Those lucky Japanese gamers are going to get a great bundle in early March. It’s the Resident Evil 5 game which will be sold together with an Xbox 360 sometime in early March. The whole package will cost around $368 and besides the special edition game it will contain the Xbox 360 Premium, a free premium New Xbox Experience theme and the free 48-hour Xbox Live card. While we know Japan will get it in March we have no idea if any other markets are also going to receive it.

via gamesindustry

While the Xbox 360 still carries a wide range of games that parents might find objectionable for their small children to play the console is making definite steps towards being a family-friendly system. The more intuitive interface that accompanied the NXE was quite obviously an attempt to make households more likely to use the console as a media center.

If you get tired of dressing up your avatar or run out of things to watch on Netflix then you can get a friend or two gathered around your console for digital recreations of classic board game experiences. EA is bringing more games under the Hasbro Family Night banner to Xbox Live Arcade. They’re set to begin releasing in the Spring of this year, including classics like Boggle, Battleship, Yahtzee, Connect Four and Sorry. To keep things interesting there’ll be some new playing modes with mini-games, online play and achievements.

A rather interesting post has popped up on the official Left 4 Dead blog that sort of rekindles last year’s Diablo 3 darkness debate. The post by developer Randy Lundeen explains why Valve made the decision to lighten up the look of the cooperative multiplayer shooter.

Lundeen writes that early versions of the game used a darker version of the game’s lighting system. However, this caused a problem where players weren’t able to see “zombie silhouettes in the midground and background… they were repeatedly getting mobbed.”

“While sudden zombie attacks were inarguably scary, they were also frustrating – players weren’t being given the information they needed to react,” wrote Lundeen. “They wanted that ‘Here they come!’ moment, and we weren’t giving it to them. The solution? Light-colored fog.”

He notes that while light-colored fog was not realistic, it did help the gameplay, giving playtesters a much smoother gameplay experience.

Coming as no surprise, Xbox 360 Fanboy reports of leaked assets for Forza Motorsport 3, the third entry in the racing simulation franchise that has done well for Microsoft over the years, that reveal something very interesting: in-game race posters.

Apparently, Microsoft Game Studios has sub-contracted Kaarbo Designs to create menu graphics for the game; the in-game race posters were posted on the company’s website and were promptly removed before being saved by Internet detectives. In response, Kaarbo has said that the posters “are only samples and are not to be used.”

Even then, the posters are sleek as hell! The game looks to be becoming quite the monster, with rumors noting that the DVD format has become an issue. It supposedly features over 400 cars and 100 tracks and will likely ship on two separate discs. Forza 3 is expected to be shown at this year’s E3.

Making the biggest blunder of the year is Sony, who has confirmed that if you want to experience Killzone 2 before its February release, you will have to pay GameStop a $5 pre-order fee.

The games retailer is promising “exclusive access” to the demo before its February 27 release; the non-GameStop customers and eager gamers will have to wait sometime after the game’s retail release to get in on the demo action.

Killzone 2 has been in development for quite some time now, making its first appearance at a rather flashy E3 press conference by Sony. It has since made good progress, and is now a highly anticipated PS3 exclusive shooter.

Developer Crytek recently assured the Crysis community that a patch for the shooter is nearly complete.

“Crysis Warhead will receive a patch in the new year,” wrote the studio. “It’s almost finished thanks to some hard work from the Warhead team, so that’s something to look forward to.”

The company also noted that an editor and SDK will be their next priority. While no exact timeframe for release was given, Crytek pointed out that “good progress” was being made and that they hope to release it “sooner rather than later.”

Microsoft may be trying to go mainstream like their Nintendo counterparts, but hardcore gamers haven’t been forgotten, it seems, as Treasure CEO Masato Maegawa has revealed that the company had requested an Xbox Live Arcade port of the developer’s Saturn game Radiant Silvergun.

“Microsoft actually asked us if we could put it out,” said Maegawa. “We’re thinking about it, certainly, but it’s not as simple as just saying ‘OK, let’s put it up.’”

Maegawa noted that with Ikaruga they didn’t have to do or add a great deal to the game, and that it was “popular and well accepted for what it was.” However, for Radiant Silvergun, they would have to make changes as the game has “aged in assorted ways”.

The arcade Saturn game was released way back in 1998 and has not been made available outside of Japan.

It seems somewhat unfair some of the great packages and deals Japanese gamers get. Sony and Nintendo put out consoles and handhelds in a wide palette of colors that rarely make their way to the rest of the world. Popular games get bundles that include console, game and various other sundries at a lower price than buying everything separately. Now Microsoft is partnering with Square Enix and Capcom to give Japanese gamers exclusive bundles for Resident Evil 5 and Star Ocean 4.

Until recently the Xbox 360 had been performing quite poorly in Japan but the release of several Xbox exclusive RPGs saw the console’s sales jump. Now Microsoft is aiming to push those sales figures even higher and get a bigger install base.

The Star Ocean 4 Premium Pack contains a copy of Star Ocean 4, a 360 Arcade unit complete with the Xbox Live Arcade Omniverse Disk, a Star Ocean 4 faceplate, and a Star Ocean series soundtrack. The Biohazard 5 Premium Pack (Biohazard is the name of Resident Evil in Japan) includes a 60 gigabyte 360 console, the game, a headset and a code for downloading a special Resident Evil 5 theme. The Star Ocean package retails at 24,800 yen while the Biohazard Pack is a bit more pricey at 34,800 yen, both offering a savings of about four thousand yen versus buying everything together. As you might expect the bundles will be released at the same time as the games.

Just in case you have some money left after Christmas and New Year’s you’ll want to know that today only Amazon is selling the Xbox 360 Fallout 3 Collector’s Edition for just $49.98 with free shipping.

What’s inside the package you ask? Well there are plenty of things! You will get your own Vault Boy collectors item direct from Vault-Tec, “The Art of Fallout 3″ hardcover book, a special “The Making of Fallout 3″ DVD, the fully customized metal Vault-Tec lunch box and the game itself. Want it? Desperately? Go look it up at Amazon.com!

No, this isn’t an article about the PS3 being a superior paperweight/doorstop/other household item necessitating a weighty object. I’m not here to hate on Sony’s console, especially since I own one. The battle for console supremacy has gone beyond having the best games. Now the quality of your add-ons, extra features and business partnerships matters.

Both the PS3 and the Wii offer a web browser as part of their functionality and this is where Sony is experiencing a small triumph. Both of their browsers support many popular sites such as Youtube but market research shows that the PS3 is being used more often to access the internet than the Wii. It’s a rather miniscule percentage difference, as the PS3 browser has four one hundredths of a percentage point of the total ‘internet market’ while the Wii browser only claims a single hundredth of a percentage point. This is probably attributed in some part to the fact that the Wii’s internet browser has to be purchased while the PS3′s browser is free of charge.