The last we heard about Bayonetta was last year when they Sega announced that it would be coming sometime in 2009.

Well, they have lifted the veil slightly now stating that it will be coming Fall of this year. Shortly after the announcement Sony stepped in and listed the game on their European website tacking on an October release date.

Bayonetta comes to us from the creator of the Devil May Cry series, Hideki Kamiya, and will be released simultaneously on both the Xbox 360 and PS3.

Just as they did with the Super Bowl and Madden NFL, Electronic Arts recently ran a simulation using NHL 09 to predict the winners of this years Stanley Cup.

After running the simulation EA has come to the conclusion that the Boston Bruins will be this years winners of the Stanley Cup. But how accurate are these simulations?

Well, Joystiq points to EA incorrectly predicting that the San Jose Sharks would be the victors last year but lets take a look at their Super Bowl predictions. Since they began running the simulation in 2004, EA has accurately predicted the outcome of the Super Bowl 5/6 times utilizing the Madden NFL engine. That means they have been right 83% of the time.

Their most recent simulation followed Super Bowl XLIII where they pitted the Steelers and the Cardinals against eachother with the Steelers coming out on top 28 to 24. The actual score of Super Bowl XLIII? 27 to 23. Place your bets people!

The level of violence in a video game isn’t always directly correlated to its body count. Your average Star Wars game has little content anyone could object to while a single round of Mortal Kombat is filled with more potential parental complaints than any other game with only a single corpse left behind.

Some parents or advocacy groups might be disturbed to know that in the 565 days since the release of Halo 3 over ten billion covenant have been killed in the campaign mode. That means since the game’s launch over 12,000 aliens have been killed every minute. If you laid the corpses end on end they’d create a chain that wrapped around the earth 456 times, although it’d probably be shorter due to the many covenant who were blown into tiny pieces.

Once again I applaud the sheer business acumen of Vin Diesel and company Tigon Studios for continuing to release second-rate video games at the rate of as fast as they possibly can to perpetrate as many colossal cash-grabs as possible.  Perhaps their most recent attempt is to cash in on the phenomenal Riddick license with recent title Xbox 360 title Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena, making me wonder how they got it in the first place.  Sublet from Universal?  Or did Vin keep a bit of Riddick as part of his Pitch Black work?  Dunno.

Anyway, like I said, Riddick’s back, and this time he’s taking on a mercenary ship called the Dark Athena (hence the title).  He’ll be taking on legions of mercenaries and armed guards and attack drones and whatnot, and he’ll be spending a lot of time sneaking around in the dark to do his killing, taking full advantage of his illicit optical modifications (a shine job in case you’ve forgotten the original Pitch Black).

While it’s always fun to watch Riddick be a sociopath to children as young as five—seriously, Riddick, it’s not cool to be all snarly and threatening toward small children.  It’s like taking a sand blaster to a soup cracker.  How about just a little variety?  Why don’t you just juggle once?  Hit someone with a pie? Do something ridiculous for no clear reason—and not kill anyone.

Ironically, this tiny rant directed at a fictional character may well be the best explanation of what’s wrong with the whole concept of Riddick video games and Assault on Dark Athena in particular.  There’s no VARIETY.  Riddick sneaks around, goes shiny-eyes, kills people, repeat until everyone bows down and declares Riddick the absolute emperor of cool.  Okay, we GET IT ALREADY.  This whole game smells like dead horse because they WON’T STOP FLOGGING ONE.

I’ll give them credit—they tried.  They added on some first-person shooter sort of stuff, gave Riddick access to assault rifles and shotguns and whatnot.  This is cool, make no mistake, but it’s also the same kind of thing that you’ve played a whole bunch of times.  Yes, it’s cool to sneak around in the dark and jam a hairpin into a guy’s brain stem. That’s innovative, but not a big part of the whole thing.  I liked being able to kill enemies by dropping off high places and using them to break my fall.  Again, innovative, but too small to be of much use.  And I definitely have to give some due props for including a complete port of Escape From Butcher Bay, giving some added value.  But the biggest problem remains—while these small additions are welcome touches of innovation, the rest of the package is so badly lacking that there’s not much sense to playing it.

In that sense, it’s a whole lot like that earlier Vin Diesel game Wheelman, because that too was a big steaming batch of More of the Same.  Get right down to it, I can’t recommend this one unless you’re a rabid Riddick fan or can’t get enough of the first person shooter subgenre, in which case you’re definitely going to be all over this.

Atari has recently released the above trailer for their upcoming game Ghostbusters: The Video Game. If you’re a fan of Ghostbusters you’ll recognize the third rule, for which the trailer is appropriately named: Split up. 

The trailer showcases all sorts of ghostbusting carnage all while nicely showcasing the game’s graphics and physics engines.

Ghost Busters: The Video Game is currently under development by Terminal Reality and will hit store shelves on June 16th for the PS3, PS2, Xbox 360, PC, Wii and Nintendo DS.

So Hasbro has put forth the most backhanded value game on the face of the earth with its Family Game Night collection on Xbox Live Arcade.

While you’ll shell out eight hundred Microsoft points for the full version, and you’ll get a pretty nice array of games with it including Battleship, Scrabble and Connect Four, you’ll also have to shell out further points for the FULL versions of the individual games.  Unless I’m totally missing this concept, the initial eight hundred gets you the normal games described.  If you want to try the FULL versions of each individual game, with new options and gameplay modes attached, then you’ll have to shell out eight hundred Microsoft points PER GAME.

I know, that sounds a bit confusing, so here’s a fast summary as best I can understand it:

The demo is free.  With that, you get timed versions of the games currently available: Scrabble, Connect Four, Yahtzee, and Battleship.  The “full game” is eight hundred points and takes the timers off and such.  But then, you can pay out ANOTHER eight hundred per game to try things like Super Weapons Battleship and Wild Dice in Yahtzee.

See what I mean?  Backhanded value.  Sure, it’s great to pay ten bucks and get a host of games.  It’s NOT great, however, to pay on TOP of that to get the full games.  So while I’m enthused about having a host of casual classic board games available to play, I’m not so enthused to have most of their features locked up unless I pay massive ransom.  So while I can recommend the good half of the deal, it’s not without a serious finger wag to EA and Hasbro for the bit of gouging.

Having announced the downloadable content, Sony has finally given a solid release date for upcoming Killzone 2 map pack “Steel & Titanium” – April 30.

The map pack will offer two new multiplayer maps, Wasteland Bullet and Vekta Cruiser. No pricing details were given.

More map packs are in the works, with one said to feature single-player maps.

Shacknews reports that Microsoft has extended the Xbox 360′s three-year general hardware failure warranty to cover E74 errors. The company is no offering refunds to anyone that paid for an E74-related repair within their first three years of owning the console.

“We have decided to cover repairs related to the E74 error message under our three-year warranty program for certain general hardware failures that was announced in July 2007. We have already made improvements to the console that will reduce the likelihood of an occurrence of this issue."

Refunds for eligible repairs will go out within the next couple of months. If you fall under this and do not receive a refund by July 1, you can claim your refund through Microsoft’s website before November 1, 2009.

The GTA series has been host to quite a few controversies, but not quite as puzzling as this. Two industry analysts have filed vastly different predictions for the US sales of GTA: Chinatown Wars, Rockstar’s take on the famed series for the DS. It is seen as an important indicator of whether M-rated titles can sell well on the platform.

First up is EEDAR analyst Jesse Divinich who pegged the March sales of the game at only 200,000 units, noting that while it will be profitable for Rockstar, the numbers aren’t exactly encouraging for other publishers.

Meanwhile, analyst Michael Pachter estimated that the game has sold over twice that number.

It is not yet confirmed just how many units the game has sold. Official NPD sales numbers aren’t due till Thursday, so keep biting your nails.

Following on from word yesterday that id Software is going multiplatform, the Gamespot interview carries a teaser from company CEO Todd Hollenshead who noted that they plan on revealing some unannounced “new stuff” at E3 this June.

"I’ll leave that as a tease," said Hollenshead when pressed for more details. The studio is currently working on three projects – Wolfenstein, Rage and Doom 4. Additionally, they are working on improving the beta project that is Quake Live.

The CEO did tease that Doom 4 will “not [be] a sequel to Doom 3, but it’s not a reboot either.”

"It’s a little bit different than those, and if I told you why, I would get my ass kicked.”

However, it won’t abandon its gorey, action-ey roots anytime soon. "Everything I’ve seen on it is classic Doom, so I don’t really have worries that people aren’t going to like it and start talking about it.”