Do you own a copy of Rock Band 2 sans microphone? Do you own a copy of Lips complete with microphone? Luckily for you Harmonix is working to make the peripheral work with their title, presumably via an upcoming patch.

"Microsoft and MTV Games are working together to ensure that consumers will be able to use the wireless mics from Lips with Rock Band 2 after launch," the companies told MTV's Multiplayer Blog in an e-mailed statement.

"More details on timing to come. Harmonix and MTV Games strive for all third-party controllers to work with the Rock Band games, fitting with Harmonix’ open-platform philosophy for controllers."

So far Harmonix has not revealed when support for Lips' mic would be added to Rock Band 2.

Image courtesy Microsoft

‘Lips’ Mic Patch Coming To ‘Rock Band’ Soon [MTV Multiplayer Blog]

See Also:

• Rock Band Track Pack 2 Coming November 17
• Guitar Hero, Rock Band Add Killers Tracks
• Rock Band Feature: Harmonix's Top Tips For Drummers
• Official Guitar Hero/Rock Band Instrument Compatibility Chart ...

Michal Kicinski and Marcin Iwinski, co-founders of The Witcher creator CD Projekt, have been named the Ernst & Young Entrepreneurs of the Year.

The annual award is granted to businessmen who "present the most valuable examples of business success to the general public." The main criteria used in determining the award are "resourcefulness, innovativeness, good management and the measure of worldwide success achieved by the company by offering products better than those offered by foreign competitors."

CD Projekt's official announcement cites their success as publishers and developers as key to the duo's win. The Witcher, developed on a budget of only $11 million, has sold more than a million copies worldwide since release in 2007.

Image courtesy Atari

Two Arizona boys, ages six and seven, stoned a kitten before hanging it with a controller cord, reports AZfamily.com.

As the boys were playing Grand Theft Auto prior to harming the animal, infamous Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio blames the game for their actions.

"This game allows players to kill cops and rape women," Arpaio said. "It’s little wonder why they perpetrated such violence against that little animal."

Due to the boys' ages they can not be charged with a crime under Arizona state law. Similarly, Arizona Child Protective Services declined to get involved, claiming the crime was outside the criteria necessary to invoke the agency's interference.

Continue reading "Young Boys Hang Kitten, Grand Theft Auto Blamed" »

It's no Lego Batman, but Batman: Arkham Asylum looks to be panning out nicely, if this new teaser trailer is anything to go by.

The first trailer we brought you certainly demonstrated the game's dark climes, but displayed nothing of the game's characters, combat or gameplay. This new clip may very well be cobbled together from cutscene footage, but at least it gives us a look at The Joker, Batman, and Killer Croc in all of their Unreal Engine glory.

Still, I'm a bit wary of this one. Aside from the aforementioned Lego game, titles using the Batman license have been almost uniformly bad -- particularly those that seek to directly ape the Batman universe.

Batman: Arkham Asylum comes to the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 in 2009.

It seems like every few years one developer or another cobbles together a wacky sports title. This time it's Electronic Arts and the firm's newly revealed 3 on 3 NHL Arcade.

As the name suggest, 3 on 3 NHL Arcade takes basic hockey tenets and melds them with a more arcadey-action feel: Bone-crushing body checks are encouraged, power-ups are plentiful and each player is granted a gargantuan head.

3 on 3 NHL Arcade will be available for download from the Xbox Live Marketplace and PlayStation Network Store February 2009. The official press release lists a $10 retail price.

Image courtesy Electronic Arts

If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

Persona 3, a PlayStation 2 role-playing game released in 2007, proved that Sony's older game console was only mostly dead. The game's blend of carefully polished RPG elements and stylish demonic-cartoon aesthetic made it one of the best games on the platform. Persona 4 makes no major changes to the formula — it's just an expanded, perfected successor that is my favorite PlayStation 2 game of 2008.

You are again cast as a nameless high school student in a typical Japanese town. But unlike the bustling metropolis of the last game, the town of Inaba is a sleepy hamlet. You, your uncle and his adorable-yet-worryingly-mature young daughter have all moved here from the big city, but as soon as you unpack your bags, bizarre happenings start popping up all over town. Your uncle, Inaba's senior police detective, is called off to investigate.

Continue reading "Review: Stylish Persona 4 Is RPG Perfection" »

Reserve a server for your massive EVE Online battles, and get a smoother ass-kicking experience.

EVE Online's chief claim to fame is it's "single-sharded" architecture: It houses tens of thousands of players, simultaneously. The potential for player-versus-player carnage is huge. But the idea isn't always as sound as it seems, especially when hundreds of players gather in a single location for a good old-fashioned fleet fight and the servers struggle to keep up.

To deal with some of the technical issues that arise, the developers at CCP are asking that players notify game masters at least 24 hours before an attack that is predicted to consist of more than 300 players, in order to reserve dedicated server hardware to ensure a smoother combat experience.

Advanced notification isn't mandatory -- it's simply an effort to prepare for server-chaos on the administrative end, so that all parties get a satisfying experience. (Except the losers.)

Continue reading "Planning a Big EVE Online Brawl? Reserve a Server, Prevent Lag" »

The pundits at Market Watch have spoken, and Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick was named as one of the finalists for the title of CEO of the Year.

Activision's wanton exploitation of video game franchises might tick us off, but the key thing to remember here is that the man isn't beholden to us -- he's at the mercy of shareholders. And as far as the shareholders are concerned, anything that boosts the bottom line is good business.

Kotick shared his all-too-familiar business plan with Market Watch: "If you constantly think about building an institutional business with lasting value, ultimately the market rewards you and your shareholders." While that mantra meant bilking gamers whenever an opportunity arose, and driving the Tony Hawk franchise into the ground (with the unending iterations of Guitar Hero and Call of Duty looming near that particular grave), the end result was unparalleled success, and the formation of the world's largest game publisher, Activision Blizzard.

While we might not like what he's done with the place, the house that Kotick built will be standing for a long time. But what does this success mean for the rest of the video game industry? My advice: Grudgingly salute his intelligence and business savvy, but think twice before dabbling in microtransactions, or plunking down pre-order money for yet another sequel.

Image courtesy Activision

Bobby Kotick Changes The Game At Activision [Market Watch]

To promote the content-sharing feature of Animal Crossing: City Folk for Wii, Nintendo sent certain media outlets a copy of Wild World, the Nintendo DS game, with a bunch of content unlocked that we could import to the Wii.

One of the bits of player-created content in the DS games they mailed out, though, was the unfortunate slang word shown above. Animal Crossing players can teach the animal residents of their virtual village to say words, and it usually ends up being a battle between players' verbal creativity and Nintendo's finely-honed naughty-word filter.

Seems as if whoever played this game on Nintendo's behalf somehow added this in. In an official statement issued later, Nintendo said the word propagated into the game through linking up with another user's copy online.

Once other blogs started reporting the story (Joystiq, Kotaku, and MTV ran with it this week), Nintendo made haste to get all the copies back. I just handed mine over to a representative who has been spending the last few days tracking them down.

Image: Wired.com

Kojima Productions wants you to get talking about its next Metal Gear project.

What on earth does this image, currently displayed on the developer's website, mean? Besides, of course, that its mastery of the English language has gone downhill since the departure of Ryan Payton? It's a clue to where the next game in the storied series will end up. Speculation is running rampant. This is what we're hearing:

1up.com says the green color might refer to the Xbox 360, and repeats the rumor that made the cover of EGM a while back -- that Metal Gear Solid 4 will end up on Microsoft's console. If it's not that, says the site, it could be a port of the original Solid for Xbox Live Arcade.

In the NeoGAF thread, at least one person has speculated that the lowercase i stands for iPhone, and that the exclamation point is from the logo of Metal Gear Acid, meaning that the strategy series might end up on Apple's new toy. I kind of like that explanation.

Somebody else said that the i is "in the Wii font," which I think we can all agree is a bit too much wishful thinking.