B&H Publishing Group has put together "Bible Navigator X" for the Xbox 360. Unlike the Gideons, they're not giving it out for free. It'll run you 400 points. Yeah? Well, the God I believe in isn't short of Microsoft Points, mister ...

According to Media Bistro, Aaron Linne, B&H's executive director of digital marketing, said:

The Xbox isn't just secular entertainment anymore. We can use technology that other people developed to study Scriptures through a new medium. Some people are just more comfortable with a controller in their hands than a book.

The version used is the Holman Christian Standard Bible. I'm not sure how that one differs, but then, I was raised in a part of the country where there literally are bumper stickers that say "If It's Not King James, It's Not Real Bible." So if you drive that truck I saw on I-40 in Burke County, this probably won't appeal to you.

Who's reviewing this? Totilo talked about "XBLA Chasers" and this qualifies, so I volunteer him!

The Bible on Your Xbox [Media Bistro via Destructoid]

A note about genres: The list below may encompass a broader range than some gamers might expect. I'm using the action-adventure term liberally, including both those games that I believe will be driven by a story and those that will be driven by non-shooting action. That means role-playing games are listed alongside God-of-War-types. What unifies these games is a sense that they propel the player through an experience scripted by a development team. And they are not all about shooting.

Splinter Cell: Conviction - This game used to be about a bearded Sam Fisher elbowing his way through Washington D.C. Now? There's this trailer. (Xbox 360 only, unless someone says otherwise.)

Assassin's Creed 2 - A new assassin doing his work in Leonardo Da Vinci's Italy. Also recently trailered. (PS3, Xbox 360 and possibly the Wii, plus a new PSP game.)

Dante's Inferno - EA's accused God of War clone that adapts one of the oldest literary classics, the Divine Comedy. (PS3, Xbox 360. Preview here.)

God of War III - Sony's accused Dante's Inferno clone (OK, not really) has growling protagonist Kratos fighting on the backs of titans in what mayl be the biggest PS3 exclusive of 2010. (PS3. Impressions here.)

Uncharted 2 - Some may think of the return of Nathan Drake as a shooter, but the depth of character and adventure of the first Uncharted makes this major holiday 2009 title from Naughty Dog a great fit for today's list. Unusual among the games listed here is that it is announced to have co-op and competitive multiplayer modes. (PS3, Impressions here.)

Heavy Rain - The latest hope for sophisticated storytelling in games, it's another dark, thriller mystery from the makers of Indigo Prophecy. (PS3. Gameplay footage here.)

The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks - Cartoon Link's on a train instead of a boat and possibly armed with a bow, a boomerang and some bombs? (Nintendo DS)

Batman: Arkham Asylum - Pushed back to late August, impressive in previews, features a Batman exceptional at both brawling and detective work. (PC, PS3, Xbox 360. Preview here).

Final Fantasy 13 - Square-Enix's role-playing game. Perhaps you've heard of it? (PS3, Xbox 360)

Dissidia Final Fantasy - It's a Final Fantasy mash-up! (PSP, Import review here.

Dragon Age: Origins - BioWare's spiritual successor to Baldur's Gate. (PC, PS3 Xbox 360. Preview here.)

Mass Effect 2 - BioWare's successor to Mass Effect. (PC, Xbox 360)

Spyborgs - Capcom's flashy co-op Wii brawler, with a special scan-the-screen-with-the-Wii-pointer gimmick. (Wii. Preview here.)

Brutal Legend - Tim Schafer and team take their video game comedy expertise to a heavy-metal-ized open world of guitar-swinging, headbanger-commanding, road-raging and demon-slaying. (PS2, Xbox 360. Preview here.)

Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days - Square-Enix's first Disney-Final-Fantasy mash-up for the DS. (Nintendo DS, Trailer here.)

Alpha Protocol - Development studio Obsidian makes what might be too simply described as a spy-themed Mass Effect, but you get the idea. (PC, PS3, Xbox 360. Impressions from the last E3.)

Fallout: New Vegas - Perhaps Bethesda will have more to show at E3 of this Obsidian-developed Fallout 3 spin-off? (PC, PS3, Xbox 360, presumably.)

Ghostbusters - I probably should have put this in the shooters list. I forgot. (PS3, Xbox 360, Wii, PS2, DS, PSP. Preview here.)

No More Heroes 2 - The only Nintendo Wii game with bathroom breaks, an unlicensed lightsaber and a sexy lady who speaks to you through your Remote's speaker is back with a sequel. (Wii)

Muramasa: The Demon Blade - Developer Vanillaware's latest, prettiest side-scrolling action title, from Ignition. (Wii. Gorgeous screenshots here.)

Mini Ninjas - From the makers of Hitman, a family-appropriate game about some cute ninjas. Really. (Wii)

Spore Hero - EA brings Spore to a home console, focusing on the creature stage and making it something of an action-RPG. (Wii)

The Saboteur - Pandemic's long-in-the-making World War II adventure starring a resistance fighter in occupied France who must defeat Nazis in a game world drained of color. (PC, PS3, Xbox 360)

Bayonetta - Platinum Games puts a pioneer of Devil May Cry to work making an even more over-the-top action game, starring a woman who wears little more than eyeglasses and her very long hair. (PS3, Xbox 360.)

Nier Square-Enix's newly-revealed possible answer to the likes of Devil May Cry and Bayonetta. (PS3, Xbox 360)

Mafia 2 - Recently delayed to some time after Halloween, the decade-spanning and genuinely mature mobster drama still has promise to wow E3 with its Madmen-esque 1950s visual style. (PC, PS3, Xbox 360. Preview here.)

Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 - Lots of Marvel characters. Fighting. (PS3, Xbox 360 Wii, PS2, PSP, Nintendo DS)

Pirates of the Caribbean - An action role-playing game from Propagana Games, the makers of the Turok re-make. (PC, PS3, Xbox 360)

Lord of the Rings: Aragorn's Quest - The creators of Battalion Wars make a kid-friendly re-telling of the Lord of the Rings Saga. (Wii, with PS2, PSP and DS versions too. Wii preview here.)

New Jak and Daxter - Announced for the new PSP. (PSP)

Alan Wake - Ah, the mystery game of the Xbox 360. Moody adventure from the makers of Max Payne. Not seen publicly in a couple of years. Shall it return? (Xbox 360)

Dead Rising 2 - Supposedly not coming to E3 because of health concerns related to the H1N1 virus, it still seems like its zombies-in-casino-town angle will get shown at the big show via a trailer like this one. (PC, PS3, Xbox 360).

Trico - This would be the new game from Team Ico that had a somewhat odd trailer leak recently. (PS3)

Beyond Good and Evil 2 - Not slated for 2009, but this sequel to the cult hit action game starring heroine Jade and some animal friends may have a trailer at E3 that looks kinda like this.

Hideo Kojima's project - What a tease this guy is. Was he referring to that Metal Gear PSP game?

Some sort of Mario/Zelda/etc from Nintendo - Because Nintendo can't go two E3s in a row without a major single-player adventure for its hardcore fans, right?

OMISSIONS: Red Dead Redemption and Grand Theft Auto IV: The Ballad of Gay Tony not included in this list (although I guess I just did) because development studio Rockstar is skipping E3. Any other games deserving of inclusion aren't here because I forgot them.

What's the trend here?

There isn't much of a trend here, except that action-adventure games continue to tend to be single-player. While almost every shooter gets support for multiple players, most of the games listed here are announced as being playable for just one.

You can also check out our E3 Racing Game Preview and our E3 Shooter Preview.

We actually did invite Gears developer Cliff Bleszinski, but his handlers said he was too busy. But Jaffe certainly wasn't some sort of alternate or sub, as the head of his relatively new studio, Eat, Sleep, Play and the lead designer of God of War for the Playstation 2, Jaffe knows his stuff. He also surprised quite a few people recently when he called Gears of War 2 not only the best game of the year, but the best looking console game he's ever played.

Jaffe solidifies his position as one of Kotaku's favorite developers in this podcast where he discusses what he likes about Gears, how God of War 3 will compare and his take on the Playstation 3's successes and failures in 2008.

Despite being exclusive to Sony, Jaffe even talked about his interest in developing a Wii title.

The famously outspoken developer also talks about the ups and downs of blogging on his own site and how he too missed prom. We almost even got him to spill some beans on his next big project for the Playstation 3, but it sounds like we're going to have to wait for an update on his blog for that.

Watch Video Podcast - Gears of War 2 on your iPod or Zune!
Right click and save link as to download.
Subscribe to our Kotaku Video podcast on iTunes and the Zune Marketplace.

Don't forget to check out our other Holiday podcasts:
A Very Special Kotaku Holiday Podcast
Media Molecule Talks LittleBigPlanet Moderation, New Pitches and How The Found Out About That Recall
Resistance 2 Podcast: Multiplayer Tweaks Coming
Call of Duty: World at War: Balancing Historic Realism With Fun
Castle Crashers with Major Nelson
Chet Faliszek Talks Left 4 Dead's Future
Home Could Remain in Beta Indefinitely

Wikipedia is still very much the domain for longwinded parsings of the esoteric, if not completely hallucinated bullshit, a lot of it depending on how motivated that subject's fanboy corps is. Who's gonna show up more, Q-Bert's fans, or President James Buchanan?

Games Radar has put together a list showing the truly distorted priorities of Wikipedia editors and writers, if length is a useful metric. And I think it is. Because according to their analysis, Knuckles from fucking Sonic the Hedgehog gets 7,832 words, and God — yes, that Guy — rates 3,726. There are 14 other hilarious comparisons (Call of Duty vs. World War II; Electronic Gaming Monthly vs Time, etc.) So get out there and start padding entries that really matter: Niko Bellic's (385 words).

The WTF World of Wikipedia [Games Radar]

For website for indie publisher GameCock has gone live and is packed with game previews and general wackiness. Blog GameSetWatch directs our attention to the delightfully nutty "About" section on the website, which is penned by GameCock honcho Mike Wilson and contains buried nuggets like:

Independent developers have always brought the goods to this business, creating the franchises that inevitably get stripped from them and driven into the ground by quarterly promises and the endless crunch imposed by producers who have never created a thing in their lives.

One word: Brilliant. Brian Ashcraft

GameCockLove [Official Site via GameSetWatch]

By: Brian Crecente

First things first: Mike Wilson wants you to know that he didn't take the money and run.

When he helped found Gathering of Developers back in 1998 he did it with money that came with some significant strings attached and those strings, he says, choked the life out of the company.

"We sold to Take-Two with a gun to our heads," he said in a recent phone chat. " It was more of a foreclosure."
While the absorption of Gathering of Developers by Take-Two and its slow death may seem like a footnote to the history of the game industry, it's important to note because Wilson promises that this time around that's not going to happen.

Gathering of Developers was founded with the idea of bucking the big name publishers, he said. The idea was to create a truly indie publishing system and leave the creative process and a good chunk of the money in the hands of the developers that made the games.

But that never really happened, instead of igniting a revolution in game publishing, they were more a flash in the pan, publishing a handful of notable new titles before vanishing.

Now with secret investors, a larger bankroll and a handful of developers backing him, Miller and Wilson are back to give it another go, this time as the head of the Gamecock Media Group.

"The industry is totally creatively starved right now and it we also have a bit of unfinished business," Wilson said. GOD president "Harry (Miller) and I felt we failed on that great crusade. It was heartbreaking to sell the company to Take-2 and we tried to make it work, but there was no way it was going to. We didn't have enough money to do it right and we didn't have the experience."

Wilson shrugs off the fact that so many gamers have forgotten who first published games like Max Payne and Serious Sam.

"Part of the reason we are calling this company Gamecock, other than to amuse me, is because I don't think gamers care who the publisher is, I don't think they should care," he said. "People don't have favorite record labels or book publishers."

Earlier this week Wilson and Miller announced that Gamecock is backing five games from a variety of developers, most notably Wideload, headed up by Bungie Founder Alexander Seropian.

"Wideload's business model centers around creating and owning new IP," Seropian told me today. "That's something pretty fundamental and that's part of Gamecock's strategy as well."

Seropian says it also helped that Wideload and Gathering of Developers were "bastard step-brothers", a bond forged from similar distribution deals Bungie and GOD had with Take-Two.

"That's how I know Mike," Seropian says.

Wilson says a big part of how he was able to land the likes of Wideload and Firefly Studios, the team behind Stronghold, was by asking them to work on their dream projects instead of sequels or safe bets.

"With several of these guys, the unifying thing was that they are working on the games that the developers really wanted to work on," he said. "They're their babies

"The Stronghold guys, those guys made megabucks and then heard we were back in business and came to us. They said we could do Stronghold 3 for us or they could do this original game they've been dying to do. I told them to do the one they want to do."

The developers are coming to Gamecock, Wilson says, because they industry is becoming increasingly risk averse. Many publishers would rather have a developer squeeze out a sequel then work on an original title.

"Even guys like Alex have to fight to get their games published."

Wilson says Seropian knew that Gamecock was coming and sat on his game, Hail to the Chimp, for about a year so he could sign it with them.

"They have a very similar model to us," Seropian says.

Both companies do the core work themselves but outsource the "dirty work."

Seropian points to Wideload's Hail to the Chimp, which Gamecock will be publishing, as a good example. They still only have a core team of 16 people working on it, but outside groups are doing some of the heavy lifting for them.

The same was true with their last game, Stubbs the Zombie.

In the press release Hail to the Chimp is described as a next-gen party game set in the animal world. Seropian declined to further detail it saying only that it will be easy to understand, be very funny and have broad appeal.

While he declined to say what console or consoles it might hit, he did say that he isn't adverse to distributing games through the Xbox 360's Live Arcade or Playstation 3's online store.

"I think we will digitally distribute stuff at some point," he said. "XBLA, and even look at something like iTunes, they are just these mammoth distribution channels."

Episodic content is also something Seropian is looking at. He says he likes the idea of being able to deliver a gaming experience that ends with a cliffhanger and then follows up quickly with the next episode.

And yes, Seropian says, there is a good chance Gamecock will be involved in future Wideload games.
While Gathering of Developers published computer games, Gamecock will focus mostly on console titles, Wilson said.

"The PC business, while we think it's going to enjoy a little resurgence, is clearly a shrinking business," he said. "Clearly console is where the market is. The pc is still a better platform and a richer experience, but it's just not as big a market anymore."

Wilson says he expects there will be a lot more interest in Gamecock and its indie approach to game publishing after the first games start to hit.

" I think more money will follow when we prove out this model," he said. "There is this perception out there that games cost $20 to $30 million to make, you can do that, but you don't have to."

"We believe indie developers out there will bring the most innovative stuff to the industry and we want to be the path of least resistance for those guys."

Oh yeah, they're definitely not getting an invite to E3. Brian Crecente

Gamers are reporting widespread problems connecting to the platform, the Steam forums, and game servers, rendering many Steam-dependent games and tools useless. After learning of the issue this morning, I attempted to play a quick round of Counter-Strike Source, only to find no game servers available. Attempts to play Half-Life DM and Day of Defeat Source yielded only marginally better results, three total games currently running for each title. I was able to connect to at least one of the Steam content servers, allowing me to download the recently released Zen of Sudoku demo.

The Bellevue, Washington based company is located about ten miles east of the city of Seattle. No word on when we can expect to resume team-flashing eachother. Let's hope that backup systems will be in place to prevent an outage like this in the future so gamers and developers worldwide aren't also left in the dark. Michael McWhertor

Jesus Christ, game developers. What's the matter with you? You know, most of us gamers are just trying to keep our heads low as lawmakers and professional ambulance chasers do their damnedest to lay all of society's ills at our door. Yet what do you do? You go ahead and announce a game so rife with depraved acts of sex and violence that it's set to make Postal 2 look like Mickey's Magic Castle, featuring acts such as:

a) Racial genocide
b) Simultaneous masturbation/electrocution fetishism
c) Infanticide
d) Satanism
e) Incest
f) Disembowelment
g) Castration
h) Crucifixion
i) Pedophillia
j) Bestiality
k) Slavery

And the list goes on and on! Don't you realize Jack Thompson has already smelled the waft of class action lawsuit in the air and will delight in nothing better than suing the impudent scoundrel responsible for creating such a game, thus programming all our nation's children into Murder-Death-Kill machines?

Although maybe that's for the best. After all, in this case, it's God himself who is responsible for The Holy Bible: The Game on the Game Boy Advance, and if anyone's responsible for programming children into flesh puppets of perceived but non-existent free will, it's not gaming, but my main man upstairs, YHWH. Florian Eckhardt

The Holy Bible: The Game [Video Games Blogger]

Left Behind: Eternal Forces needs some divine economic intervention. The Weekend Edition of MarketWatch dubbed the company behind the PC Christian game as the "Stupid Investment of the Week." Left Behind Games was formed to capitalize the best-selling series of books by the same name, Left Behind. The company has yet to turn any revenue since it was started in 2002, and what's more, MarketWatch says that it will be months before investors know whether the game is a success or not. Until then, pray, we guess. Brian Ashcraft

More Here [GameSetWatch]

A group tracking religious rights activities says the Christian game Left Behind is wall-to-wall spyware. Game play and ad viewing will be tracked once the title is installed on PCs. The software can't be deleted or removed. Moreover, it apparently locates where in the world your computer is and reports how many times a day you use it. Don't think "spyware," think "computer angels."

In related news, Left Behind Games, the company behind Left Behind: The Game (clever, eh?) just brought on some new senior VP—David Klein who used to work at Electronic Arts and 3DO. Klein said this about his new position:

I believe in the mission of Left Behind Games and the vision of its founders. After witnessing the degradation of game content over the last many years, I feel revitalized to be a part of a company that can provide an excellent gaming experience and still hold itself to a higher standard.

And that higher standard is God. Brian Ashcraft

New Exec [Next-Gen]
Spyware Left Behind? [Talk To Action] Thanks, Dsamsil!