"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. And realistic is going to be really fucking hard - you're going to need stealth, two bullets is going to kill you, the enemies are going to be super-lethal."

"I really want to make NMH a big franchise, and with this second episode have bigger success. I'm putting a lot of care into developing this IP, as I feel there's a lot of potential," he told Edge.

However, "I think this is the last NMH that is going to be developed on Wii."

"Why we locked the characters originally was that in the arcades, it was kind of to extend the life of the game by gradually unlocking characters. And also with the home versions as well, because you can rent games or whatever, it was to protect us against that," Harada told VideoGamer.com at Namco Bandai's Europe event.

"That's kind of outdated now though, especially with online play. If we were to have locked characters it would irritate a lot of people, to be playing against others online and to not have all the characters available. So I think it's no longer useful."

Rock Band's DLC for next week includes the exclusive Green Day three-pack that was announced last month, in addition to eight tracks from artists involved with the Rockstar Energy Drink Mayhem Festival. The Mayhem Festival eight-pack will go for $13.49 (1080 Microsoft points), and the Green Day three-pack will cost you $5.49 (440 Microsoft points). Individual songs, as usual, are set at $1.99 (180 Microsoft points, 200 Wii Points).

Expect the following tracks to show up next Tuesday, July 7 on Xbox Live and Wii, and Thursday, July 9 on the PlayStation Store:

• "21 Guns" by Green Day
• "East Jesus Nowhere" by Green Day
• "Know Your Enemy" by Green Day
• "Conquer All" by Behemoth
• "What a Horrible Night to Have a Curse" by Black Dahlia Murder
• "Hammer Smashed Face" by Cannibal Corpse
• "Empire of the Gun" by God Forbid
• "Embedded" by Job for a Cowboy
• "Disposable Teens" by Marilyn Manson
• "Black Magic" by Slayer
• "This Is Exile" by Whitechapel

What's it going to be -- a sampling of Green Day's latest, or some good old fashioned metalcore? With a song title like "Hammer Smashed Face", how could you possibly go wrong?

"A lot of titles have already hit the shelves and there is a deluge planned for Christmas, but I think 2009 will be remembered as the year of 'roast duck or no dinner,'" Livingstone told GamesIndustry.biz.

"There's a glut of product and in a discerning market there is no room for mediocrity. To make a suboptimal game with a suboptimal marketing spend is a recipe for disaster."

EA set a date for their downloadable World War II shooter Battlefield 1943 this morning, and it's coming a lot sooner than you may have predicted. The Battlefield 1942 followup should be arriving on the Xbox Live Marketplace next Wednesday, July 8 and the PlayStation Store that Thursday, July 9. It'll set you back a cool $14.99, or 1200 Microsoft points.

It ought to be interesting to see what happens to the number of multiplayer users in Halo 3 and the Call of Duty games over the next couple of weeks. Will DICE's budget-priced, multiplayer FPS be able to make a dent in the following of the established kings of the genre, or will it simply go under the radar of most mainstream players?

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 much more frequent, with every tenth wave being comprised of the little beasties. Should be a good chance to pick up that "Takes a Licking" achievement.

According to these sources, the Wii version was in development at Electronic Arts (who will be publishing Brutal Legend), but Double Fine was not in charge of it. If accurate, this would help explain a curious comment creator Tim Schafer told us when we spoke with him back in March. When asked about the rumor of a Wii version, Schafer first looked to his accompanying public relations manager for how to respond, and then said simply, "We are making an Xbox 360 and a PS3 version of Brutal Legend." If, as this new rumor suggests, Double Fine wasn't in charge of the Wii version, then Schafer's enigmatic response was perfectly accurate.

Still, as Desctructoid notes, this is essentially a rumor of what was already a never-officially-confirmed rumor. But considering the reported outcome of the project, it doesn't seem to make a difference -- either these rumors are true and the Wii version existed but was canceled, or they're inaccurate, and no Wii version ever existed in the first place. Either way, it looks like there's no violent, demonic, and comical metal adventure in your future, Wii gamers. Our condolences.

For those unfamiliar with the series, the first Onimusha in fact took place in 1560, the second in 1573, and the third in 1582. So it seems likely, then, that the 1600 date represents when a new entry in the series will be set (why Onimusha: Dawn of Dreams -- which took place in 1597 -- was left off the timeline is unclear). And while it's not exactly any further proof, it's worth noting that even the visual style of the X's that cross off the first three dates on the site vaguely resemble the lettering of the games' titles.

But since Capcom didn't include a countdown, there's no saying when they actually plan to reveal whatever game this site is teasing. Hopefully they'll end the suspense soon, so stay tuned.

"Hardware-wise, it was all about Project Natal," Suda said. "It's hard to really understand it unless you use it, and it remains to be seen what you can do with it, but I think it'll be a huge device. We developed No More Heroes with the Wii remote in mind, but now I want to think about games with Natal in mind. I have to ask myself, as a game designer, what new games can be done with this, what can be an interesting experience and challenge, and I'm looking forward to that."

Mizuguchi, a designer whose games have a noticeably "futuristic" aspect to them, enthusiastically agreed. "With new technology announcements like Natal and the [PS3] Motion Controller, it's like I have a feel for the new generation, or that the door to the future has been opened," he said. "It's a wholly different impression of the future than we had before. It's not a shift from 2D to 3D or in the number of polygons, but it's games trying to open up an entirely new door. I thought it would take longer, but it's happening faster than I expected."