The package will deliver five new characters - one of whom is Black Panther, it was just announced. He joins Cable, Psylocke, Carnage and a player to be named later.

You also get more boosts and simulator missions. In Xbox Live currency, it’ll set you back 800 points. On PSN, it’s $US9.99. Additionally, Juggernaut will be available separately on the same dates (for both services). He’s 160 points and $US1.99, respectively.

DLC Date and Pricing Announced [Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 Forums]

“If I were young now and I wanted to do stories,” Lee told The Guardian, “I would very much want to get into the videogame business because it’s the most exciting.”

While Marvel has licensed its characters out to developers for game development, Lee’s involvement seems largely hands-off.

“Videogames and movies are the most exciting forms of entertainment,” he continues. “But a videogame in a way is more imaginative, it has more variety. In a movie you stick to the plotline, in a videogame you go in a million different directions. I have no idea how they’re able to do that. It’s like a miracle.”

Know what’s an even bigger miracle? When they make good games.

Stan Lee: ‘I have no idea how games are made – it’s a miracle’ [Guardian] [Pic]

“On the video game front, (Marvel) have some smart licensing agreements with some of the best video game manufacturers in the business,” said Lowell Singer, Disney’s senior vice president of investor relations. “While we have been steadily moving in the direction of video game integration, we don’t rule out the blend of licensing and self-produced and distributed video games.

“As these licensing deals expire we have the luxury of considering what’s best for the company and the products.”

Earlier today, Disney announced that they were buying Marvel for $US4 billion in cash and stock. The deal would give Disney ownership of Marvel’s 5000 characters. Currently both Activision and Sega publish games based on Marvel properties.

Under current deals with Marvel, Activision, Sega, Gazillion and THQ all have different licensing deals to make video games based on the comic company’s characters.

Activision’s deal with Marvel, which includes the Marvel Ultimate Alliance and Wolverine games, expires in 2017. Gazillion Entertainment’s deal with Marvel, which includes several massively multiplayer online games, expires in 2019. Sega’s deal with Marvel, which includes games based on Marvel movies, is described multi-year. The same is true of THQ’s deal with Marvel, which includes video games based on Marvel’s Super Hero Squad.

While video games are certainly an important part of Disney’s acquisition of Marvel, there are plenty of other opportunities for both companies, including comics, toys and movies.

Speaking more generally Tom Staggs, Disney’s senior executive vice president and chief financial officer, noted that Disney is well aware of Marvel’s great potential and that Disney is looking into future potential characters that can be turned into other things, including movies and video games.

“As the current agreements in place sunset we will look to exploit the library of characters more broadly,” Staggs said. “This is a big library of properties and we think there is real opportunity.We plan to evaluate where those opportunities are greatest and how we can leverage those across both Marvel and Disney.”

Does that mean we’re going to see future video games with Marvel and Disney characters in one title? I suspect not, with perhaps one major exception. But would involve getting Square Enix on board as well.

We have calls into all of the publishers with licensing contracts with Disney and will update as we hear back.

What games would you love or hate to see come out of this deal?

“The good news is that everyone in the known universe told us what was wrong with the first game,” said Kyle Brink, creative director at Sega Studios San Francisco, the team working on Iron Man 2: The Video Game. Sega Studios San Francisco is the re-branded Secret Level, the team that worked on the original Iron Man and Golden Axe: Beast Rider for Sega.

Yeah, I know.

But Brink says that there have been some personnel changes at the studio, including his own hiring as the studio’s creative director. The Iron Man team is listening to complaints, things like having to half-pull a trigger on the Xbox 360 or PS3 to make Iron Man hover.

“The controls were a big issue in the first one, so we completely revised the controls here,” told us during an interview at Comic-Con. “They’re based on the top 20 games out there, so they should be immediately familiar to people and they’re consistent across all movement modes out there.”

“We also brought the range in tighter, because in the first you were hunting pixels,” he adds, addressing one of our own gripes about the original.

Marvel showed off three concept renders of Sackboys that may be coming to the PlayStation 3 exclusive, but did not offer dates for the costumes, nor confirm that this would be the extent of the Marvel characters that would be licensed for LittleBigPlanet use.

Considering Marvel has Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 and Marvel Super Hero Squad coming this year, don’t be surprised if you see Captain America and Wolverine on your PS3. Iron Man, on the other hand, doesn’t have a game coming until 2010.

Penance, formerly the teenage superhero Speedball, transformed himself after taking on the full responsibility for the nuclear incident that kicked off the whole Civil War series and left most of his New Warriors team dead. His transformation is a key point in the series, both punctuating the event and reflecting the change in the Marvel Universe as a whole, from something bright and innocent to something dark and more mature, so his addition to the Civil War-themed game just makes sense.

Of course, there are other reasons as well, as explained by game director Dan Tanguay.

Gameplay-wise he’s going to make for very good fusions. Beyond that, we wanted to have some new characters to be excited by, and finally… he just looks kinda cool.

The most tragic thing about Penance? There never was a full 3D, free-roaming Speedball game.

Aside from Penance, it was stated during the Q&A session following the panel that two more characters are left to be revealed, with one more that will “never be revealed”, meaning they’re going to be quiet until the game hits store shelves. After that, we can expect more characters via DLC in the near future.

The game, debuting at San Diego Comic-Con in the Sega and Marvel booths, will include enemies not seen in the movie, like Crimson Dynamo, and have a greater focus on hand-to-hand combat as well as a redesigned control scheme.

“Iron Man has an undeniably huge fan base, and we really wanted to give them the game they have been waiting for. We spent a lot of time incorporating their concerns and feedback from the first game, as well as coming up with new ideas to take this game to a whole new level,” said Sean Ratcliffe, Vice President of Marketing, SEGA of America. “Creating a new story with renowned comic book writer Matt Fraction is a huge part of making that happen, and we are incredibly excited to bring fans the game we know they want with Iron Man 2.”

Fraction, whose work at Marvel includes The Invincible Iron Man, The Uncanny X-Men and The Immortal Iron Fist, will be on hand to sign stuff at Comic-Con this week.

Brevik – who not only helped found Blizzard North but also helped create the Diablo series – will take up the role of studio director at Gargantuan, the San Mateo-based crew currently working on Marvel Universe.

If you’re wondering why they hired a former Diablo guy, and not a former WoW guy, Brevik left Blizzard in 2003 to go work for Flagship (Hellgate), and when that went bust, Turbine (Lord of the Rings Online), so he knows his way around an MMO or two.

Diablo Creator to Lead Marvel MMO Development for Gazillion [IndustryGamers]

Tsui was at this week’s IGDA demo night in Chicago, Tsui showed off the board controller to the crowd, explaining how the original prototype design set the company back abot $US3,000 to make. After getting Activision on board (harhar), Tony Hawk started helping out with product testing, eventually cracking an early prototype trying to perform an ollie.

The most interesting thing to come out of the presentation, it seems was not that Tsui envisions the skateboard being used for other games, we reported that a month or so back, but which types of games it might be used for.

Tsui mentioned that there are plenty of no-brainers, like surfing and snowboarding, but that there are also opportunities for Silver Surfer and Hobgoblin games in the future.

[Thanks news ninja AJ]

Activision unleashes the first behind-the-scenes video for X-Men Origins: Wolverine is definitely the best at what it does: proving that the developers at Raven are a bunch of drooling Wolverine fanboys.

Activision seems to have a knack for passing their Marvel properties on to developers in love with the characters, though as was the case with Spider-Man: Web of Shadows, that doesn’t always work out. As my only exposure to the new Wolverine video game so far has been this particular video and a few screenshots, I’d say the game is looking pretty good, though that voice at the end spouting Logan’s little catch phrase grated on me a bit.

Still, not going to get my hopes up. I learned a valuable lesson last time I got excited about a superhero video game being released on my birthday.