This isn’t really gaming news because it’s for TV and film, however, the service is now available (confirmed by various users) via Wii (go to the Wii shop channel), Playstation3 and Xbox 360 as well as standard via your PC or Mac.

The service will cost €6.99 per month, but as a bonus for signing up you get a month free!

“What I really want to do is be in the forefront of game development once again myself,” Miyamoto said. “Probably working on a smaller project with even younger developers. Or I might be interested in making something that I can make myself, by myself. Something really small.”

No more Miyamoto involvement with Zelda or Mario?

Undoubtedly the transition from major budget titles that propel Nintendos ethos, culture, brand and image into smaller, cut-throat development would be difficult. The extent of these “small games” he’s talking about isn’t fully revealed, but there is a chance that we’re talking app-level games for Nintendo handheld devices that port upwards to the Wii U.

It can’t be overstated enough how significant this move is. He’s a genius in his field in terms of creating characters, stories and worlds that we consistently fall in love with. Him stepping aside to focus on smaller things is akin to Steve Jobs stepping down to focus on making small apps or Picasso stepping aside to make paint brushes.

These features includ Video Kinect, Facebook, Zune Video and of course online gaming, making them free for all users.

This week we launched a new Xbox LIVE dashboard offering controller-free online entertainment through Kinect, making the Xbox 360 more intuitive and interactive than ever before, whilst connecting users to an ever-expanding world of games, movies, TV, music, sports and social entertainment.

Throughout the weekend, Zune Video will also be offering movie deals and free content to everyone. Visit Xbox LIVE and get a 10 minute preview of the blockbuster hit The Hangover Part II for FREE and enjoy up to 40% off amazing titles such as The Hangover, Green Lantern, 40 Year Old Virgin and many more.

To try some of these exciting new features along with all the other existing fantastic Xbox LIVE Gold features visit the Xbox Dashboard and log in to Xbox LIVE.

Check it out below!

In other news, Konami’s long-time cover star of Pro Evo has defected to the arguably superior series (right now, anyway), FIFA. EA snatched the star to be the cover hero of their flagship FIFA yearly update. His debut will be on the cover of FIFA Street, due next year.

“Our FIFA franchise is the number one selling sports videogame franchise in the world, and Lionel Messi is the number one player in the world, so this agreement is a true partnership of superstars,” said Matt Bilbey, Vice President and GM of Football, EA SPORTS.

Messi went on to comment, “I want to be part of the team behind the best sports football game in the world and be associated with the great EA Sports name, EA Sports is a brand that shares my values of creativity, excellence and social responsibility.”

What this really means for fans of the series, like myself, is that we won’t have to put up with grumpus himself, Wayne Rooney anymore on advertising campaigns or in the menu of the game itself. I can handle a Barça jersey over a Manchester United one. Though it’s a crying shame Bayern can’t get Schweinsteiger or something on the global platform!

The purported leak says that the game is set in San Andreas, which will include bigger and more detailed versions of the cities we saw on the PS2. Gang turf wars are coming back alongside tagging and moral choices, which will affect the story.

6 star wanted levels return with military (“national guard”) stepping in to get you.

Girlfriends are also back. Rockstar are also making the game more fun, with some of the fun cheats that were omitted from GTA IV.

All of this is, of course, subject to grain-of-salt rumour reading but it does seem to confirm a lot of what we already knew and expected.

You can see the full list of what’s discussed here.

[Source]

It goes without saying that Battlefield is a huge franchise. It lept beyond the PC-only era into consoles with Bad Company. Bad Company 2 was DICE’s attempt to “PC-ify” the console generation with a more advanced level of difficulty applied to online gaming. With that in mind, console gamers have been taught how Battlefield works when it’s done properly.

BF3 is the spiritual successor to Battlefield 2, which was the last hurrah for DICE’s PC exclusivity. However it feels like a grown up version of Bad Company 2. The HUD, audio and visuals are similar to BC2 – but the difficulty is notched up. This game was quite clearly built for PC gamers and ported back to consoles. This is no more evident than when trying to play a balanced game with controllers versus keyboard & mouse. Of course, this is all subjective, but it matters. It’s more immersive on the PC where it looks better firstly, plays better secondly and is easier to get to grips with.

Server browser is HTML5 powered

Console gamers can jump in fairly handily. However, PC gamers are subjected to “Origin”, which is EA’s answer to Steam. The application itself is fine but in order to play a game you need to launch from Origin, which goes to a browser address which acts as a server browser, etc. This is an entire extra step just to play a game that feels needless.

The browser is well built and works well. In fact it’s so well thought out it’s a joy to use. It also means updates come server-side rather than client-side. However the extra step of having to load Origin first feels clunky and pointless, especially when Origin could have easily built a web browser into itself.

Multiplayer feels phenomenal. There are server crashes here and there but this is, generally, out of EA or DICE’s control. There is also a lot of lag, which is something DICE really needs to address better. Even when it crashes, much like BF2, you still have the urge to jump back into a game.

There still is nothing that compares to 32 people fleeting across a small bit of ocean from an aircraft carrier towards 32 people protecting their land. People loading into boats, people shooting each other to get planes and choppers and the people who spawn late who are forced to swim for it (or be snipers). Launching a huge assault is great fun, regardless of how good or bad your score is.

DICE decided to consolidate some of the class based system which was perfected and popularised by BF2. Assault now also includes the medic functions (my speciality) and as you play through you unlock items like the defibrillator, etc. The classes perfectly compliment each other, much like they did before. It makes no sense not to have a medic and an engineer in a squad, especially when you’re using vehicles.

Airstrip? Nah. Land in a driveway.

A new thing I’ve noticed when playing, that never happened in any previous games, is squads and teams organising properly in spawn points to arrange their assault. This is no more evident in the brilliant Seine map, which features two crossing points over the river via two bridges. It plays out much like 2Fort in Team Fortress, but with the obvious extra crossing to avoid deadlock. Flanking is the name of the game, and the map is tight enough to allow a lot of points of contention.

This map is by far my favourite, but for a slightly bigger map with more options in a bigger 64-man game, Operation Mètro plays very well.

I’m not sure why both of these maps are so well honed compared to the rest, or why they’re set in Paris, but they feel much like it did when playing Karkland in BF2, with infantry-only settings.

Speaking of Karkland, the expansion due in December should appease BF2 fans like myself who are missing the grand scale of Karkland or Wake Island, which feel like they’re somewhat omitted from the new maps. In fact, the new maps feel more like better adaptations of Bad Company maps, rather than maps designed to remind PC gamers of how good BF2 was.

Karkland is coming in a month!

The thing that makes Battlefield what it is, is the sense of chaos that permeates the game. On the PC it’s exactly that. Demonstrating the game to other people I explained every single thing going on is someone making their own decision. Driving jeeps over hills to try and land near a flag in a position they won’t get shot in, planes falling from the sky, tanks reversing to avoid the man in front of them with the rpg launcher, random knife battles, and now with the added bit of chaos created when a building explodes into pieces in order to reveal a sniper.

On the consoles, with its limited number of players and lack of immersive control mechanics, it just doesn’t feel the same. There’s not as much chaos. There’s not as much fun… and in the more organised games players don’t quite know how to not play like they’re rambo. I will concede this experience is based on limited playing and observing others, but it’s immediately obvious that the PC experience is better than the console one.

Overall this is a remarkably well done return to the series and a great spiritual successor to BF2, even if it shares more in common with Bad Company 2. With the flaws of Origin and the crashes that occasionally occur it’s still the best of the “big” online shooters. 64 men battling it out with planes, tanks, choppers and infantry is still the most impressive online experience you can have. [9]

Since week 40 (3rd October), PS3 climbed to nearly 3 million sales in Europe, according to the information. Wii and Xbox 360 sales area almost exactly on 2 million.

“Looking at the cumulative sales transition from the beginning of the year, the sales of PS3 are exceeding those of last year,” noted Nintendo’s president Satoru Iwata. “But Wii’s sales showed a year-on-year loss. Xbox 360 is selling well in the US, but the transition is nearly the same as last year in Europe.”

The data was apparently gathered through independent sources, and continue to confirm the belief that Nintendo fills a gap where Xbox dominates America while PS3 dominates Europe.

A Lancer Turret-The wrong end to be looking at

Gears of War 3 opens in a familiar setting, and without giving too much away this is in my opinion is a vital and clever story telling device that very much shows Epics commitment to constructing a proper narrative. This holds true throughout the game via scenes and in game set pieces that in my view are above and beyond what has come before series. One may notice that the tone this time round is very much a desperate one.

This is humanities last push against the Locust/Lambent horde, as a result you have a very somber setting. One important thing I feel I need to point out is that the there is very little forced tear jerking in this one, which is where I believe the second one fell down on.  Doms story line in the second offering-while tragic, I felt was very much out of synch or shoehorned in.  Towards the end of the game there is a standout piece which in my view was brilliant and nearly had me standing up and applauding.

As you tag along with Delta squad you will see human and locust alike scrounging for ammo, and weapons. You will see an existence that has been pushed to it’s bare minimum with little hope of coming back. All this weighs in and contributes to a more dramatic and believable scenario.

Carmine-Not the best practitioner of amateur dentistry

Looks wise Gears has a few new tricks up its sleeve. On first look the Unreal engine under the hood of the game looks sharper or crisper, (or as one friend of mine put it “it has brighter browns and greys”). The Draw distance has been increased and the game is no longer happy to dwell in a darker night setting as most of the action takes place in daylight where the engine is happy to show off it’s new bells and whistles. Smoke effects seem to have been upscaled along with more bloom and lens flare. Some boss encounters are now on par with any of the massive encounters in God of War. There are still very minor frame rate issues when the ‘splosions and giblets start flying but this is forgiven as it is not noticeable and not game breaking. The sound as usual is fantastic. Bullets whizz explosions go boom in Hollywood style proportions. This is best enjoyed with you volume high…or with a pair of good headphones if you have a better half in bed (talking from experience here).

Game play is very much in the realms of “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it” territory, and as I have already said, this is entirely understandable. Snapping to cover now feels more fluent, the rodeo run is still a bit dicey and hard to turn but this is more for balancing reasons than anything else. In a nod to the alien movies, there is the welcome addition of mechanical loaders or “Silverbacks”. These are awesome to play around with as you feel like you are wearing a small tank. I would gladly play a mini game based on the Silverbacks- Epic take note.

Anya now gets her ass outta the office and into the field.

The Multiplayer this time round is a lot better. In my view (and I know this is a touchy issue among the hardcore fans of the multiplayer), the previous iterations of this were farcical. Between balancing issues and host rage quits, it was a cock tail of failure that was only really fixed through numerous patches. Thankfully, this time round this is not the case. I am confident in saying there is a solid structure here where all the past failings have been taken on board and dealt with. There are also very few balance issues.(people on the receiving end of the Sawed off shot gun may say different though). A lot of the previous modes make a welcome return like King of The Hill (formerly known as Annex), Warzone, Capture the Leader, Wingman and execution. Horde also makes a welcome return, this time however we also have the Locust equivalent “Beast mode”. The idea being that you take on wave upon wave of the enemy, all the while building fortifications and looking out for your team mates. Personally these are tremendous fun and can result in a lot of “Bugger I have work in the morning”, play sessions.

You will notice that I have very little negatives about the latest instalment of what has been an extremely successful franchise. In truth it is hard to fault it. I could mark it down for being ”more of the same”, but if one looks deeper, One can see why the developers stuck to their guns. They wanted  Gears swansong to be one of instant adrenaline and visceral carnage. None of this could be achieved if their fan base had to learn new mechanics. Epics passion for the game is no where more apparent than in its closing chapters, and I for one am glad that I was along for the ride.

Presentation- 8

. The cinema style cut scenes and adrenaline fused set pieces hold the player by the throat.

Graphics-9

The Unreal engine does its bet and is what you would expect. Big hulking soldier types are detailed to the nth degree. Visual effects both particle and otherwise add to what is a stunning looking game.

Sound-9

Marcus is still very much a “gravely voiced, take no crap/I have a past” character. Bullet and ambient sound headlines here. The sweeping score by Steve Jablonski (done the transformers soundtrack) is uplifting and suitably epic.

Gameplay-9

I felt like I needed to survive. I felt pushed to pick up that last ammo stash. That in itself is an accomplishment. The majority of the game will feel familiar however but with more tweakage.

Lasting appeal 9

There are various difficulty setting you can ramp it up to like insane if you are that way incline. The Multiplayer should keep you going for yonks.

Overall 9- Amazing