Erik J writes "In a fairly bold (and quite possibly stupid) move, the Sci-Fi Channel has announced plans to use missions and campaigns of players in their own developed MMO to shape and guide a new 'ongoing' television show. They hope to have the project up and ready to air by 2010, as they work with game developer Trion World Network to create 'the ultimate merging of the TV and gaming mediums.'"

Ant writes "GamePro.com says the path to Wii Fit's success was paved with a slew of failed foot-based controllers. Here are seven particularly awful ones that are currently collecting dust in the attics of gamers worldwide."

Erik J writes "Remember about six weeks ago when Motley Crue and Rock Band partnered to release a new single premiering first in the game before anywhere else? Come to find out their song 'Saints of Los Angeles' was downloaded over 47,000 times on the Xbox version alone, beating out digital services iTunes and Amazon, which were tapped only 10,000 times for the single."

Next Gen recently had a chance to sit down with Ubisoft and discuss the next addition to the Prince of Persia franchise. The team is excited that this isn't just another tired rehash of the same characters and setting, however, promising a new prince and open world adventuring on top of the already rich world of the previous games. "'We had a whole story with the previous trilogy, and Prince of Persia is a general universe where several different stories can unfold,' [creative director Jean-Christophe] explains. 'We're starting afresh, in the same universe, and we wanted to bring something new while keeping what worked before. We introduce a new Prince, who won't start as a prince, more a drifter and adventurer, lost in the desert. He'll be confronted by a lot of fantasy settings, as opposed to Assassin's Creed, which was more realistic. Here he will come to a land and be engulfed in the conflict between two ancient gods, in this very specific region of Persia. It's based on an old Persian religion, Zoroastrianism, and the battle between light and darkness.'"

Erik J tips us to news of Valve's announcement that their content distribution system, Steam, will receive an update "in the near future" called Steam Cloud. The new service will allow users to save games and configuration settings online. According to MaximumPC: "This system will be completely transparent to the user. The files cache locally, and will upload when Steam detects an internet connection. There will be no restrictions on users - no save quotas or file management - the system will 'just work.' Any Steamwork game will be able to support these features, and it'll be free for customers and developers."

longacre writes "With the gaming industry now spending more to develop user interfaces than the Pentagon, the Army has begun putting all that R&D to good use in weaponry and training. Reversing the traditional role of games attempting to simulate real life killing machines, it is now the weapons makers using gaming technology to make their products more effective. Popular Mechanics notes, 'Already, [Mark Bigham, director of business development for Raytheon Tactical Intelligence Systems] says that Raytheon has been experimenting with Wii controllers to explore the possibilities for training simulators and other applications that require physical movement. Just think, one day, the R&D that Nintendo put into Wii bowling could end up influencing basic training.'"

NASA MMO Team writes "Due to the additional time required to respond to the number of questions that were raised during the NASA Massively Multiplayer Online Educational Game RFP Briefing held on April 21, 2008 in Baltimore, MD, we have decided to extend the RFP Proposal response date to Monday, July 21, 2008 at 12:00 midnight EDT. ... Please contact the NASA Learning Technologies Project Office at mmo@nasa.gov with any additional questions." (NASA has set up a site with additional information on the NASA MMO Education Game project, too.)

Kotaku is just one of many to have captured a recent showcase of Guitar Hero World Tour by Activision's CEO, Bobby Kotick. They have a nice video highlighting gameplay on the fancy new drumset. Looks like Guitar Hero is really turning up the heat in the ongoing war with Rock Band for dominance.

GameTap has announced that it will be giving their editorial section the axe and concentrating solely on the distribution business. "We have had a lot of successes over the last year and the move to the web has been a good one for us. While we have been very happy with the work done by our editorial and video teams, we've made a decision to focus the business on our biggest strength, which is our game catalog. As a result, we will be restructuring the site to focus exclusively on gameplay."

Kotaku has a bunch of screenshots of the new Tecmo Bowl game for the Nintendo DS. Purists shouldn't be disappointed with this game, as it seems (relatively) true to form. The main departure that seems to be drawing the ire of play testers is the absence of Bo. I guess he doesn't know football after all.

BigDownload.com has a great interview with Jeff Hickman, Senior Producer for Warhammer online, that offers a great preview of many of the game's features. The interview spends quite a bit of time discussing the "RvR" (Realm vs. Realm) style of gameplay and what that will mean for players. "We generally start everything in our game with a thought toward PvP. PvP isn't the first thing we think of, but it's one of the first things. We think of Warhammer Online as a PvP game that also has monster and PvE content. So, when we balance our careers, we balance the content around player verses player, not fighting monsters. We balance the classes against each other. Then, instead of balancing those classes against the monsters, we balance the monsters against the classes. Our philosophy is to make the best PvP game in the world and build the PvE content around it. We know how much damage each class can do and take, plus all the utility each class can provide. So, instead of balancing each ability, we just need to modify the overall damage output and absorption of each career."

Gamespot is one of many to report that Ubisoft has announced a sequel to their action-adventure game "Beyond Good & Evil." "The teaser gave no details as to platforms or release date. However, as part of the company's earnings report last week, Ubisoft did say that it had a pair of unannounced sequels in existing franchises set for release by the end of March. Released in November of 2003, Beyond Good & Evil won critical acclaim for its mix of traditional action adventure elements with stealth segments, a picture-taking gameplay mechanic, and an engaging story of a young woman pulled into a rebel faction to blow the lid off of an interstellar government conspiracy. "

TazedSoul writes "During Ubidays 2008, Ubisoft revealed that its upcoming snowboarding title, Shaun White Snowboarding, will be coming to Nintendo Wii. More exciting, the publisher revealed that the game will support Nintendo's Wii Balance Board. Although members of the press were not allowed to play the game at the event, an Ubisoft representative was on hand to demo the setup. The game is played with both the Balance Board and Wii-mote, using the latter to control tricks." Update: 05/28 19:26 GMT by T : Erik Johnson writes with word that Ubisoft's Raving Rabbids TV Party will also use the Balance Board (for the Wii version, of course).

Many different sources are reporting that the new Street Fighter game will be hitting the PS3, XBox 360, and PC but not the Wii. "Expected to release this fiscal year and now confirmed for PS3, 360 and PC, the next iteration of the genre-establishing fighting series renders characters and environments in stylized 3D, while the game plays in the classic Street Fighter 2D perspective 'with additional 3D camera flourishes'. Street Fighter IV will include the original cast of Street Fighter II along with new brawlers including female super-spy Crimson Viper, lucha libre wrestler El Fuerte and mixed martial artist Abel."

Pirates of the Burning Sea is soon to see a new epic mission, and creator Flying Lab would like you to come visit them to help test it out. The only requirements appear to be the ability to get to their Seattle-based studio on May 29th, June 2nd, or June 6th and already be in possession of a level 50 character. Interested players are being asked to email the usability lab and volunteer for a session.

Itninja writes "A few days ago Consumer Reports posted their first report on a specific video game: Wii Fit. From the article: 'Our testers ranged in age from 24 to 69 and included 10 women and five men. Users ran the gamut from regular exercisers to mostly sedentary folks.' Will this be a harbinger of things to come? Will CR be reviewing the next installment of Gran Turismo?"

Eleanor writes "Games for Change, the non-profit organization that promotes games which foster social awareness and/or activism, will host their fifth annual festival of the same name on June 2-4 in New York City. The festival, which will be hosted by Parsons The New School, features opening keynote speakers Henry Jenkins (MIT) and James Gee (Arizona State University), and the closing keynote is the Honorable Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, who is working on a project on the court system in conjunction with Dr. Gee."

OMGZombies writes "Speaking on a conference held yesterday in New York, the Atari founder Nolan Bushnell said that a new stealth encryption chip called TPM will 'absolutely stop piracy of gameplay'. The chip is apparently being embedded on most of the new computer motherboards and is said to be 'uncrackable by people on the internet and by giving away passwords' though it won't stop movie or music piracy, since 'if you can watch it and you can hear it, you can copy it.'"

marcan writes "The Homebrew Channel is a tool that can be installed on any Wii (no hardware mods required) that lets you run unsigned homebrew software from an SD card, or upload executables via WiFi or a USBGecko. We've tried to make it friendly for users with a simple GUI, and powerful for developers with direct upload features and reloading which we hope will make testing less painful. The channel can be installed using a DVD if you have a modchip, or using an exploit in Zelda: Twilight Princess which only requires an SD card (or any future hack or booting method). Once installed, it simply shows up as a Channel on the Wii Menu, just like any official channel. Hopefully, this and other recent developments (such as the upcoming devkitPPC r15 toolchain, much improved and with many bugs fixed) will help make the Wii an appealing platform for DIY software. And yes, it also runs Linux."

circletimessquare writes "The New York Times has a gushing portrait of Shigeru Miyamoto. His creative successes have spanned almost 30 years, from Donkey Kong, to Mario (as well known as Mickey Mouse around the world, the story notes), to Zelda, to the Wii, and now to Wii Fit — which according to some initial rumors is selling out across the globe in its debut. The article has some gems of insight into the man's thinking, including that his iconic characters are an afterthought. Gameplay comes first, and the characters are designed around that. Additionally, his fame and finances and ego are refreshingly modest for someone of his high regard and creative stature: 'despite being royalty at Nintendo and a cult figure, he almost comes across as just another salaryman (though a particularly creative and happy one) with a wife and two school-age children at home near Kyoto. He is not tabloid fodder, and he seems to maintain a relatively nondescript lifestyle.'"