The first, a $13 million facility built in the Franklin Mills mall in Philadelphia, PA, was designed to lure in shoppers and loiterers with free games like Rainbow Six: Vegas and Madden NFL 09. That's right. Come for the free games, stay for the "three full-scale simulators, including an AH-64 Apache Longbow helicopter, an armed Humvee and a Black Hawk copter with M4 carbine assault rifles."

Dubbed the "Army Experience Center," recruiters contend that the goal isn't just to see who can kill more efficiently and rack up the highest scores, but to educate.

“Most people think joining the Army means being a grunt, and that Iraq equals death," First Sgt. Randy Jennings told the Times. "We try to show them that there’s more to the Army than carrying a gun. If people come in here and they learn that but they don’t join, that’s O.K.”

While it sounds like a brilliant strategy to get the violence-desensitized gaming crowd comfortable with riding in the back of a Humvee, it's also giving me a case of the willies. Anybody been?

Urban Tool in Recruiting by the Army: An Arcade [New York Times - thanks, Andy!]

Standard exposition: Details are scant on the new project at this moment, but Ubisoft promises better graphics, new gameplay features and updated settings.

Intelligent reflection: Man, the original Rainbow Six Vegas sure was good. We know because we played it.

Quip: We're just happy Ubisoft isn't dumbing down the franchise with Rainbow Six Atlantic City.

Rainbow Six: Vegas 2 Announced [ign...who I just saw made a gambling allusion, which makes us making fun of ourselves all the sweeter]

The bad news for gamers, however, was that the Xbox 360 exclusive game Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell Conviction will miss its original winter '07 release, instead arriving in the company's fourth quarter, sometime between January and March of 2008. Far Cry 2 will also be released within that three month window.

Moving Splinter Cell Conviction into next year was probably a good move on Ubi's part. It would have been eaten alive alongside this year's pre-holiday '07 releases. Plus, it will give fanboys a good rival in Metal Gear Solid 4 for the PLAYSTATION 3, which makes for fantastic nitpicking.

Ubisoft reports first-quarter 2007-08 sales Results

First quarter sales up 90.5% to €134 million ($180.66 U.S) and forecasts revised upwards for 2007-08 sales and current operating income1, Ubisoft and 20th Century Fox team up for the video game based on James Cameron's "Avatar," Calyon carries out its first sale of Gameloft shares.

PARIS, July 24, 2007 - Today, Ubisoft, one of the world's largest video game publishers, reported its sales for the first fiscal quarter ended June 30, 2007.

Sales for the first quarter of 2007-08 came to €134 million ($180.66 U.S.), up 90.5%, or 94.5% at constant exchange rates, compared with the €70 million ($94.37 U.S.) recorded for the same period of 2006-07.

First-quarter sales for 2007-08 exceeded the forecast of approximately €120 million ($161.78 U.S.) announced when Ubisoft released its sales figures for fourth-quarter 2006-07. This performance was primarily attributed to the following:

o The continued success of Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six® Vegas on Xbox 360™ as well as its launch on PLAYSTATION®3 and PSP™.
o The release of Surf's Up™, Prince of Persia®, Oblivion™ and Call of Juarez™.
o Back catalog games, which accounted for over one third of total sales for the period, particularly thanks to the Petz® series and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles™.

In first-quarter 2007-08, 79% of the Group's sales came from games for new-generation consoles, compared with 42% in the comparable prior-year period. This increase particularly reflects a sharp rise in sales of games for the PLAYSTATION®3 (21% of sales) and the Nintendo DS™ (16%, versus 3% in the first-quarter 2006-07).

Yves Guillemot, CEO of Ubisoft stated "Ubisoft has made a solid start to the year, and continued to win market share. Momentum was particularly strong during the period for European sales, which climbed 109% thanks to the ramp-up of new-generation consoles and the impact of PS3 game sales, including Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Vegas and Oblivion. Our performance during this quarter has once again proved the relevance of our early positioning in the casual gaming sector, as demonstrated by the success of our DS and Wii games. Lastly, we were able to present one of the best game line-ups in the industry at this year's E3, in terms of both quality and diversity. Assassin's Creed, Brothers in Arms, Haze, Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell Conviction and Tom Clancy's End War are some of the most highly anticipated games of the year. At the same time, our portfolio of upcoming casual games will enable us to strengthen and broaden our current offering, and to reach new consumers."

Outlook

Ubisoft expects second-quarter 2007-08 sales to remain stable at approximately €105 million ($141.56 U.S.) . The period will see the following main releases:

* Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter®2 on PLAYSTATION®3, PC and PSP™.
* The Settlers®6 for PC.
* Jam Sessions™ on Nintendo DS™.
* The European launch of the game based on the animated movie Surf's Up™.

Future games releases

* Far Cry® 2: The multi-million selling brand will be back for the fourth fiscal quarter of 2007-08, as announced on July 19, 2007.
* Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell Conviction™: originally scheduled for the third fiscal quarter of 2007-08, this game will now be released in the fourth fiscal quarter.

Outlook for full-year 2007-08

In light of our first-quarter performance, which exceeded forecasts, as well as the positive feedback for our games at this year's E3, Ubisoft has raised its performance targets for full-year 2007-08. The Group's 2007-08 sales target is now approximately €825 million ($1,112.27 U.S.), and it expects current income before stock options to represent at least 9% of sales, compared with the previously-announced forecasts of €800 million ($1,078.56 U.S.) and at least 8% of sales.

Ubisoft and 20th Century Fox team up for the video game based on James Cameron's "Avatar".

In a separate press release, Ubisoft announced today that it will develop and publish the video game based on Twentieth Century Fox's "Avatar," the upcoming feature film written and directed by Academy Award®-winning filmmaker James Cameron, whose previous films include "Titanic," "True Lies," "The Abyss," "Aliens," "The Terminator" and "Terminator 2: Judgment Day." The game is expected to release in conjunction with the movie's planned opening in May 2009.

First sale of Gameloft shares by Calyon

On July 17, 2007, Ubisoft announced that it had sold its 18.89% stake in Gameloft (13,367,923 shares) to Calyon. At the same time, Ubisoft entered into an equity swap agreement with Calyon under which Calyon has 24 months to sell the shares on the market and any and all changes in the Gameloft share price will be recorded in full by Ubisoft. This transaction will only impact Ubisoft's income statement and generate cash inflows when Calyon sells the Gameloft shares on the market.

As of July 24, 2007, Calyon had placed 4,167,923 Gameloft shares on the market at a price of €6.064 ($8.17 U.S.). This initial transaction led to a €25.3 million ($34.11 U.S.) cash inflow for Ubisoft. The Group will record a related net gain of €14.5 million ($19.55 U.S.) in its 2007-08 income statement under "gain/loss from operations of discontinued business segment", representing the difference between the share sale price of €6.064 ($8.17 U.S.) and the value of the Gameloft shares on Ubisoft's balance sheet (€2.54 ($3.42 U.S.) per share at March 31, 2007), after deducting 1.65% in taxes.

Recent highlights

Market share: In the first six calendar months of 2007, Ubisoft was the number 3 independent publisher in the United States with market share of 6% (compared with number 5 and 6% one year earlier); number 2 in Europe with 8.4% market share (compared with number 2 and 7.3%), number 2 in France with 7.9% market share (compared with number 2 and 7.3%); number 2 in the United Kingdom with 10% market share (compared with number 2 and 8.5%); and number 2 in Germany with 6.9% market share (compared with number 3 and 6.4%).

Strategic expansion of the casual games offering: Ubisoft has invested in the expansion of an internal development structure dedicated to the creation of Games for Everyone. Among the new team's first projects are the launches of two new product lines - "My Coach" and "Imagine™" - as well as the expansion of the already successful Petz® franchise.

Creation of Tom Clancy's EndWar™, a new brand in the Tom Clancy series: Led by strategy veteran Michael de Plater, Tom Clancy's EndWar™ is being developed by a world-class team at Ubisoft's Shanghai studio whose members have experience working on Ubisoft's hit franchises including Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon®, Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six® and Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell®.

Ubisoft to develop the video game based on the motion picture "Beowulf": Ubisoft, Paramount Pictures and Shangri-La Entertainment have announced a partnership to create video games based on "Beowulf™", the upcoming feature film from Robert Zemeckis, starring Angelina Jolie, Anthony Hopkins and John Malkovich. The movie is scheduled to open in late 2007.

Planned expansion of Ubisoft's Moroccan studio, with the aim of creating 150 new positions by 2010.

Two new game modes and several new maps hit for Rainbow Six Vegas today.

The 800-point Red Edition Pack includes the Assassination Mode and Total Conquest Mode as well as new maps the Doscala Restaurant, Marshalling Yard, Roof, Border Town — Redux, and Killhouse — Redux.

In Assassination you have to escort a VIP to a designated extraction point. In Total Conquest you have to control three locations on a map. Brian Crecente

The update also sees two new modes. Assassination, in which one team guards a target while the other tries to kill it, and Total Conquest, which is all about controlling strategic points. Ubisoft hasn't released a price yet for the Player Pack, but since it contains brand new content for my second-favorite shooty game on the 360, I'll say it should be worth whatever they charge. Michael Fahey

R6: Vegas DLC detailed [GameSpot]

I'm not sure how I feel about this video. On the one hand it's in-your-face in-game advertising for Axe. On the other hand, it's pretty damn funny and not really that intrusive. Brian Crecente

Amy "Valkyrie" Brady, Emily "Seppuku" Ong, Nelly"Psyche" Morel and Alyson "Calyber" Craghead won after taking down the previously undefeated team The Unknown.

"There were a few good teams that we were worried about especially with the team compete team but we were confident about our team work," said Nelly Morel "Psyche." "It was a very long tournament that started at 7:00 p.m. and ended at 1:00 a.m.. I kept counting down the clock, we were up by a good amount of kills and after we won it was such a relief - it was an amazing feeling."

Team captain Morgan "Rhoulette" Romine said the team has been playing Vegas up to 12 hours a day since it came out.

"We have been getting more experience with competition and playing under pressure by playing in pro-circuit tournaments like MLG and WSVG over the past year," she said. " Being able to come here to play Rainbow, always our favorite multiplayer series, and bring our experience with both online and live event competition made for an ideal combination. We played as a team, communicated well, stuck to our strategies and won."

That's it, Team Kotaku totally has to get their asses kicked by the Frag Dolls, it's written in the stars. Brian Crecente

With the exception of a few titles, almost everything this week is is something that's already out on other systems. Not really much in the way of new stuff besides Elebits, although I'm hot to try out Super Swing Golf.

Super Swing Golf (Wii)
Watch Kasumi and her boobs play golf!

Elebits
Wreck everything in pursuit of cute little blobby things!

Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Vegas (PC)
Rainbow Six action now for the PC!

Metal Slug Anthology (PSP)
The full collection of the arcade classic title lands on the PSP.

Fullmetal Alchemist: Dual Sympathy (DS)
The popular manga and anime series gets it's first DS game.

The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess (GC)
Zelda fans who couldn't get a Wii, rejoice!

Star Trek: Legacy (Xbox 360)
Experience the entire history of Star Trek all in one game!

The Shield (PS2)
Michael Chiklis in polygons!

Blazing Angels: Squadrons of WWII (PS3)
More World War II simulation from Aspyr.

Flynn De Marco

I'm still busy trying to get my cat Rufus to sit still long enough to test out non-human head mapping. You know, for the furries. Michael Fahey

The Frag Dolls, Ubi's marketing/gamer vixens, have been running a little competition on Rainbow Six Vegas this week.

Starting on Monday four of the Frag Dolls have been playing 4X4 matches from 7 to 10 p.m. pacific nightly. Any team that beats them wins $2,000 cash. Rhoulette says the random match-ups could result in Ubisoft giving away $100,000.

While you might think you have little chance against the FDs, so far the team has lost ten of the last 21 matches, giving away $20,000 to some often skilled, but sometimes lucky gamers.

I hit team leader Rhoulette up earlier this week and asked her to do some 'splaining.

She was pretty straight forward, pointing out that sometimes a good team wins and sometimes a good team loses.

"Tthere are a lot of good players out there and anything can happen in team sharpshooter. It'll be exciting to see how the next few days unfold," she said, adding: "We're just glad it's not our money on the line."

Cheeky monkey.

I tried joining one of the matches Tuesday night but wasn't lucky enough to catch one. If you're interested in trying your luck here's how:

Put the following setting into Custom Match search -
(NOTE: the Game Mode is subject to change. They may play some objective modes as the series goes on. Refer back the Frag Dolls site each day before 7pm to see the match settings)

Game Mode: Team Sharpshooter
Min players: 2
Max players: 10
Type: Player Match
Language: German

The game will be hosted by one of the following:
IGN niteStar
Valkyrie FD
Calyber FD
Rhoulette FD
Jinx FD
BrookeLyn FD

And to make things a bit easier, the group intends to try and play three games an hour. So to catch a game you're best chance is to look around these times:

7:00pm
7:20
7:40
8:00
8:20
8:40
9:00
9:20
9:40

Brian Crecente

Rhoulette [Frag Dolls]

The voice chat bug, which Penny Arcade so excellently documented, as well as other "critical issues" are about to receive a metaphorical headshot from Ubisoft. A patch, the development team says, is in the works. Brian Crecente

Rainbow Six Vegas 360 Patch Inc

The genie is out of the bottle and I'm liking what I'm seeing. Brian Crecente

Hit the jump for plenty more courtesy of FourZeroTwo.

I just realized that in the excitement of posting about sticking Sopranoes characters into Rainbow Six: Vegas I forgot to walk you fully through the process of creating your own celebrity in-game faces for the shooter.

This all comes via Will, who actually took the time to put my wild ruminations into practice, and DigiMask the people behind the technology.

The first, and often hardest step, it seems is finding two really good shots of the celebrity you want to face map. They need to be clean, clear, up close pictures showing a head-on and side pose.

Here are some tips for what to look for in a photo:

The image should have a neutral expression, eyes open, mouth closed. No smiling if possible.
Make sure you can see both ears in the face-on image.
Make sure the hair isn't covering the ears or forehead.
No glasses.
You should only be able to see one eye in the side-on shot, not even part of the other, and the whole ear.
Make sure the profile faces to the left.
Even lighting with no shadows or bright highlights is important.

Once you find your celeb pics, photoshop them if necessary to get the brightness and contrast right.

Will pointed his Vision Camera at his computer screen to do the capture, which probably explains Gandolfini's angelic glow. I'll try to do some off of prints later this week.

Good luck and happy photo hunting. Make sure to send in any particularly good faces. Too bad Vegas doesn't let you save multiple custom faces.

I've been playing a lot of Rainbow Six: Vegas lately. Mostly because it just plain-out kicks ass. But what initially drew me to the game was the cool little face-mapping feature it has built into it.

If you want, you can use the Xbox 360's Vision Camera to map your real face onto a character in 3D for all to see during multiplayer matches.

After doing two or three face grabs and coming up with a frighteningly realistic Brian, I started thinking about the process. All it does is take a head on shot of you and a profile and them use some magic and math to turn it into a very realistic 3D face.

Couldn't you just get sharp pictures of people, one head on, one profile, and use that to create faces.

Fortunately, when I was babbling about this I happened to be in the middle of a series of matches and one of the gamers, a reader named Will, decided to test out my theory.

The result was amazing. He took two pictures of James Gandolfini (Sopranos) and turned it into a fairly realistic 3D face map. Oh, the possibilities. First up? Paris Hilton, that is if I can find any pictures that aren't of her turned slightly to the side.

Mostly I made this video to test my new video capture set up, but I also wanted to show people how Rainbow Six Vegas uses the Live Camera to insert your real face onto your multiplayer character.

It's pretty damn cool, though it automatically gave me a crewcut. It would have been nice if the game allowed you to pick between a few generic hairstyles after capturing your face. Oh, well. Brian Crecente

As Associate Editor Comma Europe of Kotaku, it is occasionally required of me to find European gaming news. This is always more difficult than it sounds: gaming wise, Europe is stuck six months in the past, and every major player views Europe with contempt.

So, I'm pleased to report this actual bit of European gaming news! The demo of Rainbow Six Vegas — a game about an American city, written by a Yank and published by the most American company there is — is now available on Live everywhere except America, according to Major Nelson.

Alright, so that's less about Europe than just a gloating double deuce to the States. Florian Eckhardt

Demo: Rainbow Six Vegas [Major Nelson]

Ubisoft today confirmed that gamers will be able to use the Xbox Live Vision Camera to put their face in Rainbow Six Vegas.

Better still, when you play online, other gamers will be able to see your custom face. Voodoo Extreme 3D reports that the process will involve taking a front and profile shot of your head. Sounds pretty simple. It looks like the key to making the end-result look like you is picking the right head to slap your face onto.Brian Crecente

Put Your Face in Rainbow Six Vegas [VE3D, thanks Jane]

I am all about new PSP shooters, so Rainbow Six Vegas' PSP port is intriguing to me. Here's what Computer and Video Games has to say:

Featuring new content and characters from the next-gen versions, the PSP version is looking stunning. Ubisoft told us that the portable version will feature a "tailored control system built specifically for the system", which is a given, but didn't go into further details about what form this would actually take.

In addition to promising a decent control scheme (good luck, I've run into very few PSP games that pulled it off), Ubi says there's going to be online or wireless ad-hoc multiplayer, too. Eliza Gauger

Gallery of screens from PSP Rainbow Six Vegas [CVG]

Kotakuite Michael C. forwarded us this message from the Rainbow Six Vegas viral game, Save Vegas.

I never follow these virals. It always takes place on a website designed in the same style as various Geocities My Little Pony pages in the mid-90's. The one of the writing is always pretty close to a tone of complete hysteria, reading something like what a sugar-junkie might write while having a corkscrew inserted up his urethra.

According to the website, "The purpose of this site is to alert elements of United States counter-terror forces, specifically the elite team that may be known as "Rainbow Six", to unusual events that I am monitoring in the city of Las Vegas, Nevada. It is my belief that their help will be needed in the coming days." At least this one's pretty transparent about its connection, as opposed to another stupid I Love Bees mind fuck. Florian Eckhardt

PS: Anyone who unbuckled for the promised "graphic and shocking images" might as well pull their pants back up above their knees. The most shocking one I saw involved a booyeahing jock drinking a Rolling Rock nursed in an inflatable sheep's anus.