Final Fantasy XIII hits the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 on March 9, 2010, introducing both sets of platform owners to the sky city of Cocoon.

The game, which hits in Japan on December 17, will include a new battle system, a “dramatic story” focused on the emotions of the character and will feature a Leona Lewis single as the game’s opening theme.

Also, holy crap, are you looking at this video? Because it’s spectacular. The video also gives us a better look at the game’s Paradigm system.

You may want to watch this video full-screen, just click on that button in the bottom right corner.

The scenes are so powerful that despite already having a Mature rating, players can choose to skip playing through it.

Details of the scene came to light after footage from the game was leaked on the Internet. Activision says that the footage comes from a game obtained illegally and “is not representative of the overall gameplay experience in Modern Warfare 2″.

You probably want to stop reading now if you don’t want to hear anything about the game.

“Infinity Ward’s Modern Warfare 2 features a deep and gripping storyline in which players face off against a terrorist threat dedicated to bringing the world to the brink of collapse. The game includes a plot involving a mission carried out by a Russian villain who wants to trigger a global war. In order to defeat him, the player infiltrates his inner circle. The scene is designed to evoke the atrocities of terrorism,” according to the statement provided to Kotaku from Activision.

“At the beginning of the game, players encounter a mandatory ‘checkpoint’ in which they are warned that an upcoming segment may contain disturbing elements and they can choose not to engage in the gameplay that involves this scene. Consistent with its content, the game has been given an ‘M’ for Mature by the Entertainment Software Ratings Board. The rating is prominently displayed on the front and back of the packaging, as well as in all advertising.”

It sounds like Modern Warfare 2 isn’t planning on riding on the success of its predecessor. Whether the game goes too far will have to wait until all of us can play the game and experience the scenes in context.

The new system goes on sale November 3, just in time for holiday shopping. The unit is the same size and shape as the 120GB PlayStation 3 Slim, only with slightly over double the hard drive capacity. The system seems to be priced a bit lower than its UK counterparts at $US349.99.

Every day my $US600 60GB PS3 launch purchase looks more and more ridiculous.

NEW 250GB PlayStation 3 System Available November 3 [PlayStation Blog]

The assistance mode will be introduced in Nintendo’s marquee November title for the Wii and is officially called the Super Guide. Using it, players who struggle with the classic side-scrolling action in New Super Mario Bros. Wii will be able to let the Wii run through a level on its own, automatically playing through the content without the gamer’s input. Players will have the option to re-assume control at any time.

Nintendo’s attempt to introduce a special helper mode in Wii games was first reported by Kotaku in January when it came to be known, informally on this site, as the “kind code”. In June, Nintendo’s development director, Shigeru Miyamoto, confirmed the mode’s inclusion in New Super Mario Bros., though the company seemed conflicted at the time about spilling the beans.

Any hesitation about revealing the mode ended this morning when, in a hotel demo suite in New York, Kotaku was shown how the Super Guide works. Nintendo is using this new help option to offer an unprecedented amount of in-game assistance, but it will only be available to players using the game’s single-player mode who have failed at a level eight times. Nintendo’s intent is to offer Super Guide as a helper for its less skilled customers and to allow its designers to make some of the game’s levels devilishly difficult.

New Super Mario Bros. gives a starting player of the game five lives. So, to activate the Super Guide option this morning, a Nintendo representative had to sacrifice her Mario character five times, then use a Continue option to replenish her lives before losing the rest needed to enable the help. Once she did that, a floating green box appeared at the start of the level she had repeatedly failed at. Hitting it with Mario—the only available playable character in single-player—will restart the level in Super Guide mode. Mario is replaced with a computer-controlled Luigi, who then proceeds through the level on his own.

The recorded Luigi playthroughs are run in-engine, not as pre-recorded video. They are, essentially, the equivalent of “ghost modes” commonly available in racing games, though the player can only watch Luigi do his thing, not play alongside him with Mario.

The Nintendo rep showed Kotaku two Luigi super-guide runs. She explained that these would be simple zips through the game’s levels and would not reveal shortcuts and secrets. The runs were definitely not the perfect playthroughs that a gamer might find if they searched YouTube for an expertly played Mario Bros. speed run. A more faulty human hand was evident. In fact, in this pre-release version of the game, the first Luigi run that I was shown ended prematurely when Super Guide Luigi died halfway through the level. That’s not supposed to happen in the final build, Kotaku was told. In the second Luigi run, the Mario brother got through the level on his own without any trouble.

What separates Super Guide from traditional video-based playthroughs of game levels is that the player can assume control during the Luigi run. At any moment, the player can press a button and cancel the computer control of Luigi. An indicator showing that that game is in Super Guide mode stays on screen, and the player assumes control of Luigi, rather than switching to Mario. But the breakthrough in the feature is that the player is not starting the level from the beginning. They are taking control in the midst of the Super Guide run. Thanks to this, players who repeatedly struggle with a tough part of a level in New Super Mario Bros. Wii will be able to let Super Guide Luigi get past that tough part for them. Even though a player takes over as Luigi using this help system, the completion of the level counts and they can play deeper into the game.

The levels of New Super Mario Bros. Wii I saw today seemed harder than those of the last side-scrolling Mario platformer, New Super Mario Bros. on the DS. Super Guide does appear to have given Nintendo licence to make the new game tougher and may provide the relief some players need to get to the end of the latest Mario world-hopping adventure.

More than 5,000 iconic comic book characters will soon be in the hands of Disney, raising serious questions about the future of Marvel video game titles from Activision, Sega, and the upcoming MMO from Gazillion Entertainment. Under the terms of the agreement, Disney will pay Marvel shareholders $US30 per share for their Marvel stock, plus .745 of a share of Disney stock for each share they own.

“This transaction combines Marvel’s strong global brand and world-renowned library of characters including Iron Man, Spider-Man, X-Men, Captain America, Fantastic Four and Thor with Disney’s creative skills, unparalleled global portfolio of entertainment properties, and a business structure that maximizes the value of creative properties across multiple platforms and territories,” said Robert A. Iger, President and Chief Executive Officer of The Walt Disney Company. “Ike Perlmutter and his team have done an impressive job of nurturing these properties and have created significant value. We are pleased to bring this talent and these great assets to Disney.”

That’s Disney’s say on the matter, and here is Marvel’s, from the official press release:

“Disney is the perfect home for Marvel’s fantastic library of characters given its proven ability to expand content creation and licensing businesses,” said Ike Perlmutter, Marvel’s Chief Executive Officer. “This is an unparalleled opportunity for Marvel to build upon its vibrant brand and character properties by accessing Disney’s tremendous global organisation and infrastructure around the world.”

We’re staying on top of the situation, with calls out to Disney, Marvel, Activision, and SEGA for comment on what effects this move will have on Marvel-based video game properties.

Molyneux will be talking about the setting and the story of this third role-playing game during Microsoft’s Gamescom press conference, which is scheduled to commence later this morning.

We’ll bring you all the details of the announcement – and everything else Microsoft have to offer – once the presser begins at 10am Central European Time (6pm AEST).

Update: And it’s official. Fable designer Peter Molyneux has just announced Fable III for the Xbox 360.

Hirai noted that it will be have the same features and function of the current PS3, with a 120 gb drive. It will be 33 percent smaller, 36 percent lighter.

The unit will cost $US299 in the US, 299 euros, 29980 yen.

It was widely speculated among the gaming press that Sony would announce a slim version of the PlayStation 3. Recurring rumours of price drops and supposed spy shots fuelled speculation for months.

Sony’s next major gaming press event is Tokyo Game Show, which begins in late September.

[PIC]

Today, Nintendo announced that it will be launching a black-coloured Wii in Japan on August 1 for ¥25,000 ($A324). Besides the console, Nintendo will be selling black DS peripherals as well. They are priced as follows:

• Black Wii Remote ¥3,800 ($A49)
• Black Nunchaku ¥1,800 ($A23)
• Black Classic Controller Pro ¥2,000 ($A26)

The white coloured Wii went on sale on December 2 in Japan when the platform initially launched.

On Monday night, got the briefest of demos of what may be the most ambitious piece of software known to be in development for Microsoft’s new motion-control Project Natal: the virtual-person game known as Milo.

And, yes, Molyneux told me, this will be a game.

Three months ago at the Game Developers Conference, Molyneux was being cagey when I asked him what the evolution of the Fable II dog would be. He said he wanted to tell me. And today he admitted that he was alluding to Milo. It’s the evolution of his interest in creating game characters that seem real. Milo, by the way, will have his own dog. (The dog’s presence was alluded to in a demo-concluding still image of a boy, a dog, both in silhouette, and the line: “It’s never too late to have a happy childhood.”)

Molyneux is wary of over-promising these days. He holds back more than he used to when he hyped features early for games like Fable and The Movies. Today’s brief Milo demo introduced a new element: he repeatedly cautioned that some of what I would experience with the game were “tricks.”

The demo took place in a brightly-lit white room in the Standard Hotel in Los Angeles. A test version of Project Natal was set-up, including a camera over a TV and some other sensors. (None of Microsoft’s Natal demos tonight used anything that looked like final hardware).

On the TV, a boy, Milo, sat on a swing hanging from a tree. Molyneux asked me to stand up in front of the TV and to begin looking around. The game was using head-tracking technology, I discovered. Leaning my head to the left or right — or backing away or walking closer to the TV — smoothly adjusted the game’s camera angle. The tracking was responsive and intuitive.

I sat down while my MTV Multiplayer blog successor Russ Frushtick tried the next part of the Milo demo. He stood in front of the TV as Milo approached him and then, using his hands to make goggles over his face, he initiated an EyeToy-style novelty. He waved his hands to make the water ripple. (Molyneux told us that you can also help Milo build a treehouse.)

I looked away from the TV to ask Molyneux what I should make of this Milo project. Is it really right to think of it as a game? He said it had to be. It had to have a goal and even an ending, he said. At its most basic he said that we could think of Milo as a Tamagotchi but that it would be much more advanced and magical than those old virtual pets ever were.

Molyneux had me wrap up the demo by approaching Milo again. He asked me to call Milo over by saying my own name and acting happy. Milo walked up to me and complimented me on my blue shirt (my shirt was indeed blue). Then he stood there, waiting for me to say things. There was a little awkwardness here. The Milo demo was partially being manipulated by a developer who was sitting nearby, and I couldn’t tell how much he was calibrating the game or how much he was pulling its strings. I said nice things to Milo and the virtual boy smiled. I said I was standing next to Peter Molyneux and he sort of sighed. The most charming moment was that blue-shirt moment. It felt like this virtual person made a connection with me.

After I stepped away, Molyneux asked me what I thought. I told him the set-up was promising but that I’d want to use it more to see how well it works. Given how new the Natal project seems — and given how long I know Molyneux has been wanting to make a game about influencing the life of a virtual child — I questioned how long he and his team had intended to even integrate a camera. Molyneux said that he’d wanted to do something like Milo for a long time but that the idea hadn’t really clicked with Microsoft until the Natal project came about. It was coming together.

I left impressed with the ambition on display but also certain that what we were shown was loosely stitched. Much tightening and tuning will be needed to make Milo feel like more than a collection of tech experiments — to feel alive. It’s exciting that that’s Molyneux’s goal.