Tomorrow Corporation's Little Inferno – whose catchy, macabre trailer we've included above – will be released officially sometime this holiday season. But you can pay $15 (or more, if you choose) now via a widget on the official website, in order to secure access to a beta version before it's released. "The Windows beta versions will be first, since we are developing the game on Windows," TC notes. "You are still welcome to sign up if you require Mac or Linux, but we do not yet know when we will have those versions ready for testing."

The beta build of the game is not ready yet, but pre-ordering will give you a "small preview of the soundtrack." Beta access will be rolled out "in small batches," in an order determined primarily by the order in which pre-orders are received, along with various testing-related parameters. "Depending on the number of signups, we cannot guarantee a beta seat for everyone," the developer warns.

The first trailer for Tomorrow Corporation's Little Inferno depicts a game that looks simultaneously entertaining and super depressing. In order to warm up an increasingly cooler world, you ... throw as many toys as you can into a fireplace. That's the premise, anyway. This is just the first teaser, so all the details of how you'll burn up toys have yet to be discussed.

"Burn flaming logs, screaming robots, credit cards, batteries, exploding fish, unstable nuclear devices, and tiny galaxies," Tomorrow says. "An adventure that takes place almost entirely in front of a fireplace - about looking up up up out of the chimney, and the cold world just on the other side of the wall."

The new game from former World of Goo and Henry Hatsworth creators will be released on PC, Mac, Linux ... and Wii U. The latter platform was likely added in a nod to World of Goo's singular success on WiiWare.

Square Enix worldwide technology director Julien Merceron realizes the Agni's Philosophy tech demo shows off impressive graphics that could drive next-gen Final Fantasy games, but he also knows that, as a developer, focusing on graphics alone is "a big mistake."

"Focusing on graphics only would be a huge mistake," Merceron tells Games Industry International. "You start to have super-great graphics, characters look really good and you end up in the uncanny valley, but you don't have animation at the same quality level. Same thing with behavior and AI; it animates well and looks good, but it is making stupid decisions. It simply won't be immersive."

As graphics improve, other problems arise, such as facial animations, physics and AI not hitting the same level and creating an obvious uncanny valley, where on-screen actions are disturbing to watch. The uncanny valley will always exist, and balancing engaging gameplay with upgraded graphics and other elements is key to player immersion, Merceron says.

Another key aspect is the hardware itself – this generation of consoles has lasted "way too long" and has helped usher in alternative forms of gaming, via browsers and mobile devices, Merceron says.

"Now you don't need to manage longevity by complexity of programming, because your longevity is ensured by your online model," he says. "And I would suggest that maybe we don't want long generations. We have Sony and Microsoft talking about this generation lasting seven, eight, nine or even 10 years and it's the biggest mistake they've ever made."

Square Enix has recently focused on developing high-end 3D experiences for web browsers, a platform Merceron sees as "instrumental in the world of tomorrow."

"We shouldn't underestimate the kind of experience that you can have in a web browser. Immediately you can play from anywhere. You have browsers all over the place. These cloud storage and computing interfaces will provide better ways for consumers to interact with the experiences they want to have."

Tekken producer Katsuhiro Harada is "not really sure" if Namco Bandai should include Tekken characters in the next Super Smash Bros., he told NowGamer. Namco is co-developing Super Smash Bros. for Wii U and 3DS with Nintendo, and the title is a "big priority for the company," Harada says.

Namco has "a lot of people" from many of its franchises developing Super Smash Bros., but fans have been most curious about Tekken staff involvement in the new game, Harada says.

"The fans, rather than asking about Tales or Gundam or some of our other franchises, the fans abroad saw Tekken as one of the key words and took off on that," he says. "We're not really sure at this moment but when thinking of the playerbase who is playing Smash Bros., maybe Tekken characters is something they wouldn't want, so I've been pulling back on that a bit. But I don't know."

One of Tekken's characters, Heihachi Mishima, has been confirmed for PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale, Sony's take on a Smash Bros.-style game. Namco's main staff is currently focused on finishing Tekken Tag Tournament 2, but it will support Super Smash Bros. in some capacity, Harada says. If any of the Tekken characters do make it into Super Smash Bros., we're personally hoping it's this one.

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You and your buddy Peter always go to San Diego Comic Con, sure, but do you always get a chance to be the first people in North America to touch Nintendo's next handheld? The answer is no, because you don't. But this year, you totally will, as Nintendo's bringing the 3DS XL.

The Japanese game publisher's also bringing a variety of games for you to play, including New Super Mario Bros. 2, Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon, Castlevania: Lords of Shadow - Mirror of Fate, and ... uh, Kid Icarus. Okay, okay – outside of those three and a couple others, the rest of the games are kinda not so new. But hey, Just Dance 4 on Wii will also be there! Yeah!

Head past the break for the full list.

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This is a weekly column from freelancer Rowan Kaiser, which focuses on "Western" role-playing games: their stories, their histories, their mechanics, their insanity, and their inanity.

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Jennifer Hale, Nolan North and Troy Baker, among others, have become video game celebrities for their voice acting – deservedly so, given how entertaining they can be as characters like Commander Shepard or Nathan Drake. Recorded speech has become a significant component of most all games, notably RPGs, having grown steadily since the shift to CD-ROM games in the mid-1990s. Yet their importance isn't always apparent.

I, for one, didn't realize their impact on games until just a year or two ago, when I commented on game designer Brenda Brathwaite's blog about how an RPG could be done cheaper and faster without many modern components, which included recorded speech. Brathwaite responded specifically to the voice acting component, saying that once her company started making RPGs with voice acting, they discovered that their writing and editing process had to be completed well in advance of what they were used to, with the actor's recording of his or her lines "baking" the narrative section in place much earlier than normal.

"Great ideas were left sitting on the bench because the time to record them (or render graphics) wasn't available," she said in her reply.

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Nintendo reportedly posted its 2012 Club Nintendo Elite prizes briefly, before taking them down. The evidence remains in a screencap taken by NeoGAFfer Pappasman and a post on IGN, revealing the prizes that "Gold" and "Platinum" status holders will be able to choose this year.

The Platinum-exclusive prizes include a fancy Mario playing card set or a collection of three posters. Both Gold and Platinum have the option of the usual desk calendar, or – a first for the Elite prizes – a Virtual Console game (Super Mario Kart, Metroid 2, Mario vs. Donkey Kong: Minis March Again, or The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask).

All of these games are available on the normal Wii (or 3DS) shop, so we only recommend opting for one of those if you really, really don't like any of the exclusive prizes.

Frogger: Hyper Arcade Edition is set to run into XBLA, PSN and WiiWare during the week of July 10, this week's PlayStation Blogcast confirms.

Zombie Studios, the team behind Blacklight: Retribution, is developing Frogger: Hyper Arcade Edition. It will feature traditional and new game modes, and a few different skins, including sprites from classic Castlevania and Contra games.

Following the launch of the long-anticipated Extended Cut DLC for Mass Effect 3, we ran through the original and updated endings a few times to note some of the differences between the two. For those of you unable to access a convenient autosave or play through the game again, we've written up a summary of the differences between the new versions of the endings and the originals, which you can find after the break.

We won't ruin all the fun for players, but the following definitely contains major spoilers for the ending of Mass Effect 3.

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The "Summer of 8 Bit" begins with two downloadable 3DS releases of NES games that were, until now, exclusive to "Ambassadors:" The Legend of Zelda and NES Open Tournament Golf. Each game will get eShop release updates, such as save states (Ambassadors can update their existing games). Also available on this spectacularly packed day are Family Tennis 3D and a demo for Square Enix's Heroes of Ruin.

Nintendo's "Game of the Weekend" promotion continues with a special $4.99 price on Sakura Samurai, from 12pm EDT Friday through midnight Monday morning. There's more, on 3DS, DS, and Wii, so check it all out after the break.

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Wedbush analyst Michael Pachter has weighed in on recent speculation suggesting Vivendi would get rid of its stake in Activision Blizzard, following mounting reports that the French conglomerate is trying to sell the game publisher.

Although a sale is "likely the preferred route" for Vivendi, Pachter wrote in a investor note, there aren't any "readily apparent buyers." Running through the list of suitors, it's noted that companies like Tencent Holdings have reportedly payed out $400 million and $600 million to acquire Riot Games and a minority stake in Epic Games, respectively, but those numbers still pale in comparison to Activision's worth at over $10 billion.

Acquisitions by Electronic Arts, Time Warner and Disney usually stay below a billion. Viacom did a $500 million write-off on its Harmonix debacle. It's also unlikely that any of the console manufacturers would purchase Activision Blizzard, since they would have to cannibalize sales. Activision's franchises du jour, like current champ Call of Duty, make so much money because they are available on every major platform.

Pachter believes the more likely outcome is a spinoff of Activision Blizzard. It would require some fancy financing on the back end, but it would give Vivendi an estimated $5 billion in cash, easing its personal burden. After the spinoff, Pachter feels Activision's shares would rise according to how much cash the company generates every year, paying off its debts. Wedbush maintains an "outperform" rating for Activision Blizzard.

WayForward's Mighty Switch Force is making the mighty switch to Wii U, according to the latest issue of Nintendo Power (preview here). Mighty Switch Force HD is the same game released on 3DS – with the bonus levels added in a recent update – but remade and redrawn in high resolution for the Wii U's HD output.

The WiiPad will be used to display the location of each of the fugitives you're hunting down, just as the touchscreen does on the 3DS version. "When roaming without a TV," WayForward creative director Matt Bozon told Nintendo Power, "a smaller onscreen compass points the way. While this is admittedly not a groundbreaking use of the second screen, it does give the player a few very handy options."

Here it is: the very first 3DS to Wii U remake. We expect to see plenty of these in the future.

Last year EA went on record calling the NPD's sales reports "a misrepresentation of the entire industry," and this year EA Labels president Frank Gibeau is taking that sentiment one step further, saying EA largely ignores NPD reports.

"An occasional bad report from NPD, which measures a sliver of what's actually happening in gaming, gives people an erroneous impression," Gibeau tells Games Industry International. "My point is it's an irrelevant measure on the industry. It's totally irrelevant. We don't even really look at it internally anymore."

NPD reports track retail games sales from stores such as GameStop and Wal-Mart, but don't provide a comparable breakdown of digital sales. In Q4 2012, EA saw digital sales generate $419 million, while packaged goods made more than double that, with $949 million.

David McQuillan, president of NPD Games, is "surprised" by Gibeau's comments for a few reasons, provided in a statement to Joystiq. The first: "While we will not comment on the specifics on our long-standing relationship with EA, we can say with confidence that we have daily dealings with all of our major publisher clients. And we know for a fact they're using the data."

The second reason McQuillan cites is the continued prevalence of physical sales, making up 56 percent of industry sales in 2011. "The current games industry is still largely rooted in retail and any industry player involved with AAA content simply can't take their eye away from the retail environment," he writes.

NPD Group's David Riley adds, "We do cover digital. Granted, it's not near the level of granularity that we provide via physical point of sale, but physical POS is still huge and needs to be taken seriously. In my opinion, you do a disservice to our industry when you dismiss the value of retail sales research."

EA's Digital sales are growing rapidly, Gibeau says, and EA is focused on riding that streaming, cloud-based, downloadable wave into the future, with or without NPD sales reports.

"We're going to be a 100 percent digital company, period," he says. "It's going to be there some day. It's inevitable."

Market research firm NPD Group has released a handful of details about the video game industry's most recent spending habits, showing a sharp decline. Compared to last year's Q1 2011 estimation of $5.9 billion, total consumer spend in the first quarter of 2012 was down to $3.40 billion. With rapidly declining sales, things may continue to get worse before they recover.

The 'Q1 2012 Games Market Dynamics: U.S.' report reveals that while spend on new physical software was on the decline versus last year – with Q1 2012 achieving an estimated $1.5 billion spent on new video and PC game software tracked by the NPD Group – total spend on other forms of physical software, such as used games and rentals, only saw a minimal drop.

"The declines in the physical market for new physical software are well documented," NPD analyst Anita Frazier said, noting that "broader view of the industry" showed other forms of physical spend, specifically the used game and rental market, "declined by just five percent and digital format content sales grew by 10 percent as compared to Q1 2011." The one-two punch of used games and rentals reached an estimated $525 million in Q1 2012, the report says.

"While the growth in digital format sales does not yet offset the declines in physical format sales, clearly the changes occurring within the industry are reflected in the trends we are seeing in the research," Frazier added.

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Lego Batman 2: DC Super Heroes "comfortably" kept The Amazing Spider-Man away from the highest spot on Chart-Track's UK sales chart. There were three new entries in the top five last week: the web-slinger swung into second, and Spec Ops: The Line and London 2012: The Official Video Game (about... London??) landed in third and fourth place, respectively.

The launch of Skyrim's Dawnguard DLC helped propel sales of the game up 121 percent. The launch of Metal Gear Solid HD Collection on PS Vita had a similar impact, shooting the game into tenth place on the charts and sales of the game up 532 percent - making it the top selling Vita game last week "by a large margin."

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