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The Week in Review news piece summarizes and highlights the most important gaming related news and rumors over the past week. This weekly article will keep you plugged in and in-tune. For starters, I just want to apologize for a lack of news at the end of last week and the beginning of this week. We’ve been streamlining a number of technical things here at CheatCC to give everybody a much better experience. Naturally, Murphy’s Law kicked in and we had a few difficulties with the servers. That’s all behind us now and we’re ready to dish up steaming piles of gaming news for everyone. On that note, a lot of gaming news and issues are discussed at length in this week’s podcast. For example, the announcement and subsequent retraction by Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer that a new Xbox was in fact in the works gets a lot of funny air time. If you haven’t subscribed to the C4 podcast yet, you really should. You can do so by clicking HERE or by going to iTunes and subscribing directly through the store. It’s free and it’s a load of fun! Getting down to business, Rockstar Games announced this week that their critically acclaimed yet poorly sold DS exclusive, GTA: Chinatown Wars, is on its way to the Sony PSP. The title found an incredible lack of success on the DS despite its innovative gameplay and universal praise. It is set for a fall release. A video interview with the creative minds behind Mass Effect at BioWare have let it be known that add-on content for owners of Mass Effect will be out soon. Though no pricing or release date have yet been revealed, we do know that the next DLC offering will be an action-heavy outing that will serve as a prequel to Mass Effect 2. From what we saw at E3 2009, we’re sure this expansion will be a glorified demo of the title that will highlight the myriad combat upgrades that are going into the sequel. The inclusion of the arena/gladiatorial battles in the expansion seems to back up that sentiment. If you’d like to take a gander at the video clip for yourself, click HERE . In a blog post by Best Buy Chief Marketing Officer Barry Judge, Best Buy stores in the greater Dallas area will be testing out “a kiosk-based trade-in service” for used video games.As opposed to other major retailers’ kiosk systems, Best Buy will be giving you instant gratification via a Best Buy gift card. That means game trades will be able to be applied toward any and all merchandise offered at Best Buy. It was announced by EA on Wednesday that Mythic Studios, the development house behind such MMO successes as Dark Age of Camelot and Warhammer Online, has been merged with BioWare. This restructuring of studios has squarely placed EA’s MMO and RPG business under one roof. BioWare founders Dr. Ray Muzyka and Dr. Greg Zeschuk will move a notch further up the totem pole, taking on titles of Group General Manager and Group Creative Officer, respectively. Former head of Mythic, Mark Jacobs, has been replaced by Mythic co-founder Rob Denton. ZeniMax Media, the parent company of Bethesda Softworks, has brought legendary id Software into the fold. That’s right; the independent developer that essentially created the first-person shooter has finally been sold. According to the presser, this deal “brings together two of world’s best game studios… [a] Library of powerhouse franchises [that] will include DOOM, Fallout, The Elder Scrolls, QUAKE, Wolfenstein, and RAGE. Finally, Sony and Naughty Dog’s Uncharted action/adventure franchise is being converted to a major motion picture; Columbia Pictures is at the helm of the project. According to a Hollywood Reporter article, the film is currently being written by Kyle Ward – also penning scripts for Kane & Lynch and Hitman 2. Additionally, Avi Arad of Iron Man and The Incredible Hulk fame is producing. Thanks so much everyone and we will see you next week! |