MS today announced the XBox Live Film Club. This new service will deliver sneak preview screenings of upcoming new movies to a select group of Xbox gamers in an exclusive setting. This gives them the chance to see the movies before anyone else. This is certainly something we need to hear more about, click read more for the full info.

PRESS RELEASE

London, 5th September 2008 – Xbox today announces a unique initiative that will enable entertainment fans to see some of the most anticipated new movies before their theatrical release.

Julie Han of Sony's Corporate Communications Division told Gamasutra that while MS will see a lift in sales due to the Xbox360 price cuts, Sony is unconcerned because it is not sustainable in the long term. She maintains that consumers will realize that even though the PS3 is more expensive, it offers a much better value in the long view.

"We'll obviously see the natural lift [in sales] with the price cut -- but how sustainable is that in the long term? We're really confident that consumers are making choices driven by value," she says, "and we know PS3 offers that value across the board, with the built-in Blu-ray player the broadest and deepest software lineup in the industry, with LittleBigPlanet, Resistance 2, Motorstorm [Pacific Rift]... we're quite confident our holiday sales will be good."

Today the ship date for Dead Space was announced as October 14, 2008. Unfortunately, that is not the news that is important re: Dead Space. The game is banned from sale in Germany, Japan, and China. As you know, Gears of War is also banned in Germany. The developers had even met with German and Chinese officials and they had no idea the game would be banned. Disappointing or Germans, Japanese, and Chinese, looks like you will have to import the game.

Multiplayer betas have proven extremely popular with gamers, and have boosted pre-orders and online game exposure by 2 fold. Well, the CoD: WaW team is going to follow the example of their brothers in arms (haha get it) from Call of Duty 4, and release a multiplayer beta in October. You can either register at the CoD World at War official website, or, pre-order the game at Gamestop. The release date of November 11, 2008 was also reconfirmed.

PRESS RELEASE

London, UK – September 05, 2008 – Today, Ubisoft announced that Far Cry® 2 will be released on October 24th throughout all EMEA territories on the 360™ video game and entertainment system from Microsoft, the PlayStation®3 computer entertainment system and Windows® PC.

We all know about the Xbox360 price cuts by now, but here is the official press release info from Microsoft. That $199 price is going to sell a lot of hardware, we think.

PRESS RELEASE

REDMOND, Wash. — Sept. 3, 2008 — Imagine if friends and families had the ability to instantly watch movies from Netflix, live out their musical fantasies through “Rock Band 2” (Harmonix/MTV Games) and “Lips” (iNiS Corp./Microsoft Game Studios), star in their own Hollywood classics with “You’re in the Movies,” or have the power to never miss the latest episode of “Heroes” — all from one device, starting at $199.1 That device is Xbox 360, and Microsoft Corp. today announced it will offer the gaming and entertainment console, which offers the leading Xbox LIVE service, at a new low price in the United States. Beginning Sept. 5, Xbox 360 Arcade will retail for the estimated retail price of $199.99, the Xbox 360 console for $299.99 and Xbox 360 Elite for $399.99.

Just another DLC FYI, folks. The demo for NBA Live 09 is now available on the XBox Live Marketplace. It weighs in at only 694mb, so it should be easy to grab. It seems like not much has changed from last year, but you can decide for yourself. EA has been doing fairly well this year with the sports games, we think.

Rockstar North sources have revealed that the download content promised for the Xbox360 GTA IV game is on track for this November. The content, which is Xbox360 exclusive, will contain at least two more episodes for the game, which equates to about 10 hours of play. No details on exactly what it entails have been revealed. We hope it is killer because MS surely paid for it - 50 million is the rumored number.

The demo for the beautiful looking Pure racing is now available on the Xbox Live Marketplace as promised. The demo weighs in at 1.3gb, and it also should be appearing on the PSN later today. Grab it now.

There is a huge fan base that will be disappointed by this news, but so be it. There will not be any more content released for Crackdown, sorry folks. There was a user petition and a huge movement online which was attempting to force Real Time Worlds to release more content. But today, in an official forum post, Chris Dye, the Community Relations Manager for Real Time Worlds dropped the hammer. He thanked the community for their continuing support, and said he hopes in the future RTW can come up with something, but for now they are focusing 100% on APB, the new crime-themed MMO, and some other unannounced projects. APB is going to be like Crackdown online, so do not be too upset, Crackdown fans.