Trailer for DJ Hero (which comes out later this week). Price tag is $120. Daft Punk and Queen together forever.

The Full-Length trailer for the new Live-Action Halo 3: ODST advertisement looks badass. It’s intense footage of a Orbital Drop Shock Trooper enlisting, training, and fighting the Covenant. I was so pumped when I watched the video that I punched a hole through the wall and impregnated all women within a 15 meter conical blast-range of my junk. The ad makes me think that Bungie might be able to do a kick-ass decent halo movie. Who knows.

From: Kotaku

Tucked into a Comic-Con announcement from Microsoft is news that the Xbox 360’s next Xbox Live update is coming in 21 days.

The 360 dash will get an update on August 11.

In it, Microsoft confirmed today, will be the launch of the new Xbox Live Games On Demand service, which will launch with more than 30 games. Examples listed in Microsoft’s press release include Assassin’s Creed, BioShock, Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga, Mass Effect, and Sonic The Hedgehog.

Also on the 11th will be the introduction of Netflix party support, allowing multiple people to watch Netflix movies together. The Avatar marketplace will launch, offering virtual knicknacks like an RC Warthog from Halo.

Matching the schedule Microsoft gave Kotaku after E3, Xbox 360 integrations with Twitter, Facebook and Last.FM as well as the ability to instantly stream movies in 1080p for users with fast enough connections will go live in the fall.

Microsoft plans to provide limited access to the next dashboard update to press and a lucky bunch of fans in the next couple of weeks.

New Starcraft II Info
General
- No Lan Support

Starcraft 2 Observer mode features
- 12 Player/Observer Slots
- First Person View
- Unit/Building Waypoints/Production
- Individual Map Reveal
- Information Tabs
- Economy
- Army Size, Composition, and Strength
- Production
- Actions Per Minute

Replay Functionality
- Rewind functionality
- Draggable Progress Bar
- Average and total performance
- Stats Graphs
- Build Order Sequence

Tons of new Single Player missions:
From: arstechnica

“We have missions where the lowest level of the terrain gets flooded by lava every five minutes—if you don’t get off low ground, you die. We’ve got missions where hordes of infested Terrans attack, but only at night,” Browder told Destructoid. “You have to hold off at night, and then during the day, it’s ‘EVERYONE GO OUT AND KILL ‘EM WHILE THEY SLEEP!’ We’ve got missions where you’re trying to defend an infested colony. We’ve got missions where you control a single Ghost, trying to change the tide of a war.”

Tons of videos have been released the past few days with SCII footage. The game has been playable since early 2005 and by-golly Blizzard thinks it’s almost ready for beta play. (Rumors are out that a few beta invites have already gone out to friends and family at Blizzard). Tech trees are also out and can be found here:

Scribblenauts is probably going to be the best game in the history of everything ever. The gameplay consists of you typing in an object — and it appears. It has most everything you can think of. What other game allows you to pit a Mechanical Dinosaur against God? Or Longcat against Tacgnol? Seriously, when I saw it I shat bricks.

From joystiq:

One level we played placed us in the desert with a thirsty, thirsty man. A cue appeared as we began the level: “Refresh him!” Of course, writing water would suffice — but that’s not very original, is it? My first time through, I managed to summon an oasis. It appeared, I dropped it into the ground, the man fell in, and the Starite appeared. At the end of the level, the game gave me a score based on how far I went over par (the target number of items you can beat the level with), and awarded me badges — achievements for clever word usage.

Justin fed the man pomegranates until he fell victim to an overstuffed slumber. He created some lemonade, which the man then poured down his gullet — level complete! Randy created a coffee shop. It appeared, the man ordered a cup o’ joe at the carry-out window, drank it — level complete!

2. Another level placed a pool of water with a shark inside between us and the Starite. While a few options may have allowed us to circumvent the shark-infested waters, we all decided to take him out. I tried dropping a sword on its head pointy-side down, but it bounced harmlessly off its thick hide. I then dropped a hair dryer into the water with more electrifying, fruitful results.

Chris attempted to drop dynamite into the water, though the splash extinguished the fuse. He then threw waterproof C Four into the water, effectively recreating the ending of Jaws. J.C. created a Kraken, which fought with and ultimately bested the shark.

Andrew created a teleporter in an attempt to instantly apparate to the Starite — instead, it took him to a medieval world where he was besieged by shadowy assassins. He tried distracting them with candy — really, Andrew? — then created a fairly anachronistic nuke. The nuke didn’t detonate, however, so andrew created a laser rifle to take out the assassins. One of his lasers grazed the aforementioned WMD, and blew up the entire level.

3. Ludwig was tasked with navigating through a zombie apocalypse to reach a helicopter with his brains in tact. He attempted to hold the undead off with a wall, but he couldn’t get build it fast enough to hold off the horde. He whipped out a shotgun, but their numbers were too large to dispatch with a firearm.
Naturally, his next instinct was to craft a time machine, which took him into the prehistoric ages. Of course, he was surrounded by unfriendly dinos, so he made a robot dinosaur, which he then mounted and used to destroy his scaly adversaries.

In all of these scenes, only a few items we tried to create didn’t appear. The guys from 5th Cell explained that there are some limitations — modifying a noun with an adjective won’t usually work as intended — brown happy dog, for instance, will probably just create a dog, though its color and mood may not be to your liking. Also, trademarked items are out, from “Nintendo DS” to “Bungee

Still, the sheer number of items the game is capable of recognizing, and the development that went into determining how these objects interact with Maxwell and each other, is simply astonishing. We’ve never seen anything like it — and based on the long line of E3 attendees that wrapped around the Warner Bros. booth with hopes of getting their hands on Scribblenauts before the expo’s conclusion, we’re guessing nobody else has either.

From: 1up:

…the team is aiming to make FFXIV more accessible than FFXI right from the start — a necessity in a world dominated by World of Warcraft. “The way WOW is aimed at casual users is something we want to incorporate, but we don’t want to copy it,” Komoto says. “The key word is growth, the growth of the character, their development. We’ll have the same type of storytelling and same type of graphics [as in FFXI], but we hope to expand on the in-game systems. Through these we’d like to expand the job system into something different from XI’s. All the knowledge and experience we acquired from FFXI will be incorporated into FFXIV. XI was designed for parties, but we’d like for XIV to have material for solo players and parties alike from the start.”

“While FFXI has changed over time, it’s still party based,” Tanaka adds. “For FFXIV, if you want to play solo you can. If you want to play in a party you can. If you want to jump in play for 40 minutes or for long sessions you can. We’ll offer different play styles for many different people.”

A polished Final Fantasy MMO could be a lot of fun. There is going to be a lot of competition though, World of Warcraft is still strong and BioWare’s SWTOR is getting a lot of hype. If the FFXIV team can make a balanced, fun and involving game from the start — they have a chance of getting a casual audience for the long term. People love online games, but they only stick with the ones that make them feel like they’re a good gamer. Even if they suck (and most do).

Square Enix announced details about Final Fantasy XIV a few days ago. The game is slated to be a PS3 Exclusive focused on online play. They have Nobuo Uematsu on music, Akihiko Yoshida as the Art director, and it’s being directed and produced by Nobuaki Komoto & Hiromichi Tanaka, respectively.

Official site here: http://na.finalfantasyxiv.com

Shiggy revealed a new Zelda title at an E3 Developer Roundtable. The game is slated for release in ‘10 and doesn’t have a title yet. Miyamoto said the title would definately use Wii MotionPlus (a controller addon that reads devilishly accurate movements).

From 1up:

During the discussion, Miyamoto briefly showed an image from the game featuring a mature Link barely visible through a broken wall. Although the picture only showed Link from behind, a short girl in a long robe stood in full view at Link’s back. Wearing a crystal necklace and emanating a blue aura, she gave off an otherworldly look — akin to Zora from Ocarina of Time.
Miyamoto had hoped to show off the game at Nintendo’s E3 press conference, but his development team wanted to focus on defining the concept for this Zelda iteration. The team has been experimenting with different gameplay and dungeon designs and they decided that their time would be better spent focusing on the game, rather than a demo.

With so little known about the game, it’s hard to speculate. But I’d assume this addition to the Zelda franchise will be a solid release.

It’s E3 time and Final Fantasy XIII is on my mind. It’s not exactly new news that Nobou Uematsu isn’t going to be the lead composer on the Final Fantasy XIII project (although he is helping), but don’t fret. Masashi Hamauzu is taking the lead composer roll and, if FF XIII sounds anything like his past works, we should all be in for a treat. Here’s a link to the FF XIII Battle Theme. This composition starts very Nobuo-ish (spoiler: it was probably composed by Nobuo), but then turns into an epic Masashi piece after the intro. Nobuo’s take on Final Fantasy music lately has been pretty edgy. He likes to use power chords and harmonics in his music to express intense moments (Its like where the Indians live, in tents). Masashi’s take is more refined. A lot of Final Fantasy XIII will be composed with a live orchestra (for reference, Masashi was lead composer for Saga Frontier 2 — here’s an example). I imagine Nobuo as the eccentric type of composer who writes Final Fantasy music while taking PCP and listening to Emerson, Lake & Palmer. But maybe my basis is misleading since it’s similar to how I describe myself.