It’s Friday, and that means it’s time to meet yet another pair of characters set to appear inTransformers: War for Cybertron. This week, the Autobots get Silverbolt and the Decepticons are represented by Brawl. Silverbolt is a selfless and grim warrior who is happy to lay down his life for his fellow Autobots. He’s a scout-class character who transforms into a jet and wields a good deal of speed. Brawl is as reckless with his life was Silverbolt, but only because he’s “obsessed with explosions and chaotic, unending combat....

Zipper Interactive is modernizing the tactical shooter withSOCOM 4. Designer Ben Jones summed up the accessibility-oriented changes — which include regenerating health and a cover system — as “the evolution of theSOCOMfranchise.” Of course,change can be scaryfor longtime fans; manySOCOMdie-hards are already dismissing this game as a dumbed-down “SOCoD” (forCall of Duty). But fear not: the multiplayer component ofSOCOM 4will offer two ways to play. Gamers who are new to the series will likely stick with the “standard” setup, which includes the changes that Zipper has made to the waySOCOMplays....

Ambiguous teases are all the rage in the games industry. It works really well for major publishers launching their marketing campaigns for triple-A titles. I have to question the logic behind making them for downloadable games from relatively unknown studios, however. Take this tease forSolar Struggle, an upcoming Xbox Live Indie Game. All we have to go on here is the Earth and some spaceships approaching it. Are they a malevolent invasion force?...

Sonic 2 HDis an unofficial HD reworking of the classic SEGA Genesis title,Sonic the Hedgehog 2. Of course, the name of the project more or less gives that away, but it’s no less exciting. Headed up by the perpetually friendly, outgoing and emotionally stable folk at Sonic Retro, this game has a lot of fans fapping already. According to theteaser site, big things are coming in twelve days. The project has been dark for quite some time, so we can expect some big reveals coming soon....

SEGA has released yet another trailer forSonic Generations, this time detailing the “Dreamcast era” levels that will be available to play through as both Classic and Modern Sonic. That said, I am fairly certain Sonic Heroes wasn’t a Dreamcast game. Anyway, it’s a cool trailer, and furry fans will be jizz their pants when they see Shadow at the end, being all broody and sexy as he is. Oh, that Shadow!...

How curious. A patent has been dug up by Internet sleuths that suggests Sony may be working on a universal controller that would work with the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360andWii. According to the patent, this controller would be a fully-fledged gaming device and would feature an LCD touch-screen displaying commands for the latest consoles. A game console controller includes a hand-holdable housing and a touch sensitive liquid crystal display (LCD) on the housing....

Time for some good old fashioned Sony logic, folks! The PS3 platform holder has earned itself a reputation of being arrogant with years of high prices and awful accompanying PR statements. However, the company believes that it’snotarrogant anymore, because Apple exists. “I don’t think we are arrogant anymore. I think we can name a company that is a fruit that is in the news a lot about their arrogance. I think they have taken the mantle from us, if we were ever arrogant,” says Sony Australia’s Michael Ephraim....

Earlier this year staff was cut at Black Rock, the devs behind awesome racing games likePureandSplit/Second.Now we have learned that the studio is closing. Black Rock Studios fell under the Disney Interactive umbrella. An anonymous source toldEurogamerthat Disney handled Black Rock clumsily, and that they were outsourcing games to other companies that the Brighton studio was more than capable of producing. The same source was also disappointed in the lack of advertising forPureandSplit/Second....

Things have been looking generally stormy for Perpetual Entertainment for months now. The announcement earlier this year that the studio had chosen tocancel their nearly completed MMOGods & Heroescame after the announcement of a “restructuring,” which is the kind of word used in business when everything is about to go down in a rain of hellfire and ash. Shortly after, they announcedStar Trek Onlinewas going to becomea more “casual” MMO, which only further implies confusion, as Trek is one of the most detailed universes out there to explore....

While publishers strives to push us into an all-digital market where it can control every aspect of the consumer experience, a new study from Ipsos MediaCT claims that 64% of consumers still prefer physical copies over downloadable alternatives. Over 1,000 people were asked, and the results are being used as an indication that the pre-owned market is still a powerful force for the average gamer. Interestingly, 63% of those polled also preferred to get their news from papers as opposed to online, while the music and film industries had slowly lower results, with 45% and 50% respectively plugging for physical media....

If you paid attention to Konami’slegendary E3 press conferencethis year, then you ought to already be familiar withNinety Nine Nightsproducer Tak “One Million Troops” Fujii. His performance at E3 was … memorable … to say the least, and now you can get the magic of his inimitable style delivered straight to your Twitter feed. According to Fujii, he thinks Western games reviewers — who typically pan his brand of hack n’ slash action games — are alright....

If you’re one of those “I must have a disc” kind of persons, its time to let out a deep, satisfying exhale. Take-Two’s CEO Ben Feder isn’t buying the speculation that corporeal videogames will be a thing of the past in the near future. He finds DLC interesting and admits that its growing in popularity, but doesn’t believe it will replace discs for a while at least. Feder shared his thoughts at the BMO Capital Markets presentation this afternoon in New York, saying (according toKotaku), “I think reports on the death of package goods have been greatly exaggerated....

GameTrailers finally brings us our first look atDead Space’sstoryline. We see that the monsters that you’ll be fighting in the game were once people, and that this game continues to look better with every new detail released. The trailer above doesn’t reveal a whole lot; but lucky for us, GameTrailers has more to share. On the latest episode of GameTrailers TV, Geoff Keighley interviewed key members of theDead Spacedevelopment team, and they revealed lots ofnew information on the game....