It’s taken longer than a Keith Moon drum solo but UK pricing and release dates for Rock Band 2 on the Wii, PS3 and PS2 have finally been confirmed. Developer, Harmonix, has announced that the much-delayed sequel to Rock Band will arrive for the PS3 and PS2 on March 23rd, while prospective Wii rock gods will have to twiddle their thumbs and air guitar for that bit longer until April 20. The game will be priced at £50 for the Playstation 3, £30 for the PS2 and £40 for the Nintendo Wii. Xbox 360 gamers have been rocking out with the game for some time.For Rock Band virgins, Harmonix has also announced some new pricing for the tools you’ll need to rock out in your living room. • Stand alone guitars will retail at £39.99 • Stand alone drums will retail for £49.99 • An “Instrument Edition” including drums, guitar and microphone will retail for £89.99. In addition to the new price points, consumers will now also be able to purchase the Rock Band Instrument Edition and Rock Band software together for £119.99 for the PLAYSTATION 3 and Xbox 360 and for £109.99 for the PlayStation 2 and Wii. Rock Band 2 will allow gamers to export ‘most of the songs from the original Rock Band disc’ as well as add-on editions, export your avatar onto the Internet and waste your parents’ hard-earned cash by being able to buy lots of other tunes from the Rock Band online music store [which has flogged over 36 million already].-Martin Lynch rock band games consoles

It seems that everyone but Sony thinks that the PS3 needs a price cut but current speculation from one set of analysts claims that the long overdue cut could be announced in a matter of days. Janco Partners’ Mike Hickey is claiming that Sony needs to hack $100 off the price of the PS3 [bringing it down to $299] to make it more popular with cash-strapped consumers and that the cut is imminent. However, it should be pointed out that Sony has so far resisted pressure to cut costs and generally rebuffs any talk of price cuts. In a note to investors, Hickey wrote: “Recent channel checks indicate increased speculation for a PS3 price cut announcement from Sony in the next couple of days. We think the company needs to reduce the current price by USD 100 to effectively restart unit velocity at retail. We believe the market is expecting a PS3 price cut in April or by June at the latest.” Without the cut, he argues that the PS3 will clog up shelves and developers will abandon it. “If Sony does not cut the price of their console, we expect the continuation of languishing PS3 hardware sales and the potential for publishers to accelerate their reallocation of resources away from the PS3 console.” Hickey also points to additional rumours that Sony is planning to introduce a PS3 without the Blu-ray drive in order to compete at the low-end with the likes of the Xbox 360. We really don’t see that happening though. Sony has since come back and said it “definitely has no plans” to issue a price reduction anytime soon and that it’s still on target to hit 10m units sold for its fiscal year.-Martin Lynch [Gameindustry.biz] ps3 consoles

With the price of Blu-ray players dropping all the time, Sony can′t rely on selling a healthy amount of PS3s by appealing to HD enthusiasts for much longer. Rather than follow Microsoft’s lead by dropping the price of the console it looks like it will be attempting to merge the future of gaming and movies by supplying them both on the same disc. The company is currently working on making the most of Blu-ray’s 50GB capacity by basically burning the equivalent full-length feature film to the empty space on a game-disc, which typically only uses around 30GB. Director of hardware marketing John Koller thinks it’s the future of entertainment, saying that “We are actively pushing, and the way that we see the future is that the movie and the game are placed on the same disc. There are a lot of developers who say, we have this game based on a movie, wouldn′t it be great to marry these concepts? We will definitely see this stuff this year.” Sony seems to be forgetting the fact that the vast majority of ‘movie-based′ games are fairly rubbish, in which case it’ll be appealing to a rather small collection of fanboys for many of the titles that get chosen. Interesting idea, but not something that we’d consider particularly revolutionary. Paul Lester [VideoBusiness] PS3 Blu ray Sony

Games sales have already shown how they’re largely recession-proof but just what was the ‘Game of Games’ in 2008. Was it the gangster-fuelled Grand Theft Auto IV, alien-infested Gears Of War 2 or maybe the most talked about first-person shooter, Call of Duty 4: World At War? Nope. It was Mario Kart Wii, leading a Wii charge that pretty much rolled over every other game on the planet. The little racer sold almost 9m copies in the UK, US and Japan to top the games charts for 2008, according to the latest figures from NPD, GfK Chart-Track and Enterbrain [in Japan]. Wii Fit managed a very healthy second with 8.231m global sales, with GTA IV in third on 7.29m.GTA IV is also a perfect example of badly many Western games do in Japan because while it sold 5.18m copies in the US and 1.85m in the UK, it only managed to shift 256,000 in Japan. In contrast, Super Smash Bros. Brawl for the Wii sold over 1.75m in Japan and just over 400,000 in the UK. In 4th and 5th places were the aforementioned Super Smash Bros. Brawl on 6.32m and Call of Duty: World At War on 5.89m, respectively. Overall, games sales were up 11% on 2007 and the UK showed the biggest jump with a 26% hike. Japanese sales dipped by an alarming 13%. “Because of this amazing growth and coupled with the downturn currently being experienced in Japan, the UK market has for the first time overtaken Japan as the number two world market,” said GfK Chart-Track’s Dorian Bloch.-Martin Lynch [Eurogamer] games wii consoles

Hotly anticipating the arrival of Resident Evil 5? You should be, it looks great, though if you’re one of the 1.8 million Xbox owners who have already grabbed the demo when it was released last week you’ll know this already. PS3 owners will be pleased to hear that it’s now available for download on their platform as well, as a 924MB grab from the Playstation store. The early release includes two sections of the full game covering a range of puzzles and of course some rootin-tootin gun slingin’ action, during which you can team up with a friend in two-player co-op mode. Choose between online or split-screen multiplayer, or of course you can check it out on your lonesome in single player. There was a fair bit of controversy surrounding the initial trailer, mostly because you’re running around killing crazy black people, which for some reason is ‘racist’ and totally unacceptable compared with running around killing crazy white people in the previous games. See for yourself in the (part 1 of 2) video below. Resident Evil 5 proper will be released on the 360 and PS3 on the 13th of March. - Paul Lester [Gamespot] Resident Evil gaming consoles

David Reeves, the head of Sony Computer Entertainment Europe, has hinted that there will be a Ṕ cut but is not prepared to say when, adding that the Ṕ will probably always be the most expensive console. Speaking to Eurogamer, Reeves argued that despite falling year-on-year sales for the Ṕ, the Xbox 360 is not a million units ahead in PAL territories, as Microsoft recently claimed. “Xbox 360 is not ahead by a million units… Our installed base now is very close to 8.5 million units in PAL territories. Our numbers show we are absolutely neck-and-neck.” “We’ve said it would be 10 million [units sold in 2009], and it is 10 million. We had a price decrease in the previous year, and we didn’t have a price decrease this year. Xbox 360 did, and Nintendo was already quite low.” As for cutting the price, Reeves was more evasive, but admitted that they may need to and agreed that the Ṕ will always be the most expensive console.”I think it will [stay the most expensive], yes. I′m not saying there are going to be any price cuts at all in the short term or the medium term. I′m not saying we don’t need to do it - we are expensive. It is possible that as the cost [of manufacturing] comes down, we will be able to do it. But we’re protecting ourselves with a very hard shell to get through the next one or two years of an economic situation. If you’re experienced, you know you have to go into that mode - it’s like being an armadillo. You have to be hard, and then you will come out when the sun comes out. If, as an industry, we can get through the next six to seven months, we’re going to find a massive uplift in September and October. I′m very optimistic about it.” He did admit that the recent wave of PSP games weren’t up to much in PAL territories and have hurt sales, but that things will pick up from Spring. Considering the recent fall off in PSP sales and the fact that a number of key publishers no longer make PSP versions of their main titles, that’s an optimistic claim indeed.-Martin Lynch [Eurogamer] ps3 games console

If you’ve been hotly anticipating the launch of the Nintendo DSi since it was announced last October, then first of all we’d ask you ‘why?’ and secondly tell you that it has been confirmed for a UK release in the Spring. This will follow a swathe of new titles including GTA: Chinatown Wars, Mystery Case Files: Millionheir and Rhythm Paradise, though we’re yet to hear of a platform-buster that′ll make enough use of the DSi’s new features to kick-start sales. Considering it’s already been confirmed that the new console will be ̸-proof (along with other related homebrew cartridges) we’re not convinced it′ll get off to a great start. Despite the fact that the company has appeared all but untouchable in the console market, it might need these sales more than you’d think, as Nintendo has rather surprisingly slashed its full-year profit forecasts by 33%. This has led experts to predict that the ‘Wii-boom’ may now be over, citing it as a ‘baffling and potentially very worrying’ sign for the console. It’s not the only one either, with Sony announcing some rather depressing statistics for its own range, whose figures showed a decline of between 15% and 51% for the last three months of 2008. Will the madness never end? - Paul Lester [PCWorld] & [T3] Nintendo DSi Sony

Sony’s overall slump in sales has hit all of its Playstation devices with figures for its financial ̭ 2008 showing that the PS3, PS2 and PSP consoles all sold less than they did a year ago. Sony’s third quarter financial report - which includes Christmas - showed that sales of its flagship PS3 console topped 4.46m, down 440,000 units on the 4.9m sold for the same period in 2007. This is a big blow for Sony, which has said it expects the PS3 to be profitable this year. In contrast, Microsoft’s Xbox 360 enjoyed a bumper Christmas. If sales of the PS3 were worrying for Sony then things are even more dire in the PSP camp, where sales declined 680,000 units to 5.08m. As for the remarkable PS2, which has managed to sell strongly [and often outsell] its PS3 successor, sales dropped off by a significant 57%, plummeting by 2.88m units to hit 2.52m. Software sales for both the PSP and PS2 were also pretty dismal. Sales of PSP software dropped by 2.8m games to 15.5m while PS2 game sales - like the hardware figures - plunged by 32m software titles to 29m. The only upside for Sony’s gaming division was that PS3 software sales saw an increase to 40.8m, a rise of 14.8m. To be fair though, there weren′t all that many PS3 games available at the end of 2007. Can Sony afford not to cut the price of the PS3 now? -Martin Lynch ps3 xbox consoles

Want a bit more realism in your Guitar Hero/Rock Band sessions? Need a psychological advantage over the competition? Well then check out the WarBeast Guitar, which is compatible with both games and differs from the rest because it’s the first and only full-sized guitar on the market. Aside from looking pretty damned awesome it features an extended glowing strum bar that’s supposed to help improve gameplay, solo fret buttons, a ‘tone’ switch for Rock Band and a dedicated Star Power button for Guitar hero. The whammy bar is adjustable for comfort and it detaches into three pieces for storage, so it really does seem better than your stock guitar in just about every conceivable way. Of course you have to pay the price to look this cool playing your favourite game; it′ll set you back £83.91, from the link below and is only available for the PS3 at the moment, though further platform support is expected to appear. Casual strummers need not apply. - Paul Lester [Step2DDR] Guitar Hero Rock Band PS3

Fans of the old arcade fighting classics or those anticipating the arrival of Streetfighter IV (due out in February) are in for a treat of an experience on the PS3, provided they can get their hands on the XCM Dominator joystick. This old-school styled peripheral offers six control buttons and a navigational stick, along with programmable rapid fire and macro modes that can store 20 commands to make mincemeat of those tricky combos. It sports rows of blue LEDs around the exterior for a bit of neon retro feel when the lights are out and you can even hook up two, provided you’re happy with a friend having the same unfair advantage, for some dual-action. Sadly it doesn’t look like it has been confirmed for UK release yet, so you’ll have to order it from the US if you can’t wait to find out. It’s available for pre-order now from Extreme Mods and is scheduled for release next week, costing $89.99. - Paul Lester [SlashGear] joystick peripheral PS3