Earlier this year, we heard confirmation that Banjo-Tooie will be coming to the Xbox Live Arcade sometime this month. Thanks to a recent announcement from Rare, we can now change that "sometime" to a more specific date.

Yesterday, we reported that Konami's announced a new Castlevania title for the PS3 and Xbox 360. They did so by showing a 10-second teaser trailer. Here's a video of that teaser.

Players don't like it when a game that they've been waiting for ends up being canceled. Take the case of the XBLA version of GoldenEye007, for instance.

With rumors of the title's cancellation at Nintendo's hands, is it any wonder that Microsoft claims that its rival holds "more than just influence" over the game's licensing rights?  More on Microsoft's views regarding the matter, right after the jump.

There was a time when developing games in your own garage would have made you rich beyond your wildest dreams. That dream is getting farther and farther out of reach as the video game industry is becoming larger and more complex. EA CEO John Riccitiello remarked in his DICE keynote speech that by 2010, the garage studio dream will no longer be possible. More in the full article.

Hearing about money matters as the reason behind the cancellation of XBLA GoldenEye 007 is intriguing enough, but as it turns out, there are other similarly interesting angles. In this particular tidbit, rumor has it that Nintendo itself ordered the cancellation of the game's Xbox Live Arcade release. Details in the full article.

In response to the demise of the supposedly Goldeneye 007 game for the Xbox 360 because of a certain disagreement regarding the sharing of profits, an online petition has been made in order for people to let the companies know that they want the game to be re-released.

More details on the petition after the jump!

Several months after the quite confusing mention of a sequel to Perfect Dark Zero by Rare Ltd. for the Xbox 360 (despite Perfect Dark Zero being a prequel to N64's Perfect Dark), there's now another rumor which may better explain what the new Perfect Dark title really is: Perfect Dark 2, a direct sequel to Perfect Dark for the N64. Still following so far?

Not much is known about this supposed new Perfect Dark installment, except for a few choice tidbits: Joanna will get a total underhaul and take on a more serious, darker appearance. Aside from Joanna, all the other characters will be rendered with a twinge of grey as well.

The storyline will be beefed up with multiple paths, thanks to a morality system that will let gamers decide on what to do during the game's critical turning points. Another intriguing rumor is that there will be no cutscenes in the game, with everything playing out from the gamer's perspective.

Certainly an intriguing thread from the gossip mill. Will there be any developments to this Perfect Dark 2 rumor? Do stay tuned to find out.

It's been a while since we last heard from Turok, and we can't blame you guys if some have no idea what this is about (no thanks to a gazillion of other FPSes out there). That said, we could use a recap for the sorry mortals who missed this bad ass series.

Dating back to the days of N64, there was this game in which players could arm themselves with futuristic weapons as they explore a jungle in fear of getting eaten alive - by dinosaurs. This ain't your generic Jurassic Park fanfare; Turok was received well enough to establish a name of its own.

After several games the series spawned, Turok is finally going next-gen (PS3, Xbox 360) thanks to Disney Interactive Games and developer Propaganda Games. So far, we know that the hero is ex-black ops specialist Joseph Turok set in an entirely new planet to track down his former mentor.

To get an idea of what to expect, here's game director Joel Manners in an interview with IGN as he talks about the massive scope of the game, the living, breathing jungle, cinematic close combat, and a huge variety of explosive weapons at the player's disposal.

We hate to make you wait, so here's the video. Enjoy!

 

A Goldeneye-less Virtual Console isn't looking good for dreamers out there. Among the best of the N64 games, Ocarina, Mario Kart, and Mario 64 have already been released, so why can't they take Goldeneye 007 over to the VC as well? Or if it's not on the VC... maybe somewhere else? Some have been constantly hoping, and the way it seems, seeing Bond and his spy-buddies online would be quite a "rare" sight.

As CVG reports, someone on the Q&A threads at Rare was able to squeeze out some info on bringing more of their titles online. What surprised us was a well-placed hint of something that could also come out on Xbox Live:

The only Rare-developed title on Virtual Console right now is the original Donkey Kong Country, and unofficially there's a strong likelihood that its sequels will follow... But the Donkey Kong series of games is a Nintendo-owned franchise... whereas something like Banjo isn't... so it's nowhere near as easy to call... Especially when you also consider the existence of Xbox Live Arcade. So right now, the best answer we can offer (for either download service) is 'it's possible'.

Speaking more specifically about Goldeneye 007 though, a representative of Rare did indicated that the game is "caught up in a convoluted web of rights" and that this "doesn't mean it won't happen, just that a lot of people with a lot of different perspectives are involved."

Looks like someone stamped a big, red CONFIDENTIAL mark on this whole issue and doesn't want to reveal the rest of the document. Just what is cooking in the Rare labs? The whole VC thing was a long-running rumor, but now an XBLA title?

It's just been a little less than a week since the hypervisor vulnerability was first reported. In the short time between that and today, we've already seen a "Hello World" Proof of Concept being released. And today, we have a few bits of info about the first emulator for the Xbox 360. This anonymous developer was kind enough to send a few screenshots and describe what he has been up to.

First, a few screenshots:

     

Here's what he said about his project:

In light of the recent 360 hack and possibility of widespread homebrew in the future, I wanted to share some news with you and X-S.

I've been working on a port of MAME to the 360. I call it 'MAME360'.

Now for a bit about the project:

• It's based on MAME 0.112 and is fairly easy to keep up-to-date (doesn't need any messing around with like Mameox on the xbox).
• Originally it was based on SDLMAME but I've since ported a 360 specific osd layer (so SDL for the 360 exists - as an aside I also have a port of ScummVM in the works too).
• Mame doesn't include any dynarec cpu emulation on anything other than an x86 platform. So any game that is PSX or N64 based for example doesn't run at all well.
• Most other stuff (that I've tried) runs pretty well.
• At the moment it will only run on 360 dev/debug/test kits. Whether it will ever run on a hacked retail box remains to be seen.

Since there isn't much of a difference when you run code on a debug kit and a hacked retail box, it is possible that if the hypervisor vulnerability is fully exploited, it will open up the Xbox360 to a lot of homebrew. Personally, I can't wait for this to show up and be possible to run it on retail boxes as homebrew.