With game installations, downloadable content and digitally distributed titles cluttering up our PlayStation 3's brain, it comes as little surprise to see Sony announcing yet another SKU with increased storage capacity. The word from its 2008 Games Convention press conference is that a 160 gigglebyte model -- which is otherwise identical to others units -- will be hitting Europe on October 31st, complete with €70 worth of downloadable game content. But is the €449 price tag a trick or a treat?

We're checking with Sony regarding any plans to release this model elsewhere.

Tearing a page straight out of the Rock Band 2 playbook, Sony announced a new service – to be made available through a firmware update – that will allow folks to essentially rip the tracks from PS2 versions of SingStar onto the PS3. IGN gives us a play-by-play of the service: "Just throw in the PS2 disc and you can grab the tracks!" Epic! We're curious about the details: What's to prevent you from borrowing or renting games? Will this work on all PS2 versions of SingStar? Will this work on all PS3s (even those without PS2 backwards compatibility)? Is this enough to compete with Lips' play-your-own-music functionality? More as we know it.

At its Leipzig Games Convention press conference today, Sony unveiled a wireless keypad peripheral that attaches to the top of the PlayStation 3 controller (presumably into the mini-USB port). The keypad also features a "touchpad mode" for mouse input. Pricing was not revealed, but the device will be released in 8 different languages.

It's worth noting that MadCatz released an attachable thumbpad for PS3 in April 2007.

Well, this should make the patented Joystiq Instrument Compatibility Matrix a bit easier to memorize. Straight from our special Leipzig correspondent Jem Alexander, Activision says that If you play Guitar Hero World Tour on PS2, PS3 or 360, your instrument is going to work. Whether it be from Rock Band, Rock Band 2 or whatever, it works with Guitar Hero World Tour.

Now, what does this mean for the Wii version of the game? We have absolutely no idea. But hey, what are you complaining about: It's got Miis in it! Isn't that enough?

We were a little startled when Eurogamer revealed Ratchet and Clank: Quest for Booty was a 3.2 GB download. We knew the game had junk in the trunk, but the last we heard it was around 2.3 GB. With no Blu-ray disc planned for North America, the less time we have to spend waiting for the interminable download from the PSN (plus install) this Thursday, the better.

We contacted Sony and were told that the difference between the European and NA version could be blamed on the 11 languages being included with the former, with two .pkg files containing 5-6 languages each. Not that a file size would have stopped us from getting the $15 game, but why do the Europeans keep getting Blu-ray releases of PSN games while North American consumers learn to macrame waiting to download another hefty PSN title? Come on, Sony. We're North America, we're not used to gaming inequity like Europe. Give us the disc and make them wait. It's just the way things are supposed to be.

British power metal squealers DragonForce will debut a new and inevitably over-the-top single in a Guitar Hero III track pack later this week. Taken from their new album, Ultra Beatdown, "Heroes of Our Time" will no doubt challenge serious shredders with a never-ending string of shifting notes and finger-knot solos when it arrives on Xbox Live Marketplace and the PlayStation Store on August 21.

The DragonForce Track Pack will also provide two other overwrought songs, namely "Revolution Deathsquad" and "Operation Ground and Pound," from the album dubbed Inhuman Rampage. Expect this one to go for the usual 500 MS Points ($6.25).

[Via press release]

Speaking at the outset of this year's Leipzig Games Convention, Crytek boss Cevat Yerli revealed that the developer's graphical tour de force, Crysis, cost an estimated $22 million to create. Yerli has previously lamented the effect piracy has had on the title, but reiterated that it's still recouped the development costs, saying, "If it wasn't profitable I wouldn't be able to stand here."

Best known for their stunning visuals, Crytek's game engines are also guilty of bringing even the mightiest of gaming PCs to their knees. While the upcoming, heavily-optimized Crysis: Warhead promises a significant performance increase even on mid-range systems, Crytek is already cooking up its next GPU melter, which Yerli says should be ready by 2012. That's when he anticipates GPU tech making the next major leap in its evolution; until then, he expects fellow developers to focus more on what they already have to work with, by means of stylized graphics and hardware accelerated physics.

Source – Crysis cost 22 million to make, IGN
Source – Crytek: New engine in 2012, IGN

From making rival gangsters offers they can't refuse, to using your voice to command soldiers not to refuse orders, these fresh-off-the-editing-computer videos from EA's The Godfather II and Ubisoft's Tom Clancy's EndWar are presented for your viewing pleasure (and "Should I pre-order either of them?" evidence pool). The EndWar trailer is the same one being trotted out at the Leipzig Games Convention 2008; the first look at EA's gangster sequel was shown to the press last week at the publisher's annual Studio Showcase. But you don't have to travel to Germany (or even the Bay Area) to watch 'em – just click through after the break.

Source – Godfather II at GameTrailers
Source – Tom Clancy's EndWar at GameTrailers

In his latest report from Infinity Ward HQ, community confidant Fourzerotwo brings word that the Call of Duty 4 battlefront could see some changes soon. No less than eight new multiplayer playlists are in development, of which four are currently being tested, and at least one can pass through the servers without a patch: Hardcore Headquarters. But we're taking a keen interest in another playlist, Hardcore Ricochet, which turns teamkillers' attacks against them. It's like we're rubber, they're glue -- whatever they shoot, bounces off us and ... burrows deep into their treacherous guts!

Peep the full descriptions and statuses of all the planned playlists on Fourzerotwo's blog.

[Thanks, Michael]

PSN title Novastrike will receive a major update in the next few weeks. Kevin McCann, president of Tiki Games, writes on the PlayStation Blog that the patch will tame the difficulty levels a bit, add Trophies and make several other tweaks to the top-down omni-directional kill-anything-that-moves shooter.

For those who purchased the $10 title, the list of changes made appears to be quite significant and might be worth giving the title another spin. McCann writes that he's looking forward to hearing from those who stopped playing the game due to the difficulty issues once the patch is released, while reiterating that a European release for the game will happen "as soon as possible."

We hope you're ready for a face full of freshly, um, zombified zombies on film, because that's exactly what Capcom has delivered at the Leipzig Games Convention. This new, entirely in-game trailer for Resident Evil 5 doesn't show too much that's especially new, but it's worth taking note of the vehicle chase sequence and hey ... is that another mine cart level?

Click on the video above and you'll get a peek at playing as Chris Redfield's female sidekick, Sheva Alomar, along with some oh-so-brief snippets of various (we presume) über-important cutscenes. Sure, it may be more RE4, but is that really so awful – especially when it looks this scary-good?

IGN reports that the latest issue of Famitsu PS3 is chock-a-block with details on the forthcoming Final Fantasy XIII demo, due to be packaged with the Blu-ray Disc release of Final Fantasy: Advent Children Complete. The info comes straight from the game's director, Motomu Toriyama, who divulges more than its expected length – which, as we previously reported, could break the two-hour mark. (Presumably just to prove that more than an hour of the game is actually finished.)

According to Toriyama, the demo will be "Like the FFVII demo that was included with PlayStation's Tobal Nol.1," allowing players to experience the game's opening sequence and prologue.

He also says that the primary goal of the demo is to get players acquainted with the new party system, which will allow them to experience the game's story from multiple characters' perspectives. Players will control more than one character in the demo – Toriyama points out to Famitsu that, in fact, there's no one "central" character in FFXIII – and, in "classic" FF form, will be controlling them directly, one after another, in purely turn-based combat.

Replacing political and social unrest with "go-anywhere" driving, Codemasters has partnered with French dev Asobo Studios to publish the company's open world-style racer, Fuel, for the Xbox 360, PS3, and PC sometime next year. Asobo's track record isn't likely to relieve you of your socks anytime soon, however. The studio's recent efforts include video game adaptations of Ratatouille, Wall-E and The Mummy, so we're not expecting another GRiD or DiRT just yet.

On top of dynamic weather and dozens of drivable vehicles, Codies boasts that Fuel will feature the "largest environment ever created" in a racing game, and that the game's absurd 5,000 square miles of weather-ravaged terrain will "revolutionize" the genre. There is that old saying about size not mattering as much as how you use it, though clearly this is not the approach being used here.

We are all interested in the future. Indeed, as the great Criswell so astutely observed, "We are all interested in the future, for that is where you and I are going to spend the rest of our lives." And it wouldn't be much of a life if it wasn't spent playing the latest video games, no doubt powered by trillions of tetraflops and a giggle-inducing number of gigabytes. Crytek CEO Cevat Yerli has seen this future (it's where he bought his Crysis-capable computer), and has concluded that the next generation of consoles -- as in the Xbox 720 and the PlayStation 4 -- could arrive in 2011 or 2012.

Discussing "The Future of Gaming Graphics" at Leipzig's GC Developer Conference, Yerli estimated that Microsoft and Sony's next offerings would arrive "in three to four years' time, although there are good reasons why it should be 2010 already...but we'll see." Crytek, which most recently worked on Crysis Warhead, has also pinned 2012 as the debut year for its next in-house engine and follow-up to last year's impressive CryEngine2.

Regardless of timing, we're pleased to see that not everybody thinks the current cavalcade of consoles is our last.

According to DFC intelligence figures cited by Dave Perry, Sony has lost more money on the PlayStation 3 hardware than it made on the PlayStation 2 during its five most popular years. In pure numbers speak it's lost $3 billion on the PS3, which is about equivalent to everything it made selling PS2s during its peak years. This story would actually have a lot more impact if Carl Sagan was around to say "beelyuns."

Perry, best known for his stint at Shiny Entertainment, was speaking at the really long-named Games Convention Developers Conference, which appears to be both a Convention and a Conference, and was just using the figures to underscore how much Sony was spending on hardware development. However, the 1UP article doesn't mention until near the end that the original PS2 lost money in its first year, and that Sony (and the other console makers) does this so it can make bank on the software/games that people need to fuel their systems.

In all fairness, the article goes on to explain that Microsoft lost $4 billion on the original Xbox, and has had to spend over $1 billion replacing faulty hardware in the 360 and extending the warranty for original purchasers. So, we tend to think $5 billion trumps $3 billion. The real winner in this struggle? Nintendo. It has been churning a profit on that little Wii since it hopped out of the gate. Rassin' frassin' wand-wagglin' profiteers.