Germany publisher dtp has just signed Frozenbyte's action-shooter Shadowgrounds. Featuring straight arcade-shooter gameplay with suspense and survival horror-elements, yet the looks is all but retro: with realtime shadows and lightning effects the top-down view Shadowgrounds is totally "2005".

Today Microsoft announced its Japanese Xbox 360 line-up during the Xbox Summit 2005. During the presentation quite a few new titles were unveiled such as Namco's Ride Racer 6, Konami's Winning Eleven. Tecmo has no less than 4 titles planned (including DoA Xtreme 2). Read more for additional details ...

Auto Assault combines vehicular combat with role-playing elements. Players explore a post-apocalyptic future in customizable cars, motorcycles, semis and even tanks. Players battle other players both in arenas and in epic race vs. race wars for control of the regions in a devastated Earth.

EA has joined forces with Gibson Guitar and Hard Rock International to launch a European-wide music competition for a place on a videogame soundtrack. Dubbed the Burnout Bandslam!, unsigned acts from across Europe can enjoy a summer of hot competition in Hard Rock Cafes in four countries across Europe, for a chance to be featured in a future Burnout game.

Microsoft announced today that it would launch its new Xbox 360 console in Japan and Europe in time for the year-end holiday shopping season. Microsoft had already announced plans to launch the console this year in the United States ahead of the holiday season, which begins in late November. It had previously said Japanese and European launches would follow within six weeks. X360 will feature three PowerPC-based microprocessors joined onto one chip to deliver powerful computing and advanced graphics, as well as a detachable 20-gigabyte hard drive and a wireless controller.

Pirates of the XXI Century is a new FPS in the works over at Eastern European developer DioSoft. Not much info is available at this point but Pirates of the XXI Century revolves around modern day sea pirates with action taking place on load, air, sea and even underwater. You will be able to play as either a member of Hong Kong’s triads, modern day pirate or soldier of US Special Forces and have use of about 30 weapons.

EA has signed a pact with New Line Cinema extending its rights to make games based on The Lord of the Rings franchise using images and actor likenesses from the pic trilogy. In addition, EA has now also signed a deal with with Tolkien Enterprises for J.R.R. Tolkien's literary trilogy, previously in the hands of Vivendi, giving it rights to use events and characters from the books not used in the pics.

For the very first time in franchise history, the next game in the series won't debut on a Nintendo platform, but is so far only scheduled for PS3 and X360. While it is way too early to speculate on a release date, Capcom producer Takeuchi Jun says "We would need 3 or maybe 5 years to fully exploit the capabilities of the new generation of systems, but right now this is the project Capcom is putting the most effort into." From the media available, it seems RE5 will feature Chris Redfield from the original RE and Code Veronica.

Metro 3D announced today that it has reached an agreement with Data Design Interactive to publish 9 affordable Playstation2 and budget PC games in the UK. Read more for details ...

Valve lastest Steam Update has news about Day of Defeat Source and the upcoming Lost Coast release. Dod Source is currently being tested and is scheduled for release later this summer. Polishing work is being done right now on the player animations, as well as lighting work on the various maps. Current favorite features include the new grenade stun effect, and the ability to deploy the machine gun on any surface. In other news, HL2: Lost Coast (the upcoming free Half-Life 2 map for Half-Life 2 owners which showcases HDR rendering technology) is nearing completion and will be released soon on Steam. Valve promises extra, yet undisclosed, content with Lost Coast, but more info to come shortly ...