EA will be bringing some serious gaming goodness to the PS3 and Xbox 360 in the form of Burnout 5. Scoop:

Burnout 5 gives players license to wreak havoc in Paradise City, the ultimate seamless racing battleground, with a massive infrastructure of traffic-heavy roads to abuse. Gone is the need to jump in and out of menus and aimlessly search for fun like many open world games; in Burnout 5, every inch of the world is built to deliver heart-stopping Burnout-style gameplay. Every intersection is a potential crash junction and every alleyway is an opportunity to rack up moving violations.

Of course, rules are made to be broken, and when gamers enter Paradise City, they’re assigned a Drivers License that quickly begins to amass a record of player’s most aggressive, reckless and destructive exploits behind the wheel. But it’s not the law that’s eyeing player’s progress … when gamers push things too hard they’ll be squaring off against the city’s most infamous burners, and these legends aren’t interested in who crosses the finish line first.

“Burnout 5 is a complete reinvention of the series, built from the ground up for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360,” said Alex Ward, director of game design at Criterion Games. “To create truly next-generation gameplay, we needed to create a truly next-generation game, from top to bottom.”

Burnout 5 also delivers the next level of speed and destruction, with brand new next-generation technology allowing gamers to literally rip their cars in half, in the most explosive pile-ups in the series’ history.

The game is scheduled to ship sometime next year and is being developed by Criterion Games in Guildford, UK.

Keeping the flow of good news for the company itself, Nintendo announced that 2 million unique players have logged into their Wi-fi Connection. They even included a comparison in the announcement: “To put that number in perspective, the population of Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection users now surpasses the population of 15 different U.S. states, including Montana, Nebraska and New Mexico.”

Additionally, the service has also logged more than 70 million individual game sessions in just more than nine months of operation.

Epic’s Unreal Engine 3 is spreading its reach everywhere it seems: Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment has announced that it will use the next-gen technology to develop Stargate Worlds and future multi-platform titles.

Stargate Worlds is based on the popular science fiction television series Stargate SG-1 and Stargate Atlantis. It is a MMORPG which is scheduled to launch in late 2007.

Namco Bandai has revealed the official title for Mobile Suit Gundam - Crossfire. In this upcoming PS3 game, players find themselves caught in the crossfire between the Earth Federation and Zeon forces nine months into the conflict. Players will be given a choice whether to join the Federation Army or to pledge their allegiance with the Zeon.

Mobile Suit Gundam: Crossfire is slated for release later this year.

Techland has announced Warhound, an upcoming first-person shooter that puts players in the role of a mercenary cleaning up the world of evil. Scoop:

Warhound is an FPP shooter where you make a career of the elite mercenary. When you are not working, you get new licenses and improve. When at work, you take part in the hottest world conflicts

Because you are a Warhound - an elite mercenary on the side of good.

The choice is yours. You’ve got a laptop and a map of the world. Presidents, businessmen, and ordinary people ask you for help where nothing more can be done officially. You choose a mission, then fly, clean and disappear. You get the reward and nobody knows anything.

Will you lead your carrier to reach the top?

GAME FEATURES

• Manage your carrier. SOS messages come from many places. Freely plan you way of a mercenary.
  
• Develop your skills. Gain the license of an Alpinist to climb harder and harder rocks, learn to operate new vehicles - from jeep to tanks and boats; practice shooting and test weapons on your own firing ground.
  
• Fight the way you want. Each mission has a number of ways to reach the goal. The number depends on your abilities.
  
• Go back to where you already fought. Enemies are like weed which revive in uncultivated soil. Many missions can be repeated many times.
  
• Manage your equipment. Buy better weapons and trade the equipment found on the battleground.
  
• Use the intelligence service. Buy information that will allow you to learn more about your enemy.
  
• Specialize. By completing tasks of given type you become a specialist. Build your reputation which will bring you new orders and will open the way to the top of the ranking.

TECHNICAL FEATURES

• Support for all modern per-pixel lighting and rendering techniques, including:
  
  • 64-bit color High Dynamic Range rending pipeline
    
  • virtual displacement mapping, multi-bump mapping,
    
  • wide range of post-processing effects (depth-of-field, light blooms, refraction, heat distortion)
    
  • high quality pre-computed lighting with ambient occlusion
    
  • pre-computed shadow masks, omni-projector lights
  
  
• High quality Spherical Harmonics Lighting
  
• Outdoor light scattering simulation
  
• Dynamic shadows based on global hierarchical shadow-maps using hardware shadow mapping
  
• High quality character models built from high-poly meshes using normal maps (bump mapping)
  
• Multi-morphtarget facial mimics
  
• Accurate simulation and animation of vegetation, fumes and smokes - reaction to wind, moving object, etc.
  
• Global Physics simulation system including the simulation of:
  
  • rigid body dynamics, clothes, next generation muscle-skeleton ragdoll
    
  • natural phenomena simulation: fire, smoke, liquid, electricity and wind effects,
    
  • objects properties influence with liquids
    
  • surface parameters such as friction
  
  
• Effective and easy to use authoring tools
  
• Real time multi-layer foliage generation

The game is yet to carry a release date.

Two patches:

• F.E.A.R. v1.07 on the Sierra, 3D Downloads, 3D Gamers, FileFront and Worthplaying
  
• Strategic Command 2: Blitzkrieg on Battlefront

• Broken Sword: The Angel of Death on 3D Gamers, FileFront, Gameguru Mania, Gamer’s Hell and Worthplaying

1Up reports that Microsoft’s soccer-exclusivity announcement at the Leipzig Games Convention may not be so exclusive. Speaking with Pro Evolution Soccer producer/creator Shingo ‘Seabass’ Takatsuka, the reporter learned that Microsoft’s claims weren’t true: “We never said exclusive for one year on the next-gen platforms. We said this year. We were agreed that it was this year.”

As per Takatsuka, Pro Evolution Soccer is exclusive to Xbox 360 this year only and not the “twelve” months Microsoft announced. It may be the same with FIFA07, as sources are indicating so. However, an official comment from EA is yet to come.

Just to show how popular Penny Arcade has become, and how much their dark influence is corrupting our souls, Hothead Games in conjunction with Penny Arcade has announced plans for a cross-platform episode game based on the comic’s characters and universe.

“We’re really excited to be working with Hothead Games on our first electronic adventure,” said writer Jerry Holkins, his clawed feet resting atop a huge slab of granite. “From the moment we laid eyes on them, it was clear they had the technical and creative chops to execute our grim vision. Now that we have pooled our strengths, our dark work may truly begin.” Holkins then paused to eat a rat whole.

The first game, entitled Penny Arcade Adventures: On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness, will be a comic adventure game initially available for Windows, Mac OSX, and Linux. It will also be released for next-generation consoles later. The game will be available via digital download and will be delivered in episodic format with new content coming out several times a year.

No release date was announced.

The last of the “bedroom programmers” Introversion Software has announced that it will release its third title, DEFCON, at the end of September. Following the release of Uplink and Darwinia (both excellent games), DEFCON will retail on Introversion’s online store at £10 for download, and £12.50 for a download with a boxed copy (sent by post).

Gamers who pre-order the title from mid-September, they will be able to get a complimentary boxed copy of the game for £10. DEFCON will also be available in a bundle pack with Darwinia and Uplink for £30.

North Americans will be able to purchase the game through Steam and at other retail outlets for $15 towards the end of September.

Vivendi Games has announced that it will deliver Scarface: The World is Yours on October 8 for the PS2, Xbox and PC. The game is based on the 1983 film classic and will let players “become” Tony Montana as he rises through the world of drugs, corruption and violence.

Gamers who pre-order the title will receive a 24″ x 30″ Scarface print created by L.A. Pop Art, depicting an iconic film scene created out of the text of the original motion picture script. The PS2 version will see a “Collector’s Edition” that will include the entire game and a variety of extras including a bonus DVD featuring behind-the-scenes documentary, a game walkthrough with producer commentary, cast interviews, hints and tips, and more.

The PS2 and Xbox versions of the game will retail for $50, with the PS2 “Collector’s Edition” going for $60. The PC version will be cheaper at $40.

Today Rockstar released the first ever screenshots from GTA: Vice City Stories, showing a glimpse of the characters and vehicles.

More after the jump.
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From Sweden comes word from Frictional Games that they will release a commercial version of Penumbra - Overture:

Penumbra is an innovative first person horror game utilizing physics for interaction and puzzles. The game is set on Greenland where the protagonist searches for information regarding his late father. Previously released as a tech demo, Penumbra gained over a quarter of a million downloads world wide. It has been very well received and called one of the scariest games ever.

Penumbra - Overture will feature major updates in both gameplay and graphics. Gameplay additions include a melee combat system, greatly improved AI and more stable physics. The already powerful graphics engine will boost even more next-generation features creating a very realistic experience. Notable features include full real-time lighting, motion blur, depth of field and advanced fogging.

The studio is currently looking for a publisher. They plan to release the game sometime next year.

The colors just keep on coming: Nintendo has announced that gamers in North America will be able to empty their pockets for two more colors of the DS Lite - Onyx and Coral Pink (both pictured). Gamers can do so on September 13.

Nintendo took the opportunity to also announce that New Super Mario Bros. has hit the 1 million unit sales mark after just 12 weeks on sale in the region. Overall, the DS and its game sales are both up more than 300 percent in July alone.

Following up on this story, ANACONDA’s press conference saw the official unveiling of Jane Jensen’s new project Gray Matter.

The game’s story mixes eerie mysteries with supernatural events in best Jensen-style. Neurobiologist Dr. David Styles is one of the game’s central characters: since losing his wife in a horrible accident some several years ago, he has become a recluse, seldom leaving Dread Hill House, his English country estate.

When student and part-time street performer Samantha Everett shows up at his doorstep, she unexpectedly becomes his assistant. Hailing from America, she has been traveling through most of Europe the last couple years, making do by performing magic tricks on street corners, so this comes as a nice change of pace for her. But is the meeting of Sam and Styles really as coincidental as it seems?

Her first task: finding six test subjects at Oxford University for one of Styles’ experiments. The experiment starts off innocently enough: the subjects are tasked with imagining different forms of physical exercise. But then inexplicable incidents start mounting - and Styles receives visitations by his dear departed wife. Now it’s up to Sam to solve the mysteries of Dread Hill House.

In Gray Matter, players control both Dr. David Styles as well as Samantha Everett in their bid to uncover the secrets and find out the truth. While Dr. Styles research leads him into an investigation into the intricacies of the human mind, the player will have to tackle stage magic as Sam to solve puzzles. Gray Matter tackles questions concerning the nature of reality and the power of the mind in constructing the world we take for granted.

Gray Matter is in development at Tonuzaba Entertainment in Hungary and will be published worldwide during Q4 2007.

Two screens from Unreal Tournament 2007. I don’t know if they are from PC or PS3.