We know there are dragons, and pawns, and repetitive dialogue, but Capcom's Dragon's Dogma remains surprisingly mysterious for something that's due to hit next month. It's a good thing, then, that Capcom announced plans to release a downloadable demo in North America and Europe next week.

You'll be able to get the demo from PSN in North America and Xbox Live worldwide on Tuesday, April 24, with the European PSN release following one day later. The character and Pawn you make in the demo will transfer into the full game, should you decide the three of you are having a good enough time to make that commitment.

Is your Mass Effect 3 Purchase Readiness Rating at $40? Good news: thanks to Best Buy, that's enough for you to be able to complete the operation (by buying the game). The retailer has marked last month's sci-fi epic down to $39.99 on PC, PS3, and Xbox 360.

We're wondering now about the wisdom of opening our post about buying Mass Effect 3 with a joke that will basically only make sense to people who have already played it. Oh, well, bookmark this, and you can chuckle after you've started.

FIFA Street returned to the top of the charts when sales were tallied in the UK last week, scoring its fourth first place finish. Chart-Track notes the title has now matched the rank history of the original FIFA Street, which also owned the hard charting streets for four weeks back in 2005.

Overall, though, it was actually a pretty quiet week in the battle for rankings, with the entirety of the top ten playing musical charts. Last week's chart-topper, Kinect Star Wars, was not the game more people were looking for, and slipped down to fourth.

The only new release last week to break the top 40 was Pandora's Tower from Nintendo, which debuted in spot 38. Check out the UK top ten after the break.

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It's time once again for the PlayStation Network to be poked, prodded and generally fiddled around with by Sony's countless technicians and maintenance cyborgs. As per usual, 13 hours chock full of network rejiggering are scheduled to begin tomorrow morning at 9 a.m. EST, during which time the PSN Store, PlayStation Home, Account Management services and online play will be unavailable.

PlayStation websites hosted on PSN servers, like the Official PlayStation Blog, will also be offline during maintenance. The official PlayStation Twitter account, however, will continue to function properly, since it's on Twitter and everything. Updates regarding maintenance can be found there, though extended periods of downtime are usually situations where no news is good news.

For those of you in need of a professional-grade accessory for a low-cost downloadable game, Hori announced plans to release an official Virtua Fighter 5 Final Showdown arcade stick for PS3 in North America this summer.

Based on Hori's Real Arcade Pro V3 SA model, the VF5 stick uses authentic Sanwa Denshi parts for the stick and buttons, and totally inauthentic optional turbo settings for all buttons. Pricing has not been announced, but the stick runs for 13,800 yen ($170) in Japan.

Ever since we saw that ad for the PS9, we've been dreaming of a really cool augmented reality gaming future. The video Google produced for its Project Glass got us excited for what could be, but what video production troupe There is a Canal did with the idea is basically read our diary and create a video of what we want: Battlefield 5 played on a pair of AR goggles.

It's a future we mostly want right now – well, not now now. We should probably get in shape before running around an abandoned lot, pretending to shoot imaginary people.

The flashy red PS3 console is no longer exclusive to Japan. The 320 GB console, which comes with a matching DualShock 3 controller, should go on sale in the UK pretty soon. Amazon has it from April 27 for £250, and Play.com is selling it for £240 starting May 4.

If you're holding out for the blue model, don't bother. Eurogamer says Sony reps declined to bring that model from Japan over to the UK. You should see listings for the red 320GB PS3 popping up at other retailers shortly.

Game has effectively checked itself before it wrecked itself, first selling its UK operations and now selling its stores in Spain and Portugal, MCV reports. OpCaptia, the same investment company behind the UK deal, established Cherrilux Investments for the Iberian transaction and bought all 290 stores across Spain and Portugal.

Cherrilux is a "sister company" to Baker Acquisitions, which bought the UK branch, and both businesses will most likely run independently but share revenue, MCV says. The sale saves 1,000 jobs, and Cherrilux "has no plans to close stores at Game Iberia and will continue to run the business as a going concern while evaluating the possible sale of the business."

EA already has a script for a Need for Speed movie, courtesy of sibling writing duo George and John Gatins, known for their work on Hugh Jackman vehicle, Real Steel. And apparently Paramount, Warner Bros. and Sony are interested in plunking down the millions it'd cost to get Need for Speed on the starting line.

Variety says that Paramount is the current leading potential financier, but EA is still open to other bidders. If EA ends up securing funds for the Need for Speed film, we wonder which game the movie would be based on? The most recent franchise entry, Need for Speed: The Run? How about Need for Speed: Undercover? It already has Maggie Q in it and we're pretty sure she was in a movie once.

Following its launch on February 28, it seems Binary Domain didn't have a very good March. According to data Joystiq received from the NPD, Sega's sci-fi shooter only sold 20,000 copies during the month. Compare that to the 1.3 million physical copies sold of the other big sci-fi game of March, Mass Effect 3.

Of course, Binary Domain had a lot going against it. For one, it's called Binary Domain. There was little-to-no marketing, whereas Mass Effect 3 ads were everywhere and everything you bought came with DLC. In the sci-fi wars of March, 2012, Mass Effect 3 emerged victorious.

As the last big boxed product from Sega, this disappointing performance likely contributed to Sega's decision to drastically alter its publishing strategy and issue substantial layoffs worldwide at the end of March.

Despite the fresh renaissance the fighting game genre has grown into over the last couple of years, the medium is still dominated by the superpowers that brought it to its knees during the late twentieth century: Capcom, Namco Bandai, SNK Playmore, etc. Now, however, a new challenger comes.

Skullgirls, the debut title from Reverge Labs, is unique in that it's one of the very few original IP fighting games to come out since the genre regained its popularity. What's more, its also an anime-style 2D fighter from an American development studio, which is crazy. I've been following Skullgirls' production since it was announced last year, and as much as I wish it were the paradigm-shifting indie darling the fighting game scene so desperately needs, that is sadly not the case.

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Total Mass Effect 3 sales for its launch month of March were 1.3 million units across Xbox 360, PS3 and PC, the NPD informed Joystiq. The number covers purely new physical retail sales, so no digitally distributed product on PC or PS3 is tallied.

Although the NPD doesn't publicly share sales breakdowns by platform, Microsoft executive Aaron Greenberg did share that Xbox 360 sales for the space opera were 943K units for the month.

Mass Effect 2 had over a half-million sales on Xbox 360 during its debut month, with another quarter million the following month. We've contacted Electronic Arts for further clarification on Mass Effect 3 sales data.

Update: "We think the monthly NPD reports are a very poor indicator of the industry's performance given the proportion of digital sales – including digital downloads via Origin, DLC, mobile and social games and much more – that are not captured in their reports," John Reseburg of EA's corporate communications told Joystiq. "Taking these reports as an accurate snapshot of the industry today is a dangerous assumption."

Later this month, Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning will add a new city and numerous side quests through the Teeth of Naros DLC pack. Well, before you venture to the floating isle of Idylla and meet its insanely hospitable people, who are in no way as cold as the stone of which they're partly made, learn the history of one of Amalur's oldest areas by checking out the trailer and gallery of screens below.

Hong Kong-based action game Sleeping Dogs will launch at retail on August 14. Publisher Square Enix announced the game's launch date this morning alongside news of three separate pre-order bonuses tied to three separate retailers: Best Buy, GameStop, and Amazon.

Should you choose to go the brick-and-mortar route, Best Buy is offering the "Georges St. Pierre Pack," which features a trio of GSP-related gear and moves (his "signature flying punch," for instance). GameStop is similarly offering a slew of in-game content, dubbed the "Police Protection Pack. As you might imagine, it comes with a variety of police officer-themed gear. Finally, Amazon has the "Martial Arts Pack," which ... well ... you get it at this point, right? For full listings of all the gear, head past the break.

Oh, and if you're a PC gamer wondering what your fancy pre-order bonus is, know that Square Enix hasn't forgotten about you: "Exclusive content for the digitally downloadable PC version of Sleeping Dogs will be announced at a later date," the press release reads.

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