Developers did not have finished Xbox 360 hardware last year at E3. So Sony’s actually maybe in a better place vis-a-vis Microsoft in relation to launch.

Yeah, Mark. Except Sony’s launch window was three months ago.

Oh right, I’m talking to Mark Rein.

Yeah, Mark. Except Sony’s launch window was… at least two weeks from the end of April.

comprised of bored housewives, 12 year old girls, and really, really gay men

Then he leaves us hanging as to which of the three he is penciling himself in under in the fan club guestbook. Metafuture bucks the trend and guesses option two.

Read – Contest Rules [via Team Xbox]

It’s hacking-lite. It gets you posted on blogs. It’s certainly more fun and more immediate than loving bees.

Aeropause gets the credit for being the place I noticed this trick, which may or may not work. I can’t verify, since I don’t even have an Xbox 360 due to me not being related to an old lady with a limited vocabulary. My new grandpa-in-law plays Civilization III or Diablo II just about every day, but he talks like a human being instead of a sailor, so I doubt anyone would care.

After eight years of consistently producing commercially successful titles for various leading publishers, Edge of Reality has decided the time is right to give life to its own internal vision.

…

In Cipher Complex, a recon satellite is mysteriously blasted from orbit, and when diplomatic requests for information are stonewalled, the US government is forced to call in its last resort – Operative John Cipher. Charged with uncovering the truth by any means necessary, Cipher is going behind enemy lines to extract information the hard way.

Don’t you mean the complex way?

Though the real question is: how much high-tech espionage stuff can you do saddled with an old-timey, hand-cranked nazi-code-breaking machine sort of last name? Especially when your first name is just John. Put it this way: if these guys were making a porn game, the lead’s name would probably be Joseph “Marital” Act.

In fact, unless there’s a swerve in the plot and you get transported back in time to Little House on the Prairie and help Laura pass her frontier arithmetic exam with your super surname powers, I’m going to have to pass on this one from the get-go.

• The central tenet of the Cherokee tribe is, as noted by the opening voice-over of the Prey demo, that “the world is full of stories, and from time to time they permit themselves to be told.” The Cherokee are proud of their centuries of peaceful and harmonious co-existence with the obstinate herds of story in their lands. In the Cherokee tongue, the story that tells of a brave single-handedly stopping an invasion is known as a “hacknee”.
• The Cherokee talk to themselves almost all the time, to the point where psychiatrists now have a separate DSM classification for their unique predilection for schizotypal personality disorder.

  

  Here we see Prey’s actually-named-Tommy-Hawk protagonist, Tommy Hawk, looking in the bathroom mirror of the bar his girlfriend owns and being sarcastic with himself about being scared of women. That may seem somewhat whiny and nebbishy, but being a total dipshit is the traditional Cherokee hero’s tragic flaw. For instance, the great Cherokee hero Kanati, also known as “The Luckiest Hunter”, was so perplexed by the concept of vaginas and the people who own them that he ended up marrying an ear of corn.

• The Cherokee, like all Native Americans, love nothing more than drinking themselves into a stupor whenever they can sell enough turquoise to buy booze.

  

  Pictured above: This is the very first thing Tommy’s grandpa does after giving him a prophetic warning that he will need to embrace his Cherokee heritage to survive.

• The Cherokee are from what is now the southeastern United States, namely Tennessee, Georgia, and the Carolinas. Here is a screenshot of the spirit lands of the Cherokee, where Tommy goes after dying.

  

  This is, as grandpa says, the ancient land of the Cherokee forefathers, before the white man came and filled in all the canyons and replaced the desert climate with the more temperate and less arid conditions the region is known for today.

• A Cherokee brave, even those that reject their heritage like Tommy, can instantly learn the ability to “spirit walk”, which looks cool and makes you immortal.

  

  All that is required is for your mystical dead grandpa to tell you to “let your spirit carry you where your body cannot pass”, which you can simulate by pressing the ‘E’ key. For unknown reasons the Cherokee saved this secret specifically for the case of alien invasion, giving the Trail of Tears and the smallpox stuff a pass. Luckily Tommy is not smart enough to think about this, because it would probably make him hate being a Cherokee even more.

  Also pictured: a Cherokee “spirit guide” in the form of a hawk. Cherokee spirit guides have all played Quake IV, and thus have the ability to translate alien gibberish on a computer screen just by sitting on the top of it.

Well, it could happen. Turns out Japan would like to say that it happened to Chopin— who did in fact die of tuberculosis at 39, but most likely was dreaming about drowning or being crushed instead— and use that as the premise for an RPG. Since it stars Chopin and a cute, also terminally ill little girl, I’m guessing it will have a little bit of pathos as well as a small portion of piano music.

Personally, I can’t wait, but if it’s not your bag maybe Rockstar will entertain your suggestion of a knockoff based on the syphilitic final ravings of Al Capone.

Read – New Namco RPG For 360 [IGN]