Despite laying off staff members due to slow, lagging sales, it seems EA is still happy with Mirror’s Edge. In fact, EA CEO John Riccitiello has stated that there will be sequels, and seemingly based the franchise off of reviews:

“Mirror’s Edge is one that was very strongly reviewed. That one’s going to go forward. We’ll probably look at some issues around the design to make sure a strong [intellectual property] is married with strong business.”

The way that reads is “We’re happy with the reviews, but the gameplay wasn’t all that great to generate sales. Instead, we’ll create a completely different game and call it Mirror’s Edge 2, creating a new fan base and write off the original buyers.” Sounds smart, at least since I certainly wasn’t a fan of the original.

As with nearly every major release these days, Capcom’s upcoming Street Fighter sequel will be getting its own collector’s edition. Capcom says that inside the box you’ll get exclusive Ryu and Crimson Viper figures, strategy guide on the new fighters, full length anime, and some DLC. What’s the DLC? Capcom hasn’t said anything yet.

No word on pricing yet either, and it appears PC fighters get nothing. The special edition is planned only for the 360 and PS3 versions. You know what would be great though? A free arcade stick so 360 owners don’t have to use the mess that is the 360 d-pad.

It’s sort of surprising that such a big event failed to have a mega build-up. One would think Sony would have tickers on their website counting the days until Home arrives in full. Maybe they’d send out press releases slowly over the course of a month describing all of the great features (sort of like what Microsoft did with their NXE). Instead, it’s announced one day before launch, official December 11th, that Home will be available to all.

Technically, it’s only a beta, but if it’s open to all users, that’s not a beta. It obviously works enough that Sony has confidence to release it to everyone, so seriously, not a beta people.

Those Xbox Live Silver members still on the fence about dropping the cash on Live Gold have been given a very slight demo period. The “Xbox Live Friendship is Free” offer gives Silver members free online access to specific Arcade games through the month of December. You’ll need to buy the full versions of these to take advantage of them. The eight games read as follows:

A Kingdom for Keflings
Aegis Wing
Bomberman Live
Hardwood Hearts
Hardwood Spades
UNO
Small Arms
Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix

There’s no specific date as to when the promo ends, but since it runs a month, a good bet would be that don’t expect it into 2009.

Fact: Madden sold like freakin’ crazy on the usual platforms, around two million copies across the PS3, 360, and PS2.

Also fact: The game sold terrible on the Wii, only pushing 100,000 copies.

These facts does make a happy Peter Moore. He sees a logical issue with this sales dilemma:

“The challenge we face is that that consumer gets ‘Wii Sports’ right out of the box and that’s a sports experience that’s good enough for a lot of people.”

The ‘09 series geared its games on the Wii for the more casual crowd, branding them “All Play.” That strategy must have backfired, at least in terms of Madden. Moore didn’t delve into the statistics for Tiger Woods and NBA Live however. Maybe the problem is game quality? Comparatively, there’s no comparisons between the games on the different hardware.

The Lost and the Damned. Spooky. That’s the name of the uber-hyped Grand Theft Auto IV DLC that Microsoft spent millions on to make it exclusive. The game extension will be available for download on Feb. 17th via Xbox Live. No word on any other way to get it.

Instead of focusing on Niko, players will assume the role of a new character, Johnny Klebitz. He’s a member of The Lost biker gang, although there’s no word as to whether or not he’s damned. One would assumed from the title though he’s pretty screwed. Now all that’s left is to await pricing details. It’s the only thing that’s not part of the official announcement.

Those who were holding off on a 360 purchase until Microsoft upgraded their chip set into something more stable can now rejoice. The rumored “Jasper” chipset should be in stores now. How can you tell? If the box states it has 256MB on board memory, you’re golden. Also, the power brick will state 150w DC, and the manufactured date should be after October 23rd, 2008. That internal memory is more than likely there to simply store the NXE when it’s downloaded to the non-updated hardware.

Since these things just hit stores (in time for the holiday shopping season of course), there is no word on whether or not these things actually are more stable. Stating so is purely going off of what Microsoft promised, so take that for what it’s worth.

Seems there’s some name changin’ going on over at Bungie. The recently announced Halo 3 expansion Recon is undergoing some name surgery to become….

… wait for it…

… wait for it…

Halo 3: ODST!

In truth, that’s hardly exciting news. However, think of how much fun it will be to walk into a game store and ask for ODST! The clerk will stare dumbfounded and say “Did you just say you want a STD?” Fun times. Also, the title is awfully close to the PS1 title O.D.T., which will hopefully never be mentioned anywhere ever again.

Dear Cammie,

We understand that you’ve been under a lot of pressure lately. After a rough go at E3, the lack of games for your longtime fans, and loads of criticism from the gaming press, you need to try and salvage something. However, coming out and stating that the Conduit is the thing to bring us back and relying completely on its visuals to do it? Not a good move.

Mad World? I’ll give you that one. Punch-Out? Maybe. Depends on the controls. The Conduit? Looks like a FPS. Not saying it won’t be great. For all I know, could be the game of the year. But stating that it’s the one game that will draw us back in isn’t best business strategy. Blow us away with the originality the console offers but has yet to full realize, not visuals. I wish you the best. You’ve got a ways to go.

No offense to anyone who worked there, but we have no idea who you were. Secretive internal studio Blueprint has been shuttered by EA, supposedly to house smaller teams who would work together virtually on projects. The only time the studio had any of the public eye was with Boom Blox, which they managed.

That said, EA stated that a sequel to Boom Blox is on its way, and honestly, can’t come soon enough. It still stands as one of the best games on the system. No word on what will happen to any of the other projects they might have been working on.

Some thought going back to World War II would be a mistake. Some might have felt giving the series back to Treyarch was a truly bad idea.

Those people would be wrong.

World at War has doubled first week sales of Call of Duty 4. It should be noted that two more platforms are hosting the WWII shooter, the PlayStation 2 and the Wii. However, the numbers breakdown didn’t specifically state sales numbers across all hardware. It’s hard to tell if a PS2 version made a huge difference or not, though Call of Duty 3 didn’t turn out so bad on the Wii. Only time will tell us if WaW outsells its predecessor or not for all time sales though.

Thanks to a price drop, the Xbox 360 will be in more homes than its predecessor at the end of November. The 360 should break 25 million units sold at that time. It has only taken three years to do what the first Xbox did in four. Obviously, there’s a lot of time left in the shelf life of the hardware, and since the price has been dropping steadily for some time, there’s little doubt that 30 million units will be out there in a short time.

Of course, the question remains: Does this include all of the people who went out and bought Elites because they were sick of hardware issues? I kid, I kid.