Square Enix’s CEO Yoichi Wada has pretty much confirmed their quest for world domination — After aquiring Tomb Raider developer, Eidos, one would think the mega publisher would be satisfied but that doesn’t look to be the case.

When questioned about their buyout of Eidos, Wada was quoted as saying:

The combination of Eidos and Square Enix gives us a good platform from which to expand. In that process, we might decide to acquire another company.

Evidentially Mr. Wada isn’t happy with his company’s presence in western markets, I wonder what companies they have in mind?

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ATI has had the edge over Nvidia for dew months, especially in the mid-range segment of graphics cards. The newly announced Radeon HD 4770 is the first desktop graphics card to be build on a 40nm process, and the first reviews of the card are all positive; the $99 card delivers great performance and competes with Nvidia models that cost twice as much.

Check out the reviews at Xbit Labs, PC Perspective and Hot Hardware.

With Punch Out!!‘s May 18th Wii release date just around the corner, it would only make sense that Nintendo would put up the game’s official website and today they’ve done just that.

As of now, only Glass Joe is featured on the website with a small gameplay video made available by clicking the stats on the right side of the page.

When the game’s release date gets even closer, expect Nintendo to update this page with more fighters featured in Punch Out!!.

Clearing confusions, rumors and the like, Capcom officially confirmed that Dead Rising 2 has online multiplayer.

"Rest assured we are going to put multiplayer in the game," said Capcom development head Keiji Inafune during a recent press event. "I can’t go into specifics about what type of multiplayer as that directly relates to some of the game systems that we don’t want to talk about at this event. It will be online multiplayer."

He noted that “single-player alone is not going to cut it,” adding that “we’re at a point in game history that you need to have some form of multiplayer component in a game.”

In development at Blue Castle, the zombie-killing simulation lets players take out zombies using guitars, animal heads and whatever they can find near their hands. It’s due out sometime next year on PC, PS3 and Xbox 360.

Capcom today sent out word that a multiplayer demo for Bionic Commando will be released only on Xbox 360 this Wednesday, April 29.

The demo will offer one map that supports deathmatch for up to eight players. There is currently no plan to release the demo for PC and PS3 versions of the game.

The modern take on the classic action-swinging franchise is set to hit PS3 and Xbox 360 on May 19. PC gamers will have to wait patiently at the corner of the room, forgotten and left alone.

Trion World Network today announced a partnership with Petroglyph, the studio behind Star Wars: Empire at War, to create an MMORTS using Trion’s proprietary technology.

The company’s technology is said to consist of “advanced server architecture, designed to enable massive scalability, dynamic content evolution and cross platform development.”

No details on the actual game itself were given.

Eurogamer and Kotaku report that Capcom is planning to release a downloadable demo of Lost Planet 2 for Xbox 360 gamers sometime “round about E3,” which happens to be the first week of June. This reportedly comes from Capcom producer Jun Takeuchi, who was speaking at a recent press event.

It should be noted here that Capcom debuted the first demo of Lost Planet back during E3 2006.

Takeuchi also teased PC and PS3 versions, noting that “it’s running off a PC now, so there may be something we can announce fairly shortly.” As for the PS3: "We would not say that the possibility of a PlayStation 3 version of the game is zero."

The game is expected sometime next year. It has officially only been announced for Xbox 360.

There were recent rumors that the console port of 2007 action-RPG The Witcher had been cancelled. That might or might not turn out to be true, as a representative of CD Projekt told Shacknews that an official statement on the matter will be made ‘soon’.

According to the site, the rumor originated from Polish site PolyGamia. Shacknews contacted the studio themselves and received a ‘no comment’ which gives more strength to the rumor.

The Witcher: Rise of the White Wolf was announced late last year and was scheduled for release on PS3 and Xbox 360 this fall.

I was always very fond of the Armored Core series, all the way back to its original iteration back on the Playstation one.  And as it continued, through its good times and its bad times, I kept up with it, generally enjoying what it had to offer but never quite as much as I did the original.

And when I finally managed to lay hands on Armored Core 4 on my Xbox 360, I began to wonder—was this it?  Would this be the one that managed to restoke my ardor for the series that had begun to flag in recent years?  Could this be the giant mech game to end them all?

The answer to that question, sadly, is no…but Armored Core 4 will really not be all that big a disappointment.  It’s better than anyone probably expected, and probably better than it really has any right to be, being this far into the series.

The world is a much smaller place in Armored Core 4, with global food and energy supplies stretched to their utmost thanks in large part to a massive surge in population that went on for several years.  The gap between the haves and the have-nots widened impossibly as there were so many more have-nots than ever before in human history.  Naturally, a whole lot of have-nots results in a really, really torqued underclass, and that means civil unrest.  So much so, in fact, that the traditional concept of nations falls apart, and what rises to replace them?  Why, none other than our good friend the multinational corporation, who steps in with private armies and mercenaries to protect their property.  When chunks of the underclass decide they’d rather be protected than killed for whatever scraps of scraps they have left, they end up becoming essentially slaves to the corporations and their wealthy few owners as they trade their freedom for peace, safety and food.

From there, the corporations expand their holdings and their mercenary armies to include the Armored Cores, like the one you’ll be piloting.

Yeah, I know, not exactly a candidate for feel-good plotline of the year, but if you take out the giant battle mechs and dial the plot back to, say, Next Sunday A.D., you might be looking at something downright plausible.  And plausibility in a video game plot is always a welcome wrinkle.

I may have put way too high of expectations on this sucker to begin with, folks—I was expecting it to be as big as the original which we’d never seen before, but what I got was an experience that was actually very similar to the original, just with ramped up graphics.  I still had the ability to juggle parts and reattach them to my mech.  The controls are actually pretty smooth, and the game’s pace is almost shockingly fast.  More than once I’d discovered that I’d finished a mission when I was still wondering what I was supposed to do. The action has to be pretty fast and furious when you’re done before you even fully realize you started. I love the fact that there’s a wide variety of weapons involved, and plenty of parts to trick out your Armored Core, or AC as they’re most often called.

However, difficulty will start ramping up surprisingly quickly, and the garage system wasn’t exactly the most intuitive of the series.  For some reason I had a tough time figuring out how much parts cost and how much money I had.  Weird, I know, but still.

Basically, Armored Core 4 is a worthy, if flawed successor to the original and a high-quality part of the series.  If you love giant robots then this game is all for you, but plenty of lower-grade sci-fi buffs will still manage to find plenty to like.

The really interesting part about Xbox Live community games is that they’ll really stretch the definition of what a “game” really is.  And Drum Xplosion, which really isn’t a game so much as it is a big drum kit, will still provide a lot of fun.

Considering that a proper drum kit with all the bells and whistles can cost hundreds, even thousands, of dollars, the fact that this one only costs two hundred Microsoft points and yet offers fully fifty different customizable drum sounds is a point worth bearing in mind.  You can even string together two different Xbox 360 controllers to simulate a full drum kit.  Fully customizable in a lot of different ways, this may well be the most extensive drum simulator ever released, even counting Rock Band.

If you ever wanted a drum kit growing up, or were a former percussionist looking to get back into practice, then you’ll likely enjoy playing Drum Xplosion.  In fact, parents out there should be advised that, now, Junior can actually afford his OWN drum kit even on what little allowance you’re giving him.  But if you can’t stand the racket or weren’t a band nerd back in high school, then this one may not be the one for you.