Capcom released this press release just now… oh wait, can’t read that one. Here it is in English.

This is hardly surprising news, though I’m going to take this less as in indication that the PS3 is doing badly and more that the 360 is doing very well. Devil May Cry is a very popular game series and while it made perfect sense to release it to market leader PS2 the last 5 years, the next installment comes out at a time with no clear market leader.

I’d say I’m excited, but when I read “DMC coming to 360” I got really bummed that this was not the next gen debut of Darryl McDaniels.

Thanks, Mike!

Xbox Live Arcade is on a roll. This week was TMNT. Last week was Worms. Before that we had Alien Hominid. What release could possibly trump 3 of the best games to hit the service so far?

Oh yeah. Castlevania: Symphony Of The Night. This classic from the 32bit era allows you to literally go medieval as you smash through giant bosses and explore the finer pits and dungeons of Romania.

Unlike your standard NES Castlevania where you took the role of one of the Belmont clan and brandished a whip, Symphony of the Night lets you use knives and stabbing weapons from the hand of Dracula’s own son, Alucard (which just happens to be “Dracula” spelled backwards!).

This is the biggest Live Arcade release yet, coming in at a whopping 96 MB, so make sure you’ve got your hard drive ready, this ain’t fitting on your 64MB memory card. All that space is of course taken up by the lovely English voice acting (“Die monster! You don’t belong in this world!”)

GameScore Blog Press Release

I just got a very nice email from the Xbox Live Rewards program. You may recall this little promotion being set up so that Xbox Live gamers can get a reward for spending so much time bulking up their gamer scores. Prizes included copies of Fusion Frenzy, downloads of Contra, and Microsoft points. I had trouble getting through the registration when the site went Live, and given my low gamer score, I kinda gave up on it. I wasn’t alone, and now they’re sending out consolation prizes for putting up with these technical difficulties

The email in my inbox tonight included all the rules for participation and registration and they admitted to having problems, and to make up for it, they included codes to redeem for a free download of Robotron and Joust from Live Arcade. Thats pretty generous considering I just was going to sit the whole thing out.

Anyone else who had problems get this email? Leave a comment below.

Full email after the jump.
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It won’t be out on this side of the ocean until June 22nd 2007 but this movie was released in Australia and many parts of Europe last year. Here’s a look at what we can expect from what will surely be this summer’s greatest blockbuster.

If you really can’t wait to check out this great movie you can go ahead and import the Dead or Alive DVD from Amazon UK. Note that this movie is region 2 and PAL encoded so it won’t work in all DVD players. If importing’s not your thing then you should just get yourself in the mood by buying a Dead or Alive video game from the normal Amazon and help support the site.

Learn about how Hitomi is technically a guy and other trivia about this movie after the jump.

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This enterprising youtuber pretty much sums up whats most fun about Crackdown. The sandbox genre needed some new blood, and the next gen horsepower combined with your abilities to lift and detonate anything in the gameworld are just what the doctor ordered.

You start out in a boring room, where you can grab one of four vehicles provided by your supercop garage. After a senselessly long drive in a tunnel, you land on a street corner in the middle of a firefight between gang members and police. I took this first oppurtunity to kill everything that moved, and it was much more satisfying than in GTA because the aiming system actually kinda works. It’s not great, but I’ll get back to that. Getting back in my car, I drove up the road and find that pretty much everywhere I go there’s gangs, so there’s lots of enemies to kill. I wasted no time finding alternate ways of dealing with this problem by running gangs over, tossing random items at them, using explosives. The visuals are much better than screen shots and even videos give them credit for. It’s a very vibrant world and the hint of cartoonyness keeps me from getting too serious and screwing around. I’m sure theres a target I had to kill here, but I spent all my time driving around, trying to scale buildings, and using whatever I had laying around to maul criminals and civilians.

I was never a fan of GTA. I didn’t think it played well, didn’t think it looked good, and the sandbox options were pretty much limited to driving and murder. Crackdown offers exploration and explosives, which are much more my bag.

The demo is currently on Xbox Live Marketplace, and according to Major Nelson, its already more popular than most full Xbox 360 games.

Activision has formally announced some of the details of the forthcoming game based on the Transformers movie. IGN reports the Xbox 360, Wii, and DS will be joined by Sony’s systems as well: PS3, PS2 and PSP. Oh and theres a PC one too. So, just about anything you’ve got.

Better yet, the console developer has been revealed as Traveler’s Tales, who are responsible for LEGO Star Wars, arguably one of the best movie games in the past few years. They’ve confirmed seperate Autobot and Decepticon campaigns, along with massive destructable environments, and on-the-fly transformations. IGN has a short interview with producer Andy Burrows, who hints that they’ll mix in some non-movie bots inspired classic Generation One characters. Confirmed playable characters right now include Optimus Prime, Ironhide, Bumblebee, Megatron, and Starscream.

Transformers on DS will be handeled by Vicarious Visions, who have a massive catalog of successful ports for Activison, including Doom 3 for Xbox, Tony Hawk and Marvel Ultimate Alliance for portables. Savage Entertainment(developer of Star Wars: Battlefront II) takes the PSP, and is promising a very different game with over 20 (!) playable Transformers spanning further into the movie’s extended universe.

A playable demo of the game will be available at Toy Fair in New York City this weekend. Since this is an industry/press affair, we’re hoping to see a video come along soon. We’ll keep an eye on the official site.

In the meantime, here is the first screenshot from the game. It’s a picture someone took of a catalog of Transformers merchandise that just happened to have a tiny page advertising the game. If you can’t make it out, it’s Bumblebee fighting the Decepticon Barricade in the first shot, and then a single shot of Barricade. Its not much, but we’re starving for info here, so give me a break.

UPDATE! IGN has added lengthy impressions of the demo, but still no screens. Read it all here.

I’ve been a loyal GameFly subscriber for several years now. I love being able to try out something new without spending $50 or putting up with ill-tempered EBGameShlub employees. It’s made me a better gamer, and more open-minded.

So, it’s with sadness I mailed back the last game I’ll ever get from there today. You see, I have 15 Xbox 360 games in my queue. All of them have “Short Wait” or “Long Wait” next to them. I tried looking in at the full list of Xbox 360 games and of 127 titles listed, not a single one is available for rent right now. What the hell? I understand a lot of people got X-boxes for X-Mas but this is X-treme.

Then it hit me: Gamerscores. So many people are renting games to up their gamerscores that it’s rendered the service useless to a weekender like myself. I could probably leave those 15 games at the top of my queue for months and still get fed random DS games sitting at the bottom of the list. I was lucky to get Chromehounds one time, though unlucky when I fell asleep during the training level. If the best I can get is that slow moving snoozefest, my money is not being well spent.

So, I’m cancelling. Prices are still sky-high on even used 360 games; but by saving my $22 a month, I might be able to afford them. Or at least I can enter a brick-and-mortar shop and get a game in hand right away. GameFly does share the blame here though, when launch titles are still in high demand, they should be upping the stock to meet that demand, instead of letting me sit and wait for a good game.

Actually its several weeks of Halo, but who’s counting?

Edge Magazine takes a look Inside Bungie which yeilds this shocking quote:

“We miscalculated, we screwed up, we came down to the wire and we just lost all of that. So Halo 2 is far less than it could and should be in many ways because of that. It kills me to think of it. Even the multiplayer experience for Halo 2 is a pale shadow of what it could and should have been if we had gotten the timing of our schedule right. It’s astounding to me. I f*cking cannot play Halo 2 multiplayer. I cannot do it. And that’s why I know Halo 3 is going to be so much better.”

That sounds like a typical post you might find at Neo GAF or from some blogger, but thats technical lead Chris Butcher. Me personally, I like Halo 2, but if they’ve got a higher goal they can reach with 3, I’m ready for it.

Bungie.net, between weekly updates that reveal nothing more than that they ARE still testing the game, has released fact sheets on the new and improved MA5C Assault Rifle, and the just plain new Mongoose.

The calls have started to come in to those registered for the Halo 3 Beta. Folk who dropped their info at Halo 3.com are getting emails with their invitation information. We all heard about the Crackdown method as well. Players who punch in three hours of Halo 2 multiplayer between Feb 1st and 3rd can also register for an invitation.

But if all else fails, JOIN THE ARMY! While taking a much needed break from dodging roadside bombs in Iraq, soldiers got to cool off by dodging roadside bombs in the new Halo 3 maps.