It’s here! Well, almost. The launch of Resistance 2 is now only days away, so we hope you and your Bullseye are just about ready to go huntin’ for some Chimera. The game officially hits store shelves in North America on November 4, and to help celebrate Resistance 2’s arrival, we’ve got something extra-special planned:

Midnight Launch Event: That’s right, Resistance 2 is taking over the PlayStation Store in San Francisco’s Metreon for the night of November 3rd (and early on the 4th). In addition to being one of the first to pick up a copy of the game, attendees will be able to meet a host of Insomniacs (including Ted Price, our President and CEO, and members of the community team), receive some cool swag, get their copy of the game signed, and have their picture taken and placed on the cover of Resistance 2. Oh, and if you’re planning on purchasing the collector’s edition, you definitely want to come to this event. Trust us; your wallet will thank you for it. You can purchase the game at 12:01 am, but fans that show up a bit early can meet us and get that photo of yourself on the R2 cover.

Mark O’Connell and Kieran Brigden from Creative Assembly were in town last week to preview some gameplay from Empire: Total War. After seeing the release of the new campaign mode trailer, we watched a demonstration of a naval battle between the American and French fleets, with Keiran discussing the physics, tactics, and AI of the new Total War naval combat.

We got a chance to watch the virtual ships manuver to take advantage of wind and trap their targets, watched cannon balls rip through sails hull and crew, and saw the effects of morale as panic caused crews to dive off their burning ships in the futile hope that they might survive the open sea (spoiler: in Empire, all sailors die after they abandon ship).

This week, we take a look how how some games will use Avatars when the New Xbox Experience is available on November 19th. More words about it over at the Gamerscore blog, or you can sit back and watch the video:

Phew! Another big week, here at Criterion Games, but it’s great to be back on the blog! Today, we made the first of a series of announcements calling out our 2009 Burnout Paradise content.

So first up, we’re talking about the in-game browser for the PLAYSTATION 3. We always like to embrace the great hardware innovations for PlayStation. We’re using the browser to bring you closer to your friends and also to get you the latest news on what we’re working on – it’s like having criteriongames.com inside the game.

We’ll bring you all the latest on this PlayStation-exclusive feature over the coming weeks, but for now all you need to know is it’s called Burnout Paradise Network and it’ll be ready in Feb ‘09.

The Independent Games Festival has debuted the full streaming video of its 2008 IGF Awards ceremony, also reminding interested possible entrants that the final deadline to enter the 2009 IGF Main Competition is Saturday, November 1st at 11.59pm PST. The 2008 IGF Awards Ceremony was held in February 2008 during Game Developers Conference. It was presented by Venture Africa/Arctic designer Andy Schatz, alongside IGF content directors and Offroad Velociraptor Challenge creators Matthew Wegner and Steve ...

There has been some talk around the 'Net this week that the PC version of Fallout 3 is sporting SecuROM, the same intrusive copy protection scheme that caused so much controversy for Spore last month.

But a post on publisher Bethesda's blog claims that Fallout 3 only uses SecuROM to verify the disc:

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The video game industry loves its customers.

Not.

The government of Belgium has apparently given in to game publisher whining about used game rentals and banned the practice.

Kotaku reports:

In June, the Belgian Entertainment Association (representing game publishers, of course) managed to convince Belgian authorities to outlaw game rentals. On the grounds that renting games made a sizeable dent in game sales.

 

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Hi again! The weekend’s here – time for your weekly update of new movie & TV shows on the PlayStation Network.

This week we’ve added new video content from the following television series:

• American Dad, Season 4
• Bones, Season 4
• Chuck, Season 2
• Elite Forces, Season 1
• Family Guy, Season 7
• Friends, Season 5
• Fringe, Season 1
• How I Met Your Mother, Season 1 &4
• It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Season 4
• Miami Ink, Season 4
• My Name Is Earl, Season 4
• Mythbusters, Season 4
• Prison Break, Season 4
• Pushing Daisies, Season 2
• Sons of Anarchy, Season 1
• Speed Grapher, Season 1
• Squidbillies, Season 2
• Top Tens, Season 1
• Watchmen Motion Comic, Season 1
• Weaponology, Season 1

We’ve also added the following feature films:

Citing losses and difficult economic news, game publishing giant Electronic Arts announced yesterday that it was laying off 6% of its work force.

That's more than 500 employees.

As reported by VentureBeat:

During the quarter, EA relied on the staple of its sports franchise, Madden NFL 09, which sold 4.5 million copies. Spore sold two million units. That’s a respectable amount, and the title is sure to sell steadily into the future to mass market audiences. But it’s not the mega-hit that some had hoped for. Another big title was Warhammer Online... EA sold 1.2 million copies...

[EA CEO John] Riccitiello said in a conference call that the postponement of the Harry Potter movie and its accompanying game was a big reason for the shortfall...

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Talking to Gamasutra as part of an an in-depth new interview, Star Wars: The Old Republic lead writer Daniel Erickson has been discussing why playing the story-rich game with different character classes will let you "see and understand different parts of the world that you might have not understood previously." Erickson, who is leading a team of twelve writers at BioWare Austin creating the story content for the upcoming EA/LucasArts co-published MMO, explains what he ...