From RedOctane comes word that it will be offering a wireless guitar controller for use in Guitar Hero 2 for the PS2. Although a Xbox 360 version of the game has been announced, the press release did not mention the wireless guitar for the console. The device will be released sometime next month for $60; Guitar Hero II is set to ship on November 7.

Bethesda has announced plans to publish Rogue Warrior, an “authentic, tactical” first-person shooter based on the best-selling book by Richard Marcinko, former U.S. Navy SEAL and founder of both SEAL Team Six and Red Cell. The game is being developed in conjunction with Zombie Studios for the PS3, PC and Xbox 360; it is scheduled for release during Fall 2007.

Rogue Warrior is a story-driven shooter that provides team-based tactical combat set in massive, contiguous levels using Unreal 3 streaming technology. Central to the game’s single and multiplayer experience is the idea of a freeform battlefield, where players are given the freedom to choose how to complete a given objective, allowing for creativity and surprises, rather than heavily scripted events and tightly contained spaces traditionally used in this genre.

An advanced AI system allows NPCs to react and fight realistically, see and hear others, and respond as a team. Rogue Warrior offers a new take on the multiplayer experience, with 10 gameplay modes and a system whereby maps are created using tiles that are selected by each team. Rogue Warrior’s tiling system allows users to experience over 200 maps in both day and nighttime settings. In addition, the campaign features solo and on-the-fly cooperative play for up to four players, where anyone can join or leave an existing campaign game at any time without having to go to menus or save progress.

In Rogue Warrior, you play Dick Marcinko, leader of an elite SEAL unit trapped behind enemy lines in North Korea on a covert mission to assess the threat posed by North Korea’s nuclear arsenal. When war breaks out between North and South Korea, you must try to lead your team back into South Korea while greatly outnumbered and with no support and limited resupply. Your journey will take you through a variety of never-before-seen environments inside of North Korea, including submarine pens, shipbreaker yards, prison camps, and more.

A 30-year veteran with the U.S. Navy, Dick Marcinko served in both the Underwater Demolitions Team and Navy SEAL programs, was a military attache in Cambodia, and conceived, founded, and commanded SEAL Team Six, the U.S. Navy’s first counterterrorism unit. He later created and ran Red Cell, a unit created to test the Navy’s anti-terrorist capabilities for highly-secured bases, nuclear submarines, ships, and other purported “secure areas”, including Air Force One. Dick’s experiences as a Navy SEAL were captured in his New York Times best-selling autobiography, Rogue Warrior, and his Rogue Warrior fiction series.

Three high-resolution screenshots:

Funcom has announced an extension of the completely free and play-all-you-want offer in Anarchy Online until January 2008. This extended offer also includes the chance to check out Notum Wars, an expansion pack, allowing players to partake in PvP combat.

The free offer content is now greatly expanded through the ‘Notum Wars’ addition. When released, ‘Notum Wars’ brought a whole new dimension to Player vs. Player MMO combat. With it, players could claim control of large areas of land, build a base with an array of towers and then fight it out with other players to achieve control, prestige and power. With numerous additional features ‘Notum Wars’ now gives all free players a new kind of experience, with more possibilities.

The new and improved offer includes the entire classic version of ‘Anarchy Online’, named “Best MMO of the Year” by PC Gamer US, and ‘Anarchy Online - Notum Wars’, “Expansion Pack of the Year” in Computer Gaming World. Those who play for free are exposed to dynamic in-game advertising, a successful revenue concept implemented by Funcom and developed by Massive Inc. If the player upgrades to additional expansion packs, a monthly subscription fee kicks in, but the player will not be exposed to the ads.

Shipped:

• 1701 AD
  
• Age of Empires III: The WarChiefs
  
• Battlefield 2142
  
• Brigade E5: New Jagged Union
  
• Bully
  
• Cabela’s African Safari
  
• Civilization Chronicles
  
• Dark Messiah of Might and Magic
  
• Destroy All Humans! 2
  
• Dungeon Siege II: Deluxe Edition
  
• Evidence: The Last Ritual
  
• F.E.A.R. Extraction Point
  
• Football Manager 2007
  
• Flight Simulator X
  
• Gary Grigsby’s World at War: A World Divided
  
• Guild Wars Nightfall
  
• Gothic 3
  
• The Guild 2
  
• Marvel: Ultimate Alliance
  
• Myst (PSP)
  
• Sam & Max: Episode One
  
• Starshatter: The Gathering Storm
  
• Stronghold Legends
  
• The Sims 2: Pets
  
• Star Wars: Empire at War - Forces of Corruption
  
• Sid Meier’s Railroads!
  
• Zoo Tycoon 2: Marine Mania
  
• Zoo Tycoon 2: Zookeeper Collection

• Gears of War (X360)
  
• Heroes of Annihilated Empires
  
• Left Behind
  
• Neverwinter Nights 2
  
• Splinter Cell Double Agent

Quite a few demos:

• ANNO 1701 on 3D Gamers, FilePlanet and Worthplaying
  
• Bionicle Heroes on the Official Website
  
• Dracula Twins on 3D Gamers, FileFront, Gamer’s Hell and Worthplaying
  
• Need for Speed Carbon on EA, 3D Downloads, 3D Gamers, ComputerGames.ro, FileFront, FilePlanet, Gamer’s Hell and Worthplaying
  
• Perimeter: Emperor’s Testament on 3D Downloads, 3D Gamers, FileFront, Gamer’s Hell and Worthplaying
  
• RACE on the Official Website
  
• Sword of the Stars on Lighthouse Interactive
  
• Sonic Riders on 3D Downloads, FileFront, FilePlanet, Gamer’s Hell and Worthplaying
  
• Sid Meier’s Railroads! on 3D Gamers, 3D Downloads, FilePlanet, FileFront, Fragland, Strategy Informer and Worthplaying
  
• Terrorist Takedown: Covert Operations on 3D Downloads, 3D Gamers, FileFront, Gamer’s Hell and Worthplaying

• Air Conflicts v1.043C on Bold Games
  
• Battlefield 2142 v1.01 on EA FTP
  
• DEFCON v1.1 on the Official Website
  
• El Matador v1.1 on the Official Website
  
• FlatOut 2 v1.2 on Empire Interactive
  
• F.E.A.R. v1.08 on Sierra, 3D Gamers, FileFront, FileNuts and Worthplaying
  
• Gothic 3 v1.08 on the Official Website, 3D Downloads, 3D Gamers, FileFront and Worthplaying
  
• Galactic Civilizations II v1.40 on the Official Website
  
• Madden NFL 07 update #2 on EA FTP
  
• ParaWorld v1.01 on 3D Downloads, 3D Gamers, FileFront, Gamer’s Hell and Worthplaying
  
• Settlers II v9801 on Ubi FTP
  
• Universal Combat v1.00.18 on 3000AD
  
• Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines v3.1 on 3D Downloads, 3D Gamers, FileFront and Worthplaying
  
• War in the Pacific v1.804 on Matrix Games

Sierra Entertainment and 20th Century Fox have announced that the upcoming Eragon videogame will feature actors from the film reprising their roles, including the voice and likenesses of Edward Speleers, Sienna Guillory, Garrett Hedlund and Robert Carlyle.

This star-studded cast will be headlined by newcomer Edward Speleers who will voice the central character Eragon - a young farm boy who discovers that he is destined for greatness as a dragon rider. Sienna Guillory (Resident Evil: Apocalypse) will voice Arya, an elf who is saved by Eragon from King Galbatorix. Garrett Hedlund (Friday Night Lights, Troy, Four Brothers) voices Murtagh, a mysterious figure who becomes Eragon’s unlikely ally. Robert Carlyle (Trainspotting, The Full Monty) will also voice Durza, a powerful shade who controls the Urgal army.

In the videogame, players will live the legend as Eragon, and with Eragon’s mighty dragon Saphira ride into epic battle against an evil king’s sinister forces. Gamers will be able to realise the ancient destiny of the Dragon Riders and save the land of Alagaësia from falling further into darkness. Eragon will overpower foes with a deep combat system, utilising devastating magic attacks, and join forces with Brom or Murtagh at any point in the game’s drop in/drop out co-op mode.

Eragon will be released for the Xbox 360, Xbox, PS2, PSP, DS, PC and GBA on November 24.

Ubisoft has made quite a few revelations through its sales report for its current fiscal year, and they’re not about the company’s financial success. First up is the disclosure of a sequel to Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter: dubbed GRAW2, it will ship in the fourth quarter of its current fiscal year, which puts it sometime between January and March 2007.

It is already known that the publisher has the largest number of launch titles for the Wii. Well, that did not stop them from upping the number: it announced an additional seven games for the Wii, including one ‘non-announced new brand’, bringing the total number of games available for the system to 14 by March 2007.

Lastly, in a bit of sad news, Ubi revealed that both Assassin’s Creed and Brothers in Arms: Hell’s Highway have been delayed from the Q1 2007 release periods. These games are now scheduled for release sometime between April 2007-March 2008.

Over on Game Matters, Scott Miller’s blog, is word that Prey has sold over a million copies and that plans for a sequel have gone ahead: “There will be a sequel, and we think we have a interesting follow-up story to tell and some all-new innovations to bring new excitement to the table.”

Meanwhile, Total Video Games says that they have got confirmation that Just Cause 2 is also in the pipeline. The original was developed by Avalanche Studios and published by Eidos Interactive. As expected, there are no details, but the game is said to be in development for PS3, PC and Xbox 360.

With Triton shutting down, 2K Games has teamed up with Valve to bring a collection of its games to Steam, the latter’s broadband content delivery service.

Sid Meier’s Civilization IV, Civilization III, Shattered Union and Pirates! will be available initially, with more games in the pipeline.

Blizzard Entertainment has officially announced that The Burning Crusade, the highly anticipated expansion for World of Warcraft, has been delayed to January 2007. The company hopes that the addition of a few extra weeks to the development cycle will let it “further refine the new content that will ship.”

The closed beta test for the expansion has begun earlier this month. This delay will allow these testers to continue providing feedback that will shape the final release.

Bringing extremely bad news to Halo fans is Variety who reports that both Universal and Fox Studios have backed out of the Halo movie adaptation. They cite rising movie costs and apprehension over a director who has no feature film under his belt. Apparently, there was a rumor that the budget for the movie was close to $200 million, the lion’s share of which was supposed to go to Microsoft.

According to Peter Jackson’s agent, the studios asked Microsoft, Bungie and Peter Jackson to ’significantly reduce their deals’ in the movie. This was “respectfully declined” however, prompting both studios to pull out. In response, Bungie is all “optimism, satisfaction and happiness for reasons can’t go into,” as per a weekly update on its site.

No new studio has been lured in announced yet.

The studio behind Mercenaries and the Destroy All Humans series, Pandemic Studios, has added a second development team at its Brisbane, Australia studios. They attribute this expansion to the success of Destroy All Humans 2 which is the sequel to one of the best-selling console games of 2005.

“Pandemic’s Brisbane studio has enjoyed great success with the Destroy All Humans! series and we are excited to build on our tremendous base of Australian talent with the addition of a second team,” said Josh Resnick, president of Pandemic Studios. “With the release of Destroy All Humans! 2, our Brisbane studio is now turning its attention to the development of brand new titles for next-generation gaming systems.”

Following the revelation of the Sixaxis PS3 controller at E3 2006, Neversoft is one of the first developers to announce support for the motion-sensing gamepad with Tony Hawk’s Project 8. The game will let players be able to balance and steer skaters through every move, as well as control slow motion to the nail the trick moves.

Tony Hawk’s Project 8 will be available for the PS3, alongside other platforms, when the console launches on November 17. It will retail for $60.

Available in UK now is the Pro Evolution Soccer 6 Xbox 360 bundle from Microsoft and Konami. This limited-edition bundle is retailing for £300, offering a Premium Xbox 360 console, a Live Headset, 30-day trial membership to Xbox Live, Component HD AV Cable with SCART adapter, Ethernet cable, and finally, a copy of Pro Evolution Soccer 6.

At its Gamers Day event last week, Sony revealed details regarding the PS3’s ability to download and play PS1 and PS2 games. Initially, games for the original PlayStation will be sold via download and transferred from a PS3 to PSP. However, at launch the PS3 will not be able to play those games, though the functionality is planned. Also: PSP users will be able to directly download PS1 games to the handheld without going through the PS3.

The company also noted that although PS1 and PS2 games will be fully playable on the PS3 (via backwards compatibility), the console will not upscale the resolution or offer any other forms of visual improvements over the original. As for pricing, Sony announced pricing for paid content on the PlayStation Network: all content - be it standalone PS3 games, PS1 games, extra content, or whatever - is likely to top out at $15.