It often doesn’t take much to ensure a video game’s success than slapping Mario’s name on it. Sonic used to have more or less the same power, but it’s diminished somewhat since many of his forays into the 3-D realm haven’t gone well. The two iconic powerhouses teamed up recently to bring Mario and Sonic At The Olympic games to the Wii with surprising success to the tune of five million copies sold in three months.

If there’s one thing Nintendo has proven over the years it’s that they know when to make a sequel. There’s no confirmation yet (a call got the standard ‘no comment’) but apparently a secret source told Eurogamer that the sequel is in fact in the works and this time it’ll have a Winter Olympic theme.

If you haven’t played the game, it’s worth a look, if only because of any Wii game I’ve played so far, it’s the only one that’s left me sweating and feeling like I’d really gotten some exercise.

Sony is beginning to feel the crunch of the global economic crisis. They’re expected to post their first annual operating loss in fourteen years soon. It’s not a small amount either, they’re predicted to have lost $2.9 billion and a hefty chunk of that is going to be laid at the doorstep of the company’s PlayStation division, whose losses are expected to increase by $377 million.

Half of that is due to the appreciation of the Yen while the other half is unsurprisingly due to the ‘unexpectedly low sales’. Despite chairman Hirai’s confidence that the company will eventually come out on top their estimated sales for the coming financial year are lower than the past two years. They expect to sell 10 million PS3s, 15 million PSPs, 8 million PS2s and 250 million games.

Part of the reason Nintendo’s raking in money hand over fist with the Wii is their brilliant decision to re-release classic titles for low costs. Between the current library of games, backwards compatibility with Gamecube titles, the Virtual Console and Wiiware it’s hard not to find something you’d like to play. While NES and SNES games are best played with more simple control schemes, the success of Twilight Princess, Okami and Resident Evil 4 showed that with a little work the games can be updated for the Wii’s more intuitive interface.

Nintendo is launching an official line of games with just this in mind, called the ‘NEW PLAY CONTROL!’ series. The first two titles are going to be out very soon, one intended to appeal to the more serious gamer and the other for the casual type. February 6th will see the re-release of classic strategy title Pikmin. The game is more or less the same, with players taking the role of Olimar, an astronaut who crash lands on a planet and is forced to find pieces of his ship with the aid of the half plant, half animal, fully adorable Pikmin. The gameplay will utilize the WIi’s pointing capabilities, allowing players to easily select and order groups of Pikmin.

The other title is Mario Power Tennis, which will likely be quite similar to the tennis game on Wii Sports at the most basic level but with various kinds of shots including the Power Shots which vary by character. Some other fun features include ‘Gimmick Courts’ where you’ll have to avoid various impediments while you play including ghosts tossing banana peels under your feet. There are also a variety of mini-games that you can play, some of which are available from the start, others are unlocked by playing through the tournament mode including “Terror Tennis” where you hit balls at ghosts to keep them under control. Mario Power Tennis will be re-releasing on March 6th of this year.

Ever since the first school shooting tragedy at Columbine the possible dangers of video games have been brought to the forefront of the public’s mind. Since then the possible linkage between video game violence and real world violence has been debated by consumers, campaigned on by politicians and studied by psychologists.

Professor Christopher Ferguson, a researcher at Texas A&M International University has published a study that goes a long way towards illustrating that the link between video games and violent crime is nothing more than worry and speculation. He points out that the methodology of previous studies is quite often seriously flawed, and that many researchers in the anti-game camp fail to acknowledge any of these flaws in their research, as well as ignoring any previous research contrary to their own viewpoints. He also discusses the fact that most video game critics are older (35+) and that many are elderly. Most of these outspoken critics are very unfamiliar with the medium, displaying their ignorance in interviews and writings, such as the incident with Mass Effect last year and critics who claim that players are awarded points in games like Grand Theft Auto for committing antisocial acts.

He discusses the idea of ‘moral panics’ and ‘culture wars’ being largely responsible for this debate, with some politicians attacking video games as a way to say they’re taking action against violent crimes without actually having to address the more complex, multi-layered causes behind them. News media has long been known to do better by reporting alarming, negative news than positive news.

Those Valve programmers aren’t sitting around idle, you know – they are actually working on Team Fortress 2, it appears, as developer Robin Walker has teased a new “very different” mode that will soon be added to the stylistic multiplayer shooter.

“A new Payload map is in the works, more community maps are on the way and the team will soon unveil a very different new game mode,” is mentioned in a story about Walker and the team at Valve in The Escapist.

Walker also noted that while the team is primarily focused on expanding the game’s existing classes, it does have a list of candidates for an entirely new class.

Ubisoft today announced that it will publish the Soviet Assault expansion pack for World in Conflict this March.

Those who have the original game now will be able to purchase and download the expansion pack online; those who will be new to the game can purchase a new World in Conflict: Complete Edition that includes the original strategy game, the expansion and unspecified “all-new features”.

The pack was originally scheduled for release last Fall, but was delayed after former owner Sierra merged with Activision and decided to sell the stufio off. Ubisoft acquired Massive in November 2008. The expansion allows players to see the conflict from the Soviet perspective; it will feature new multiplayer maps, new films and new characters.

It is due out on PC, PS3 and Xbox 360.

With the game having gone gold recently, Relic Entertainment has revealed that it will add two multiplayer maps to Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War 2 within a week of the game’s February 19 release.

It was additionally disclosed that while the game had gone gold, the team will take feedback from the forthcoming multiplayer beta and implement the changes through a day zero patch.

Relic has also spoken about its desire to pump out paid DLC through Games for Windows Live.

“There may even be some [GFW Live] DLC available during the first few weeks after the game’s released if everything goes to plan,” said the studio. However, it wasn’t mentioned if they would be free or premium DLC.

In an extremely short press release, Capcom announced that it will publish an unnamed multiplatform title from MMOG developer Monumental Games later this year. That was all the details the company provided, however, Monumental’s website has some more: “We can’t reveal the franchise as yet, but we can say we’re both proud and excited to be working on it. As you would expect given our core technology, there’s a substantial online element, but the gameplay focus is pure adrenalin.”

The studio has so far release one game – the free-to-play soccer MMO Football Superstars. They are also working on Hunter’s World, a hunting MMO that is early in development.

Sony is on a roll this week, it seems! Having placed the company as the “official leader of the console industry” and blasting Microsoft’s Xbox 360 lifetime possibilities, SCE chairman Kazuo Hirai claims that the PS3 is intentionally difficult to program for in order to ensure that the console meets its promised ten year lifecycle.

“It’s hard to program for, and a lot of people see the negatives of it, but if you flip that around, it means the hardware has a lot more to offer,” Hirai explained. “We don’t provide the ‘easy to program for’ console that [developers] want, because ‘easy to program for’ means that anybody will be able to take advantage of pretty much what the hardware can do, so then the question is what do you do for the rest of the nine-and-a-half years?”

It’s worth mentioning that Sony did something like this before with the PSP. Though the handheld’s CPU was capable of running at 333MHz, developers were initially limited to using only 222MHz, supposedly to conserve battery life. The company eventually allowed developers to access the processor’s full speed.

Midway sent out word that Wheelman, its upcoming action game starring Vin Diesel, will be released to stores on March 20, several weeks later than the original February 16 launch date.

The game was supposed to serve as a prequel to a movie of the same name – which would also star Vin Diesel – and was set to arrive simultaneously with the film. There is currently no news as to how this will affect the release date of the movie.

However, Midway did reveal an interesting bit of information: a playable demo of Wheelman will be made available on Xbox Live and PlayStation Network before its retail release; no specific date was mentioned.