There’s a lot of sites out there with transcripts (or approximations thereof) of the DC Nation panel, and the vast majority of it seems to be rehashing old knowledge and witty banter.  That said, there were at least a couple nuggets of knowledge worth gnawing on:

• New (?) Terra shows up in Supergirl #12 (issue to be drawn by Amanda Conner), and this will be the Terra on the Titans East team coming up in Teen Titans, which will be led by Deathstroke.
• A Terra miniseries is still coming, but after that Supergirl appearance
• Cassandra Cain (the recent Batgirl) will also be on Teen Titans East
• A General Zod more like the one from Superman II will be showing up somewhere, sometime
• Brave & The Bold will be a team-up book, with issue #1 starring Batman & Green Lantern, #2 with Supergirl, Green Lantern, Batman, & Blue Beetle, #3 will have all of them, plus a backup with Lobo & Adam Strange
• All 3 heroes in space in 52 will not be returning… so based on the previous bit, it seems that Adam Strange will probably still (unsurprisingly) remain in space
• The upcoming 5 issue extension of Manhunter will lead into an upcoming Wonder Woman story
• Diana Prince will show up in 52, somewhere, sometime
• Ambush Bug will be in issue #24 of 52, as will Checkmate, Suicide Squad, and Martian Manhunter
• There will be a Nightwing annual in early ’07
• Is Roy Harper becoming the Red Arrow, a la Kingdom Come?  “Not really.”
• Seven Soldiers will be coming out next month, they tell us yet again
• Meltzer is writing 14 issues of JLA total, including issue #0
• Despite the fact that we’re getting an All-Star Batgirl, and despite the fact that there’s nowhere to get Barry Allen stories, there are no plans for an All-Star Flash book

Sources: ComicBookResources, Comic News International, Newsarama

Captain America scribe Ed Brubaker joins artist Billy Tan on Uncanny X-men for the 12-part series, “Rise and Fall of the Shi’ar Empire“. Basically, Vulcan (the other Summers brother) resurfaced, left Earth, and is hell-bent on seeking revenge on the Shi’ar for killing his mother and making him a slave. Of course, the X-men must stop him.

I was not familiar with Billy Tan before this arc, but I must say I quickly became a fan. He and inker Danny Miki have put together a book that is crisp and vibrant. His characters convey real emotion and his action scenes are fluid. For anyone unfamiliar with Ed Brubaker (and shame on you), he’s the current writer of Captain America and Daredevil and recently finished a six-issue mini, Books of Doom. He is currently one of the best writers in the field and Shi’ar is no exception. He’s put together a great and dynamix X-team: Professor Xavier, Marvel Girl, Havoc, Polaris, Nightcrawler, Warpath, and a mutant I was unaware of, Darwin. The team dynamic is excellent and has many moments of pure, unadulterated baddassitude. With most of the Marvel universe preoccupied with the evnts of Civil War, it’s nice to have a story that is seperate from that. This series gets my highest recommendation.

Parts 1-4 (of 12) already in stores.

Playsyde has made available Sony’s first Playstation 3 commercial which is intended for a European audience.

A lower resolution streaming version is available for the impatient You Tubers out there and a 1280×720 high quality downloadeable version is also available for those that want to see some guy punching a bag and jumping around a ring in high definition and then seeing a few short seconds of some lame first person shooter in a quality that’s comparable to what the rich elite of Europe will see on that system sometime in 2007.

The commercial rings in at a ridiculous 3 minutes and 20 seconds with about 12 seconds of actual footage tagged on at the end. Most of it is just some guy training and boxing with a voice over going on about how revolutionary this beast is supposed to be. Unless there’s an ultra realistic boxing training simulation game I haven’t heard about I’m not very impressed.

This is living?

Thanks to TVPro for the heads up.

Not wasting anytime, The Four Horsemen have put up the first poll for their FANtastic Exclusive 2007 voting. The FANtastic Exclusive is a chance to put the fans in the driver’s seat of picking what Four Horsemen line their next series of figures should come from, in addition to picking the character designs, weapons, packaging and more.

You may recall last year’s end result, Xetheus, the Minotaur and the later added exclusive Troop Builder figures.

Also announced from the Four Horsemen is the addition of a seventh minotaur figure, the Mynothecean Royal Guardsman. He will be available for pre-order at the Four Horsemen’s online store, StoreHorsemen starting Saturday September 9th. Thats today for those not paying attention. Supplies will be extremely limited as the figure will only be made in a quantity of 250 and not all of those will be released for pre-order.

Traveller’s Tales, developers of the great pick-up-and-play platformers LEGO Star Wars have revealed their newest game to CVG.

LEGO Batman will taked DC’s famed Caped Crusader to new block shaped heights no doubt. I certainly hope we get all the body and character swapping fun from LSW, and the option to build and modify Bat vehicles. No solid details are known, but given how well the first game in the series handled, one can only hope. Whats next? LEGO has a lot of licenses, and also a lot of original properties. I’d go for any LEGO Pirate or Space game, personally.

On a semi-related note, a couple years ago the The Digital Animation & Visual Effects School project was to create a Batman short film called “Batman: New Times” featuring CG models based on Art Asylum’s Batman Minimates, which is a hardy derivitive of the LEGO style. Adam West reprises his role as Batman/Bruce Wayne, and Mark Hammill is the Joker. Its a nifty film, and worth a watch if you’ve never seen it before.

To check out the LEGO Batman toys, here’s the official site.

A powet.tv exclusive! A review of advanced copies of the new Star Wars DVDs planned to be released on next Tuesday September 12th 2006.

Special thanks to Dave for giving me the heads up that the Zellers at Place d’Orleans in Ottawa was selling these DVDs a week early and to Janine my loving and patient camerawoman/stunt double/lover.

Update – September 9th

Compare the video quality between the new updated versions (left) and original vesions (right) images have been scaled to a common size and correct aspect ratio for easier comparison

Wow! I thought Grand Theft Auto 4 wasn’t supposed to be released until next fall! Nevertheless, I’m always ready to do some more random carjacking and pedestrian killing! But what’s with the name change though? And where is the Rockstar logo? All kidding aside, Saint’s Row certainly isn’t gonna win any awards for originality. However, we should be thankful that someone decided to copy GTA instead of something like ‘True Crime’ or ’25 to Life’ for once.
[Read the rest of this entry…]

The impassioned call rang out above all others in a recent Sony investors meeting:

With the company in the red yet again in its most recent quarter, Japanese investors were in an unhappy mood. “I bought shares in mighty Sony,” cried a woman whose holdings had lost nearly two-thirds of their value. “What are you going to do about this?”

Wired Magazine investiages the company’s future with Can the PS3 Save Sony? and comes to the ultimate conclusion that Sony’s various teams and departments are in such dire straights the fate of the entire company rests on whether or not the PlayStation 3 can be a profitable success.

Sadly, the future is not looking any brighter this day. Joystiq reports: European launch of PlayStation 3 delayed until March 2007, and this heartbreaking blow to the fastest growing game market is quicky followed up with North American, Japanese PS3 launch limited to 500,000 units.

Add on the fact that the unit itself still costs $600, and trendsetters like Penny-Arcade have sworn off the launch as “bullshit” and even the editor of Official PlayStation Magazine will be opting for an Xbox 360.

Maybe I’m not seeing the glow of Sony fans right now. Entire sites like This is Waiting mock the future of the PS3, and literally hundreds of posts on digg, youtube, and blogs all across the net collectively laugh at every single mis-step. The detractors aren’t watching Sony fail, they’re actually cheering it on.

There is little doubt Sony will sell through the initial stock quickly. I’m sure they’ll also meet their trimmed goal of 2 million by Spring 2007.
But with Xbox360 poised for its second year and reporting rapid success, and the Wii celebrated at the most talked about console since console wars began 20 years ago… Does Sony even have a shot now? I mean, could this be the end of the road for the biggest company in gaming? A year ago I’d say this was impossible, but now I wonder if a Playstation 4 will even see the light of day.