This week's Famitsu magazine revealed several things about Namco Bandai's anticipated fighting game sequel, Soul Calibur 4. The magazine not only revealed that the latest installment has Katsuoshi Sasaki as director and Masaki Hoshino as lead programmer; it also noted that the focus in the sequel is still "cool action" fighting.

On the technical side, it was reported that while Namco Bandai is considering supporting 1080p, the developers feel that a frame-rate of sixty frames per second in of utmost importance.

Story-wise, Soul Calibur IV is set some time after Soul Calibur Legends. This tale of swords and souls is set to move around the story of a father who used the legendary Soul Edge to become a hero, only to end up killing his own son and fall prey to the Soul Edge's corruption.

The cast in the game is set to be larger, and so far only a CG shot of Ivy is being shown by Namco Bandai. We do know from the teaser trailer though that Mitsurugi and Nightmare are probably in it too.

It was not noted if Soul Calibur 4 will include a continuation of the "Chronicles of the Sword" mode found in Soul Calibur 3, or if the latest installment will implement the massive customization options found in Soul Calibur 3. Soul Calibur 4 is set to be released for the PlayStation 3 and the Xbox 360 in 2008.

Now that a new teaser another Soul Calibur is out, fans of the franchise are eager to compare what's known about the new installment (Soul Calibur IV) from the previous versions in the franchise. Since there wasn't much shown in that short teaser, folks turn to the previewed character art and lament/rejoice that it seems that with each passing Soul Calibur title, the appearance of the ladies become more and more "gratuitous" (for lack of a more politically correct term).

Games Radar has a rather lengthy musing on the state of mammaries in the Soul Calibur franchise, even going through images of other female characters in the game (like Tira and Setsuna) and analyzing their glands. While it's good cheesecake and all that, we believe that the video below that we found on GameTrailers better illustrates the clothing/mamary situation in Soul Calibur IV.

Should we attribute this advent of cheesecake to the rise in popularity of the Dead or Alive franchise? Or should we just think of this as Namco Bandai recognizing the "needs" of their fanbase? Anyhow, the video's below, click play and er, enjoy. (For the morally concerned, don't worry, there's nothing here that you didn't already see in the teaser video. Think of this as video game "Baywatch".)

Rev Rogers Govender, Dean of Manchester Cathedral, claims that Sony has failed to engage with the Church of England in an open dialogue regarding the apparent similarity of a church in Resistance: Fall of Man to Manchester Cathedral. Well, there are reports that say this isn't true.

Aside from our previous report where Sony spokeswoman Nanako Kato talks about negotiations between Sony and the Church being difficult, Sony also says that it has "spoken to Manchester Cathedral authorities" - that is, if Next-Gen, the anonymous Sony insider, is to be believed.

It seems that what the Church is looking for is a more public response from Sony regarding the matter. "We believe that a silent response on this issue is not acceptable behaviour for a responsible large corporate body," says Rev Govender.

That seems unlikely though as the supposed Sony insider says, "We don’t anticipate any further public statements on the matter in the immediate future."

A publicized apology from Sony? Sony bowing to the Church despite their already bad PR record when it comes to marketing their games? Come on. This is madness. This is Sony. Kidding aside though, it'll be interesting to see how Sony "officially" responds to Rev Govender's claims.

Okay, in our previous report on Namco's GunCon 3 accessory for the PS3, several of you folks wondered in the comments if the product will come in black or orange. Well, here's something that may disappoint some of you. Wired's Chris Kohler reports that US and EU will get the orange gun shown in the images we gave you. Japan gets the black gun.

Also, some of you were wondering if it'll work with LCDs, well, here's some positive news for you folks: the gun works by placing markers on the left and right side of your TV. A camera in the GunCon 3 should be able to detect the position of the markers use them to figure out what you're targeting. So, just like the Wiimote, any type of screen should work.

It was also revealed that there are six buttons on the device and two analog sticks, one of which is placed in the sub-grip that you can hold with your left hand. The second stick is in the barrel of the gun. It wasn't made clear though as to how these analog sticks will work with Time Crisis 4 on the PlayStation 3. We'll update you as soon as we have more info.

An article on Doctor Dobb's Programming Journal looks at the many advantages and disadvantages of programming for the Cell processor. After all of the tech talk and the analysis were done, the conclusion is such:

....The Cell offers an impressive potential for performance. However, due to its architecture and limited support offered by the compiler, you can't expect to exploit this potential by just recompiling your current applications. Applications must be radically redesigned in terms of computation and data transfers.

Of course, this caveat of "radically redesigning" applications for the Cell only means that game developers will have to spend some more if they want their multiplatform game to show up on the Sony PlayStation 3.

What's amusing about this is that Sony seems to agree. GamePro reports that Sony Senior Director of Corporate Communications, Dave Karraker, had this to say in his blog:

If your game starts on Xbox 360 you will have to re-engineer aspects of the game to run properly on PS3. This means additional effort. Some developers have been complaining about this but I don’t believe we can solve that.

Now this doesn't directly mean that Sony is leaving the developers to figure things out for themselves. Karraker does hint that they're doing what they can to help developers along. While talking about online capabilities, Karakker said: "XBL provides more and better standard libraries for online gaming to developers. For the same features on PS3, developers have to do some extra work. We’re catching up, but there is a difference."

Also, thanks to Sony we already know that starting games on the PS3 is just as costly as starting games on other platforms. "If a game starts life on PS3, then man-hours per feature or costs related to asset production are comparable with industry norms," or so says Sony officials to GamePro.

But what about multiplatform games? How long do we have to wait for the PS3 to be friendly to porting? Karraker says they've already done some steps. He says that this is what the SCE offered to devs so far:

Middleware tools like Havok and other specialist graphics tools are now customized to exploit Cell’s SPUs. These mean that developers don’t have to reinvent those particular wheels themselves. Also, PlayStation Edge does some very difficult and performance-critical aspects of the graphics pipeline on the SPUs: geometry processing, animation, compression - delivering performance unachievable on other systems. This is available for free to all developers from SCE.

Sony better get more of those tools out. More tools only mean more potential games on the system, and that's what we all want, right?

According to an Associated Press report, Sony will be talking with the Church of England regarding their much-reported complaint that the Manchester cathedral is a setting in the Insomniac Games sci-fi shooter, Resistance: Fall of Man.

The Church of England has demanded an apology from Sony, and maintains that Sony has not asked to use Manchester Cathedral in the game.

A Sony Computer Entertainment spokeswoman, Nanako Kato, acknowledged that the church depicted in the game does have a resemblance in some parts to Manchester cathedral. She said, however, that they weren't really aiming to represent a specific church in the game, but instead create a backdrop that felt like an authentic old church.

Kato goes on to say that more time may be needed for the talk between Sony and the church due to the sensitive nature of the topic.  Said Kato, "Many historical buildings are used in entertainment such as movies, including Godzilla and the Tokyo Tower and King Kong in Manhattan."

We've previously reported on the rumors regarding the online retailer listing that says "Time Crisis 4 with Guncon", and well, now its rumor no more. Namco Bandai has officially announced the existence of the much rumored Time Crisis 4 for the PlayStation 3.

JeuxFrance reports that Time Crisis 4 was revealed alongside the revelation of the new "Guncon 3" gun accessory for the PS3. Images of the accessory along with a small glimpse of Time Crisis 4 gameplay can be seen below.

Time Crisis 4 and the Guncon 3 accessory should be released in Japan by the end of the year.

No official word yet on the price of the Guncon 3, so far all we have to go with is that GameStop and Amazon.com listings. We'll update you as soon as there is more info on the game, and if there is confirmation if it will reach North American shores. Stay tuned.

   

The latest issue of Famitsu magazine reveals that there will be a new Tekken 5: Dark Resurrection available on the PlayStation Network which will allow for online versus play.

NeoGAF's neo2046 reveals that the download should cost around 2800 Yen or US$ 22.89. For those who have already downloaded the previous Tekken 5 from PSN, the update should only cost them 1000 Yen or US$ 8.17.

While the download itself costs a bit, online matches between players should be free. SDTekken.com reports that other features also include a new online leaderboard, a new practice mode, and a new survival mode.

So far no official release dates for the upgraded Tekken 5: Dark Resurrection have been revealed. Rest assured that we'll update you folks as soon as there is word. For now, we'll all have to wonder how Namco Bandai will manage to work around possible latency issues and such.

Intrepid QJ reader SephXII left this lovely note in our mailbox today: "PS3 XMB Hole is currently present in PS3 v1.00-1.11 Firmware. This allows PS3 Blu-ray Disc back-ups to boot but not run just yet." That note of course, is hot enough to raise any PS3 owner's eyebrow, so we decided to give it a look.

Apparently there was this report that is circulating around the internet that says that by doing certain things, backups of PS3 games are now bootable. The thing is, and we have to stress this, is that the method only boots up the backups, and doesn't run them. Here's a video of that discovery:

The method was discovered by a netizen that decides to go by the handle "hacked2123." Using a SELF (HDD formater) from the recent SDK leak, he was able to boot a PS3 backup, but not run it. Others have speculated that this may be so because a DVD-R was used as the medium of the backup and not a Blu-ray Disc Recordable.

Given that there has been a lot of progress in regards to tinkering with the PS3's system, a lot of folks hope that there will be more improvements in this matter. As always, we'll keep you updated as soon as word breaks. Stay tuned.

Cinema Blend's gaming section CB Games reports about a rumor that Frank Miller's 300 will soon be made for Sony's PlayStation 3 and Microsoft's Xbox 360.

Not much word yet on what genre the game will be or which studio will be developing it. What gives this rumor some sense of credence is that even EGM's resident rumor monger, Qurtermann, is seeing it fit to spread the word on this rumor.

CB Games' Rich Knight hopes for a strategy title, We at QJ however hope that it builds on what the PSP version has done so far. We're not asking for a concept by concept remake though, but a decent next-gen action title would be nice. It would also be pretty amazing if the next-gen game managed to adopt the graphical stylings of the Frank Miller graphic novel, but that's just us getting a bit ahead of ourselves.

We'll update you as soon there's any official word that confirms or denies this rumor. Keep reading.