As some of our readers may be aware, Microsoft’s E3 press conference is taking place as I write this, and those details will come soon, but Microsoft isn’t the only company with exciting announcements right now. Harmonix and MTV Games have just announced all 84 on-disc tracks that will comprise Rock Band 2, and I must say they have outdone themselves. It definitely feels like there is more of a variety than what we saw on Rock Band, and music purists will be very pleased to hear that every track will be a master recording. Though these are the all of the on-disc tracks, Harmonix has said there are 20 unannounced additional bonus tracks that will be released in the Fall for free. Luckily for us, free is our favorite price.

One thing we’ve always been a bit miffed with is the inability to transfer DLC from one iteration of a series to the next. Harmonix realizes this, and is making Rock Band 2 backwards compatible with every piece of Rock Band DLC. Also, through some kind of data-transferring voodoo that only Harmonix is privy of, players will be able to export most of their Rock Band on-disc tracks into Rock Band 2. I don’t know why they would only be able to export most of the songs and not all of them, but regardless it will save gamers a lot of time switching the two discs.

Rock Band 2 will be an Xbox 360 timed exclusive, with a North American release date in September. The PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3, and Wii versions of the game will be released later in the year. Story continues..

We’ve heard some rather interesting rumors from camp Microsoft this year, ranging from the mysterious Lips, to MiiToos aka Avatars, a new Dashboard that might be navigated using a motion controller etc etc. Microsoft has just wrapped up their E3 press conference in LA, and it’s time to see which of those rumors were dead on, and which not so much.

Below is everything that Microsoft announced during the briefing.

• Don Mattrick takes the stage and opens the conference, talks of past successes for Microsoft’s Xbox business, and leads in a reel showing Fallout 3.
• Bethesda’s Todd Howard takes the stage, plays Fallout 3 on-stage. Announces extensive downloadable content exclusive to Xbox 360 and Games for Windows.
• Jun Takeuchi from Capcom, the producer of Resident Evil 5 takes the stage and demonstrates a live gameplay of the game, including the online co-op mode. Release date announced: March 13 2009.
• Peter Molyneux from Lionhead takes the stage, says (with utter satisfaction) that Fable II is finished. Says “innovation” a lot. Introduces one button press jump-in co-op. Will be released in October.
• Gears of War 2 reel plays. Cliff Bleszinski takes the stage and shows off the 2-player co-op. Shield, flamethrower seen in action, some new wretches-type enemy noticed. Reavers, brumaks rideable in the game. Horde, a 5-player co-op announced. November 7th release date confirmed.
• Don Mattrick takes the stage again, talks future of the industry. Says 360 leads US sales, 5 mil more than PS3, third-party sales over 2.2 billion. Says Xbox 360 will sell more units than PS3 this generation (calm down!). NBC, Universal join LIVE.
• Xbox LIVE’s John Schappert takes the stage. Introduces new Dashboard for Xbox 360, Avatars are real! Both coming this fall, after the Dasboard update (look out for a story soon). Geometry Wars 2 coming, Galaga sequel too.
• Portal: Still Alive announced Xbox LIVE Arcade with new levels and Achievements this fall.
• South Park game coming to Xbox LIVE Arcade!
• First wave of Community Games coming soon.
• Exclusive partnership announced with Netflix.
• Shane Kim takes the stage, reminds everyone of the exclusive GTAIV DLC, says over 1000 games will be available by years end.
• Reel runs, showing Rare games: Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts, Viva Piñata: Trouble in Paradise. Kim also announces two new games: Scene It! Box Office Smash (with Avatars) and You’re In The Movies from Codemasters (demoed on stage). The game will include a LIVE Vision camera.
• Red Octane’s Kai Huang takes the stage to talk about Guitar Hero World Tour.
• Kim takes the stage again and introduces Lips, a new music game from Microsoft Game Studios, to be available this holiday.
• Keiichi Yano takes the stage to talk about Lips.
• Rock Band 2 on 360 in September, Harmonix’s CEO Alex Rigopulos takes the stage to talk about the game’s 84(!) songs, including a future release Guns’n'Roses, Bob Dylan, AC/DC, Metallica, Megadeath, Interpol etc etc. All Rock Band songs will be compatible with Rock Band 2.
• Don Mattrick takes the stage once again, introduces Square Enix’s Yoichi Wada, who announces Final Fantasy XIII(!!!) for Xbox 360!

Next up is Nintendo and Sony — they’ll be holding their press conferences tomorrow morning back to back, so check back then, and keep an eye on TVGB for more coverage on these Microsoft’s offerings.

Whenever a game developer decides to make titles based off a wise cracking zombie, or animals running for president, you can suspect Wideload Games had something to do with it. Based out of Chicago, Illinois, Wideload Games was created by Alexander Seropian who also was one of the founding fathers of Bungie and one of the minds behind the original Halo. They are responsible for the original Xbox title Stubbs the Zombie, and the recently released Hail to the Chimp.

We got the chance to speak with Alexander Seropian and the head of Wideload Shorts, Scott Corley. Wideload Shorts focuses on developing games exclusively for digital distribution. In our conversation we covered the general ideas they have for the company as a whole, how the gaming industry is changing, as well as how their own gaming habits have changed. Read about it all below. Story continues..

Mark Healey and Alex Evans, the co-founders of Media Molecule, the developer currently heading up LittleBigPlanet for the PS3, gave a keynote presentation at GDC Paris recently where they covered several topics regarding game creation. Healey is convinced that it doesn’t take a large number of people to create a great game and brought Brain Training as an example of how a game can have only five people working on it, and have it still be innovative and become widely successful.

Evans also commented on the subject by adding, “I believe that was a very small, focused team. And when you go through the breadth of our industry, it’s really staggering that you have casual games, role-playing games, you have MMOs, you have educational games, puzzle games, social games - the breadth is completely insane, and that’s just a huge inspiration for us.”

LittleBigPlanet is being built around the idea of letting individuals create their own levels and then share them across PLAYSTATION Network. In many ways the success or failure of the game depends on how accessible the features will be to the average consumer. With that concept in mind, the question of whether games should be kept secret for a long time comes into play. Since LittleBigPlanet was first unveiled at the beginning of March last year, those interested in buying the game have had more than a year to come up with ideas for making the perfect stage. Healey believes that embracing user-created content and responding to feedback in a timely manner will help the industry move forward instead of releasing huge games years apart from each other.

As for more details on LittleBigPlanet itself, Healey and Evans were tight-lipped. However, the idea of having users sell the content they create came up. I’m not sure how that would work out, but this should convince us that Media Molecule may have some extra tricks up their sleeves.

[See also: LittleBigPlanet gallery]

One of my greatest fears with WiiWare and, on a slightly lesser level, the Virtual Console is that they will become a place for people to dump cheap, poorly made games in order to earn a quick buck. So far I don’t think that this fear has been validated as most of the WiiWare games are of a pretty high quality, however, the last few weeks have shown that not everything is going to be stellar. We’ll have to see how it goes in the future but as for this week, it looks like we’re on an upward swing with Gyrostarr (High Voltage Software, 1-4 players, Rated E for Everyone-Mild Fantasy Violence, 700 Wii Points) coming out for WiiWare along with Alex Kidd in Miracle World (Sega Master System, 1 player, Rated E for Everyone-Comic Mischief, 500 Wii Points) and BURNING FIGHT (NEOGEO, 1-2 players, Rated E10+ for Everyone 10 and Older-Mild Suggestive Themes, Violence, 900 Wii Points) for the Virtual Console.

Gyrostarr is a track shooter in which you fly down a “technoplasma” track at high speeds while shooting enemies and collecting power-ups to get to the finish, where you must have received a certain score to move on. Interestingly, High Voltage has made the 4-player game playable with almost every possible controller the Wii has and you can even play while sharing a controller with one player holding the Wii remote and the other the Nunchuk or a classic controller. Of course the way I jerk the controller around while playing this would only end in injury and tears.

On the VC front of things, we get two games that I would say always come in at number eleven on a top ten list. Not really classics but quality games, both Alex Kidd and BURNING FIGHT are solid games but don’t demand your attention. I remember Alex Kidd being hard as hell but damn fun whereas BURNING FIGHT was a competant game but never really wowed me in any way. Even Nintendo’s press release on the game seems a bit boring, extolling the fact that you fight a boss at the end of each level. I know, groundbreaking game design there. As usual you can download all these games after 9 a.m. Pacific time.

Valve president Gabe Newell has revealed that the company will soon be making more money from the digital distribution of its games than traditional boxed sales.

“We see sub ten per cent growth rates in our core, packaged retail business,” Newell said. “Right now we’re seeing close to 200 per cent growth in the alternative ways of connecting with customers. It will actually pass over in the next three months, how much of our business is coming from retail versus how much is coming from other channels.”

When asked about how digital distribution overcomes the reassuring feeling of having a box in your hands Newell points out that Steam, their digital delivery system, makes downloading even more secure and reliable than physical media. And with the soon to be implemented Steam Cloud, meaning that your game saves can be accessed from any PC, it is clear where Valve are placing their bets.

This news seems to dovetail nicely with statements made a few days earlier by Wild Tangent founder, chairman and CEO Alex St John, who explains his vision for the future of gamin — maximum profit lies not in game sales at all but in microtransactions. Story continues..

Faking the Band is a weekly feature detailing the latest in downloadable content for Rock Band.

Êtes-vous prêt pour un échange content transatlantique?

Ahem! Sorry about that. Had a frog’s legs caught in my throat. What I meant to say…are you ready for a transatlantic content swap?

Rock Band for the Xbox 360 is boarding a jet plane and will be landing in Western European countries on May 21, 22 and 23 (Germany, France and the United Kingdom, respectively). The PS3, PS2 and Wii versions will be held up a bit, possibly due to turbulence or a hold-over for refueling, and land a bit late on August 29.

This immigration has been a long time coming, and the European gaming community has naturally grown a little upset and a lot impatient over the oft-delayed arrival. One of the concessions made to ease this international tension was a handful of on-disc, Eurocentric tracks. Of course, we here in the Western Hemisphere cried foul once we saw the British selections, so we’ll be getting every track as well via May 20’s DLC!

If our European friends find that insulting, perhaps they’ll be happy to know that the entire North American DLC library will be available to them the same day. And to the people of Mexico too!

Story continues..

Movie goers around the world will be blessed this summer with the third installment of The Mummy (fourth only if you count that Rock/Scorpion King thing), and with Jet Li as the bad guy, who could possibly want to miss this? And as it’s become tradition with every big movie release these days, gamers will also be able to dive into the series with The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor releasing alongside the movie.

This new the Mummy game puts players in the shoes of both Rick O’Connell and his son Alex. Sierra worked together with Universal Pictures to make sure the game followed closely with the movie, meaning players can expect to traverse the many exotic locations featured in the film, from ancient Chinese catacombs to the snow covered Himalayan peaks.

“Developed in collaboration with the film’s creative talent, The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor videogame will add another opportunity for players to experience the thrill and excitement of this adventure favorite,” said Al Simone, senior vice president, Global Marketing, Sierra Entertainment. Story continues..

Time to close the curtains, switch off all the lights and grab a pillow because Konami’s next installment in the seminal horror series Silent Hill has finally been christened, Silent Hill: Homecoming.

Homecoming follows another unlucky individual, Alex Shepherd, as he returns home to investigate the sudden disappearance of his brother. Alex’s journey takes him from is quaint little home of Shepherd’s Glen to the sleepless horror factory that is the little town of Silent Hill.

It’s been 4 years since the last Silent Hill installment on home consoles and it’s the series’ first venture onto the current generation. Fans of the series have been waiting a long while for this and hopefully a whole new story and a whole new misadventure with updated graphics and all the merriments that the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 bring with them will satisfy their hunger for horror. Story continues..

Faking the Band is a weekly feature detailing the latest in downloadable content for Rock Band.

Many moons have passed since E3 2007, when Harmonix CEO Alex Rigopulos dropped a few Rock Band bombshells. Not only did he promise DLC every week after the title’s debut - so far, so good, gentlemen! - he also promised FULL ALBUM DOWNLOADS like The Who’s Who’s Next and Nirvana’s Nevermind. And then there was silence, which led quickly to confusion and ultimately despair as days turned to weeks and weeks turned to months without any further announcements or release dates.

Now the year is 2087, and mankind is on the brink of total impatience…

Alright, it hasn’t been that long. A few months at the most. And there’s been a treasure trove of singles and song packs released in the meantime.

But that hasn’t stopped Rock Band players from foaming at the mouth and convulsing in anticipation. Well, stop all that twitching! Get that thumb out of your mouth! All is not lost. Oh, no. Far from it. Story continues..