Take this message from Infinity Ward "creative strategist" Robert Bowling, posted to his well-followed Twitter account earlier today: "First round of meetings in Paris wrapped. Grabbing lunch with Xavier Gens, director of the Hitman film while in town. Talking game films." Sure, Bowling and Gens may merely be enjoying a social call. Or maybe they're talking about turning the narrative of the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare series into a feature film.

Parent company Activision just recently filed for new trademarks related to the Call of Duty franchise—as spotted by Trademork—protecting the mark against "Pre-recorded movies featuring comedy, drama, action, adventure, music, theatrical performances and/or animation." Honestly, not making Call of Duty into a film, direct to DVD animated feature, or CGI something would be foolishly leaving money on the table.

And it may be reflective of a larger trend at Activision, who also recently filed similar trademarks for Guitar Hero and Singularity. The latter we can understand, as it's story driven sci-fi fodder. But Guitar Hero? Certainly no one would think that was an idea worth doing.

Oh, wait.

FourZeroTwo [Twitter]

Renting a movie off of the PSN, now, that's something that would expire, and we're all familiar with that. Fareo at the Retail Gamer posted these shots with the same quality applied to games. And, purely speculation here, he reasons that since PSPgo owners are no longer able to rent games from GameFly or anywhere else - lack of the UMD drive and all that - such a service would only make sense. Wouldn't it?

Sure. This isn't a completely foreign concept. Sony's also surveyed the acceptability of such an idea.

Here's another screen proving the point.

Digitally Renting PSP Games? [The Retail Gamer]

But a sampling of analysts turn up some who believe that, sure, Microsoft will follow suit with an Xbox 360 slimline design.

The pros for such a move: If the re-engineering cost can be held down, smaller product means lower costs in shipping, packaging, and more space on the shelf. Also, Microsoft seems to have beaten the RRoD with the Jasper motherboard, but actively marketing "New, more reliable Xbox!" in the same old case rings a bit hollow. A new case gives enough cover for such a campaign.

Cons: Jasper solved RRoD, and so that effort and outlay represents Microsoft's re-engineering of the console; marketing "new more reliable Xbox!" diminishes and reminds the existing installation base it has the "old, less reliable Xbox!" And aside from the me-tooism, Microsoft's better bet is in selling different hard drive configurations - and a 360 slim would likely require either its own line of removable drives, or have an internal-only unit.

That said, here's your cheerleader for a 360 slim: David Cole, DFC Intelligence, speaking to Industry Gamers.

"I think it is a question of when not if. However, the when part is a big uncertainty...rumors have been going on for a long time. I think people were asking me the same question last year at this time. As cost efficiencies allow smaller and more reliable is always a good thing. However, you also have something like Project Natal which could also tie in with hardware redesigns. There are a lot of questions Microsoft must weigh internally and there are always going to arguments on both sides of the fence around timing. So I don't know, but in our DFC forecasts we anticipated a major redesign in 2010 ....so I guess that was our bet."

Yes, great awesome. Now please start sending all your faeks, hoaxes, shakycams and shoops to our tips box.

360 Slim? Analysts Weigh In [Industry Gamers]

The four masks in question, shown above courtesy of But Wait, There's Lore, depict a goblin male and goblin female, which are pretty standard sights around Azeroth. They also depict, however, a male and female wolf-looking creature, which many in the community are calling Worgen. Worgen are also common around Azeroth, only they are slightly less detailed, and there are no females. This is leading many people to believe that these are two new races that will be announced as part of World of Warcraft's next expansion, which everyone is calling Cataclysm.

I'm on the fence here. The Worgen and the Goblins were the two races I wanted to see in The Burning Crusade, but of course that didn't come to fruition. Giving the Horde goblins would give them a smaller race to hopefully annoy the Alliance as much as Gnomes annoy the Horde, while the Worgen on the Alliance side would give them a nice, bestial-looking race, while allowing the opposing faction to call them furries.

It's all utter speculation at this point, of course. I don't think Blizzard would be so sloppy as to have two major reveals tucked away in a patch anyone has access to. In fact, I'd fully expect the company to do things like that in order to purposefully mislead speculators. Blizzard remains tight-lipped, and will do so until at least BlizzCon next month, where I will be sitting in the audience during the keynote desperately praying my laptop battery doesn't die.

Datamining of 3.2 —-> reveals upcoming races? [Scrolls of Lore Forums]

That's because the photography in the first Dead Rising was tied specifically to Frank West and his career as a photojournalist. He's covered wars, you know?

Dead Rising 2? It stars Chuck Greene, a motocross champion, Inafune told me, that means that he will be "damn good" on the motorcycle and get it to do some pretty amazing things. But Inafune hinted that Greene won't just be about the motorcycle.

"Based on his personality and the different choices he made he will have different skills," Inafune said.

Like what? Too early to tell, but not too early to guess.

High on the list, I think, is the possibility that Greene will be able to make his own weapons, or at least customize them. Watching the trailer and sitting in on the presentation, I couldn't help but notice that the chainsaws found in the game were often duct-taped to other things to crank up their killing power.

The bucket with drills attached to it, the nail-wrapped propane tank? There's no way you're going to just find those lying around. I think there's a good chance that Greene will have some hand in how these weapons come to be.

I also think, and perhaps this is entirely wishful thinking, that there's a good chance that while photography won't be in the game, video will. Why not give Greene a helmet cam? And what about all of the security cameras you find in a casino? And all of those security camera shots we see in the trailer?

What better way to one-up the photography of Dead Rising then by adding videography to Dead Rising 2?

Call me a purist, call me an asshole, I don't mind, but when a Transformer looks like a Bionicle with a bone disease, it's not really a Transformer. This ruined the last film for me, I wasn't going to work to unlock them in the last game, and it even ruined the 2004 PS2 game based on the "Armada" series, which part of me knew was excellent, but other parts reviled because it starred the "wrong" Optimus Prime.

So it's heartening to hear that the developers behind the second Transformers game - the one based on the second live-action Transformers movie - will be incorporating a wide range of downloadable characters into the game. Not "unlockable". "Downloadable".

Sure, this will include characters from the Michael Bay film, but it's interesting that publishers Activision refused to confirm with MTV that these would be the only ones. Leaving us with the very real possibility that there would be downloadable characters from other Transformers timelines/mediums.

Like, say, the original series. Or, in my dreams, multiple series, from which I can build a Prime menagerie like the one above.

UPDATE - Yes, you could unlock some skins in the first game. But they were just re-skins. This sounds more like the (downloadable) introduction of all-new characters, which if Activision know what they're doing, will include Soundwave, Huffer and Seaspray.

Activision Planning ‘Transformers' Character DLC [MTV]

Unfortunately, Square Enix's protection of Vanguard Storm is extremely light on details. But the title could be related to the publisher's rumored "yet-to-be-announced action game," teased via a single mysterious screen shot in the latest PlayStation: The Official Magazine.

What does it have to do with Vagrant Story? Absolutely nothing, as far as we know. I just happened to really like Vagrant Story and would like to see Square Enix return to the property, as unlikely as that may seem.

The official PlayStation mag's teaser shot shows a man in a fantasy sci-fi world setting, sporting a giant, meticulously engraved sword. Sure, that sounds like most Square Enix games, but this one looks awful pretty. Like most Square Enix games. Hopefully, the company will have something to show us by the time E3 rolls around.

Sony Computer Entertainment Japan has registered a trademark for "PS Cloud," protecting it against it against all manner of video game-related things, like "entertainment services, namely, providing an on-line video game that users may access through the internet." The possible service, which has not been announced, could follow the recently announced OnLive model, which plays your games remotely, or Valve's SteamCloud service, which hosts Steam user preferences and game saves on outside servers.

If we had our druthers, the latter might be more appealing, as having more remote access to account-specific content could be a boon to PlayStation 3 (and PSP) owners who would like to have game saves and DRM-restricted content away from their home console. It's not like the PS3 is the most portable of game machines.

But if it were the former, the ability to play games that aren't stored locally, especially on the PSP, could be appealing. A cloud-based service could possibly come with fees attached, as OnLive has planned, revenue that would likely help Sony's PlayStation business out.

Or it could be a big, fluffy cloud controller. That would be just heavenly.

Keep in mind that some filed trademarks never make it to market as an actual product, so we're just getting our kicks speculating.

PS Cloud [USPTO]

Rumors have been stirring since December about a potential motion control apparatus for the Xbox 360, and instead of fading away like bad rumors generally do, more and more fuel has been added to the possibility as time went on. With the latest speculation indicating a new motion-controlled friendly redesign of the Xbox Dashboard, E3 could very well be the time for the big reveal.

The announcement of a motion controller would naturally lead to the reveal of a big-name title or titles that would use it. This could be Banjo Kazooie, once the subject of one of the motion controller rumors, or an entirely new title. Microsoft isn't the type of company to bank on innovative gameplay alone, so if a motion controller is announced you can bet they'll have the games to back it up.

Then there is the future of the Halo franchise. We all know something new is coming, whether it be Peter Jackson's Halo game or something entirely different. Microsoft isn't going to let the franchise stagnate, and as lovely as the strategy game Halo Wars is looking I very much doubt it has the strength to carry fans of the original FPS gameplay, so there's a good chance we'll be seeing something new, with or without Master Chief.

Personally I am hoping for more information regarding the Zune gaming we got a look at during GDC this year, including some actual titles and release dates for the functionality, but that might just be because I recently bought a Zune for some odd reason. Yeah, I don't know. It was shiny.

All will become clear Monday morning, so we have until then to speculate, assume, and wildly imagine to our hearts' content. What would you like to see from Microsoft? What do you think we'll get? This is why God created the comment section.

The full image — just after the jump — is huge, showing an even longer teasing progression from frosty, barely visible demon head to flaming red hellish visage coupled with an ominous "III." But we certainly don't think we're in for six more days of intolerable teasing, especially since the Blizzard Worldwide Invitational kicks off in Paris just hours from now.

Check back in with us later tonight, as the game announcing festivities kick off at 11 AM Paris Time. That's just eight hours or so from right now.

Thanks to everyone who sent this in. We think Chris was first. He gets a Kotaku No-Prize for his efforts.

Believe it or not, I've been so busy working on a special surprise for MGS4 buyers (that not even those who have leaked copies of the game can spoil! Haha!), that I haven't had time to catch up on most of the pre-launch excitement.

A special surprise? I love surprises! What ever could it be? It's something that people with leaked copies of the game can't spoil, meaning probably DLC of some sort to kick things off? A special outfit? A new weapon? A cutscene only available through download?

Or is this one of those special surprises like Michael Scott from The Office would come up with? There's no way that folks with leaked copies could ruin ice cream sandwiches.

I suppose that in the interest of more accurate speculation we should stick to the DLC idea. You guys throw out your ideas while I rush to my local grocer's freezer.

"In collaborating with Brash, we were introduced to a very compelling fictional world and given the freedom to expand it through the game. We are working directly with the creative talent from the film, and feel that the close collaboration will result in an amazing game play experience that immerses the player in an incredible fantasy world."

Brash Entertainment Partners with Game Republic, Inc.

HOLLYWOOD, Calif., March 12 /PRNewswire/ — Today Brash Entertainment announced a game development deal with Game Republic, Inc., the Japan-based studio led by famed game producer Yoshiki Okamoto. Under the terms of the worldwide agreement, the partners will collaborate on an unannounced game based on a popular Hollywood film. The game will release in 2010.

Game Republic, Inc. was founded in 2003 under the leadership of industry visionary, Yoshiki Okamoto. A 20-year veteran of the game industry, Game Republic, Inc. CEO Okamoto has had a dramatic impact on the styles of gameplay prevalent in modern titles and is credited with pioneering new genres including "one-on-one fighting" with Street Fighter II and "survival horror" with Resident Evil. In addition, his teams have delivered such popular franchises as Lost Planet, Devil May Cry, Onimusha, Darkstalkers and many more.

"As a gamer, I am extremely excited to work with Okamoto-san, who has produced some of my favorite games," said Brash co-founder and CEO Mitch Davis. "The Brash business gives us the luxury to match the best Hollywood IP with the skills of the most talented independent game developers; our partnership with a strong studio such as Game Republic, Inc. is an excellent example of that."

"One of my goals with games is to do something revolutionary with something that has been never been seen before. The opportunity to re-imagine a fictional world provided by a compelling Hollywood IP using the interactive medium of games is very exciting to me," said Okamoto. "In collaborating with Brash, we were introduced to a very compelling fictional world and given the freedom to expand it through the game. We are working directly with the creative talent from the film, and feel that the close collaboration will result in an amazing game play experience that immerses the player in an incredible fantasy world."

Square Enix has made no such announcements about such a game, but its recently filed trademark for Party Castle certainly makes us think it may have sights set on an English port. Everyone knows "party" translates to "dice-rolling board game" in Nintendo-speak. Plus, Itadaki Street DS has no shortage of castles. Conjecture? Totally. That's why we're getting in touch with Square Enix to learn more about what this new trademark means. (Pray it's not a mobile game!)

Party Castle Trademark [USPTO]

Sony Computer Entertainment has just registered In The Beginning There Was Darkness, a game we don't believe is based on the book of the same name, chronicling a blind man's life journey while reading the Bible. [Update: As commenter CONFUSEDGAM3R points out, this is part of the God of War: Chains of Olympus ad campaign. Thanks!] Square-Enix has two new filings with Sigma Harmonics and My Life As A King, the latter of which may be a spin on the name of its announced WiiWare game.

Finally, it looks like Ubisoft has two new properties in the works, Aftershock and Strike Hawk. Why do both of those instantly sound like Tom Clancy branded games to me? Regardless, the first may simply be the post-earthquake survival game previously known as Alive. Go ahead, speculate!

Imagine all of the fun, strategy, and intrigue of a game of Risk without having to set aside an entire evening in order to play a game through to conclusion! It makes me want to break out my old copy of the game and make up my own objectives, though in my case they'd be more like, "Avoid landing on any soda stains", which is much trickier than it sounds.

So why is this important to the video gaming crowd? As Newsweek's N'Gai Croal reminds us, back in August EA signed a deal with Hasbro granting them the rights to create casual games based off of Hasbro intellectual properties. While the original Risk would never have worked via Xbox Live or the PlayStation Network, Risk: Black Ops would be simply sublime. We'll keep an eye out, but don't be surprised if EA jumps on this one in the near future.

Risk: Black Ops [Gamers With Jobs via Newsweek's Level Up]

A Rockstar Games representative on Tuesday replied by reiterating that Grand Theft Auto IV "is going to come out during our second financial quarter of 08."

Recent circular advertises early March date for the upcoming Rockstar game. [GameDaily]

Quite the leap, no? While we're positive that Call of Duty 5 is coming, we aren't sure whether Infinity Ward or Treyarch or another developer altogether will be holding the reins.

Level Builder - Call of Duty [Treyarch via Gamer]

The next thing I'd love to do is not based on realism, but stylizing with a little more in-depth look to the materials in the world. Instead of just having an impressionistic background, or having highly stylized characters. Making the characters a little bit more believable, even incorporating bold design, getting a little bit more specific.

So it would be a little bit slash realism and stylization all at once. And it can be achieved. We've done experiments like this, where you take a character and you make them — instead of taking photographs of the character, you base it off of lots of drawings and studies and paintings of the character, with real proportions. But with true design to it. You'll be amazed at what you can do.

Valve's Francke: Game Art Direction In Its 'Infancy' [gamasutra]

"I don't think that this is an issue of dissatisfaction with Take-Two; rather, I think it is rational to believe that in the wake of the $850 million Pandemic/BioWare deal, high quality developers like Bungie and [Rockstar] North would look to test their market value"

Pachter: GTA Dev Rockstar North May Eventually 'Pull a Bungie,' Split from Take-Two [Shacknews]