Mega Man 9, Niko Bellic is a rapist, and more.

Busy week?  No worries.  Here are the most noteworthy news items of the past week.

Monday: Kotaku’s Stephen Tolito wrote an interesting piece on figures now available from the Wii’s Nintendo Channel.  He highlighted some surprises, the greatest being that people actually enjoy Wii Play to the tune of nine hours logged per person.  Carnival Games was another unexpected winner.  Most compelling, indeed.

Tuesday: EGM’s Quartermann is reporting one hell of a rumor this month.  If their sources are correct (and their hit-to-miss ratio is decent), Microsoft might be looking to farm out Xbox 360 hardware production to third-party manufacturers.  So… if respected Japanese companies started producing these units, could that change the landscape over there?  Probably not.  But it sure as hell would be interesting. (more…)

This time, he's naming names.

Electronic Gaming Monthly Editor-in-Chief Dan Hsu is quite the controversial character, it seems.  We're not talking "controversial" in a negative, "tries to get mouth-love in an airport restroom" sort of way.  Rather, this is the positive, "tells the truth regardless of who he pisses off" variety.

Most of you probably remember the infamous editorial he previously posted in EGM (Issue 199), wherein he openly attacked certain gaming publications for engaging in the practice of trading favorable coverage for advertising dollars.  The problem?  He never specifically named the publications in question.  As can be expected, responses to his allegations were mixed.  Some praised his willingness to even broach such a touchy (and potentially career-wrecking) matter.  Others saw his unwillingness to be specific as part of a ploy to artificially boost the credibility of his own magazine.

Whatever the case may be, a lot has happened in the past two years.  The biggest bombshell dropped not too long ago in the highly-publicized firing of Jeff Gertsmann from Gamespot in late November of last year.  While no evidence of a wrongful termination has officially surfaced, it was difficult to follow the story without being reminded of Hsu's editorial.

Now, Video Game Media Watch reports that Hsu is back on the warpath, and he is specifically calling out the offending companies.  In his most recent editorial, he names the Mortal Kombat developers at Midway, sports game developers at Sony, and Ubisoft as inhibiting EGM from covering their products.  This move is apparently in response to the companies receiving what they perceived to be negative coverage in the past.  In other words, if the EGM editors smelled a turd, they didn't pretty up their impressions of the experience for their readers.

It should be noted that, as in the Gertsmann situation, nothing has been technically proven one way or the other.  Nonetheless, Hsu is a well-respected professional charged with overseeing the creation of a premier print gaming publication.  That he would gamble with his reputation, and that of his magazine, without good cause seems downright silly.  That being said, it seems a safe bet that no amount of salt need be ingested with this story.

This blog article should be recognized as the sole opinion of the editor and does not necessarily reflect GotNext’s official opinion on the subject.

Or maybe not. 

Most people have long forgotten that a remake of Final Fantasy VII (as well as VIII and IX) was actually announced almost seven years ago…for PS2. While they were all quietly canceled as a result of the tremendous money pit better known as Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, fans have never stopped begging Square to give them the opportunity to buy the game again.

As recently as June, FFVII character designer and Kingdom Hearts/FF Versus XIII director Tetsuya Nomura insisted that they were "absolutely not" making it while Crisis Core director Hideki Imaizumi has just intimated to Famitsu that they are "aware of consumer interest" but the current obstacle is the fact that the team responsible for the infamous 2005 FFVII tech demo are busy working on FFXIII.

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Taking the sequel into unexpected territory.

The original Condemned was a great game with a story that was more than a little vague. At the end of the game you were probably left scratching your head. The recent announcement of the movie based on the Condemned universe, The Unforgettable, may shed some light on the direction of the game's sequel.

The movie was actually first announced as Species X (no relation to the Natasha Henstridge films) before Condemned even hit the shelves and was always planned as a tie-in to the series, to be released alongside "a planned sequel to the game that will expand the universe of the original."

The weird thing is that the movie is apparently about a "war between good and evil aliens" which the first game certainly was not. Since they are still billing the film as a tie-in to the games it's looking like this alien war may feature prominently in Condemned 2: Bloodshot. While introducing aliens into a storyline that seemed to be more supernatural or psychological seems odd, at the very least this has been their plan all along.

Condemned 2 is currently scheduled to be released in February 2008 so a summer release for The Unforgettable isn't out of the question.

[Hollywood Reporter via Kotaku]

Hot on the heels of the Wal-Mart and Toys 'R Us fliers revealing a possible $50 price drop on the Premium 360, comes a Circuit City flier that answers the important question: What about the Elite and the Core?

Way to keep things simple Microsoft. The people who brought you five different versions of Windows Vista now present the staggered price drop.

The Core, with only $20 excised from it's price, is even less of a value compared to the Premium than it already was, and since the Elite is only seeing a $30 drop it is $100 more expensive than the Premium instead of just $80 as it was previously.

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