Kotaku

Take-Two Interactive announced today that BioShock 2 was officially in the works, under the development wing of the recently formed 2K Marin studio. The sequel—rumored to actually be a prequel—to the Xbox 360 and PC shooter is planned for a fourth-quarter fiscal 2009 release date. Take-Two's fiscal year ends October 31, so expect it to hit unspecified platforms (read: Xbox 360) before the '09 holidays.

Take-Two also noted that the original BioShock has 2 million unit sales under its belt since its August '07 release. No pressure, 2K Marin! No pressure at all.

Everyone knows that Ms. Pac Man is filled with ghosts, four of them to be specific. But a fifth ghost?

That's what a Boston-area Craigslister claimed when he was contacted to ask why he was giving away a Ms. Pac Man cabinet for free.

Someone on ArcadeControls.com contacted the cabinet owner for the explanation, which involves poltergeist, a crying 3-year-old and a "dark figure."

Back in 1999, Nintendo released Super Smash Bros. for the Nintendo 64, taking their most popular characters and dropping them into a simplistic fighting game that captured the hearts of millions of gamers around the world. Its sequel, Super Smash Bros. Melee, was the best-selling title in the entire GameCube library, so you can see why Super Smash Bros. Brawl has a lot to live up to. The game is bigger, with more characters, more stages, and star cameos from a few non-Nintendo properties like Sonic the Hedgehog and Solid Snake, but does it live up to the legacy of its predecessors?

The results are plain as red and blue.

Looks like Super Smash Bros Brawl is having some problems working on a few Wii out there. We've only received a handful of complaints about this here at Kotaku, but it's a big enough problem that Nintendo already has a site set up to deal with the problem in North America.

Super Smash Bros. Brawl utilizes a double-layer disc which has a large memory capacity. A very small percentage of Wii consoles may have trouble consistently reading data off this large capacity disc if there is some contamination on the lens of the disc drive. Nintendo has specialized cleaning equipment that can resolve this problem. (Please do NOT attempt to clean the lens yourself, as you may damage the system.)

Hit the jump for the mini FAQ on the issue:

Take-Two Interactive tonight disclosed an email they sent out to their employees about a change in their severance plan which was triggered, it appears, by Electronic Arts offer to buy them out.

The "Change in Control Employee Severance Plan" will give "minimum levels of compensation" to all employees in the event that they are fired as a result of a change in control of the company. While Take-Two goes to some lengths to point out that this has nothing to do with the possibility of a buy-out, they also note that the plan was created to address the "understandable concerns" that some employees have about the possibility of an EA buy-out.

We hope that this benefit will alleviate some of the concerns you may have, and allow you to remain fully focused on your responsibilities. You are critical to the success of Take-Two. The most important contribution each of us can make during this period is doing our jobs with the same focus, skill and creativity we always have.

We remain committed to open communication with all of you, and will continue to update you when and as we can.

Creativity is at an all-time high at Take-Two -- this is an incredibly exciting time for all of us and also for our customers who depend on us for cutting-edge innovation and the industry's most exciting games. We know we won't disappoint.

Sincerely,
Strauss and Ben

Was that the sound of stockholders announcing their intentions? Hit the jump for the full email.

By: N. Evan Van Zelfden

What if you could go back, start from scratch, and remake E3 in your own image? With EIEIO in Austin, Texas, that's what developer-centric games publisher Gamecock Media is trying to do: Developer demos for the press, live bands and demos for the public, and drinks for all. The event was loosely associated with South by Southwest this year, and both festivals hope to have stronger ties with each other next year.

It started on a Wednesday evening, at the Alamo Drafthouse--a movie theater that serves dinner and a selection of fine beers. 140 developers, partners, press, and Gamecock staff watched a screening of documentary film The King of Kong--which met with great enthusiasm from the audience.

Gamecock's chief executive, Mike Wilson, took the stage beforehand to give a one-and-a-half minute speech, in which he thanked everyone for being there. "It's really awesome to have everyone in Texas for once," he said in reference to the developers who had traveled from Germany, England, California, Chicago, Houston, and other points on the compass. "God knows we've come to all of your homes enough."

"I need all of you in top form for tomorrow," Wilson continued. "There are bulls to be ridden, there are Rollergirls to be boxed, and somewhere in there, we're going to fit in some videogames."

A new study from Gamasutra and sister divisions Game Developer magazine and Game Deveolper Research division has selected the top 50 developers in the gaming industry today. It was based on reputation and sales data, through anonymous surveys and assessments of sales charts in the US, the UK, and Japan, the number of games released each year, and the average metacritic rating. While the sales data is handy, the all-encompassing approach taken by the study to include reputation, as well, makes this study interesting. According to Gamasutra, "the resulting report is the only multi-input empirical ranking available for game development studios."

Hit the jump for the top 20 devs on the list.

The moment is here that you've been waiting 3 or 4 days your whole lives for. Kotaku readers from around the globe assembled in the hopes of finding America's Next PSP2 Concept. How did you all do?

Let's just say we had mixed results. So hit the jump to vote for your favorite of our best picks. Then laugh to your heart's content at everyone else.

After seeing the demo of EA's Spore running on the iPhone earlier today, we were scratching our heads as to whether or not we'd actually see the game in our hands (not just on the jumbotron as a tech demo). But according to word we just received from EA, we will one day play Spore—as well as a pile of other EA titles—on the iPhone.

Today we announced SPORE for iPhone and have other games in early stages of development.

We are using the new iPhone SDK to develop games for the iPhone OS.
We're really excited about what this means for people to be able to play EA games on their iPhone or iPod touch and are thrilled to extend our relationship as a developer of games for various Apple products (Mac, iPod nano, video iPod and now iPhone & iPod touch).

From EA's CEO John Riccitiello, "The animation technology in the iPhone OS enables us to build awesome games. I think iPhone consumers are going to be blown away by the games we create for this platform."

Today, Apple shows off their software development kit (SDK) for the iPhone. This is a series of tools that Apple is releasing so third parties can make (authorized) programs for the system. And game makers showed up. In droves.

First up, Spore for the iPhone.

Today during Carl Freer's Georgia Tech speech, he revealed that while his company plans to release the Gizmondo with unchanged hardware (save for a new graphics chip) to the market in the near future, the company is already collaborating with NVIDIA on a completely new circuit board for a future Gizmondo.

He explained that since the platform "could never compete with Sony or Nintendo in content," they planned to take a completely open source approach instead, promoting software development from within universities. He also added, "If we do well, our roadmap entails expanding the hardware and supporting full telephony." For the full story, make sure to catch our liveblog of the event.

You might recall that last week Jack Thompson offered to come to Electronic Arts assistance in their attempt to try and buy-out Take-Two. (Funny enough, when I first emailed Jack about this he said he didn't care.)

Today Electronic Arts told Jack thanks, but no thanks:

Army of Two is Electronic Arts' answer to the growing desire for cooperative play, a game that is essentially one giant coop mode, with some flawed single-player strapped on for the lonely and friendless. While the third-person shooter has plenty to say about the privatization of armies and the inherent monetization of war, the real message here is that shooters have gotten stale and Army of Two's bag of new tricks is here to shake things up.

More good than bad, more blue than red, I still found Army of Two to be quite a mixed bag.

Well, it's Monday and, right on cue, here's Phil Harrison's new job: President and "Directeur Général Délégué" of Infogrames. He is also a member of the board of directors. Shoot, I was hoping he'd stay in the video game industry.

We kid, because we love you, Phil... and we're a little worried.

Harrison will be overseeing the studios and content development for the group, which owns the Atari brand.

"This is the perfect time to join Infogrames and help shape the future of Atari - one of the industry's legendary brands. As the game business moves rapidly online I believe we have an outstanding opportunity to create amazing network game and community experiences for players the world over. I am especially excited to be working on this challenge together with David, one of the most respected leaders and successful executives in our industry."

I'd imagine that Infogrames would have had to drop quite a bit of coin to lure Harrison away from Sony, though I bet that fancy new title helped. Heck, I'd be Directeur Général Délégué for Infogrames just for the business cards.