British power metal squealers DragonForce will debut a new and inevitably over-the-top single in a Guitar Hero III track pack later this week. Taken from their new album, Ultra Beatdown, "Heroes of Our Time" will no doubt challenge serious shredders with a never-ending string of shifting notes and finger-knot solos when it arrives on Xbox Live Marketplace and the PlayStation Store on August 21.

The DragonForce Track Pack will also provide two other overwrought songs, namely "Revolution Deathsquad" and "Operation Ground and Pound," from the album dubbed Inhuman Rampage. Expect this one to go for the usual 500 MS Points ($6.25).

[Via press release]

Speaking at the outset of this year's Leipzig Games Convention, Crytek boss Cevat Yerli revealed that the developer's graphical tour de force, Crysis, cost an estimated $22 million to create. Yerli has previously lamented the effect piracy has had on the title, but reiterated that it's still recouped the development costs, saying, "If it wasn't profitable I wouldn't be able to stand here."

Best known for their stunning visuals, Crytek's game engines are also guilty of bringing even the mightiest of gaming PCs to their knees. While the upcoming, heavily-optimized Crysis: Warhead promises a significant performance increase even on mid-range systems, Crytek is already cooking up its next GPU melter, which Yerli says should be ready by 2012. That's when he anticipates GPU tech making the next major leap in its evolution; until then, he expects fellow developers to focus more on what they already have to work with, by means of stylized graphics and hardware accelerated physics.

Source – Crysis cost 22 million to make, IGN
Source – Crytek: New engine in 2012, IGN

From making rival gangsters offers they can't refuse, to using your voice to command soldiers not to refuse orders, these fresh-off-the-editing-computer videos from EA's The Godfather II and Ubisoft's Tom Clancy's EndWar are presented for your viewing pleasure (and "Should I pre-order either of them?" evidence pool). The EndWar trailer is the same one being trotted out at the Leipzig Games Convention 2008; the first look at EA's gangster sequel was shown to the press last week at the publisher's annual Studio Showcase. But you don't have to travel to Germany (or even the Bay Area) to watch 'em – just click through after the break.

Source – Godfather II at GameTrailers
Source – Tom Clancy's EndWar at GameTrailers

In his latest report from Infinity Ward HQ, community confidant Fourzerotwo brings word that the Call of Duty 4 battlefront could see some changes soon. No less than eight new multiplayer playlists are in development, of which four are currently being tested, and at least one can pass through the servers without a patch: Hardcore Headquarters. But we're taking a keen interest in another playlist, Hardcore Ricochet, which turns teamkillers' attacks against them. It's like we're rubber, they're glue -- whatever they shoot, bounces off us and ... burrows deep into their treacherous guts!

Peep the full descriptions and statuses of all the planned playlists on Fourzerotwo's blog.

[Thanks, Michael]

PSN title Novastrike will receive a major update in the next few weeks. Kevin McCann, president of Tiki Games, writes on the PlayStation Blog that the patch will tame the difficulty levels a bit, add Trophies and make several other tweaks to the top-down omni-directional kill-anything-that-moves shooter.

For those who purchased the $10 title, the list of changes made appears to be quite significant and might be worth giving the title another spin. McCann writes that he's looking forward to hearing from those who stopped playing the game due to the difficulty issues once the patch is released, while reiterating that a European release for the game will happen "as soon as possible."

We hope you're ready for a face full of freshly, um, zombified zombies on film, because that's exactly what Capcom has delivered at the Leipzig Games Convention. This new, entirely in-game trailer for Resident Evil 5 doesn't show too much that's especially new, but it's worth taking note of the vehicle chase sequence and hey ... is that another mine cart level?

Click on the video above and you'll get a peek at playing as Chris Redfield's female sidekick, Sheva Alomar, along with some oh-so-brief snippets of various (we presume) über-important cutscenes. Sure, it may be more RE4, but is that really so awful – especially when it looks this scary-good?

IGN reports that the latest issue of Famitsu PS3 is chock-a-block with details on the forthcoming Final Fantasy XIII demo, due to be packaged with the Blu-ray Disc release of Final Fantasy: Advent Children Complete. The info comes straight from the game's director, Motomu Toriyama, who divulges more than its expected length – which, as we previously reported, could break the two-hour mark. (Presumably just to prove that more than an hour of the game is actually finished.)

According to Toriyama, the demo will be "Like the FFVII demo that was included with PlayStation's Tobal Nol.1," allowing players to experience the game's opening sequence and prologue.

He also says that the primary goal of the demo is to get players acquainted with the new party system, which will allow them to experience the game's story from multiple characters' perspectives. Players will control more than one character in the demo – Toriyama points out to Famitsu that, in fact, there's no one "central" character in FFXIII – and, in "classic" FF form, will be controlling them directly, one after another, in purely turn-based combat.

Replacing political and social unrest with "go-anywhere" driving, Codemasters has partnered with French dev Asobo Studios to publish the company's open world-style racer, Fuel, for the Xbox 360, PS3, and PC sometime next year. Asobo's track record isn't likely to relieve you of your socks anytime soon, however. The studio's recent efforts include video game adaptations of Ratatouille, Wall-E and The Mummy, so we're not expecting another GRiD or DiRT just yet.

On top of dynamic weather and dozens of drivable vehicles, Codies boasts that Fuel will feature the "largest environment ever created" in a racing game, and that the game's absurd 5,000 square miles of weather-ravaged terrain will "revolutionize" the genre. There is that old saying about size not mattering as much as how you use it, though clearly this is not the approach being used here.

We are all interested in the future. Indeed, as the great Criswell so astutely observed, "We are all interested in the future, for that is where you and I are going to spend the rest of our lives." And it wouldn't be much of a life if it wasn't spent playing the latest video games, no doubt powered by trillions of tetraflops and a giggle-inducing number of gigabytes. Crytek CEO Cevat Yerli has seen this future (it's where he bought his Crysis-capable computer), and has concluded that the next generation of consoles -- as in the Xbox 720 and the PlayStation 4 -- could arrive in 2011 or 2012.

Discussing "The Future of Gaming Graphics" at Leipzig's GC Developer Conference, Yerli estimated that Microsoft and Sony's next offerings would arrive "in three to four years' time, although there are good reasons why it should be 2010 already...but we'll see." Crytek, which most recently worked on Crysis Warhead, has also pinned 2012 as the debut year for its next in-house engine and follow-up to last year's impressive CryEngine2.

Regardless of timing, we're pleased to see that not everybody thinks the current cavalcade of consoles is our last.

According to DFC intelligence figures cited by Dave Perry, Sony has lost more money on the PlayStation 3 hardware than it made on the PlayStation 2 during its five most popular years. In pure numbers speak it's lost $3 billion on the PS3, which is about equivalent to everything it made selling PS2s during its peak years. This story would actually have a lot more impact if Carl Sagan was around to say "beelyuns."

Perry, best known for his stint at Shiny Entertainment, was speaking at the really long-named Games Convention Developers Conference, which appears to be both a Convention and a Conference, and was just using the figures to underscore how much Sony was spending on hardware development. However, the 1UP article doesn't mention until near the end that the original PS2 lost money in its first year, and that Sony (and the other console makers) does this so it can make bank on the software/games that people need to fuel their systems.

In all fairness, the article goes on to explain that Microsoft lost $4 billion on the original Xbox, and has had to spend over $1 billion replacing faulty hardware in the 360 and extending the warranty for original purchasers. So, we tend to think $5 billion trumps $3 billion. The real winner in this struggle? Nintendo. It has been churning a profit on that little Wii since it hopped out of the gate. Rassin' frassin' wand-wagglin' profiteers.

FIFA 09 cover athlete Maurice Edu has been traded to another team, meaning EA Sports will, yet again, have to change the box art on one of its games. Edu, who would have been featured on the cover wearing his Toronto FC jersey, will now wear the uniform of the US Men's National Team -- not Scotland's Glasgow Rangers, which is the team he'll actually play on. EA Sports tells IGN that the cover of the game will ship with the correct art -- no "print out" version necessary.

This would be the second time in a month that EA Sports had to dump extra resources into changing a cover due to an athlete changing teams. Earlier this month the publisher had to fix the art for perennial high-profile American football title Madden 09 when cheesehead favorite Brett Favre unretired and left for New York New Jersey.

LucasArts has sent us a rather hefty excerpt from The Art and Making of The Force Unleashed book (itself a whopping 224 pages) that came out this week. We're guessing it doesn't end with a note on the dev team being cut.

Click above to peruse the gallery (Protip: Click on the Hi-res button on each gallery page to view a high-resolution version of the image). A demo for Star Wars: The Force Unleashed drops this Thursday, with the full game arriving mid-September.

Well, that was easy. 2K Games has complied with our subliminal request that it release the PlayStation 3 version of sublime, submerged shooter BioShock in North America on October 21. There was some mental resistance to our suggestions of a worldwide release, however, so you international folks will just have to make do with October 24.

BioShock comes to the PlayStation 3 sporting the same aquatic utopia-turned-dystopia that made the game one of 2007's best, along with Trophies, a new "Survivor" difficulty level and challenge rooms, to be released as downloadable content "shortly after launch."

Patrick Aiello, the producer for the upcoming film Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li (starring Kristin "Lana Lang" Kreuk!), believes Street Fighter IV will launch alongside the film. Aiello tells GameDaily that the "film and game release dates will coincide." According to IMDB, the Street Fighter movie currently has a release date of February 27, 2009.

Although hardcore Street Fighter fans may be upset that the game isn't coming out at the end of this year as originally announced, there's always the option of playing it in arcades at diverse locations on this little planet.

Update: Sony tells us that shipments of the "new 80GB PS3 started this week, and retailers can sell them as they receive the inventory." Go get 'em!

We're currently checking to see if they should be "officially" on sale, but it appears the 80GB PS3 models, with DualShock 3 included, are now roaming the lands of retail in some locations. The Sony Style store has a release date "on or about" September 1 for the SKU, and we've also been informed by some of our retail contacts that the model has arrived in their stores. The 80GB model costs $399 and replaces the 40GB model -- neither model features backwards compatibility.

As PS3 Fanboy points out, this means there are currently two 80GB PS3 SKUs available as the 40GB slowly fades away. The other version is the 80GB Metal Gear Solid 4 bundle at $499, with a copy of the game and limited backwards compatibility.