Late Night Consoling

With the runaway success of Traveller's Tales' Lego Star Wars and Lego Star Wars II among all ages and across nearly all platforms, more Lego tie-in video games were a shoe-in. For months, rumors have been circulating that the next game to get the Danish brick treatment would be Batman, and today Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment made the speculation official. The company plans to establish a video game franchise around the Lego Batman brand.

Lego Batman: The Videogame is being developed by TT Games, the recently formed group that absorbed Traveller's Tales, and published by WBIE. TT Games confirmed that the Lego Star Wars team will be responsible for development of Lego Batman. Players will take control of Lego brick versions of Batman and sidekick Robin, who will presumably be playable in cooperative form, reprising one of the most popular features of the Lego Star Wars game. On the translation of Batman to Lego form, DC Comics president Paul Levitz commented, "There's a special magic to the LEGO incarnation of Batman that makes him accessible to a younger generation of his fans. We look forward to the videogame version extending this fantasy."

"Batman spans several generations as one of the most popular DC Super Heroes, and LEGO BATMAN will appeal to several generations of gamers who grew up idolizing the Dark Knight and playing with LEGO toys," said WBIE development and production senior VP Samantha Ryan. "Working with TT Games, we are confident they will continue their LEGO games' success with this title, and we will expand our publishing endeavors with the introduction of the LEGO BATMAN franchise.

WBIE plans to ship TT Games' Lego Batman: The Videogame for "next-generation and current generation platforms and the PC" some time next year.

After delivering one of the PSP's standout racing titles with Wipeout Pure, Studio Liverpool is returning to Sony's handheld with the upcoming Wipeout Pulse, Eurogamer revealed today. The game will feature 24 new tracks, a custom soundtrack option, downloadable content at launch and beyond, and much-requested online multiplayer. Eurogamer has the first screenshots. Also described in the report is a new "Mag-Strip" track component that keeps vehicles anchored to the track, meaning that gravity-defying loops and upside down sections become possible within levels.

According to Eurogamer, Wipeout Pulse is due out in September 2007, though no region information was attached to that date.

...and here is our reprinted Wipeout public service announcement: The franchise is called "Wipeout," not "WipEout." No, that is not a capital "E" in the logo. It's just how that particular typeface works. The publisher refers to its own series as "Wipeout." Look it up. If we were to treat that letter as a capital "E," we'd have to read the Wipeout Pure logo as "WipEout purE" or possibly even "wipEout purE," depending on how you interpret the "W," and do you really want to be the gamer--or even journalist--who participates in that kind of thing? No, of course not. Thank you for your time.

Last night, Bethesda Softworks the Xbox 360 version of the Shivering Isles expansion pack for The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. Bethesda claims the appromixately 1GB pack includes some 30 or more hours of gameplay, along with its 250 additional points' worth of Achievements.

The Elder Scrolls IV: The Shivering Isles is available for 2,400 Microsoft Points ($30). The PC version also shipped to stores today and sports a suggested retail price of $29.99.

In its roudup of The World's Best CEOs, financial publication Barron's has highlighted current Nintendo boss Satoru Iwata. Iwata, who has headed up Nintendo since 2002, has helmed the legendary game company during its practically meteoric rise on the back of the Nintendo DS and Wii, following several years of decreasing market share. On his strategy, Iwata commented, "We are not fighting against other companies--we are fighting against ignorance of video games."

Iwata landed his corporate position with a track record unusual for CEOs of major global corporations; prior to his employment at Nintendo, he was a developer at Kirby and Smash Bros. studio HAL Laboratory, where he spent most of the 1980s and 90s.