Gamescom

Speaking during a roundtable session at Gamescom last week, Sony Worldwide Studios president Shuhei Yoshida said the company would give developers greater access to user metrics. "We like to provide our developers with much more services for the platform," he said. "Platform holders have data, and that data has not necessarily been available for developers. Sometimes it's just hard to provide the right data to development teams. But [we are offering] more and more services to developers, and I think things will just get better and better."

Speaking to VG247 at last week's Gamescom, Microsoft's vice president of interactive entertainment Chris Lewis said the company did not feel compelled to cut the price of the Xbox 360 following Sony's reduction of the PS3's price. "For me to sit here and say that was a surprise would be a lie," he said. "We think we offer great value now. I think Xbox Live's enviable. What we've achieved with Kinect has given us growth that I think others would aspire to at this point in the lifecycle. We're happy with our position."

Last week’s Gamescom event attracted a record 275,000 people between August 15 and 17, cementing the show’s status as "the world's largest games fair", according to organiser Koelnmesse. Gamescom 2011 played host to 557 exhibitors from almost 40 countries. More than 300 games were on show, drawing over 5,000 media representatives from over 50 nations to the event. "In a word: overwhelming!" said Koelnmesse CEO Gerald Böse. The firm also confirmed that Gamescom 2012 will return to Cologne, Germany next year, from August 15-19.

New fighting game IP doesn't come along very often, and with good reason: much has to be done to stand out from the established crowd. Developed by a competitive fighting game player, Skullgirls has been built from the ground up with the competitive scene in mind, with an in-depth, feature-filled training mode, the ability to take control of a character while viewing a replay to try and right past wrongs and plenty more besides. Our favourite feature? You have to hold down the start button for a full 15 frames to pause the action, a move designed to avoid accidental mid-match pauses which, in tournaments, mean forfeiting the round. Skullgirls is set for release this year on PSN and Live Arcade, and these screenshots, released at Gamescom, show the newly announced Parasoul in action.

With Devil May Cry 4 disappointing, its reboot entrusted to Ninja Theory and Clover Studio long since disbanded, fans of the complex melée combat systems that Capcom does so well have been left wanting this generation. All eyes, then, are on Asura's Wrath, and while this latest trailer from Gamescom is a little heavy on QTEs and camera cuts, we're hoping there's plenty of depth to the underlying mechanics.

Speaking to Eurogamer at this week's Gamescom in Cologne, Sony Worldwide Studios head Shuhei Yoshida said that recent reports that Sony had halved the RAM in its upcoming portable to keep costs down were "very funny." Those reports appeared to be corroborated by Reality Fighters developer Novarama, but Yoshida says a RAM cut was never on the agenda. "It's been very funny. Some developer mentioned the RAM was halved," he said. "We never announced the amount of RAM, and we never changed it. We've been making games, right, and we've been showing the games since January. If RAM gets cut in the middle of development, there's no way we can complete the games. So I was like, what's going on?" Sony's PSP successor has 512MB of RAM and 128MB of VRAM, meaning it has more memory than Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.

Gamescom brings the latest footage from Criterion's top-down take on the Burnout series' beloved Crash mode, set for release through Xbox Live Arcade and PlayStation Store this autumn.

Another day of Gamescom means a fresh batch of trailers. We'll kick off today's proceedings with this latest glimpse of Assassin's Creed Revelations, soundtracked by some historically inappropriate dubstep.

Konami's remastering of Silent Hill 2 and 3 was first announced as a PlayStation 3 exclusive. Tomm Hullett, producer of the upcoming Silent Hill: Downpour, confirmed an Xbox 360 release for the collection at Gamescom yesterday following fan clamour for a multiplatform release.

Suda51's Grasshopper Manufacture is having a busy time of it, working on a PSP Evangelion game, a social game for Mobage, collaborating with Hungarian studio Digital Reality on Sine Mora and working on a radio drama inspired by Hideo Kojima's Snatcher. Its next full-scale console release is Lollipop Chainsaw, which tells of a cheerleader ridding her US high school of a zombie infestation. Warner Bros has already announced plans to publish the game in the west in 2012 for PS3 and Xbox 360, and has released the below screenshots to coincide with this week's Gamescom in Cologne.

Electronic Arts titles collected four out of eight gongs at the Gamescom 2011 awards, the show’s organisers said this evening. An “expert jury of national and international media, press, and trade representatives” unanimously elected Battlefield 3 Best Of Gamescom 2011, while FIFA 12 was named Best Console Game and Star Wars: The Old Republic Best Online Game. The Sims Social also took Best Browser Game, which was a new category at this year’s awards. Sony scooped two awards, with PlayStation Vita named Best Hardware and Uncharted: Golden Abyss Best Mobile Game, while Blizzard’s Diablo III was crowned Best PC Game and Warner’s Sesame Street: Once Upon A Monster Best Family Game.

Finnish developer Bugbear Entertainment's upcoming racer is a Ridge Racer spin-off in name and deed, with an emphasis on destruction and aggression rather than the series' trademark sweeping powerslides. Other firsts for the series include an in-world HUD, user-generated content and, astoundingly for an 18-year-old franchise, a PC release.

Speaking to Eurogamer at Gamescom, Noah Heller of Call Of Duty: Elite developer Beachhead confirmed that the PC version of the upcoming Modern Warfare 3 will sport the feature that was so lamentable an absence from 2009's Modern Warfare 2. "The big announcement today is that we're supporting dedicated servers for PC, which is really cool," he said. As for Elite itself, Heller revealed that as well as mobile, tablet and browser-based versions of the service, there will also be a console app allowing users to "jump out of the game into the app and communicate with your clan or do whatever you need to do before running back into the game."

Announced - under its Japanese name, Gravity Daze - but sadly rather lost in the crowd at E3, Gravity Rush is a cel-shaded action adventure centred on, as the name suggests, controlling gravity to traverse the environment. It's an internal project, under development at SCE Japan, and certainly has pedigree, helmed as it is by Keiichiro Toyama, director of the first Silent Hill and, more recently, PS3's episodic survival horror Siren Blood Curse.

If launch title Super Street Fighter IV 3D Edition proved that 3DS was that rarest of beasts - a handheld on which fighting games are a sound fit rather than a compromise - it was Dead Or Alive Dimensions that showed that the system might in fact be the natural future home of the 3D fighting game. It was no surprise, then, that Tekken was announced for the system at E3, and judging by this Gamescom trailer it, too, will work well on 3DS with its four-button, pad-friendly controls. A 3D copy of the CG movie Tekken Blood Vengeance is included, too, but what sells it to us is the prospect of seeing Bob's morbid obesity rendered in three dimensions.

This latest trailer, first shown at Gamescom yesterday, shows just how well the creative elements of Media Molecule's platformer translate to Vita's capabilities. While touchscreen controls are an obvious help, we were quite taken with the use of the handheld's built-in camera to add a little natural colour to creations.

At Gamescom yesterday Sony announced this downloadable spinoff from Infamous 2 which, in what appears a clear nod to Red Dead Redemption's zombie expansion Undead Nightmare, casts players as series protagonist Cole McGrath in a vampire-infested New Marais. Cole has been bitten and infected, and has one night to find and dispatch the head vampire to save his city and himself. Unlike Undead Nightmare, this is a standalone game, a PS Store download that doesn't require the original Infamous 2 to play. Festival Of Blood is set for release in October.