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Title: Beijing 2008: The Official Video Game of the Olympic Games
Platforms: Xbox360, PLAYSTATION 3, PC
ESRB: E for Everyone
MSRP: Xbox 360: $49.99; PLAYSTATION 3: $49.99; PC: $29.99
Genre: Sports Simulation
Multiplayer: Online up to 4 players
Ship date: June 2008

The Olympic Games have the accolade of not just being the world’s most famous sporting event, but in 2008 have the privilege of being hosted by China – undoubtedly the most talked about emerging economic and political power in the world. With Beijing 2008: The Official Video Game of the Olympic Games (Beijing: 2008), SEGA will capture what makes the Olympic Games special by absorbing the cultural identity, and the athletic drama of the 2008 Olympic Games into the videogame. Beijing 2008 will feature uncanny realism with fully rendered models of the actual Olympic arenas where competitions take place as well as the surrounding cityscape of Beijing. Players will strive for national pride as 32 countries are represented in Beijing 2008 and over 35 different sporting events to participate in. For the first time ever in Olympics video game history, players will have the ability to compete against others online and compare scores on online leader boards; truly capturing the international competitive spirit of the Olympic Games.

Partial Feature List:

• Developed for all true next generation consoles
o PLAYSTATION 3
o Xbox 360
o PC

• 32 National Teams Represented

• Numerous disciplines including
o Athletics
o Gymnastics
o Shooting
o Aquatics
o Weightlifting
o Table Tennis
o Kayak
o Cycling
o Judo
o Archery

• 38 Events in total

• Over 1000 character models

• Play as male and female competitors

• Comprehensive Game Modes
o Training
o Competition
o Career

• Competitive online gameplay for all platforms
o Complete live against opponents from around the world
o Download & upload best times & scores
o Download & upload ghosts of your best performances
o Full online leader boards

• LAN (Local Area Network) support for PC version

Platforms: PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, Wii, PlayStation 2
Category: Action/Adventure
Developer: Sonic Team
Release: Holiday 2008
ESRB: Rating Pending

Overview
Sonic is on a race against time… as the sun sets, a new adventure awakens!

Sonic Unleashed will launch players on a revolutionary high-speed adventure through a world torn by chaos. Powered by the all-new “Hedgehog Engine,” Sonic Unleashed merges classic Sonic gameplay with the latest in next-generation innovation. It launches players on a journey across the globe and merges blistering 2D action with picturesque 3D environments. Sonic Unleashed delivers an expansive world with seamless 3D to 2D transitions and branching pathways, as well as dynamic viewpoints and a series of enhanced speed mechanics to help Sonic navigate the world.

With an exciting new storyline where day and night play drastically different roles, Sonic Unleashed will send Sonic on an unforgettable quest to save a dying world from the maniacal Dr. Eggman. Players find that Dr. Eggman continues on his mission for domination, but this time he’s upped the stakes by causing a catastrophic event that breaks apart the world and unleashes a slumbering beast that alters Sonic in unexpected ways. It is up to Sonic to use his newfound abilities to connect the remnants of a shattered world by finding the lost chaos emeralds. With the world divided and Sonic facing distinctly complex challenges, including new abilities and powers, the stage is set for a climactic battle for Sonic to save the world… and himself!

Key Features:

• Unleashed Engine: A suite of new technologies combine to form the new “Hedgehog Engine” unveiled in Sonic Unleashed. Under development for three years, delivers a revolutionary gameplay experience with realistic graphics and seamless transitions between 3D and classic 2D high-speed action.

• Unleashed Gameplay: With scorching 2D gameplay and cutting-edge 3D visuals, the latest Sonic adventure blends the very best of the franchise with a keen eye toward the future. Use a collection of all-new abilities and powers to navigate thrilling courses, while battling the minions of Dr. Eggman.

• Unleashed Speed: Avoid obstacles instantly using “Quick Step” without losing speed. Players can also use “Sonic Boost” and accelerate to supersonic speed by quickly collecting rings and increasing “Ring Energy” level. Finally, maintain the high-speed momentum through turns using “Speed Drift”. With more opportunities to maintain or increase speed, the player is challenged to compete with energy and fast-paced action!

• Unleashed Environments: The splintered world of Sonic Unleashed delivers a massive playground where players can choose an array of paths when jetting through each stage. Each unique route offers different encounters with varying rewards and obstacles.

Genre: Action-Fighting
Launch Date: Summer 2008
Developer: Treasure
Platform: DS
ESRB: Rating Pending

BLEACH: Dark Souls™ on the Nintendo DS™ brings an exclusive storyline, expanded cast of playable characters and fast multi-plane fighting action for up to four players via Wi-Fi. Players will also build a power-packed Spirit Card Deck and collect power crystals to augment their spirit card powers on the lower screen and dish out moves that will directly affect their opponent’s gameplay. With a burgeoning cast of 44 characters including the ability to play as Hollows, players can spend hours experiencing furious fighting gameplay and unlocking personal character stories all based on the series’ story arc.

BLEACH™ is a popular animated series on Cartoon Network. The series follows the life of a 15-year-old boy, Ichigo Kurosaki, who crosses paths with a Soul Reaper and becomes one. The franchise has established itself as a major anime series in Japan, and is now creating a stir in North America. The first season of the show was featured on Cartoon Network’s program, Adult Swim, and received solid ratings in America this past year. The series is poised for a successful second season that began March 2008.

KEY FEATURES:

• Exclusive Single-player Storyline. BLEACH: Dark Souls features an exclusive storyline that takes place in between seasons 1 and 2 of the animated series. Fans of the anime will have to play BLEACH: Dark Souls to uncover story plot points that are sure to shed new insight on Ichigo’s quest to save Rukia.

• Exciting Multiplayer fighting action. Up to four players will enjoy the fighting action via Wi-Fi connection. This game supports the Download Play feature where one player has a cartridge and transmits the game to another player’s Nintendo DS which allows them to play head-to-head.

• Variety of multi-plane 2D fighting arenas. Players can switch between the foreground and the background battlelines to chase after or escape from opponents.

• Large cast of popular characters. Players will select from 44 of their favorite characters who are all voiced by the actors from the anime series including the Hollows.

• Special attacks to master. Players can inflict massive damage on opponents with special Combos and Super Power Attacks taken directly from the series.

• Seven thrilling gameplay modes. Story, Arcade, Versus, Training and Challenge modes along with two unlockable modes which will provide hours of replayability and keep players coming back for more.

• 30 New Power-up Cards and Power Crystals to Customize Spirit Card Deck. On the lower screen, players can customize and manage their deck of Power-up Cards for boosts to Health, Attack and Defense, and much more.

• New BLEACH Encyclopedia. Contains fun and interesting facts about the entire BLEACH universe. Fans of the series are sure to use this as a reference for to expand their BLEACH knowledge.

Legend III Roc Mountain to Feature Never-Before-Seen Areas, Quests, Weapons, and More

SAN JOSE, Calif. – May 20, 2008
Joymax, an independent developer and publisher of interactive entertainment for the global market, today announced a new expansion for its massively popular free-to-play MMORPG, Silkroad Online. Entitled Legend III Roc Mountain, the expansion will give players access to a mountainous new area west of historical Karakoram, and promise high-altitude adventure amongst the desolate peaks and rocky terrain. Treacherous new monsters that call the forbidding mountain ranges home will challenge even the bravest and most seasoned of adventurers as they take on epic quests to obtain the most precious armor, weapons, and shields available in the magical world of Silkroad Online.

New features for Legend III Roc Mountain include:
• New area: Explore the elevated battlegrounds of Roc Mountain
• Increased level cap: Advance to level 90 to earn new items and skills
• High-level monsters: Clash with treacherous monsters including the mighty Shaitan, the reclusive shaman with deadly summoning abilities
• Ninth degree items: Obtain the full set of never-before-seen armor, shields, weapons, robes, and accessories
• Brand new quests: Take on new high-level quests such as “Sayun’s Quest” for a chance to earn items like “Spirit Fragment”
About Silkroad Online
Silkroad Online is a historical fantasy massively multiplayer online RPG that puts the player deep into ancient Chinese and European civilizations along the Silk Road trade route. Traveling across Jang’an, China to Constantinople, players can make their fortunes as merchants, prey on the rich as thieves, or be protection-for-hire as hunters. Silkroad Online is free to play, and offers the unique chance for players to develop their characters free of restrictions or fixed paths.
More information about Legend III: Roc Mountain and Silkroad Online is available at http://www.silkroadonline.net.

Pteroglider, a discontinued 2.5D space shooter from Codeminion is now available as a free download from the Casual Game Harmony blog.

May 20, 2008 – Maciej Biedrzycki, Codeminion co-owner and an author of the Casual Game Harmony weblog announced that Pteroglider, the company’s discontinued space shooter has been re-released as a freeware game. Soon after the game was originally launched in April 2004 it has been removed from the online stores due to Codeminion’s focus changing towards the casual games market. The unrestricted full version of the game can be downloaded from the Casual Games Harmony blog.

Full Version of Pteroglider can be obtained from:
http://codeminion.com/blogs/maciek/2008/05/pteroglider-full-version-free/

Lyon, France – May 20th 2008 – PathEngine announces release 5.16.00 of their pathfinding and agent movement SDK. This is yet another optimisation release, with big speedups in 3D content processing and tokenised loading as well as some core queries. And we’re also pleased to announce licensing to both Frogwares and NeoAct (Korea).

The PathEngine 3D content process is a completely automated process for the generation of ground meshes from arbitrary 3D source geometry. This release includes some very significant optimisations within this process, resulting in order of magnitude reductions in processing times for certain complex environments.

The processes involved in mesh loading and run-time partitioning generation have also been significantly optimised in this release, on top of the general improvements in tokenised loading in the previous release, and there are also big speedups in core point collision and ‘find closest unobstructed position’ queries.

More details about the full set of changes in this release can be found in our SDK changelog, on this page:
http://www.pathengine.com/changelog.htm

On the licensing side of things, new options include the possibility for inexpensive binary only licensing on the Xbox 360, and an ‘all platforms’ version of our full source licence.
Please refer to our pricing page for details:
http://www.pathengine.com/pricing.htm

About PathEngine

PathEngine was founded in 2000 to provide an extremely focused solution to some fundamental issues in intelligent agent movement, based on hard industry experience.

Our SDK is built around an advanced implementation of points-of-visibility pathfinding on three-dimensional ground meshes. The approach taken enables us to provide both pathfinding and collision in tight integration against a single, sophisticated, agent movement model, with agent shape taken into account, with seamless support for overlapping geometry, and with dynamic obstacles directly integrated into the core movement model.

PathEngine is integrated with a host of AAA titles, including ‘Granado Espada’ (released in the west as ‘Sword of the New World’), ‘Mobile Suit
Gundam: Operation Troy’ (Dimps Corporation), ‘Titan Quest’ (Ironlore Entertainment), ‘Pirates of the Burning Sea’ (Flying Lab Games), ‘Just Cause 2′ (Avalanche Studios), ‘Guild Wars 2′ (ArenaNet), as well as titles in development by Rare and The Creative Assembly.

Veteran video game music composer Hitoshi Sakimoto is in collaboration with Four Bars Intertainment to bring his acclaimed style of music to video games produced outside of Japan.

Having composed the music for the multi platinum hit Final Fantasy XII, as well as other titles from the Final Fantasy franchise, Sakimoto’s career has spanned over 2 decades, and has so far worked on over 150 projects for Video Games and Animated Series.

“I’ve been wanting to explore international opportunities for quite a while now, and Im happy that we were able to create this business collaboration”, Sakimoto said. “I’m hoping that from this, I’ll be able to bring a new creativity to match these games, which can require a different approach, compared to Japanese based titles.”

Four Bars Intertainment, who have represented composers such as Jason Hayes (World of Warcraft), Inon Zur (Fallout 3, Crysis), and Jack Wall (Myst series), will now be representing Mr Sakimoto in most regions outside of Japan.

“For many years, our composers have praised the music of Hitoshi Sakimoto”, says Bob Rice, CEO of Four Bars Intertainment. “We are all so very proud to now represent Hitoshi Sakimoto to the game companies in the United States, Europe and Canada.”

Sakimoto will continue to compose for video games and anime within Japan, as well as continuing his role as president for the music production company ‘Basiscape’.

Most recently, Sakimoto has composed the music to the anime series The Tower of Druaga, as well as SEGA’s new RPG Valkyria Chronicles.

Hitoshi Sakimoto’s new English website will launch very soon: http://www.sakimoto.jp

Best-selling games and cool brands on your mobile for nothing

London, UK – 20th May, 2008: Have you always loved mobile games but hated shelling out for them? Then you’ll love 123play.com. Launching today, 123play.com offers more than forty of the very best mobile games to suit all flavours of gamers. And here’s the best part: they’re free. Whether you’re a Sudoku freak or a Moto GP fan, 123play.com has the mobile game for you.

So how does it actually work? When you launch a 123play.com game on your mobile, you’ll see two short adverts before the game. If you want to visit the advertiser’s website on your phone, simply click; if you don’t, the game will start. Simple as that. When you’re finished playing, you’ll see another two ads.

If this all sounds like a good deal, head for 123play.com and follow these simple steps and you’ll be playing in just a few minutes:

1. Go to 123play.com and choose the game you want to download
2. Click ‘Download’
3. Enter your mobile number when prompted to send a download link to your phone
4. On your mobile, click on the link to download the game. Operator charges may apply for the download, but the game is free.

The games aren’t just free, they’re great. With backing from top games publishers like THQ Wireless, RealArcade, Digital Chocolate, Hands-On Mobile, Vivendi Games Mobile, PlayerX, Indiagames and Progressive Media, you’ll get best-selling games you’ll love to play. And it’s not just about the games. 123play.com has partnered with advertisers who you want to hear from: brands like Britvic, Ebay, The Sun and NME. All advertising will be short, punchy and relevant to men and women of all ages.

123play.com has had a massive response since its Beta launch in March. “The variety of games on offer means advertisers get access to a broad audience, and consumers get quality games in seconds for perfect mobile entertainment.” says Markus Råmark, CEO and founder of 123play.com.

Follow-up to an extraordinary ball is here.

Prague – 19th May, 2008 – Cinemax is proud to announce that Gumboy Tournament is finished and waiting for you on Steam! Get ready to test your lighting reflexes in this fast-paced, addictive, action game! If you can roll a ball, you can play Gumboy Tournament.

Gumboy Tournament is the follow-up to the successful and critically acclaimed Gumboy: Crazy Adventures. This time there are even more environments, more control options, more game modes, and best of all: More Gumboys!

Yes, Gumboy Tournament is waiting for you and all your friends to download! Up to nine players can spend hours of fun playing four completely different games inside 20 unique stages spread across four environments. Do you have close friends or family members crazy enough to compete with you? No problem! Gumboy Tournament supports up to four players on one screen! Just bring some extra chairs and enjoy the evening together.

The game is now available for download on Steam for a special starting price, and there are three languages to choose from: English, Czech, or Slovakian. More languages are coming soon. You can play against computer controlled opponents or with friends in 80 different levels on land, under water, or in space. Games include capture the flag, win the race, and collect the diamonds and can be enjoyed with easily accessible and reconfigurable controls. Rolling a ball was never so entertaining!