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.

A StarCraft 2 gameplay footage video from the cover disc of the August issue of PC Gamer recently managed to end up on YouTube. The said video features several new Protoss units available in Blizzard's StarCraft 2.

New units previewed include the Soul Hunter, which seems to be another "dark" mechanized, rapid-fire Protoss unit; the Phase Cannon, or a slightly more mobile photon cannon; the Twilight Archon, what looks to be an upgraded Archon; and the Tempest, or what looks to be like a "Dark Carrier."

Each of the mentioned units can be seen in action in the two-and-a-half minute video. What's nice is that freezing the video at 2:14 also reveals several interesting details. for one thing, a unit that bears a striking resemblance to the Reaver, can be spotted.

The video's description also hints that the Protoss Observer will be making a return, along with the Dark Templar and the High Templar. The video description also claims that the High Templar have new ability that allows the High Templar to create forcefields that could block paths and/or trap enemy units. As for the Dark Templar, no additional abilities were revealed.

A quick look at the official StarCraft 2 site reveals that these mentioned units are yet to be featured there. Anyhow, the video is below, click play and enjoy!

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?

It seems that four years ago, not even Steve Jobs nor other Apple folks realized that Apple shares would be what they are today: up by 1600% since early 2003. In a report by Brett Arends on TheStreet.com, it was revealed that even Steve Jobs wasn't able to take advantage of a potential US$ 4 billion in profit because of Apple stocks.

It was also revealed that this is because he made a decision four years ago to "cut his exposure to apple stock". During 2003, Apple stocks was down 80% from its peak. Arends reports that Jobs and the Apple board agreed that Jobs would disregard around 15 million stock options in return for 10 million actual Apple shares.

Arends writes: "At the time, it looked like he was giving up nothing and getting $75 million in return. And, as he had rescued the company from oblivion, who would argue he didn't deserve it?"

Perhaps what's even more amusing is that during March 2003, company employees were allowed to make exchanges similar to what Jobs did. Apple set up a program that let people swap their seemingly worthless, post-bubble stock options for a smaller number of options at a lower strike price. The reason for this is that the exchange would be beneficial as long as the share price stayed low.

As mentioned, Apple stocks is up 1600% since early 2003.

Now that Apple products are so hot, and its stocks so high, one would think that anyone, especially Jobs would wish to just have that potential 4 Billion dollars back. Would Apple folks wish to have all that stock profit back? Arends says that Apple media relations declined to comment on this.

A half-pound bright blue lobster was caught last weekend by Steve Hatch and Robert Green at the mouth of the Thames River.  Now this bit made news because the odds of finding a true blue lobster is apparently 1 in 3 million. Compare that to the odds of an average person living in the USA being killed by lightning, which is only a mere 1 in 35,000 (so says Wikipedia).

Cooking now seems to be an unlikely fate for the lobster, as the caught lobster will be brought to the Mystic Aquarium and Institute for Exploration to join two other blue lobsters in their aquarium.

The azure crustacean will live out its days being observed (and hopefully not harassed) by the elementary school kids that pass by during their field trips.

Apple has revealed that they will require those that purchase the iPhone have an active iTunes Store account in order to setup the the handheld device.

According to a MacWorld report, Apple has released an email to U.S. customers warning them that they should get an iTunes account. The email also included information on the iPhone's features. The email reveals that the iPhone will be able to get contact information from Address Book, Entourage, Outlook, Outlook Express, or Yahoo! Address Book, and grab schedule reminders from iCal, Entourage, or Outlook.

This warning of course, has led some to question why an iTunes registration is required. Some have speculated that perhaps Apple wants to ensure more security for data that can be passed from iTunes to the iPhone.

Other reports have noted concern that this iTunes requirement may cause problems for the first wave of iPhone purchasers as AT&T employees may not be fully aware of the requirement and thus could lead to setup troubles.

Others have also noted that this may just be Apple's way to expand iTunes' user base even further. Of course, its probably likely that those eager and willing to get the latest Apple gadget already have iTunes accounts.

It appears that the folks at Bungie are doing something similar to the I Love Bees viral campaign at the moment, only this time it's supposedly for Halo 3. What's the viral campaign? A special user account on the Bungie.net forums that goes by the name of Adjutant Reflex is leaving messages that hint that something will happen on June 14 1AM PDT.

What's curious about Adjutant Reflex's account is that unlike other people on the forum, who are classified as "member", Adjutant Reflex is classified as "CompoundIntelligence"

Rapture at The Hushed Casket has gathered several bits of info on the mysterious AdjutantReflex. First off, it was revealed that there was an Xbox Live profile for the account. That profile no longer exists. If you want to understand more on why we say "was", here's YouTube user triplestunt's videos:

More on Adjutant Reflexes' communications on the Bungie.net forums after the jump!