Late Night Consoling

Last year, Electronic Arts announced that its Def Jam hip hop wrestling franchise would be heading to next generation systems. Today, the company formally announced Def Jam: Icon, coming to PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. EA Chicago is developing the game. "Music is the cornerstone of hip-hop culture so we wanted to incorporate music and rhythm into the actual gameplay mechanics," said executive producer and EA Chicago head Kudo Tsunoda. "In DEF JAM: ICON, we are changing the way fighting games are played! We are completely innovating the role of the environments in the games, moving from the typical lifeless arenas the hip-hop celebrities are fighting in to environments that play an instrumental part in the fight where they will react to the music and interact with both characters like a third fighter." In the game, the music being played at any given time will have an effect on the performance of in-game characters. Celebrities represented in the game include Ludacris, T.I., Big Boi, and others.

EA Chicago's Def Jam: Icon is set to release in March 2007 for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.

Microsoft today announced that its Xbox Live online service for Xbox and Xbox 360 has gathered 4 million members. The statistic includes gamers who subscribe to Xbox 360's free Xbox Live Silver service, which does not allow online multiplayer gaming. Microsoft expects Xbox Live to reach 6 million users by summer 2007.

Rockstar Games today announced that Rockstar Toronto's film adaptation brawler The Warrior (PS2, Xbox) will be making the trek over to Sony's current portable system. The port will be handled by Rockstar Leeds, which handled both PSP Grand Theft Auto games, with assistance from Rockstar Toronto. "We set out to create a highly sophisticated portable game that delivers a visceral experience previously unseen on the PSP system," said Rockstar Games founder Sam Houser. "We are looking forward to setting the definitive bar for the brawler genre on the PSP system by delivering an extremely stylish and exceptionally deep experience." Little information regarding the game was revealed in the announcement.

Rockstar Leeds plans to release its PSP version of The Warriors in North America and Europe this holiday season.

Earlier this year, Konami released Gradius Collection for PSP, containing several games from Konami's long running shooter series. Now, various outlets report that the company's Japanese operation has announced that it will be releasing three more similar shooter compilations for the system: Salamander Portable, Parodius Portable, and Twinbee Portable.

Salamander Portable will consist of the original Salamander as well as Life Force, Xexex, and Salamander 2. Parodius Portable will consist of Parodius da!, Gokujou Parodius, Kakou no Eikou wo Momomete, Sexy Parodius, and Jikkyou Oshaberi Parodius - forever with me. Finally, Twinbee Portable will consist of Twinbee, Detana Twinbee, Twinbee Yahho! Fushigi no Kuni de Ooabare!!, and Pop'n Twinbee. Each game will also include a fifth, currently unnamed, title. Salamander Portable will feature both original aspect ratio and widescreen options; IGN speculates that this may be an option for all of the games. Twinbee will allow the PSP to be rotated 90 degrees in order to simulate the vertical aspect ratio of an arcade cabinet screen.

Konami plans to release all three games in Japan this coming January. No North American release plans have been announced. If they do make it to Western shores, the titles will likely replace "Portable" with "Collection" to fall in line with the naming convention of Gradius Collection.

Recently, Microsoft and Burger King announced the upcoming release of several cross-promotional Xbox and Xbox 360 games featuring the Burger King brand, in development by Blitz Games. Apparently, the deal got the studio thinking about the potential afforded by smaller, low-budget games. Now, speaking to GamesIndustry.biz, Blitz Games CEO Philip Oliver has revealed that Blitz has created an internal division exclusively focused on creating downloadable games. Oliver did not specifically state which platforms the new division will be supporting, but it is likely to be targeting at least Xbox Live Arcade and Sony's upcoming online platform.

Oliver pointed out some differences between the routes being taken by Xbox Live Arcade and Sony's service. "[Sony's is] a very similar system but Sony is going to put much bigger memory limits and footprints on its downloads," he explained. "It is not going to go the retro route--in fact Sony says it wants its games to be around the same price, but to be higher quality." In contrast, Microsoft maintains a somewhat conservative size limit on Xbox Live Arcade games in order to ensure that they can fit on a memory unit in case a hard drive is not present. Xbox Live Arcade is also assembling a growing library of classic arcade games.