This week, for perhaps the first time ever, the eyes of the gaming world have been on Eastern Europe. Not only has the region exported the star of Rockstar’s Grand Theft Auto IV but publisher Ubisoft have announced they are to establish a development studio in the city of Kiev, the capital of Ukraine.

Ukraine has long been of interest to the game industry and has numerous gaming-related companies in operation across the country. The city of Kiev has been chosen over other nearby cities because it has, in recent years, become a hive of activity with 100 of the 300 IT universities and institutions located in the capital. The new studio currently operates with a core team of 12 developers, however they are hoping to expand to around 50 in the near future by attracting some of the 7000 software graduates the city produces each year.

Ubisoft has had a presence in the region since 1992, when it opened a studio in Bucharest, Romania. The group then decided to open a studio in Sofia, Bulgaria in June 2006. If all goes to plan Ubisoft will have a total of 800 employees working in the region by early 2009. Continue reading this story..

According to the description for a recent job listing posted over at SCEA’s website (to view the post, do a job search with “Santa Monica” as the location), God of War III is likely to feature online gameplay. The posting indicates that SCEA Santa Monica is specifically looking for an “online gameplay programmer to join the team behind the critically acclaimed AAA titles “God of War” and “God of War II.”" Granted, the description does not specifically indicate the lucky future employee will be working on implementing online gameplay specifically for God of War III, but I think it is safe to assume as much considering that the third installment for the console series has already been announced and production has probably already begun, or will begin soon.

Aside from leaderboards and online stats, it is a bit difficult to imagine how online gameplay would work in a game like God of War. I don’t think we will end up seeing multiple Kratos fighting it out and trying to kill each other on Mount Olympus. Maybe we’ll be able to customize our own “gods”, and specify their particular specialties within an open world environment. For example, the God of the Sea, or better yet the Goddess of the Harvest and you could go around the open environment and bless farmers with good fortune for their crops. As awesome as that sounds (strong implied sarcasm here), I doubt that the online gameplay will take this form. Nevertheless, it will be interesting to see if and how Sony’s Santa Monica studio eventually decides to implement online features for this title. We’ll just have to wait until 2009 to find out.

Spore. It’s a name that evokes a number of emotions amongst gamers. There are those of us who are so completely drawn into the possibilities of the game that we can barely hold a thought in our head, and then there are those of us that feel nothing but intense intimidation with the sheer scale of the game itself. Regardless of which group you personally belong to, June 17th will afford you the opportunity to test the waters of the game before officially quitting your job to devote your entire life to the organisms of your own creation. On that day, EA and Maxis will be releasing the Spore Creature Creator (also available in demo form) to the masses for $9.99 (€9.99 for EU).

The Creature Creator allows those of us who want to get your hands on something Spore related the chance to spend countless hours engineering your brainchild of a life-form and working out all the kinks before you unleash them into the full retail version when it finally drops. This also gives skeptical players the opportunity to try out some of the aspects of the full game without all the intimidation of the hundreds of hours of gameplay that may lie ahead. Continue reading this story..

Sierra has finally come out with it and announced the third chapter in the Legend of Spyro trilogy, titled The Legend of Spyro: Dawn of the Dragon.

The final chapter puts Spyro in league with a former enemy, Cynder, and thanks to the game’s new jump-in/jump-out cooperative mode, allows the player to go through and finish the game as either of the two characters.

Dawn of the Dragon pits the unlikely duo against the Dark Master, voiced by Luke Skywalker fanboy favorite Mark Hamill, who is, of course, all sorts of evil and must be stopped at all costs. Along the way, players will unlock Spyro’s true power and in the end, help Spyro fulfill his destiny.

Al Simone, senior vice president, Global Marketing for Sierra Entertainment: “Spyro has grown up a lot since his debut, and players are going to notice advanced gameplay, character design and story lines in Dawn of the Dragon. The game takes some exciting twists and turns – fans of the series and newcomers alike will experience non-stop fun, a renewed sense of intensity and the type of challenging adventure only Spyro can overcome.” Continue reading this story..

Nintendo is famous for its first party games. Any system of theirs will sell millions just by announcing a new Zelda game, so the industry held its breath to see how third party games would fare on the Wii. At release in 2006, one of the best-selling games was Rayman Raving Rabbids. Ubisoft followed the success by having the Rabbids invade Earth in Rayman Raving Rabbids 2.

Both games are fantastic party games, but Raving Rabbids may be most well known for its crazy commercials. Some have been just off the wall funny like “Bunnies don’t milk cows,” others poke fun at current events like “Bunnies can’t infiltrate Games Convention,” and others play off holidays like Halloween and Bastille Day.

Ubisoft has now put out a new commercial that shows what happens when a Rabbid gets hold of the new Wii Balance Board. This video has stirred up many gamers’ hopes for a Rayman Raving Rabbids 3, but is a new rabbids really in the works or is this video just a clever shout out to remind everyone of those crazy creatures?

If a new Rayman game is indeed in the works and will take advantage of the new Wii Balance Board, I’d like to suggest a balance sobriety test. Lets see how wild your next gaming party really gets.

Whew! With the overflowing news of all things GTA IV, you thought that we’d forget about all that other game related news, didn’t you? Not so. Hot off the press from Nintendo Power comes the song listing for Activision’s upcoming Guitar Hero: On Tour for the Nintendo DS.

There are only 15 songs listed so, and I don’t know about you, but to me that’s a little, uh, sparse? It would seem obvious that the standard DS cartridge wouldn’t be able to lasso the huge number of songs that a DVD or Blu-ray disc can handle, but that’s a mighty brief roster either way. As much as you may want to give the franchise the benefit of the doubt and assume that the game will be stellar either way, even the most hardcore Guitar Hero nut has to have their doubts. One thing that the track list does have in its favor is they seem to be including a wide variety of genres. Perhaps they’ll do something with an expansion for the game or downloadable content? Fingers crossed. Continue reading this story..

Footage has surfaced for the Wii version of Alone in the Dark running on the Wii and I have to say, it looks really good. The footage comes to us by way of French site Jeuxvideo and there’s an accompanying interview with Maxime Loppin, the producer of the Wii of PS2 versions of the game. I haven’t spoken a lick of French since my junior year of highschool, but was able to nab a translation of the important parts of the interview courtesy of some posters over at VGChartz.

Things to note:

• The game isn’t a spin-off for Wii but follows the other versions and fits into the Alone in the Dark storyline
• Hydravision, the developer of the Wii and PS2 versions of the game, is playing around with the technical build to give the game “next-gen” type effects (fire, water, etc.)
• There will be no on display inventory, everything (as in everything) will be handled by Wii remote integration and manipulation.

Check out the Wii video here. If you haven’t seen the developer tech demo videos for the PC, 360 and PC versions of the game yet, then those are certainly something not to miss. You can catch up on those here and here.

[See also: Alone in the Dark gallery]

So GTA IV is finally out and available for grubby hands of the world at large. In the weeks leading up to its release the net has been flooded with impressions, reviews (mostly hailing the game as the next best thing to oxygen), and more impressions. And the hype approaching the release of this game was hitting astronimical levels. For some reason I didn’t get caught in the tidal wave until Sunday, a full two days prior to launch. Maybe it was the fact that a lot of my local sports teams are in the playoffs? Or maybe it was the fact that a good friend of mine had spun records at a Rockstar sponsered GTA IV launch party in New York and managed to get a copy of the game a week earlier, and then decided to cut his phone off, vanish off the face of the Earth and keep the game all to himself? Whatever the reason was, I knew I wanted the game bad.

In keeping up with my big game tradition I decided to check and see what stores near me would be having midnight launches. I called everywhere and managed to find that GameStop was the most accommodating in terms of midnight launches. Continue reading this story..

As we all go GTA mad in the next few weeks (months?) it might be worth taking a moment to reflect on where this phenomena originated from. The BBC have provided us with a trip down memory lane courtesy of their excellent technology pages. In the second video of this post we visit the offices of DMA Design who developed the first Grand Theft Auto game way back in 1996.

As you can tell from the video, this is a UK based company (Scottish actually) and gives us a clue as to where the humor of the GTA franchise, which affectionately pokes fun at American culture, originates from.

[See also: Grand Theft Auto IV gallery]

After putting Assassin’s Creed to bed, the guys (and gal) at Ubisoft Montreal have gone back to their roots and announced the next installment in the franchise they resurrected, Prince of Persia. It’s been a good few years since the last Prince of Persia game and this one marks the franchise’s debut on the current generation of consoles. The game is expected to see release at the end of this year.

Similar to Assassin’s Creed, Ubisoft are eager to increase the game’s cross-platform appeal, so expect a PC version of the game to accompany the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 versions. Alongside this, Ubisoft will also release a Prince of Persia game specifically designed for the Nintendo DS, featuring an entirely new storyline and new characters.

Except promising “a new breed of gameplay,” to “rejuvenate the action-adventure genre” and introduce “a brand-new illustrative art style,” Ubisoft isn’t too generous with the details at the moment. We won’t have to sit in the dark for long though; Edge magazine has secured an exclusive and will reveal the first details and the new look of the prince in their May 8th issue.

Wii Sports was the perfect title to bundle with the Wii. It set the tone of the console and showed us what the Wii remote was capable of, while providing lasting appeal for almost all that bought the system. However, with just five sports covered it apparently wasn’t enough for Hudson Entertainment.

Hudson has released a new teaser trailer to remind us all about Deca Sports. This sports package has ten games - Beach Volleyball, Snowboard Cross, Badminton, Basketball, Curling, Figure Skating, Archery, Supercross, Soccer and Kart Racing - all using the Wii remote in unique ways, all including both single and multiplayer modes as well as a training mode. Continue reading this story..

Well here we are - Grand Theft Auto IV is out and, while we don’t have any real numbers, Liberty City just got what must be a few million new inhabitants. And Microsoft is making sure no one forgets the ways those inhabitants can continue their experience by reminding them of the Xbox 360-exclusive downloadable content they’ve secured from Rockstar. A statement on Xbox.com as well as a mailing list sent out today reminds that the DLC is due out this Fall and promises extra missions in the form of exclusive episodes that will expand the main storyline, not dissimilar to the Half-Life 2 episodes.

Both Microsoft and Sony are banking that GTA IV is going to be a real “killer app” (rightly so in my opinion) and will be responsible for shifting a large number of consoles as late adopters finally take the plunge into the current-gen pool. In an effort to secure a larger piece of the pie (really mixing my metaphors here) Microsoft have reportedly forked out a massive $50 million for the exclusive rights to the GTA IV DLC. They hope that these extra goodies will mean most people plump for their machine rather than Sony’s.

Whether that money was well spent will only be revealed in the coming months. Expect tons of conflicting reports from both parties claiming victories of one form or another. And we can’t wait to interpret the statements and press releases that are bound to start flowing in sooner rather than later.

[See also: Grand Theft Auto IV gallery]

In the ever-consolidating videogame industry, it seems that sooner or later every company will be purchased by some other company (except EA), so it really didn’t surprise anyone when rumors of yet another attempted acquisition surfaces. This time it was SCi (who recently swallowed Eidos) trying to fend off Infogrames, owners of the cursed Atari namesake.

Much like a jilted boyfriend telling all his friends that his ex-chick is nuts, Infogrames released a statement after being shot down by SCi, “Infogrames’ proposal is financially disciplined and recognises the strengths of both companies,” they explained, “Although the indicative offer is subject to standard conditions relating to due diligence, the receipt of irrevocable undertakings from certain SCi shareholders and the recommendation of the SCi Board, it is not subject to financing.”

It continues, “Infogrames has sufficient resources to satisfy the cash element of its indicative offer and has secured commitments in relation to the potential working capital requirements of the enlarged group. Importantly, Infogrames is in a position to move expeditiously with its proposal.”

Now, let me put my corporate/laymen translation hat on. Basically what Infogrames is saying is that they are going to end up buying SCi one way or the other. Yes, it’s true, this getting us just one step closer to an industry where every gaming property is owned by either Activision, EA, or Vivendi. Oh how I love the games industry…

What’s that I hear? The rumor mill is once again churning and grinding the hopes of gamers as GoNintendo is reporting that a Metroid Prime bundle could be on its merry way to the Wii at some point in the near future. Allegedly a retailer stumbled across a detailing of a Metroid Prime Trilogy SKU listed for the Wii in their database. Interesting.

What could this trilogy consist of? Well, to date, not including Metroid Prime Hunters and Pinball for the DS, there have been three Metroid Prime games in the series. Two for the GameCube and one for the Wii. My guess is that they will be repackaged with flashy Wiimote motion-sensey action and shiny new box art to give those who recently got into the series on Wii a chance to see what all the fuss was about way back when.

Bearing in mind that many of the 25 million Wii owners are encountering these franchises for the first time, Nintendo might be discovering that reworking them with minor to non-existent changes is easy money. Who’s up for a new Kirby game then?

When you hear the words “update” and “Metal Gear Online,” you may start to cringe a little. So far updates just meant more hassle to sift through before you could really begin to enjoy the ongoing beta. Well that’s not the case today. This new update that was released for Europe enhances the gameplay experience by a lot. Once updated, you are going to get a new map called Midtown Maelstrom and a new game mode called Sneaking Mission.

The Midtown Maelstrom map seems to be more of the same. You’re dropped down into a war torn setting that was probably once inhabited by middle class citizens until something big blew up. Expect to find lots of rubble to use for cover and a comfy spot for sniping. The real fun lies in the new Sneaking Mission mode.

Sneaking Mission mod