Destructoid report that the game has been cancelled "due to quality and technical concerns". Which sounds a lot like what you'd expect to happen when you try and port a 360 & PS3 game to the Wii.

Sad news for anyone who was looking to pick this up but only owns a Wii, but then, how many of you only own a Wii?

Rumor about a rumor: Wii version of Brutal Legend canceled [Destructoid]

In an interview with Gamasutra, EA's Frank Gibeau has said:

I think in the spirit of your question, I think we launched too many new IPs all at once in Q3.

I would have spread them out and found better windows for them. I would have had longer marketing for them. The marketing cycles were fairly short. We didn't have enough assets to really build the fanbase, build the community, and get that long lead demand built.

So I probably in hindsight would have picked a couple different windows for Dead Space and Mirror's Edge.

In hindsight, yeah, I bet you would have. But you know, for all the people getting down on both those games...in the 6-9 months since their release, word has spread. Both were, for their quirks, excellent games (probably my two favourite from 2008, even). So when the sequels roll around, things will be different. People will be ready. Ready with money.

A Different Track: Frank Gibeau Talks Strategy [Gamasutra]

You'll notice if you visit the website of both Amazon and GameStop/EB Games (showing that these are official cuts, and not retailer-specific) that most of EA's 2008 lineup has been put on sale in the past week or so. The following EA Games titles have been reduced:

- Dead Space was $60, now it's $50
- Red Alert 3 was $40, now it's $30
- Army of Two was $30, now it's $20
- Mirror's Edge was $50, now it's $40

While the following EA Sports games are now cheaper:

- Madden 09 was $60, now $50
- NBA Live 09 was $50, now $40
- FIFA 09 was $60, now $50

It's common for older games to get cheaper as they get, well, older, but it's strange seeing almost the entire recent lineup of a big publisher get marked down at once.

You could , then, take this opportunity to kick EA while they're down, but really, you should take the opportunity to pick up Mirrors Edge and/or Dead Space, which in hindsight were probably my two favourite games of 2008.

Now, you can go to jail while working the criminal career path. Now, you can steal things from your friends' and neighbors' houses. Now is when The Sims 3 gets interesting; because for the first time since a sim slapped on a striped t-shirt and snuck off into the night, players might find themselves facing real moral dilemmas instead of just random chance events.

What Is It?
The Sims 3 is the latest sequel in the crazy-popular EA Sims franchise that started in 2000. The entire game is a life simulation that covers a "sim" life from birth to death – and maybe a little bit beyond. Players act as an omnipotent being that can micromanage every aspect of a sim life, or just leave them to rot and die in a puddle of their own urine. The structure of the game is an open world with no narrative and no ending. So – like a dollhouse, only your dolls can die.

What We Saw
Associate Producer Grant Rodiek co-piloted me through the creation of two Sims and a tour of their neighborhood, which included their houses, the local gym, the cemetery and the headquarters for the criminal career path.

How Far Along Is it?
The Sims 3 was pushed back from a February 2009 release to June 2, 2009. The game is essentially final, but EA really wants that one last layer of polish before releasing it into the wild.

What Needs Improvement?
Glitches, Bugs, Hiccups: The Sims is a huge game; lots of little things like a twitchy animation or a grammar error get missed. I saw only one major bug where something pops up when it's not supposed to; but one hour isn't nearly enough time to comb through the entire game for every instance of minor screw-ups like that.

Online integration: The online community for the Sims franchise has always been active in creating custom content (my personal favorite being vials of poison for those pesky sims you need to kill off quickly); but ties between the game itself and the community have been weak. Supposedly Sims 3 will allow you to share even more custom content with the online community – but unless there's some incentive to do so (like a create-a-look-alike sim competition), the community won't change very much from its Sims 2 level of participation.

You still can't get your kids back if the Social Worker takes them: So much for total realism.

What Should Stay The Same?
The unspoken narrative: New things like Traits, Career Paths, Opportunities, Wishes and Lifetime Wishes all serve to create more of a narrative for the lives of sims than in previous games. Traits determine a sim's personality, personalities determine what Career Paths the sim will want, the Careers open up Opportunities (which are like mini-quests) and play into a sim's Lifetime Wish, which also guides immediate Wishes. It's all connected somehow, so you never feel like you're not doing something or working toward some goal, which makes those chance events even more meaningful.

"Decaying to neutral": Sims 3 won't punish you for not fulfilling Wishes or answering the phone every time a friend calls. Relationships decay to neutral rather than deteriorating to the point where you have to work really hard to get them up to friendship status again. And if you sit back and do nothing for your sim, it won't flounder and die in a puddle of urine – it will largely look after itself; although it won't be all that happy if none of its Wishes are fulfilled.

The sense of humor: Everything from the gameplay to the text has something amusing about it. Example, Rodiek showed me a negative personal interaction that carried the option to "Imply Mother is a Llama." While doing so, he related to me the story of one of his sims that had an unlucky trait which 1) caused the sim to die whenever the he tried to repair something and 2) Death to feel sorry for him and resurrect the sim repeatedly. That sounds more hilarious than my pregnant sim that caught fire twice in The Sims 2.

The tweaks we've long been waiting for: You can now place items on half-tiles so they straddle a line on the grid in buy or build mode; pick up and throw away things for your sim without telling them to do it; and turn all items diagonally. If you were ever a Sims fan, two of these tweaks alone will make the game worth your while – never mind all the new stuff.

You can now pick shoes to go with outfits: Awesome.

Playable ghosts: Twice as awesome.

Final Thoughts
I'm on the fence about the UI overhaul. On the one hand, it will be easier for newcomers to find what items they want or which hair color they like because everything is arranged intuitively and options are embedded within submenus so as not to overwhelm the noobs. But on the other, it might be hard for old hats like me to find something we're used to seeing all the time and we lose a little nostalgia at not being able to see stats like Bladder, Environment and Social right from the start.

It's obvious by the big 3 in the title that this game will appeal to the fans of the first two. It doesn't matter what's different and only barely matters what's the same; there will be hordes of people buying it whenever it comes out. But I think EA did right by making Sims 3 with as much new stuff as they did and by taking the time to polish it as much as they are. Whatever else Sims 3 is – "game of the year," "for fans of the genre," "Will Wright's plan to take over the world," etc. – it's most definitely not Sims 2.5.

It's known that, as far as games are concerned, Knight is working on an unannounced project for the 360, PS3 and PC, so we'd be surprised if Dante's Inferno (or whatever name it ends up settling with) wasn't it.

Universal hot for 'Inferno' [Variety]

The EA Wall of Games [Aeropause, via Go Nintendo]

Firstly, our source confirms Pandemic as the developers behind the title, though we pretty much knew that already. Secondly, a good portion of the game is set in a GTA-style rendition of Gotham City, which plays a lot like Spiderman 2 as Batman zips around (he even gets a grappling hook for swingy-swingy when not using the Batmobile) attending to crimes. And thirdly? As was first raised last week, it's not in the best shape, perhaps explaining why the project has been kept in the *ahem* dark for so long.

Seems the combat just doesn't work. Partly due to the game's wonky free-roaming camera system, partly due to the mashy hand-to-hand combat, partly due to the limited range of moves Batman has at his disposal, which makes the whole thing awfully repetitive. Which is a bit of a shame, though realistically, with no official announcement, let alone release date, there's plenty of time to fix that kind of stuff. On a brighter note, another source tells us Pandemic have taken a few creative liberties with the game, and while it's based on The Dark Knight, the game's actually set after the events of the movie, which should at least be interesting from a story-telling perspective.

Son of "Godfather" sues Paramount over video game [Reuters]

You can play this game both at the street level, much like a GTA-style game, but you can also play it top-down, almost like you're in an RTS, controlling the strategy of the boroughs so you can see what's going on..

So...there are parts where you play, and parts where you command at a more strategic level? So...X-Com, with mobsters? Neat idea, if they can pull it off.

EA Talks "Godfather II" [Next-Gen]

No, that honour went - surprisingly - to the PS3. Check the chart below: last quarter, EA made $152 million off PS3 game sales, and "only" $128 million off sales of games on the 360.

See, interesting stuff. Especially the part where EA made more money last quarter off cellular games than they did off the DS. If there's a post-it note somewhere on John Riccitello's fridge door, I hope it's got a little picture of a DS on it, with the words "MUST DO BETTER" scrawled underneath.

Once it's over the sky's the limit. There's definitely the possibility of going to other consoles.

Expanding deeper into the mobile market? EA says "yes" and has reached an agreement to purchase Jamdat at the tune of almost $700 million, reports Reuters. Jamdat is pretty much the mobile gaming leader here in the U.S. counting Tetris and Jamdat Bowling among its most popular titles. Hopefully the deal will bring the Jamdat sports lineup the EA makeover.

Electronic Arts to Buy Jamdat in $680 Million Deal [Reuters]