We saw a pretty strong hint of it back in March, but now developer Polytron has confirmed it: their perspective-shifting puzzle-platforming game Fez will be released over Xbox Live Arcade in "early 2010," according to a post on their website.
Although it was made with Microsoft's XNA development framework, Polytron has until now remained quiet on what platforms Fez would be released. The announcement post only mentions Xbox Live Arcade, but it's unclear whether this rules out a PC release as well.
For

The CEO of Tecmo Koei has stated that he is hoping for a price drop to the PlayStation 3. Kenji Matsubara, in an interview with CVG, said he's made it known to Sony that the company is interested in seeing such a move. "Whenever I discuss this with Sony reps I always ask them: 'Please cut the price', but I don't have a clear view on Sony's situation," he said. "It's definitely a way of boosting the PS3 market, but it's Sony's strategy and I don't know their cost structure. Sony introduced cutting-edge technology in the PS3, that's why people in the industry accept that the PS3 cost is so high, but we'd welcome a

The News: Sega has announced an official release date for espionage-based RPG Alpha Protocol. The game is set to hit shelves on October 6, which as previously reported puts it right in the middle of the holiday season. Sega has also added a descriptive subtitle: "The Espionage RPG."
Our Take: Alpha Protocol has us intrigued, but the title of the game doesn't seem very distinctive, and new RPGs can have a hard time catching audiences in the holiday rush. We're hoping Alpha Protocol doesn't find itself lost in the crowd. Check out our

Splinter Cell: Conviction creative director Maxime Beland wants people to finish his game. Accordingly, it looks like Sam Fisher's latest adventure will be clocking in at around 12 hours.
"I want people to play my games and finish them," Beland recently told Official Xbox Magazine.
"We're going to ship with difficulty levels, at least a normal mode and realistic mode - like we did on Rainbow Six Vegas.

The Ace Attorney series consistently delivers funny, well-written stories, and Capcom's latest game in the ever-expanding series, Ace Attorney Investiagtions: Miles Edgeworth, seems on route to follow in its predecessors' footsteps. I recently finished playing through the first case in the Japanese release of Investigations, and while it tickles my nostalgia bone with plenty of nods to the previous Ace Attorney installments, it offers quite a bit new as well.
The game doesn't change the basic "search for clues and talk to people" formula, but Capcom adds one very important thing that the last game in the series, Apollo Justice, was missing: a main character that you already know. Sure, the cameos

Sony had plans to make a PSP without the UMD drive from the beginning of the system's life, according to a new interview with GameBusiness.jp (via Develop). "We'd planned to release a PSP model without a UMD drive since the very beginning," said Naoya Matsui, Sony's head of product planning. "But if we'd simply released the hardware, there wouldn't have been much for everyone to enjoy. We needed to prepare the right environment for it first... We wanted to release it when the delivery of digital content was on par

Motion picture studio Universal has picked up the rights to produce a film based on the vintage Atari game Asteroids, according to the Hollywood Reporter. Already attached to the project are script writer Matthew Lopez and GI Joe: The Rise of Cobra producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura.
This is just the latest in a series of truly bizarre license acquisitions by Universal, which currently has Alien and Gladiator director Ridley Scott working on a movie adaptation of the classic board

The Gears of War 2 Title Update 4 is almost here, and Epic wants players to know it. To celebrate the new update -- as well as the long weekend -- they will be holding a Double XP weekend starting Friday.
Anyone on the publish playlist is eligible. All you have to do is being on the winning team for a ranked match, and you'll get an additional 500 XP.
In additional, Epic is throwing in a little something extra for Horde mode players. During the event, Ticker appearances will be

Blizzard has joined in on the recent trademarking party, filing three new trademarks for the name Cataclysm. The trademarks could apply to any number of unannounced projects, including a possible World of WarCraft expansion.
As reported by BlizzPlanet, the new project potentially relates to the Sundering, an event that occurred 10,000 years before World of WarCraft. The name refers to the implosion of the Well of Eternity, which was destroyed when the Burning

Over in Japan this week, Marvelous Entertainment announced the first details behind Rune Factory 3, the series of Nintendo DS farm/love/fight-'em-ups that Neverland Company has been developing over the past few years. The newest game in the series, another DS release, is slated to come out within 2009 in Japan; no release plans for America have been announced.
The main new gimmick in Rune Factory 3 appears to be the fact that your hero can use a magical belt to actually transform into the monsters you're collecting. This unlocks a wealth of new attacks and battle moves, and talking to people in animal form can also change the way the respond to you.
Other than that -- and the fact that much of the

According to a new report from Engadget, Sony is finalizing manufacturing contracts for the PlayStation 3 Slim. The agreements are said to be with Foxconn and Pegatron, and surprisingly the new model is supposed to be set for a July delivery. This would line it up with a recent rumors that Sony is planning to drop the price of old PS3 models in order to clear stock for bringing out the Slim in the fall.
This remains a rumor until we hear official word from Sony, but at this point it's all but