Blog Posts by Mike Smith

Racing into stores...sometimeOnce upon a time, eagerly awaited Playstation 3 racer Gran Turismo 5 was due to release this week.

As fans will doubtless have noticed, it didn't. In fact, three weeks ago it was delayed until some vague point "later this holiday season"
-- and Sony Europe later clarified gamers could expect the game "before Christmas." Typically, release dates need to be nailed down several weeks in advance to allow publishers time for advertising,
manufacturing, and distribution, meaning a November release looks
increasingly unlikely.

Or does it? GT creator Kazunori Yamauchi,  speaking at the SEMA car show
in Las Vegas this week, told auto enthusiast blog Jalopnik that not only
is Gran Turismo 5 finished,

Fender's new axe

If you've ever wondered, when playing your favorite guitar-based music game, whether you could have learned to play the real thing with all the time you've been spending playing games, this one's for you.

Fender -- yes, the people who make real guitars -- has finally coughed up pricing and availability details for its Squier Stratocaster controller, a thing of great wonder that'll double as both Rock Band 3 controller and, when plugged into an amp, a genuine electric guitar. On sale March 1, 2011, it'll cost you $280. Big bucks for a video game controller, but not such big bucks for a real guitar.

Fender's controller-guitar hybrid works its magic with a position-sensing fingerboard that

Clear your calendar It's one of the top selling franchises in video games history. Even the older versions still sell a copy every 4.3 seconds, and more than half a billion people around the world are thought to have played the game. And it's about to get its third major release in its decade-long lifespan, so you'd better start making room in your calendar.

If you hadn't guessed, we're talking about celebrated gem-swapping puzzle game Bejeweled. As its creators, Popcap Games, revealed today, they've been working away in secret on Bejeweled 3, expected to be in the hands of gamers everywhere in a little over a month, on December 7.

How do you update what's widely considered one of the most addictive games

Nike GridRenowned for its congested, traffic-clogged streets, the inhabitants of London
could certainly be forgiven for seeking alternative means of transportation. But walking is slow, and running ain't much fun -- or it
wasn't, until Grid came along.

The brainchild of sportswear giant Nike, Grid is a project that turns the
entire city -- all 42 postal codes of it -- into a 600-square-mile board
game, awarding its players points for completing runs.

And no, it isn't some high-tech operation involving GPS, expensive portable
electronics, and augmented reality interfaces. (Although that would be
pretty cool.) Instead, players place calls from those iconic (and, these
days, otherwise useless) London

Maybe...Sony's PSP is in dire need of a hardware upgrade. Sony's good buddy Sony Ericsson makes upmarket cellphones. Apple's iPhone, which combines impressive gaming capabilities with passable phone functions, has been something of a success. Consequently, over the last year or so there's been no shortage of speculation about a possible PSP-cellphone hybrid device.

But there's never been anything quite like this before.

Leaked to tech blog Engadget by what the site calls "multiple, trusted sources," this is (apparently) the Playstation Phone, which is codenamed "Zeus," says Engadget, and runs Android.

According to Engadget's sources, the "Zeus" is substantially more powerful than the PSP, boasting a

PS2: double figuresThe gaming news might be full of fancy motion controllers and the year's big new releases -- but today it's an old friend of gamers that's making headlines. The venerable PlayStation 2 marks its tenth birthday today.

It wasn't exactly an easy birth, however. When it was released on October 26, 2000, the instant and immense popularity of the high-tech new toy pushed consumer demand to impressive heights, just as a component shortage forced Sony to slash its U.S. shipments in half. Ebay price gougers were selling Playstation 2s at well over the thousand-dollar mark, and it was months before shoppers could expect to find them on store shelves.

But once gamers started picking them up, they never

Been following the development of Epic Mickey, the dark-themed Mickey Mouse game from celebrated game design auteur Warren Spector?

If so, we’ve got a double surprise for you: first, the news that you’re only going to have to wait until November 30 to get your hands on this stunning-looking Wii exclusive, and second, this new trailer, hot off the presses at publisher Disney.

Epic Mickey is part of an effort to shift Mickey Mouse’s character away from the cheerful, happy-go-lucky personality he’s sported for the past 80-plus years. It’ll see him indulging his darker, more cunning side, as he tries to clean up a Disney-inspired world called the Cartoon

If you’re one of the tens of millions of fans of Nintendo’s Brain Age
series of puzzle games, you’ll be familiar with the giant head of
Professor Kawashima, who serves as the game’s host. He’s also the game’s
real-life creator, and a genuine professor of neuroscience.

But now, according to reports out of Japan, Kawashima has taken his
brain to the opposition. His latest game won’t be coming out on Nintendo
platforms -- instead, it’ll be a Japanese launch title for Microsoft’s
innovative, controller-less camera system, Kinect.

Can you guess what it’ll involve? Yup, Kawashima’s new game will set
its players logic and recognition puzzles to solve. Instead of a
touch-screen, it’ll rely on