Let's say you find yourself in possession of a whale bone. What should you do with it? If you're Reddit user Ragebarf, the choice is obvious: You painstakingly create a real-world version of a whalebone rune from Dishonored.

The rune design was carved with a Dremel, and the bone itself is affixed to the wooden board with leather straps. The board has been appropriately aged, as has the name plate and, if we do say so, the whole thing is very impressive. Kind of creepy, but impressive nonetheless. Check out pictures of the rune's creation from from start to finish right here.

Xbox Live's latest streaming event struts its stuff at 6pm ET on Sunday, February 24, when film aficionados in the US with an Xbox Live Gold subscription can tune into the Associated Press' red carpet coverage of this year's annual Academy Awards. SmartGlass users can also engage with the second-screen experience through their tablets and smartphones.

During the event, Xbox Live users can participate in the same interactive voting and tweeting stuff introduced during the Presidential Election coverage. We're not sure what kind of questions will be asked, but if the Presidential Election was any indication, it'll be a lot of bar graphs showing community support levels for Jessica Chastain's dress and questions about foreign policy in Iran.

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Armored Core: Verdict Day, the latest entry in From Software's military mech series, will be released in North America on Xbox 360 and PS3 this fall, Namco Bandai has announced. After some confusion with the source URL (it says "summer") we confirmed with Namco Bandai direct that fall is indeed the launch window.

Verdict Day puts humanity in a war over valuable natural resources, with a persistent multiplayer mode made up of territories where each faction battles for control. Factions are broken up into squads, in which up to 20 players can join up and play together – if you're playing alone or offline, AI will fill in the gaps.

Operator mode gets beefed up in Verdict Day – the tactical top-down game mode where you act as battle overseer now lets Operators see the cockpit views of individual pilots, mark targets and set rally points in real-time. Verdict Day also checks for an Armored Core 5 save file and lets you transfer your custom mech.

Deus Ex: Human Revolution film scribe C. Robert Cargill and director Scott Derrickson claim they're taking care to present a believable cyberpunk setting in their upcoming film, based on the Eidos Montreal game.

"Yeah, the chief philosophy is we're not making a video game movie, we're making a cyberpunk movie," Deus Ex film co-writer C. Robert Cargill says in an interview with Crave Online. "We've taken a look at what's worked in video games and what hasn't, and really what we've broken down is what we think the audience really wants, [what] the audience that loves Deus Ex is going to want to see out of a Deus Ex movie. And it's not a rehashing of the game."

The duo, which think of Mortal Kombat as the best video game movie yet made, will borrow motifs from the game, rather than attempt to replicate specific events. "The thing about Deus Ex, the landscape is massive. I mean, it is a big, broad, sprawling game, and look, it's impossible to get the aesthetic of that game into a single movie," Derrickson says. "That's the nature of turning a video game into a movie, is keeping the elements that are iconic and important, [that] advance the game, but also recognizing that if that's all you do, you'll just make another bad video game movie."

According to Derrickson, there's a draft of the film already, and the process as a whole is "moving like a rocket."

There may be a few clouds hanging over your Xbox Live experience today. Microsoft reports that users are experiencing troubles accessing cloud saves and other remotely stored information on Windows 7 and Xbox 360. We've also received reports of trouble with the Halo 4 servers.

The (crackpot) theory going around the Joystiq think tank is that Sony's testing PS4 cloud services and taking up all the bandwidth in the imaginary "cloud." Xbox Live isn't working right, because Kaz Hirai is streaming some Cool Boarders 2 to QA.

The first piece of Dead Space 3 DLC, 'Awakened,' could be stirring towards a March 3 release date. We know Awakened is coming sometime next month, but a post on the official Dead Space Twitter (now deleted, but screencapped after the break) in response to this tweet clearly noted a March 3 date. However, when asked about it later, another post reverted to the March release window, and "no precise dates" as yet.

It seems there are crossed wires at whoever's in charge of the Twitter feed, and the date may well be a mistake - March 3 is a Sunday, which is a bit unusual for DLC - so take it with a pinch of salt. In any case, we've reached out to EA for comment.

Update: An EA representative has told us that the company has "not announced a specific release date in March for Dead Space 3 Awakened."

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Xbox Live's Games on Demand has the value of convenience, but the games are frequently priced well above their prices at retail. That issue will temporarily be resolved from February 26 through March 4, with the "Ultimate Game Sale."

Specific prices aren't offered, but games are being marked down up to 75% for the sale, and the list includes, like, everything. All the Calls of Duties, the Halos, the Batmen, Borderlandses, Metal Gear Solid HD, Dead Island, The Orange Box, etc. Even El Shaddai. Check the list after the break for many more.

Yes, these could all be discounted 1% and one game nobody cares about discounted 75%, but XBLM will be worth a look next week just in case.

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Remember the "Alien Noire" website supposedly counting down to a revelation about Prey 2? A recent update added a Prey 2 logo and more to the site. The site now also features logos for both Bethesda Softworks and Human Head Studios, Prey 2's publisher and developer, respectively.

Furthermore, the hidden message in the site's source code has been expanded. Previously reading "Tommy needs your help," it now reads "Tommy needs your help with a stranded human who wants to go home." The message refers to Tommy, the protagonist from the original Prey, who plays an important role in the sequel.

You might think that using official logos would substantiate the site's legitimacy, but apparently that's not so, according to Bethesda. A spokesperson tells Joystiq, "I don't know what that is or who is doing it. It's not something we're doing." So there you have it.

The Xbox 360 S-compatible 320GB hard drive is getting a new batch of games, forcing out the formerly bundled-in Lego Star Wars III: The Clone Wars.

As of sometime next month, the additional storage space includes downloadable copies of Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit, Ms. Splosion Man, and Pinball FX 2 with the Sorcerer's Lair DLC. As for the price, that sticks at $129.99.

Mass Effect 3's newly announced Citadel DLC features Zaeed and the work of Robin Sachs, the late actor who portrayed the bounty hunter. BioWare producer Mike Gamble revealed Sachs' involvement, marking one of the very last pieces of his acting work to be published. Sachs, known for his roles in other BioWare games as well as TV shows Buffy The Vampire Slayer and Babylon 5, passed away earlier this month at the age of 61.

BioWare, following a suggestion from fans on its forums, is also paying its respects to the actor through this weekend's Mass Effect 3 multiplayer operation. The aim of the operation, called 'Tribute,' is to "honor and avenge our comrades who fell – and let the Reapers know this was a mistake, not a victory." The goals are to earn points using the M-8 Avenger and Inferno Grenades, referencing Zaeed's old 'Jessie' rifle and his loyalty power from Mass Effect 2. The operation begins today and runs through to Sunday, February 24.

[Thanks, Sigfodr]

The third Tomb Raider Guide to Survival webisode focuses on something that's always been something of a pitfall for Ms Croft: combat. Clearly Crystal Dynamics hopes to address that with this reboot, and thankfully we've not seen any evidence of shark-punching (yet).

Square Enix also sends us the game's newly revealed PC specs, which we've published over the break. PC stalwarts may be pleased to see Tomb Raider bucks the growing trend of dropping XP support.

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Jonathan's Blow's next mind-melting puzzler has a bright – and colorful – future in the next generation, as he took center stage at Sony's conference last night to announce The Witness would come to PlayStation 4 as a timed exclusive. After the show, Blow told us that his team is hard at work on the PS4 port of The Witness, and a PC version is still in tow.

"Basically, you'll see The Witness on PS4 before you'll see it on the next Microsoft console or on the Wii U, presuming we eventually do ports to those consoles," Blow said. "Ideally we want the game to be in as many places as we can get it, but since we are a small developer and it's a complicated game, we can only do so much at once."

Blow decided to port The Witness to PS4 because he liked the console, not to snub players on other platforms or simply make a quick buck, he said:

"People are speculating that we did this because of money, but that is not the case at all. We like the console and we like the people we are working with; we were already developing a PS4 port of the game, which prevents us from doing other console ports anyway, again because we can only do so much. So it was only a small step to go from this practical fact of development to a formal agreement signed on paper."

Besides, signing a contract with any company wouldn't be too difficult for Blow and his team, since they already have at least one Witness.

You thought you knew what today's most exciting news was. You were wrong. Mossmouth has quietly sneaked two items of downloadable Spelunky content onto the Xbox Live Marketplace. The 160-point "Explorers DLC" gives you eight more characters to choose from, including the Eskimo, Viking, Round Girl, Round Boy, Cyclops, Ninja, and the Golden Monk.

The "Arenas DLC" adds 24 new multiplayer deathmatch arenas. "These chaotic death traps offer up all kinds of devious ways to kill or be killed, from sacrificial altars to perilous bee hives," reads the XBLM description. "Will anyone survive?" It'll also set you back 160 points ($2).

And no, no one will survive.

BioWare and EA have announced two more bundles of DLC for Mass Effect 3, with one focused on multiplayer and the other serving as "one final, sentimental journey with Commander Shepard and their squad," according to the press release.

The first batch of content, "Reckoning," is a free bundle of multiplayer DLC that'll be available for free when it lands this Tuesday, February 26. The pack adds new characters, weapons and item upgrades for use in multiplayer, though what any of those things are specifically remains to be seen.

"Citadel," meanwhile, is Mass Effect 3's last chunk of single-player DLC, arriving on March 5 for $14.99/1200 MS Points. The pack returns Shepard and crew to (where else) the Citadel, on a mission that will give players the "opportunity to reconnect with some of their favorite characters from all three of the Mass Effect games." Well, provided you didn't get them horribly murdered, we figure. You know what you did.

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Irrational Games announced a Season Pass for BioShock Infinite this morning, granting buyers access to three "all-new" upcoming DLC packs. We've spoken to the boys and girls in our labs, and they tell us that means there are at least three pieces of BioShock Infinite DLC on the way.

The pass is priced $19.99 on PS3 and PC, or 1600 MSP on Xbox 360, and Irrational says it provides $10 worth of savings. So the three DLC packs come in at an average of $10 each, or 800 MSP.

A Season Pass purchase also pecks picks you up the Early Bird Special Pack, this giving you a machine gun damage upgrade, pistol damage upgrade, gold skin for both weapons, five Infusion bottles, and four pieces of gear, all for free.

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Alleged specs for the next iteration of Microsoft's Kinect sensor have popped up on VGLeaks. The new Kinect will be included with the next Xbox, according to the report, and it seems to outperform its predecessor in nearly every way. It packs a much larger field of view (70 degrees horizontal by 60 degrees vertical, versus the current 57.5 x 43.5) and a dramatically higher resolution (1920x1080 versus 640x480). The unit also features significantly lower latency (60ms versus 90ms), conceivably giving it a much faster reaction time.

It will apparently ditch the tilt motor seen in the current Kinect, as the larger field of view should accommodate most play spaces. For example, the new Kinect should be able to detect a 6' tall person at just over five feet from the television. As previous reports have suggested, it will also be able to recognize more minute details, such as whether a hand is open or closed.

For what it's worth, in the absence of verification, the tech wizards at Digital Foundry find the leak plausible, though it may not be the most current information. Furthermore, the information does seem to match up with previous reports, specifically the sensor's improved resolution and its ability to detect much finer details.