Online tournament organizer GGL has partnered with Sony to deliver an official Warhawk tournament with some exciting prizes. Unfortunately, the prizes are only available to US citizens, but "Warhawk players from anywhere in the world are welcome to join open competition ladders on GGL's Warhawk Game Group" There's a practice ladder running right now, which will be reset when the official ladder opens on May 27th. This will give those of you who are a bit rusty the chance to shake off the cobwebs and get back to grips with the game.

The tournament is team based and is therefore probably better to play with people who you work well with. However, if you don't have any Warhawk playing friends, or need to bolster your team numbers a bit, you can find new team mates in GGL's "Find/Form a Squad" forum.

On the 29th of June the top 32 teams in the ladder will go on to the Elimination Bracket, where they will whittled down to a single winning team. That team will take home Limited Edition Warhawk statues (worth about $50) as well as an exclusive in-game item -- the Champion's Blade. This "replaces the knife weapon in game and looks completely different so that everyone you encounter will know you won the tournament."

Check out the website for more details and to sign up. Good luck!

The official site for Final Fantasy IV has expanded from a sly tease into something bigger and better. A few character portraits are up, which juxtapose the in-game images with some of the artwork we found so eye-catching, as well as a few other tidbits. The "download" section isn't up yet, but we'll guess that eventually wallpapers will fill that space.

Jeux-France has also reconfirmed that the game will be playable at this month's Tokyo Game Show.

There are further rumors about Nintendo Power, Nintendo's official gaming magazine, but the rumblings have changed slightly. The latest word is that the publication will continue, just with a new publisher working things behind the scenes, which is how the European Nintendo magazine is handled.

It's a good time to to relive some nostalgic moments with the magazine, and Infendo recently clued us in on a shiny new set of covers courtesy of Flickr user kocojim. Go forth and bask, and let's hope this version of the rumor is true.

Back in the day, so to speak, we brought you news of a homebrew project using the Wiimote called "WiiJ"ing, in which one (or two) Wiimotes were used to control various functions of popular mixing software (Traktor). We're convinced the technology is indeed real at this point, but according to the WiiJ creator and head-honcho, Nintendo has come forward and straight-up purchased the website and concept from him for release in a future game.

Sounds cool, and certainly in line with Nintendo's strategy, but color us a bit skeptical. A quick WHOIS shows domain registration as unchanged in the site's history, and in addition, the front page news post regarding the deal has a bazillion-word long actual game description. It's unlikely that Nintendo would simply allow the creator of WiiJing to simply dictate the full design of a videogame, and at this point, certainly, little to no actual development has been completed.

What say you? Even if it isn't real, would you enjoy or look forward to an application like this?

[Thanks, Jason!]

Valhalla Knights was one of the best games at Tokyo Game Show this year, and although it's coming to the US in the future, details have been very scarce. The official US website for this RPG opened a few days ago, and gives a few tidbits on the game's story and characters. With the "Trailer" and "System" sections of the site currently unavailable, it seems like we'll have more to report on in the coming weeks.

Sony's offical American PlayStation website has undergone a serious makeover, just in time for the upcoming PLAYSTATION launch. One of the new things that Sony's touting is the "PSP Evolution", a term that was undoubtedly created by a marketing team somewhere. This is where the new firmware upgrades, like the hotly anticipated 3.0 update, will end up being distributed.

You may also want to check out the site's not-often-updated downloads page, where you'll be able to download new Content Packs and demos.

[Via PSP-Vault]

Supposedly, ONM (Official Nintendo Magazine UK) was holding out on a pretty big exclusive set to grace the cover of their next issue, set to release in September. They hyped up that this was something we'd yet to see, so the fact that it turned out their "secret exclusive" was none other than Battalion Wars 2, a game revealed at Leipzig, is equal parts laughable and pathetic.

We haven't been following the coverage of this rumor as it snowballed on various message boards and blogs because it isn't in our nature to be a gossip rag. We respect our readers and even though ONM hyped this "secret exclusive" up for some time, we felt it did not need to be commented on. We'd let the guys at ONM handle their business. And handle it, they have.

Go Nintendo has an interesting snippet taken from issue #6 of the UK Official Nintendo Magazine where Sonic Wildfire is discussed. Apparently in development for two years, the game is based off of Arabian Nights and will follow Sonic as he adventures through a book and looks to go back to the roots of the title by instilling that sense of speed once again. The game also will see the return of Dr. Robotnik Eggman and is to feature even more ways to use the Wiimote than were presented in the E3 demo.

Yojiro Ogawa also expressed some interest in bringing another franchise to the Wii in the article. Thinking that it is "fantastic hardware," he would like to bring a new franchise, completely unrelated to Sonic, to the console, utilizing the entire spectrum of capabilities the Wiimote offers.

Nintendo has gone ahead and tossed a fresh coat of paint on the DS section of their website to coincide with the release of the DS Lite this Sunday. The day draws near, and even though some of you folk were able to capitalize on the ignorance of retail employees around the country, there are still a few of us living in the dark and waiting for the Lite. So do we think this design is better than the previous one?

Our friendly anonymous source at Microsoft has provided us with a few more details concerning the 360 accessories announced back at E3.

Perhaps the most important involves the bundling of the Xbox Live Vision camera with a wired headset, the popular Live Arcade title UNO, and a month of Live Gold service for $39.99 when it releases in the States on September 19, 2006.

Granted, this is still an unofficial report (based on a leak of "official" info), so understand that you're probably not gonna get much confirmation from MS until they're good and ready to give it. If you'd like information on what other peripherals are coming out "Holiday 2006" (so sometime in the 4th quarter) and at what price, read on for more.

Thanks to a reliable source from Microsoft, we've learned some important details about the new peripherals announced for the Xbox 360, including pricing and a few Halo faceplate (non)specifics. Check out the leaked info and prices below:

• 360 wireless gaming receiver (which enables wireless 360 controllers, headsets, and wheels on your PC): $20
• Wireless racing wheel: $130
• Wireless headset: $60
• Xbox Live Vision Camera (with headset, one month of Live Gold, and one arcade -- presumably Xbox Live Arcade -- game): $40
• New faceplates for Halo (with the Master Chief on 'em, but not Halo 3 specific) and Forza (no word on connections to the sequel): $20 each
• 256 MB portable memory unit (MU): no official price yet, but definitely not four times the cost of the older 64MB MU
  

Besides acknowledging that the PC is "the biggest gaming device of all," MS appears to be setting an agressive price for its most relevant new PC accessory, the wireless gaming receiver (at least in comparison to the outrageously priced 360 wireless networking adapter). Unfortunately, no price was revealed as of yet for the USB-based HD-DVD add-on.

We've speculated in our recent podcasts as to what would happen to the various 360 SKUs when price drops inevitably occur. An interesting theory bandied about by prolific Joystiq Contributor epobirs (on our earlier bump-to-256MB-MU post) was that a $20 price drop for the Core system, coupled with a $20 price drop on the 64MB MU, would finally allow folks to pick up a capable non-Premium bundle for the original $300 Core price point. (Not a bad way to undercut PS2 memory card prices, too.) We hope to get official confirmation on this info in the not-too-distant future.

[Update: Sorry, had the camera price wrong in the headline; it now matches the price of the bundle listed in the body of the text below.]

See also:

• 360's Mem Unit getting a bump to 256MB? (Comment from epobirs)
  
• Use 360 wireless peripherals with a PC
• Engadget & Joystiq's live coverage of Microsoft's Xbox 360 E3 event
• Joystiq / Engadget podcasts from Day One and Day Two of E3 2006
  

If internet reports are to be believed, Frame City Killer has been cancelled, with an unnamed RPG replacing it in Bandai-Namco's roster of upcoming games.

We knew that FCK (as it's affectionately known in the gaming community) was having some problems -- with multiple delays stemming from poor graphics and inadequate content -- but most 360 owners expected the game to come out one way or another sometime later this year.

If you're a member of the Frame City Underground (the official fan community for the game), a pretty clear announcement in English has already been made. Check out the full text below. FCK ... we'll miss you.

[Thanks, murph, Blue_Six, & a tipster who'd like to remain anonymous; via Evil Avatar & GameFront]

See also:

• Original Japanese announcement page; Google auto-translation
• Frame City Killer missing until summer at the very least
• Namco responds to criticism, sends Frame City Killer back to the lab
• Frame City Underground official announcement (must log in for it)

As you can see above, there are a few things different between the two PS3 SKUs planned. (Hint: the obvious alterations concern high-def output and wireless connectivity -- though Bluetooth controllers should work just fine with both, with or without any chrome case highlighting.)

So what's HDMI, built-in multimedia card-reader slots, wireless internet connectivity, and an extra 40 gigabytes' hard disk space worth to you? $100? Now that Sony's gone with the 2-SKU approach with its next-gen hardware (a la the Xbox 360's premium and "Core" systems), we can expect some tough consumer choices after six months -- with console shortages possibly for another six months after that -- as $100 separates the base $499 and premium $599 versions of Sony's "Clear Black" hope.

HDMI is important to those who want to take full advantage of Blu-ray high def and have the new screens to use it; MemoryStick, SD, and CompactFlash slots would be nice for the PS3 memory-card users and those will run multimedia on the system; Wi-Fi's the only way to avoid stringing ethernet cables for online access; and 360 owners might appreciate the full 60GB available to potential buyers of the premium PS3 model. Neither model comes with a second HDMI port; thankfully, one should hopefully be all most users need. The details are laid out in a feature-comparison table at the end of Sony's official PS3 hardware press release, available in both Adobe Reader and Microsoft Word formats. Determine what's most important to your PS3 ambitions there.

[Image pieced together from the PlayStation.com forums; thanks, Guru]

Call of Duty 3's just been confirmed, and it looks like we were right on the money with our early leak of the WWII-related game.

Back in early March, we printed the following information (and a whole lot more) on the focus of an upcoming sequel: "'CoD 3' ... is being produced by Big Red One dev Treyarch. ... The next Call of Duty World War II-based title will return gamers to the battlefields of Normandy as the Allies take on Nazi Germany to drive them out of France once and for all. This time around, American and British forces are joined by Canadian troops, Polish tanks, and French freedom fighters in a reenactment of the bloody Normandy Breakout campaign spearheaded during the summer of 1944. In the push to Paris, you'll get to choose how you approach each mission, free of menu screens and jarring non-interactive cut-scenes."

Here's what IGN quoted from Activision for the announcement yesterday: "Through the eyes of four Allied soldiers, Call of Duty 3 brings players closer to the fury of combat as they fight through the Normandy Breakout, the harrowing offensive that liberated Paris and changed the fate of the world. Developed by Treyarch, Call of Duty 3 is the follow up to the #1 next-generation game and is scheduled for a 2006 release." Fingering the developer and the setting? Not too shabby -- while Joystiq pats itself on the back.

Check out the IGN trailer below for a first-person look somewhat reminiscent of the FPS sequence in the Metal Gear Solid 4 trailer from TGS. At the end of the "official E3 teaser" trailer, a number of platforms are listed, with the major manufacturers (including a small "Nintendo Revolution" in text) and publisher/developer combo listed. We suspect that versions for the PC and possibly the current-gen consoles will be covered with ports as well. Now all we have to do is wait for the word on Call of Duty: Modern Warfare. (Infinity Ward, we're looking at you!) More info obviously hitting at E3.

[Thanks, icemorebutts, jason, & Hiro Protagonist]

[Update 1: Had to fix a verb. Thanks, Hiro Protagonist, John Q, & Jiiiiihad!]

See also:

• Official E3 teaser trailer for Call of Duty 3
• Next Call of Duty leaked: Modern Warfare tackles terrorists
• Rumor: Call of Duty joining the Revolution
• Kojima interacts in real-time with MGS4 trailer at TGS