The game is said to be a third-person Bond game that's racing and driving focused. But they're also working on a second racing game, described last year as Mario Kart meets Forza.

With both games on their plate, Activision wants to make sure that the developer will have plenty of time to make sure the games shine.

Activision publishing president Mike Griffith said the game was moved away from Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 and a crowded holiday slate, two factors which he said " negatively affected" the sales of its previous Bond effort, Quantum of Solace.

Bizarre finished with PGR4 content [CVG]

Sure the news not official, but who cares? We're celebrating all night long until Activision comes around with cops and starts busting heads, shattering dreams and putting those annoying dents into all of our plastic cups.

GEOMETRY WARS RETRO EVOLVED 2 Game (Multi Platform) [OFLC via XBLAH]

Bandai Namco Brings Bubble Wrap Game To Wii Ware [IGN] [Pic]

We were impressed with the innovative and the extreme car designs submitted; We hope that Mihai Panaitescu will be excited when he sees The Flux faithfully created on the Xbox 360.

Compared to PGR3, 4 has twice the number of locations, improved graphics, and of course, bikes. The focus is on "you" being the star, so you customize your character's profile with stuff like your country so that you can participate in regional competitions online. Each region then goes on to send their best to world competitions, which will crown a world champion PGR player in the end. Pretty neat.

The environmental effects are definitely something to notice. There's rain, snow, ice, and even puddles on the ground, all affecting your driving. The snow and rain change your car's exterior to a have a "rain" effect, but the real interesting view is the cockpit view. When you're inside the car, you can see the water go up the windshield and around the side windows. Looks quite realistic, and should spice up the cockpit view enough that you'll want to be inside even with the decreased visibility.

As for bikes, the developers are trying to make them as "Project Gotham" as possible. Which is to say, more arcadey and less realistic in the effort to keep things fun. You can bump and grind into other bikes and cars, but if you go too hard or ram into a wall at the wrong angle you'll fall off and have to get back on.

You can play your career mode on either a bike or a car, and most races will have at least one bike to give everything a nice mix. So bikes are definitely in there in a big way. We asked how the racing wheel will work on bikes (it works fine on cars), but the PR referee chimed in and said they didn't have anything to say about that at this time.

Other cool things are volumetric fog—which you can actually get up and over in parts of levels—the presence of arcade mode like in PGR2, party and team races in online modes, regional championships, Gotham on Demand (a YouTube-like system to share and view video recordings of races), and "left of center" achievements.

Oh, and there isn't going to be a Geometry Wars Galaxies in this game, but there is going to be something along those lines.

We wanted to expand upon the game, however to do this we looked inwards to help expand the game outwards. It's very easy for games to become overcomplicated or to loose in their focus. A game like Geometry Wars is all about the detail, and there is no way we were going to lose sight of that. Once we were happy with this we started to create the nucleus of the design and Galaxies was born.

Lots of prototyping then ensued to test the fundamentals would work. Once confident of the results the next step was to find someone to help develop it. The team at Kuju impressed us from the beginning as they really did understand the detail of the original game, and grasped our ambitions on how to take it forward on the Wii and DS.

There's going to be a lot to sample in the new game. Multiplayer is already starting to look like it will cause some fierce lunchtime rivalry in the office!

There is a new single player campaign that has new battle grids, game types, enemies, strategies, weapons and a companion to follow you along for the journey.

Yet with all of this, it still retains the essence of Geometry Wars.

The post then goes on to give a sort of dev team roll call, naming off all of the people working on the game and talking about their roles in its creation. The game, they say, is progressing at a "sweet rate" so hopefully we'll see something soon.

Geometry Wars [IGN]

Never, ever shop at the Lexington, Kentucky Best Buy on Nicholasville Road for your video games or electronics. That place is dangerous! After being the home to a drive by shooting incident earlier this week, authorities found another undesirable near the risk-taking PS3 campers.

What type of undesirable? Why, suspected rapist and escaped inmate William Rick Burdine, Sr.!

Burdine was arrested not in line, but at a loading dock after being spotted in the area. Said one Best Buy customer of Burdine's arrest, "I thought it was for the Playstation." Yikes! Michael McWhertor

Escaped rape suspect arrested at Best Buy [Lexington Herald-Leader]

Bizarre Creations, the developer responsible for Project Gotham Racing, is driving crappy cars across Europe. Ironic yes, but it's all to raise money for charity. Dubbed the "Scumball Rally 3000," the 4-day Vanishing Point-style drive will take fearless Bizarre staffers across Europe. Cool wheels, and the bullet holes are a nice touch. Check out more pics after the jump.

More Info Here [Bizarre] via UK Resistance
Donate Here [Just Giving]

Last week at a London event, Bizarre Creations stated that the next Project Gotham Racing will be faster and harder than the current Xbox 360 title. Bizarre's Ben Ward said, "We've already done some experiments, and things are looking good." Bizarre did not outright admit PRG 4 was already in development, but told Xbox 360 - The Official Magazine that they'd "be daft not to do another one."

"I think we'll be able to push the graphics a lot harder," says Bizarre's Gareth Williams. "When we were working on Gotham 3, we kept finding ways to do things better once they'd already been done, but the producer was telling us that we couldn't re-write the whole code two weeks before launch!"

As developers and programmers get more experience with the 360, the games are obviously bound to look better and better.

Full Story Here [OXM]