Sega has released some new information about Iron Man 2, the new Iron Man game being developed as a tie-in for the next Iron Man movie. It's a tie-in, but it won't follow the movie too closely. Instead, writer Matt Fraction will be taking a middle ground approach by drawing from both the movie and comic book universes, both of which he has been involved with. More after the jump.

Capcom has finally dated the much awaited XBLA and PSN outing of Marvel vs. Capcom 2. Earlier reports speculated that the release date of the game will be on June 29 as projected in Marvel Entertainment's Q1 2009 financial report but Capcom has clarified the rumor and pinned down the release date in late July.

Marvel vs Capcom 2 on the PSN and XBL is heating up with some serious combo strings.

Before any of you guys can bust some thumbs though, let's ask ourselves... when will it be released anyway?

I haven't heard much about the movie sequel for Iron Man lately, and already they're talking about the movie tie-in game. Sega has announced via press release that they're now working closely with Marvel Entertainment to deliver Iron Man II. Considering that the movie sequel will follow Tony Stark's dark spiral into alcoholism, maybe we can expect some GTA4 level of how the amount of alcohol imbibed messes up Stark's skill in flying his suit. DUI? Why not FUI? That's flying under the influence, kid.

D'oh! It looks like Marvel Comics is joining the bandwagon in fortifying their defenses against copyright infringement in LittleBigPlanet. Apparently, Marvel has been hounding Sony to start moderating user-created customized Sackboy costumes that take from the Marvel universe. *sniff*

Marvel has announced that their revenue has dropped in the first quarter. However, they are optimistic that their year-end revenue will perform better. In addition, upcoming Marvel games The Incredible Hulk (Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Wii, Nintendo DS, PC, PlayStation Portable) and Spiderman: Web of Shadows (Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Wii, Nintendo DS, PlayStation Portable) were also dated. To find out more, head on over to the full article.

In an interview with GameSpot, Sega's VP of Entertainment Marketing">Scott Steinberg, VP of marketing for Sega of America, said that their bid for the Western market was partly driven with their acquisition of the superheroes franchise from Marvel Entertainment. Earlier, Sega preached that the movie-game adaptation development will improve this time around, and it's anticipated that Sega will be first to bring forth this revelation.

After having previously secured a deal to the Iron Man game, it appears that Sega is also working on the movie-game adaptation of the Hulk, closely linked to the next (yet totally different from "The Incredible Hulk") Hulk movie starring Edward Norton (of "Red Dragon" fame).

It was revealed earlier that Thor and Captain America were also in the planning stages, but Steinberg was able to reveal that the two IPs were already part of the Marvel deal and they are definitely going to come out as separate games, too. However, Steinberg has avoided spilling any details into the development of the titles, only making it clear that the games will be coming in next-gen and current-gen platforms, including the PS2, DS, PSP and PC, although there are no concrete details on that.

There has been mention of the Wii, but Steinberg only said that "it's still [to be determined] right now." There are a lot of developers approaching Sega and hoping to grab a part of the titles to work on, so hopefully an experienced developer for the Wii would take the challenge.

But most importantly, Sega has revealed that they are closely working with movie producers and significant entities in the movie production so that they can "understand what's going on with those guys from a creative standpoint" and deliver a title that "fully [articulates] what [is] going on in the movie."

Here's to hoping, folks!

If you've just spotted this title and muttered, "Well, it's about ******* time!" you definitely aren't alone. Game adaptations of movies are mostly sub-par (with a few exceptions), being half-games that don't even pass as half-movies either.

But in a recent interview with Next Gen, Sega's VP of marketing Scott Steinberg believes that the movie-licensed game will improve in the near future. He believed that the problem of rushing games in a six-month period was to blame.

Movie licenses would usually get shoved into game developers throats and had to be developed in a short deadline. He commented, "No surprise [the licensed game] might not have been the greatest."

But recently the movie and game industry have matured to a point that they take things more seriously now. The movie company see the importance of how a game reaches out to more people, therefore strengthening the fan-base for the franchise. Steinberg explained:

As publishers and the different movie studios are recognizing how important videogames are to the marketing of a film to the [target] demographic, movie studios realise that they can't trivialise the interactive space.

In 1991 or '92 the [movie] studios saw videogames as sort of chump change. They'd bounce perhaps a property six months before a game, basically when the movie was in the can, and publishers tried to crank it out with using an existing engine, threw a couple of artists on it, and shipped a 16-bit game.

Having recently secured a deal with Marvel Entertainment, Sega will now be one of few game development companies to create games based on the Marvel franchise. It's been reported that characters such as Captain America and Thor will also be given their own title, and to have "upcoming movie tie-ins."

Apparently, Sega also licensed the Aliens franchise for two games (an RPG and an FPS) and The Golden Compass franchise, both of which also made it big in the big screen prior to going interactive. What comes out of these games will certainly make or break Sega's claim and rep, but it would be nice to see an improvement after years of poor game adaptations. Now only if someone could do something about games becoming bad movies...