In news that will surprise absolutely no one who has paid attention to the upstart company Mind Candy and their Moshi Monsters product, the company is planning a sequel to the incredibly popular Moshi Monsters: Moshling Zoo.

The original game, released on Nintendo DS last year, managed to topple Nintendo's Dr Kawashima's Brain Training from the position of being the DS's longest running Chart Number 1 title.

“We are extremely passionate about increasing the brand experience in as many ways as possible,” Mind Candy’s senior category marketing manager Andrew Matjaszek told MCV. “[The sequel] offers a completely new take on the Moshi universe. We focus on the key characters in a similar way to Moshling Zoo. However, players will once again experience new locations, new characters and loads of new games to enjoy.” “We’ve loved taking Moshi to the DS and don’t see any reason why we wouldn’t look to expand the Moshi universe even further in the near future. Stay tuned.”

Andriasang have an interesting translation of an article on the development of Final Fantasy VII detailing the roles of staff members where Yoshinori Kitase, Kazushige Nojima, Tetsuya Nomura aswell as giving an insight into some of the inspirations that led to the final product.



This article comes on the back of Nomura saying he's busy working on new games that he hopes surpass the PlayStation classic rather than working on the much in demand remake of said game.

It always seems like when Cave appear on bitparade just recently its bad news.


This time its no different really, with the news emerging that the companies Chief Operating Officer Miko Watanabe has resigned from the company.

His resignation will take effect from May 31 and is believed to be for personal reasons, although he will keep hold of his Representative Director role until the company holds its annual shareholders meeting in August.

Cave have also strived to make it known that Ito Masahito (Representative Director, CEO and President) will become the company's sole Representative Director following the resignation of Watanabe.

In other bad Cave news, despite pledging support for Sony's PlayStation Vita at TGS last year, the company appears to have cancelled two of its upcoming releases for the system if Famitsu's release schedule is to be believed.

In this Behind the Scenes video for the upcoming Wii, XBox 360 and PlayStation 3 title "Epic Mickey 2: The Power of Two", Warren Spector and other members of the development staff talk you through the various abilities that Mickey and Oswald will have at their disposal.

Enjoy!



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Naughty Dog, developers of the Uncharted series, have released a new trailer for their upcoming survival game "The Last of Us"

“What you watched here is only a peek into how alone and forsaken the world has become,” Naughty Dog’s community strategist Eric Monacelli stated. “Our world is a brutal, lethal place in The Last of Us. Be ready for things to get much worse.

“We can’t wait to share this genre-defining game with you. The hounds have started to bay. Get prepared for the coming months and look out for more information at E3.”

The tone of the trailer certainly has yours truly interested and it'll be one of the games I'll be looking for more from at E3 thats for sure!

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According to MCV, Ubisoft are looking at the possibility of Free-2-Play software models for the big three's next console offerings.



Admittedly, this opinion seems to come from a third party, namely Colin Sebastien of Baid Equity Research, who has said:

“We believe that F2P versions of Wii-U titles are in UbiSoft's plans for the coming year, It appears that new consoles from Microsoft and Sony will also allow more integration of item-based transactions within games, including a free-to-play option similar to the model used in social and mobile games.

“UbiSoft expects this to drive better monetization than what is commonly available in the current generation. We believe the F2P model on consoles, as part of a broad multi-platform strategy (phones, tablets, connected TVs) could drive a higher level of profitability per franchise.

“In addition, developers of Facebook and Mobile/Tablet games may discover a new platform opportunity for their titles in the next console generation.”

Honestly, I don't think anyone other than Nintendo, Microsoft and Sony have any idea if this sort of thing is feasible or not (especially considering licensing fee's that are applied by the console manufacturers when publishers releases games on their console), so we'll have to see if something like Team Fortress 2 or Lord of the Rings Online is ever likely to appear on a console.

Never ones to miss out on a marketing opportunity/chance to cover their console in something incredibly gaudy, Microsoft have announced that they have joined forces with supermarket ASDA and are releasing the "Jubilee Edition XBox 360" bundle, which includes the XBox 360 console, wireless controller and Kinect, plus Union Jack skins to cover them with.

GALLERY:

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Okay, What We're Playing has been dead and buried for some time. But its spirit lives on as Square-Enix continue to dance around the idea of a sequel to its unofficial spritual game, The World Ends With You.

Now, we know that some TWEWY characters appear in Disney/Squeenix crossover Kingdom Hearts: Dream Drop Distance, it's only now come to light as Nintendo Dream (reported, as ever, by Andriasang) interviewed Tetsuya Nomura, that the reason Rhyme- a character you meet early in TWEWY- has no speaking lines in the game, is because they didn't cast any voice talent- quote- "out of consideration of the future of The World Ends With You series."

This is probably boilerplate arse-covering, leaving the door open for future development, even if there's none in the pipeline at the moment. Later in the interview, however, the line "Regarding The World Ends With You, I can't say anything at present... (laughs). But there probably is something." was uttered. Leaving fanboys like myself feverish at the possibilities that another excursion into the TWEWY canon could bring.

KH3D is due out in European shops on July 20th.

Jamie Russell has written a book about the suite of videogame-based films, and it's called Generation Xbox: How Videogames Invaded Hollywood.

This apparently joyous occasion has lead to websites larger than us carrying what are either extended columns from the game's author, or excerpts from the book itself.

Wired US' Game|Life has what is definitely an excerpt, charting Microsoft's attempt at getting that Halo moie off the ground.

CVG, by way of PSM3, has another piece, which might be an extended column, rather than a piece from the book, being as it does cover the form more broadly than the Wired article.

The book was released on Monday.

Aivi Tran- waltzforluma on YouTube- happened to run into game composer Surasshu at last month's Game Developers' Conference.

The result is this version of the Mabe Village BGM from The Legend Of Zelda: Link's Awakening.

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