"Harmonix is developing Rock Band 3 for worldwide release this holiday season! The game, which will be published by MTV Games and distributed by Electronic Arts, will innovate and revolutionize the music genre once again, just as Harmonix did with the original Rock Band, Rock Band 2 and The Beatles: Rock Band. Stay tuned for more details!"

Rock Band 3 will be the second Rock Band game released this year. Green Day: Rockband will be releasing in the Summer with the option of importing the songs into your overall Rock Band music library. Seems like a no-brainer that Harmonix will let you import all your Rock Band 2 tracks (for a small fee of course) once Rock Band 3 is released. We will update you when more information is announced on this.

The Beatles: Rock Band added three-part vocal harmonies to the mix. What kind of direction do you feel the series should take now? What improvements would make Rock Band 3 a day one purchase for you? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.

Move over Billy Mitchell and Steve Weiebe - there's a new king in town. According to record-keeping organization Twin Galaxies, newcomer Hank Chien has taken the Donkey Kong world record with a new high score of 1,061,700. The record was set during a 2 hour and 35 minute play session at an arcade cabinet in New York.

"I remember the exact day I knew I could get the world record: September 13, 2009," Chien said in an interview with Twin Galaxies. "That was the day I first broke a million on Donkey Kong to reach 1,037,700. I didn't even realize how close I was to the world record. I was going on a business trip that day and had a flight to catch, but I had about two hours to kill and figured I had enough time for one game. So I fired up my Donkey Kong machine - I wasn't recording of course - and on my first game, boom! Too bad getting 1,000,000 takes about 2 1/2 hours. Still, I caught my flight without getting any speeding tickets, but I realized I couldn't speed and text."

Chien says that he started playing the game after seeing the popular documentary The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters. That documentary ended with Weibe overtaking then record-holder Mitchell. Mitchell then took the record back with a score of 1,050,200 which stood for three years until Chien showed up on the scene.

<via 1UP>

Did you really think you could escape from Lady Gaga? Not content with her songs taking over pop radio, she is now coming to conquer the Rock Band universe. Harmonix and MTV Games announced today that a four-pack of the pop diva's songs will be added next week to the Rock Band Music Store of downloadable content for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and Wii.

"Lady Gaga Pack 01" will include "Bad Romance," "Just Dance," "Monster" and "Poker Face" for $6.99 over PSN and 560 points over XBLA. You can also purchase individual tracks for $1.99 (160 points) or 200 Wii Points. Additionally, a special version of Lady Gaga's "Poker Face," made famous by South Park's Eric Cartman, will also be available in the Rock Band Music Store next week.

So we all know what this means right? You need to keep your girlfriends and wives away from your consoles next week. This is not a drill. Bad, bad things could happen...

Valve announced today it will bring Steam, Valve's gaming service, and Source, Valve's gaming engine, to the Mac. Steam and Valve's library of games including Left 4 Dead 2, Team Fortress 2, Counter-Strike, Portal, and the Half-Life series will be available in April. Portal 2 will be Valve's first simultaneous release for both Windows and Mac.

"Our Steam partners, who are delivering over a thousand games to 25 million Steam clients, are very excited about adding support for the Mac," said Jason Holtman, Director of Business Development at Valve. "Steamworks for the Mac supports all of the Steamworks APIs, and we have added a new feature, called Steam Play, which allows customers who purchase the product for the Mac or Windows to play on the other platform free of charge. For example, Steam Play, in combination with the Steam Cloud, allows a gamer playing on their work PC to go home and pick up playing the same game at the same point on their home Mac. We expect most developers and publishers to take advantage of Steam Play."

"We looked at a variety of methods to get our games onto the Mac and in the end decided to go with native versions rather than emulation," said John Cook, Director of Steam Development. "The inclusion of WebKit into Steam, and of OpenGL into Source gives us a lot of flexibility in how we move these technologies forward. We are treating the Mac as a tier-1 platform so all of our future games will release simultaneously on Windows, Mac, and the Xbox 360. Updates for the Mac will be available simultaneously with the Windows updates. Furthermore, Mac and Windows players will be part of the same multiplayer universe, sharing servers, lobbies, and so forth. We fully support a heterogeneous mix of servers and clients. The first Mac Steam client will be the new generation currently in beta testing on Windows."

This is great, great news for Mac users. Any Mac users excited about this news? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.

What would the launch of a new Battlefield game be without server issues? They seem to go hand in hand. Many players (myself included) hoping to hop in over the weekend and take Battlefield: Bad Company 2 for a test spin, had to deal with occasional server shutdowns - the latest taking place this morning at 9:30 AM PST. DICE has released an update on these server issues via the official Battlefield blog.

"All teams are actively engaged in diagnosis and remediation. We are adding additional services to alleviate load. Despite having a major infrastructure in place, the peak traffic this weekend has been huge, 400% higher than any other Battlefield's peak simultaneous users. The teams will continue to monitor the services closely. We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience and will provide further updates on the latest developments as they are relevant."

The Xbox 360 and PC communities seem to have been the most severely impacted. The service is being restarted for both while they are closely monitored. The PS3 experienced a "brief outage, but has quickly recovered and the service is functioning properly at this time."

Such a shame. A series that focuses on multiplayer as its main component and this always seems to happen. It took a couple days for Battlefield 1943 to function properly when it was released over XBLA and PSN this past summer. Hopefully we will see a quick turnaround this time also. There are soldiers down that need my excellent medic skills. If only I could get to them...

Seems one of the more hit and miss titles of 2009 is getting a sequel. The latest issue of Nintendo Power has announced that there will indeed be a Scribblenauts 2 released this year for the DS. The sequel promises to add 10,000 more words, 120 new and improved levels, the removal of the par system and improved controls (thank God!).

Now everyone knows that the original Scribblenauts had loads of potential. Many feel the controls got in the way of the world the game was attempting to create. If developer 5th Cell can get the controls down, then I am all aboard for another Scribblenauts. What do you guys think? Leave us your thoughts in the comments below.

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Microsoft has replaced the previously bundled LEGO Batman and Pure with a couple different games for their new Xbox 360 Elite Spring 2010 Bundle. And to say that it is an upgrade would be sort of an understatement. Starting next week, you can pick up an Xbox 360 Elite bundled with copies of Microsoft exclusives Forza 3 and Halo 3: ODST.

Amazon has these new bundles available for pre-order at $299.99. It will be launching the same day as the $399.99 Final Fantasy XIII "super-elite" bundle. The Halo 3: ODST/Forza 3 bundle will include a 120 GB hard drive. The Final Fantasy XIII bundle will include a 250 GB hard drive as well as an additional wireless controller.

Perfect timing on Microsoft's part to get Halo 3: ODST in as many players' hands as possible. This is just in time for the beginning of the Halo: Reach beta which begins May 3rd.

You may have heard a story last year about a female Xbox Live member who was banned from the service after identifying herself as a lesbian in her gamer profile. Apparently, some gamers found her honesty offensive, and Microsoft couldn't allow that. At the time, Microsoft defended its disregard for freedom of speech as a part of its policy that forbids profiles disclosing any details regarding sexual orientation.

Now, over a year later, it looks like Microsoft is finally ready to embrace diversity. According to Xbox Live general manager Marc Whitten, a new policy now allows gamers to freely disclose their race, nationality, religion, and sexual orientation in their profiles.

"Under our previous policy, some of these expressions of self identification were not allowed in Gamertags or profiles to prevent the use of these terms as insults or slurs," said Whitten. "However we have since heard feedback from our customers that while the spirit of this approach was genuine, it inadvertently excluded a part of our Xbox LIVE community."

So basically what he's telling us is that the old policy was intended to protect people from questionable content because they assumed it was harmful rather than truthful. Now they're saying it's okay to be honest. Took them long enough.

The time to bust out that companion cube Halloween outfit for celebration is upon us. We can now officially confirm that Portal 2 will indeed be available this holiday season. Valve was nice enough to send us a press release with that tidbit of news (and little else). No story hints, no screen shots, no SKUs -- just confirmation that Portal 2 is being worked on. With Valve though, little else is needed. But lucky for us, GameInformer Magazine also revealed its April Cover today. Would you look at that: some Portal 2 goodness.

Twelve pages will be dedicated to the sequel in the magazine's April issue. They promise to shed some light on new gameplay mechanics, new storylines and new twists. They also refer to Portal 2 as a "full-fledged, standalone sequel," implying a meatier campaign. Does this mean no The Orange Box 2? Probably, but Half-Life 2: Episode 3 is pretty much still a thing of myth at this point. But one can still dream....

Tomonobu Itagaki is back. Andriasang reported yesterday that the game designer as famous for his games as he is for his ego has settled his legal disputes with former employer Tecmo over unpaid royalties and is now ready to get back to work at the newly-formed Valhalla Studios.

In a two-page interview with seminal Japanese gaming magazine Famitsu, the former Team Ninja leader has been rechristened Valhalla's chief technical officer, or CTO. He also confirmed that he is currently working on a new game, but remained exceptionally cagey about the project.

"At this stage, I cannot say," Itagaki said when asked for specifics. "However, I believe the game I'm working on now will be a little bit like nothing anyone has ever seen." Beyond this, he wouldn't even say who the game's target audience is: "If you ask who I've been developing for, it's for Earthlings."

Despite Itagaki's outspoken support for the Xbox and Xbox 360 in the past, he didn't even say what platform he was developing the new game for. "There could new hardware released in the future. Also, not just consoles -- I am interested in PCs," he said, displaying a substantial shift in his previous outlook.

But while Itagaki wouldn't open up about what the game is, he did say some things about what it probably is not. Displaying his characteristic confidence, Itagaki implied that the new game is probably not of the fighting variety. "At my previous company, I made the best fighting game in the world, Dead or Alive. Fighting games have once again reached a dead end, although to be honest, if there was no Dead or Alive, fighting games would have ended a long time ago," he said.

Now that's the Tomonobu Itagaki I know.