Are you a PAL Xbox Live Gold member and can't find the supposed Beautiful Katamari PAL demo? Stop flipping through Xbox Live - at least, not until next week - since a glitch has caused it to be available only for Silver members. Check out when its going to be fixed in the full article!

Ever have the urge to just run around rolling everything into a giant ball? If you do, then you might want to check out Namco Bandai's Beautiful Katamari on the Xbox 360. Major Nelson has just announced that the demo is now available on Xbox Live in various European regions.

Head on over to the full article for more details.

Atari has announced that Namco Bandai's Beautiful Katamari should be hitting Europe by February 2008. That means that we can expect gamers in that region to be spending more time in front of their Xbox 360 rolling up various creatures and continents in an effort to create new stars in the sky.

Want to know more? Head on over to the full article via the "read more" link below.

The Xbox Live downloadable content for Namco Bandai's Beautiful Katamari for the Xbox 360 is now out, with a new Royal Rainbow-themed Dashboard theme available for the following regions: Canada, Hong Kong, Japan, Korea, Mexico, Singapore, Taiwan, and the US. The theme costs 150 Microsoft Points and is non-refundable.

New in-game content for the Prince's rolling adventures on the Xbox 360 are also available, in the form of four new missions:

• Milky Way Constellations - Roll up 88 constellations to create the Milky Way
• The Weaver Girl - Roll up a huge ball of yarn and string to create Vega, the Weaver Girl
• Shopping Spree - Make a Space Station but be thrifty about it; sounds like an offshoot of a Katamari mission from one of the previous games where the value of the items collected are taken into account
• High-calorie Katamari - Feed Cetus the Whale, roll up lots of food!

Certainly exciting new content, and Katamari fans will immediately take a liking to these new missions. The catch? The first three missions are available in Asia only, while the last mission, High-calorie Katamari, is a Japan-exclusive. Which means there's no downloadable Katamari action for the rest of the world...well, at least for now.

Of course, they may get released to other regions. More updates as they come!

  

Good things come in pairs as they say, and it's good news for Xbox 360 owners as two highly anticipated games go gold: Ace Combat 6: Fires of Liberation and Beautiful Katamari. The two games of completely different genres - you can hardly put shooting down planes and rolling up planets in the same category - are both from Namco Bandai.

The photorealistic Ace Combat 6: Fires of Liberation will be hitting stores on October 23, along with the limited edition which will be packaged along with Hori's ACE-EDGE Flightstick. The limited edition game will be available for US$ 149.99. Beautiful Katamari will be out (according to the website) by October 16.

Ever wondered about what achievements can be earned in Namco Bandai's quirky rolling game Beautiful Katamari? The achievement-tracking site Xbox360achievements.org has listed the possible achievements the Prince and his Royal Cousins can earn as they roll along.

Some of the strange but challenging achievements are "Responsible Roller", "Speedy Roller", and "Non-stop Roller". To get the Responsible Roller title, players must take care not to bump into any object as they roll along. It's quite the hard feat especially while zipping across the stage to beat the deadline.

Speedy Roller and Non-stop Roller are already self-explanatory: Speedy Rollers can be achieved by dashing all the way throughout the course, while Non-stop Roller means that the Prince (or any of his cousins) will not stop at any time while rolling the Katamari.

There are also six secret achievements in the game, which can be unlocked by playing Beautiful Katamari again and again until you get all six.

Incentive to roll? Yes, indeedy! Do roll back here for more Katamari-related updates.


Click on the Read link to check the complete Beautiful Katamari achievements list!

Regardless of whether Beautiful Katamari will appear on other platforms outside Xbox 360 or not, we can settle down and safely say it's looking good. This Japanese trailer, which should appear at Tokyo Game Show a few days from now, rolled up some sweet gameplay footage together while breaking down what features to expect from Namco Bandai's larger-than-life title.

When we say larger than life, we mean it quite literally - in Beautiful Katamari, you can roll up pretty much everything and eventually be more massive than Earth itself. Add online multiplayer features and a quirky soundtrack the series is known for, then we're sold.

More details are packed in the trailer, but our comprehension of the Japanese language can only do so much. Check it out yourself by watching the embed below.

When asked about the availability of Eternal Sonata for the PS3, an Namco Bandai spokesperson only had this to say: that they are not aware of a PlayStation 3 version at the moment. But their official website now says otherwise.

And that's not all. Beautiful Katamari is also listed for both the PS3 AND the Wii.

Remember the previous rumors about Beautiful Katamari leaving the PS3 in favor of the Wii? It looks like our dear beloved Prince had a change of heart and decided to - once again - roll over to the Nintendo Wii and Sony PlayStation 3.

If this isn't a typo (like the supposed Killer 7 for the Wii), this should be a definite sign of good things to come.

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*Update* As QJ reader teeg commented below, it turns out that Namco Bandai has indeed updated their site and took out the listings. That was pretty fast! So, all we can assume now is that the listings of Sonata and Katamari for the other next-gen consoles were nothing more than a simple typo. Glad things are cleared up now!

Thanks for the heads up, teeg!

For those of us who want our Xbox 360s to have that extra bit of cutesy craziness that only the Royal Family of the Cosmos can bring, here's a special treat: a Beautiful Katamari theme, as well as a series of picture packs of the miscellany-roll-em-up game have recently become available for purchase in Xbox Live. The theme comes in at around 150 Microsoft points, while the picture packs cost around 80 Microsoft points. Affordable, and very stylish.

Of course, with this first ever microtransaction for Beautiful Katamari, it brings up the question: will we see downloadable content for the game as well? It's not that far off a possibility, as the game itself is styled so that stuff can easily be added in.

For example, they might release downloadable content in the forms of extra cousins, or special items that you can roll up. Maybe even new songs for you to play while rolling about your business - as one of the key elements of the series has always been its quirky soundtrack. This opens up a lot of possibilities, and hopefully Namco Bandai would make it into reality.

Updates as we get them!

Nobody can stop the Prince of All Cosmos from rolling everything into stars and planets, but the intense action won't be available until Beautiful Katamari's release on the Xbox 360. While we wait for that fated day, spend some time checking out this gameplay video of interplanetary proportions.

As usual, the Prince is determined to absorb everything that stands in his way - from gigantic wedding cakes to crocodiles  - just to please the King with a Katamari of great size. We feel for the unfortunate people that get sucked into the Katamari unknowingly, but hearing their screams make for a pleasurable rolling experience.

Before we get in trouble with the King for talking too much, we'll just leave you with this video of Namco Bandai's Beautiful Katamari: