Knight and Lambros will be discussing everything Dante's inferno related in the first weekly installment of the live video series tomorrow, focusing primarily on the game's development, the PlayStation 3 demo, and the Dante's Inferno comic book. Fans of the game will be able to ask questions of the duo by posing them to @danteteam on Twitter or posting them on the Dante's Inferno Facebook page wall.

The whole shebang kicks off tomorrow at 4PM Eastern time at the game's official website. If you're lucky and we remember, we might just embed it here for your convenience.

If you're lucky.

I suppose that was a rather large hint, but I just couldn't keep our readers in suspense. The Dante's Inferno Gates of Hell demo will be hitting the PlayStation Network on December 10th, arriving on Xbox Live two weeks later on the 24th. Announced last month, the demo features the entire opening level of the game, detailing Dante's journey to Hell's gates in order to rescue his murdered love, Beatrice.

"The world of Alighieri's Dante's Inferno is such a rich, detailed, and often alarming universe, that all of us at Visceral Games put our hearts, and dare I say souls, into creating something truly intense and exciting," said executive producer Jonathan Knight. "We hope gamers enjoy this tease of hell, and come away from the experience lusting for more when the game comes out on February 9."

In the spirit of the holidays, I urge PlayStation 3 owners to invite an Xbox 360 owner to their home on December 10th in order to promote console harmony. Call it a kinder, gentler way of saying "go to hell."

Soon that empty space will be filled with people playing Tatsunoko VS. Capcom, Marvel VS. Capcom 2, and Super Street Fighter IV, and while you won't be able to join them, you'll at least be able to watch them via Capcom's Ustream channel, which will be broadcasting until the end of the event. Witness the joy on fans' faces as they revel in competition! Envy the amazingly good time they are having. Or, you know, enjoy this relatively empty room. Your choice!

You can watch the stream via the little doohickey below, or hit up the channel page to break the first rule of Fight Club.

Video streaming by Ustreamhttp://www.ustream.tv/channel/pac

Before co-founding Robomodo in 2008, Tsui worked at Midway Games on the Mortal Kombat series. He went on to co-found Studio Gigante in 2000, which developed both Tao Feng: Fist of the Lotus and WWE WrestleMania 21. He later went to work for Electronic Arts Chicago where he worked on Fight Night Round 3.

The idea behind the peripheral-using Tony Hawk Ride, Tsui tells us, came from his love of arcade games. We'll be talking with Tsui about that, all things video games as well as taking your calls and questions tomorrow at 1 p.m. Eastern.

Make sure to tune in to BlogTalkRadio to listen to the show live and give us a call to ask your questions. You may want to call early if you want to get in on the call.

To participate use Skype or your phone to call in to (347) 857-3782 starting tomorrow.

Zeno Clash: Ultimate Edition will is scheduled to release in March 2010. The first-person brawler will include a new cooperative mode in the game's Tower Challenges, Atlus said in a release. The game will also feature "new features, and added content combine with a series of tweaks and improvements based on fan feedback to deliver the definitive version of the critically-acclaimed game."

No price was named in the release. Atlus's announcement also teased an "as-of-yet-unannounced other new mode exclusive to the Ultimate Edition," plus other features.

Atlus Announces Zeno Clash: Ultimate Edition for Xbox Live Arcade [Atlus Forums]

To listen, head over to our BlogTalkRadio page. Unfortunately, you can only listen live on the BlogTalkRadio website.

Want to be heard on Kotaku Talk Radio? Call us on the air at (347) 857-3782!

Better still, myself and guest co-host Russ Frushstick from MTV will be taking your live calls, comments and questions.

To listen, head over to our BlogTalkRadio page. Unfortunately, you can only listen live on the BlogTalkRadio website.

Want to be heard on Kotaku Talk Radio? Call us on the air at (347) 857-3782!

This week on Kotaku Talk Radio we'll be talking about QuakeCon, playing easy in Red Faction: Guerrilla, buying your way to victory in Madden, the posh office settings and flat panels of gaming's greatest developers and a quick listen to an 8-bit Weezer tribute album.

With Stephen Totilo jetting his way to QuakeCon in Texas this week we'll be joined by MTV Multiplayer's Russ Frushtick, taking your calls live and discussing some of the stories of the week.

Join us Wednesday at 11 a.m. Mountain and give us a call. If you miss the live show we'll be posting the downloadable audio file and a link to iTunes by Wednesday evening.

Kotaku Talk Radio Live Stream [BlogTalkRadio]

In this first show we'll be talking about the DSi's new Facebook photo integration, playing outside with video games, racism in gaming, Comic-Con and listening to some music from Supercommuter.

We'll also be taking calls from you.

To participate just listen in starting at 11 a.m. Mountain Time. If you want to call in to the show dial (347) 857-3782 and talk to our live screener. He'll get your details and what you want to talk about. No promises on who gets on the show, but we'll try to get to as many of you as possible.

Listen to Kotaku on Blog Talk Radio

Update: The show's over, stay tuned for the archived episode.

That's because I've never been a fan of podcasts myself. They feel a bit too canned, too introspective for my tastes.

This week we're trying something new: A live podcast that allows us to take calls from our readers. Essentially we want to create a drive time show without the radio... or the driving.

The show will be streamed on Kotaku live and then saved and uploaded to iTunes for those of you who miss it. (Though the first episode may take a week or so to get there.) This is just an experiment for now, but we hope it is one that works and that we can continue doing it.

This week we'll be talking about Comic-Con, racism in gaming, DSi's new Facebook photo feature, backyard games for gamers and hip-hop, experimental band Supercommuter.

To participate just come back to the site about 11 a.m. Mountain Time today and hit up the new post with the embedded player.

I will ignore bad words, so don't waste my time.

Look for a preview of Scribblenauts' gameplay next week. For now, let's mess around with turning words into virtual objects in the game's menu screen.

I'll start: I typed "boy," and a boy appeared. I typed "blob" and a blob appeared and attacked the boy.

I typed "president" and got a white guy in a suit. I typed "Republican and got the same guy." I typed Democrat and again got that guy.

Suggestions?

(The game's out on September 15, from development studio 5th Cell and publisher Warner Brothers Interactive Entertainment.)

A total of three new stages are being added to Space Invaders Extreme with tomorrow's new downloadable content, along with the requisite new enemies and bosses to add that extreme flavor. Perhaps the most exciting news is also the least extreme: two emulators are included in the pack, consisting of both the original black and white Space Invaders and the 8-bit color Space Invaders 2. Sure, you can play those two versions on countless devices using programs readily found on the internet, but that's completely beside the point.

The point is, this is probably as extreme as Space Invaders is likely to get any time soon, and it all happens tomorrow, provided you have 240 Microsoft points to spare.

The six-episode collection of Sam & Max's 2006/2007 adventures features Achievements, tweaked gameplay controls and HD graphic support. The compilation used to be called Sam & Max: Season One, but I guess "Save the World" sounds better. The actual saving of said world in these six episodes occurs I think in the last episode, Bright Side of the Moon.

Now's a good chance to check out the games if you haven't had a chance already. The Xbox Live game goes for 1600 Microsoft points and for a limited time, the PC version of Save the World is going for $19.95 on Telltale's online store.

A relative surprise delivered as part of Microsoft's 2009 E3 press conference, popular music community service Last. FM will be available as a free download for Xbox Live Gold subscribers later this year, allowing them to browse and listen to music, discovering new artists based on their preferences. As McWhertor put it in our live blog of the press conference:

Having Last.fm on Xbox Live is something I didn't know I wanted. Now I do. Good get.

My sentiments exactly. This is exactly the sort of thing I can turn on and fall asleep to, and if there's one thing I need it's more excuses to fall asleep in front of the television.

We first caught wind of this via GamerBytes, who managed to snag a picture of the German listing before it was removed from the Unterhaltungssoftware Selbstkontrolle website. The listing was for The Secret Of Monkey Island - Special Edition, with the system listed as the Xbox 360 and the publisher Activision Blizzard Deutschland GmbH, the European publishing arm for LucasArts.

Adventure game website Adventure Gamers claims that independent sources have already confirmed the existence of the project to them, with a planned revelation during E3 2009 in two weeks.

So what could the special edition tag mean? Is this a completely overhauled HD remake, or just the original title stretched and filtered? Will it be an Xbox Live Arcade title, or a full on Xbox 360 retail release? Does the project even exist?

We've sent out requests for more information to both LucasArts and Microsoft, though if the game is planned as a big E3 reveal, chances we'll get official confirmation before then are slim.

If this turns out not to be a real project, someone needs to get on it immediately. There's a whole generation of gamers who have no idea what game we're talking about, and that needs to be rectified as soon as possible.

Update: As expected, LucasArts doesn't comment on rumors or speculation.

XBLA: The Secret Of Monkey Island Coming To Xbox 360 [GamerBytes]
LucasArts planning Secret of Monkey Island re-release [Adventure Gamers]

With retail chains increasingly limiting their shelf space for PC games, and most mainstream media coverage of gaming directed at the splashier Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 multimedia consoles and family-centric Wii, PC gaming finds itself in a fight for the hearts and minds of gamers.

Leading the charge in that fight is the recently formed PC Gaming Alliance, a consortium of computer manufacturers, parts makers, retailers and game developers.

Christian Svensson, an executive at game developer Capcom and member of the alliance board of directors says that the purpose of the alliance, which was formed early last year, is to pin down hard numbers for game developers. How many people play games on their PC? What sort of PC do they have? What are the current trends?

"I joined to get a better understanding about the market and what's working for people," Svensson said. "The low hanging fruit for (Capcom) is to take our content and our brands and bring them to another platform."

Capcom, traditionally a developer with a focus on consoles, has recently started to bring more of their games like Resident Evil 5 and Street Fighter IV to the PC.

"We feel we can create an incredible and perhaps different experience than the PC has had before," he said. "The PC versions of Street Fighter IV and Devil May Cry 4 will be the definitive versions of the game."

But often the PC version of a game comes out after the console versions hit, something that in the long run can impact sales. That's because unlike with consoles, there is no single standard for the PCs that games may run on. It's the same issue that has for so long hampered mobile game sales.

"The beautiful thing about the PC is that it's a completely open platform," Svensson said. "Anyone can get any game to market. There are no boundaries.

"But that same thing cuts the other way, no guidance means no oversight."

So developers need to make sure that when they make a game it can play on a wide range of computers, from a high-end desktop to a cheap laptop, so they can sell to the larger chunk of that 300 million gamer market. And unlike with consoles, technology for PC gaming jumps forward every 12 to 18 months or so, making the sweet spot for game development a moving target.

Drew Johnston, Microsoft's group program manager for Windows gaming, says that another similarity between computers and cell phones is how prevalent they are.

"Most people in the U.S. and many other parts of the world have both a phone and a computer, so they're instantly part of those demographics, and an audience for developers," he said.

The key, both Johnston and Svensson agree, is to make it easier for gamers to get their games on PC.

That's what Microsoft tried to do when they launched Games for Windows – Live with the rollout of Windows Vista. But initially the program stalled.

Johnston says that's because gamers initially thought that Games for Windows – Live only worked on Vista and that initially gamers had to pay a subscription to play multiplayer games, something that Microsoft also requires with Xbox Live.

"What's right for the console isn't always right for the PC," Johnston said Microsoft came to realize.

Last July, Microsoft dropped the subscription fees for the PC version of live. Then, at the end of last year Microsoft revamped the service, tweaking it to work better for PC gamers and adding more robust anti-piracy measures.

Johnston describes the future of PC gaming as "growing and evolving" saying that it is as strong as it has ever been and leading the way in many new ideas, like digital distribution, online services and social gaming.

Perhaps most significantly, the alliance plans to soon announce a new set of PC system requirements that would be used to identify a PC gaming machine.

The idea, Svensson said, is to make PC gaming as seamless an experience as console gaming is.

It could also perhaps lead to a new renaissance in PC game design, reminding all of those millions of PC owners that their machines are just as capable at entertaining as is a console.

Well Played is a weekly opinion column about the big news of the week in the gaming industry and its bigger impact on things to come. Feel free to join in the discussion.

Instead of finding players, it would just restart the search. Pictured is the status message everyone seemed to be getting.

Whatever the problem is, it seems to have spread to LIVE (or vice-versa) as it's currently borked. So, we know, you can stop sending us emails letting us know. Microsoft probably knows, too.

Some people (Luke Plunkett, for example) are reporting that it's finally come back for them. What about you?

Zune is co-developing the show along with MEAN magazine.

So what scenes would you like to see reenacted by which actors? Besides Christopher Walken as Han Solo.

Technology Briefing [Seattle Post Intelligencer]

These maps were supposed to be available for free only to those who purchased the game new at GameStop game retailers. Well, there the formerly free maps are, waiting for your LIVE patronage.

Gears of War 2 Flashback maps hit XBLM for $5 [Xbox 360 Fanboy]