Ars Technica is reporting that a UMD-less PSP-Go! (aka PSP-4000) will be getting some spotlight at E3 2009. These are the same people that reliably claimed such rumors as the RE5, Halo 3, and Fable 2 bundle for the Xbox 360. Speculation of Sony pushing out a UMD-less model has been running wild ever since Patapon 2 was released as a download-only game. The insider claims that the system will also be lighter, have a lower power consumption (meaning higher battery life), and possibly even a lower price.

The Playstation 3 Slim will likely not be announced at E3 this year, mostly due to the thousands of regular PS3’s still hanging out on store shelves. Most likely Sony will make their move quietly, announcing the PS3 Slim right before it hits store shelves.  According to what everyone is calling the “mole”, that should be August or September, right in time for holiday 2009. The image above is a supposed leaked version of the system.

I don’t even know what to say, that trailer looks amazing. Infinity Ward sure is living up to the promise of another great Call of Duty title. No multiplayer footage, but the video shows off plenty of the engine. We will be sure to keep you posted on new developments as they come. Modern Warfare 2 is set to launch on November 9th, 2009 for PC, Xbox 360, and Playstation 3.

Heavy Rain is an upcoming and highly anticipated PS3 exclusive video game developed by French Studio Quantic Dream, and published by Sony Computer Entertainment. The game is being directed by Quantic Dream’s founder and CEO, David Cage. Until recently not much was known about the game with the exception of a technology demo shown at E3 in 2006, entitled The Casting, and a short interview with Cage in late 2008, not much was known about the project.

What we know now is that the game is an interactive story, with four main characters. If any one of those characters die, the game goes on without them. If all the characters die, the “story” ends. Mr. Cage stressed that there are no traditional game overs, or loading from the last save points. In other words the games story is completely dynamic, anything that happens is because of something you did or did not do previously. As you can imagine, this allows for a seemingly countless amount of possible paths, ensuring that no two gamers will have the exact same experience.

If you missed out on The Casting video, you can view it below, immediately followed by the 2008 interview mentioned above.

Today we came across a actual gameplay video, illustrating the amount of choice you actually have in this game:

Looking sexy? Alright now hit up the interview with David Cage by GameTrailers, about the new interactive storytelling system, how the game deals with death, and the unique “thought” system:

The character in the above video was named Norman Jaden (spelling?), and Cage further elaborates on the characters in this next video, as well as controls and gameplay:

If you are interested, there was another interview done by Game Videos, although it doesn’t really give out too much more information.

Update: Aparrently GameTrailers has an extended version of the gameplay trailer on their site. Unfortunately their embed script is horribly ugly, and doesnt allow HD, so I am just going to point you int he right direction:

Part One | Part Two

Well that’s pretty much everything the public knows so far. Hopeful we will be seeing an appearance from them at the years E3, which is less than two weeks away!

According to IGN, Nintendo has quite a treat for the hardcore gaming crowd on August 24th. All three metroid games are coming to the Nintendo Wii in one nice package. Even better news, all three games will be on one disc, and all for the MSRP of $49.99. Even better than that, Metroid Prime, and Metroid Prime Echoes will be completely reworked with full widescreen support, 480p, as well as Wiimote and Nunchuk support.

All three games will can be accesed from one centralized game menu. From that menu you can create a profile that will save your progress for all three games, as well as your custom control schemes. Also available is the classic Metroid Prime Echoes multiplayer mode, which due to the Wiimote support, has reportadly become a whole lot more fun. Unfortunately there is no online multiplayer support, but given the circumstances that can be forgiven. There is also an achievment system, Craig Harris from IGN explains:

“Along with the new control and display options, Metroid Prime and Metroid Prime 2 Echoes has also been given the same medal system that’s already in Metroid Prime 3 Corruption. As you complete missions you’ll be given medals specific to the task completed – each medal has a specific color, and you spend these tokens in the new front-end’s option menu for unlockables. Each unlockable has a specific value: you can buy concept art, music, or special options like a screen grabbing utility so you can save screenshots to the internal storage and send them to friends. Some of the more coveted unlockables are far more expensive: we saw a few items that required three red, one blue, three yellow, two green, one orange, and two purple medals. You can also score medals by linking friends over the Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection and earn friend vouchers.”

Thank you Nintendo, for this nice gesture of friendship to us hardcore gamers. Please keep them coming.

Looks like Infinity Ward is giving us another short taste of gameplay for their upcoming sequel, Modern Warfare 2. We get a few more shots mixed in with some old ones, but nevertheless the game is looking impressive. The full trailer is being released on May 24th at http://modernwarfare2.infinityward.com/

Just a few days ago we had the ChickHEN exploit that brought us homebrew on firmware 5.03, now the latest PSP firmware has it’s own exploit! Is Sony getting more careless or are hackers getting smarter? Either way it’s great for the community. A video demonstrating the crash is shown above, or you can download it for yourself below. Simply drop both the files in your PICTURE folder, then scroll to them on your PSP.

[Download 5.50 Tiff Exploit]

Just a side note, the video about gives credit to Wololo. However on his blog today he denies credit, or at least doesn’t remember if he did it or not:

If history is anything to go by, it won’t be long before the community will be able to launch homebrew on any PSP to date.

Even though Modern Warfare 2 (Call of Duty 6) has yet to make a major appearance (with the exception of a TV spot), Treyarch has already started working on Call of Duty 7. This was confirmed by Senior Editor David Kim’s LinkedIn profile:

“I am currently on my second title as a senior animator in the games industry with Activision / Treyarch on Call Of Duty 7. Previous to that I specialized as a previsualization artist for various productions.”

The game is expected to use the CoD6 engine, as World at War did with Call of Duty 4. There are even rumors of the game taking place in Vietnam, which isn’t hard to believe since that is one place the Call of Duty franchise has not visited.

As promised last week, when Pokemon aired in Japan they “officially” announced Pokemon Heart Gold and Soul Silver. To our dismay, it looks like it is running on the Diamond/Pearl engine. However it looks like there were some graphical touchups. Not to mention that it looks like your partner may follow you outside of it’s pokeball? That was always one of my favoirte features of Pokemon Yellow, and I’m sure it would be a welcome addition back for fans.

New scans out of the July issue of CoroCoro give a bunch of new information:

• There are two new unknown human characters.
• A new area called “Torn World” will be added.
• Lucas and Dawn get new clothes.
• Shaymin’s Sky Forme is confirmed (it’s Grass/Flying type).
• For those who are picking up Movie Regigigas when the 11th Pokemon movie debuts in Japan can transfer it to Platinum, then catch Regirock, Regice, and Registeel in-game.

You can check out all the scans here.

The more of this information that is leaked, the more I think that the game is really gone for good… Anyway we came across a bunch of new Duke Nukem Forever info for you guys:

• 28 Hi-Res Screenshots
• The Complete Plot (it was about 60% done)
• The Design Document

It’s a shame, it was looking like a great game. Remember there is still the major press release by Apogee Software next week, so we may just here some good Duke Nukem Forever news.

3D Realms shut down this month, halting production on the vaporware known as Duke Nukem Forever. The game began development back in 1997, and has seen numerous delays since then. The future looks grim for Duke. Take-Two Interactive still holds publishing rights, so it’s possible we may see another developer pick the game up. It’s worth noting it was confirmed that Take-Two had cut all funding to 3D Realms, which is what caused the shutdown.

So what does twelve years in the making get us? Actually the game was looking pretty impressive, while still holding true to the “feel” of Duke Nukem. After twelve years, I really don’t know what to say. Is it going to be released eventually? Let’s flip a coin…

Update: Apogee Software is tweeting about a major press release coming out next week regarding Duke Nukem Forever. Maybe not all hope is lost? Check it out here.