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Goichi Suda, creator of No More Heroes, hopes to adapt film director Sion Sono’s next movie into a videogame.

In an interview with the My Big Fat Geek Running blog, the iconoclast gamemaker revealed how a dinner with Sono, director of the amazing four-hour geek epic Love Exposure led to the potential collaboration.

“I told him how much he inspired me with his movies,” Suda said of the meeting.

He said Sono responded in kind, offering to let Suda adapt his next film — presumably the serial killer flick Cold Fish. (But how wicked would a Lords of Chaos game be?)

Goichi Suda, aka Suda 51, is CEO of Grasshopper Manufacture and designer of ultraviolent pop-culture infused games like Killer 7. Suda 51’s reverence for trash cinema is best evidenced by the cameo appearance of director Takashi Miike in No More Heroes 2 (pictured).

Sion Sono began his creative life as a poet before moving into a filmmaking career that melded the peculiar concerns of the otaku crowd with contemporary avant garde filmmaking techniques. He is best known in the U.S. for his film Suicide Club.

Suda 51 Talks About Fitness And The Future [My Big Fat Geek Running]

Image courtesy Ubisoft

See Also:

• Suda 51 Clarifies Comments About Third-Party Wii Games
• Suda 51, Shinji Mikami Partnering With … EA?!
• Suda 51 Wants More “Punk” Games
• Suda 51: No More Heroes “More Violent Than Manhunt 2?
• No More Heroes's Travis Born on the Throne

Jamie Foxx will star in the Kane & Lynch movie, says screenwriter Kyle Ward.

The news comes via a status update on Ward’s Twitter account, which has since been deleted. “Done deal… Jamie Foxx is in,” he wrote. The scribe then clarified that Foxx has been cast as Lynch, the mentally unstable bank robber from Eidos’ 2007 co-op shooter. Bruce Willis had already been tapped to take on the role of Kane in the movie for Lionsgate.

Kane & Lynch is best known among gamers not for being a great game, but for a controversy surrounding the ouster of GameSpot critic Jeff Gerstmann after he gave it a 6/10 score. Some said that Eidos, a GameSpot advertiser, used the leverage of its ad dollars to make things uncomfortable for the writers.

A sequel titled Kane & Lynch 2: Dog Days is due out later this year on PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.

Photo: Urban World Film Festival/Flickr

See Also:

• Bruce Willis Negotiating Starring Role in Kane & Lynch Film …
• Fired GameSpot Editor Defends Kane & Lynch Review
• Video: GameSpot Editor’s Kane & Lynch Review
• UK Authorities Yank ‘Shocking’ Kane & Lynch Ads
• Filming of Kane & Lynch Movie Scheduled to Begin This Fall …

Three new mash-up tracks from Jay-Z and Eminem are the first fresh bits of content for Activision’s DJ Hero since November.

The new music for the turntable-based game is available for the Xbox 360 version as of Thursday, but PlayStation and Wii mixmasters have to wait until March 25 to nab the downloads.

To call the paucity of DJ Hero downloads a “drought” would be an insult to regions suffering from insufficient rainfall. Activision released the game in October to solid reviews and genuine excitement among music gamers looking for something new. Activision answered this enthusiasm with a pair of overpriced, overlong mash-ups, followed up by techno-centric tracks from house producer David Guetta.

Four months later, Activision squirts out a handful of tunes from Jay-Z and Eminem — both artists already on the original DJ Hero disc. The Jay-Z vs. Eminem Mix Pack features mash-ups of “Shake That” and “Show Me What You Got”, “Without Me” and “Encore”, and “Can I Get A” and “Lose Yourself.”

They’re all fine songs, but nothing terribly thrilling for DJ Hero owners looking for a reason to dust off their plastic turntables. Consider this a ninth-inning bunt. Perhaps Activision is holding all its best material for DJ Hero 2 later this year?

Image courtesy Activision

See Also:

• Review: DJ Hero Celebrates Malleability of Music
• Daft Punk Contribute Music, Masks to DJ Hero
• DJ Hero Talent DJ AM Found Dead
• Jay-Z and Eminem Go Renegade For DJ Hero Premium Edition
• Hands On: Queen vs. 50 Cent in DJ Hero DLC

Sam Fisher, protagonist of Splinter Cell, has been updating his Twitter account with details of his flight from authorities.

The fictional special agent’s bio says it all: “I’m being set up. I need to find out who killed my daughter. Please help me.” Imagine the tweets posted by Real_SamFisher are being read by Michael Ironside, and they feel much more dramatic.

The viral promotion for Ubisoft’s Splinter Cell: Conviction, due April 13 for iPhone, PC and Xbox 360, is accompanied by a Facebook page maintained by the foreboding Third Eschelon of the National Security Association. Be sure to check out the phony government agency’s wall for trolls from Facebook users like this gem from Alex Lincon: “So, you mean to say that something like Third Echelon can’t track a dude on Twitter, who writes stuff down on notebook pages and scans it?”

Xbox 360 users can download the demo for Splinter Cell: Conviction tomorrow, March 18. PC users, well, you know how much Ubisoft loves you guys.

Image courtesy Ubisoft

SAN FRANCISCO — Final Fantasy XIII began its life as a PlayStation 2 game. Here’s what it looked like.

Speaking at Game Developers Conference on Friday, FFXIII director Motomu Toriyama talked a bit about the development history of the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 game, showing the early screenshot pictured above. The battle system, Toriyama said, let players attack enemies so they slammed into a wall and collapsed — perhaps the precursor to the finished game’s “Stagger” mechanic.

“The battle system and combat hasn’t changed much from PlayStation2, and the plot and characters were completed for the PlayStation 2 version, so the PlayStation 3 inherited those,” he said. What the team worked on for the final game were the “emotions” of the characters, using motion capture and detailed facial expressions.

Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

SAN FRANCISCO — Sony’s motion controller is called PlayStation Move and will be released this fall, the gamemaker said Wednesday. Whether any killer app games will be released with it is still in question.

At a lavish press briefing taking place a few blocks away from the Game Developers Conference, Sony revealed the final name and specifications of Move, which it first showed off at last year’s E3 Expo.The controller itself is almost exactly like the Wii remote, although Sony says it is more precise: PlayStation Eye, Sony’s already-released camera peripheral, sits near your television and tracks a glowing plastic ball on top of the controller. This allows it to track the controller’s movements. Sony says that the primary advantage of the controller’s precision will be that hard-core gamers will embrace Move even if they don’t think Wii is accurate enough.

“We are bringing consumers what they have been asking for: A more precise, immersive and responsive real-world gaming experience,” said Shuhei Yoshida, president of Sony’s worldwide game development studios, during the presentation. “The types of games we can make with it are amazingly diverse… it has the potential to breathe new life into many established game genres.”

Having said that, the games Sony showed off were largely cribbed from Wii’s playlist: table tennis, bowling, golf, archery, etc. Most of these are included in a single game tentatively called Champion Sports.

Also like Wii, the PlayStation Move will be expandable with a second piece held in the left hand that features an analog joystick and buttons. For example, in the shooter game SOCOM 4, the left hand controller moves the soldier around the screen and the Move is used to aim his gun with an on-screen reticle.

Sony’s Champion Sports features Wii-style games like table tennis.
Photos: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

Sony let us try a few of the games after its presentation. On the whole, they weren’t that much fun, feeling more like rough proof-of-concept tech demos than software that’s going to excite consumers. If the Move is more precise than the Wii remote, it didn’t much matter when PlayStation 3’s versions of tennis and bowling just felt jankier than Wii Sports. At this point, the software isn’t living up to the promises of the technology.

Another mini-game in Champion Sports was called “Gladiator Duel,” or as I like to call it, “Beat a Woman To Death With a Hammer: The Game.” This actually used two Moves to play: One controls your sword, the other your shield.

One unique thing that Move does that Wii can’t is augmented reality. The camera can show the player on the TV screen and overlay images onto the controller, making it look as if you’re holding a whip, a sword, even a hair trimmer. The game Move Party showed off these features, but it seemed more like a slick visual gimmick than an exciting new type of game.

An area where Move seems markedly inferior to Wii, based on what we played, is pointing at the screen. Two games used the controller as a gun — the aforementioned SOCOM and a cartoony shooting gallery called The Shoot — and the control felt laggy, as if the cursor was trailing after my movements instead of reacting right alongside them.

Sony VP Peter Dille extols the virtues of PlayStation Move at a press briefing in San Francisco on Wednesday.
Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

Sony said that a bundle package containing the basic controller, the required PlayStation Eye camera, and a game would cost “under $100″ this fall. The company also said it would bundle the controller with some PlayStation 3 hardware this year, and also sell the controller on its own.

It did not say how much any of these other packages would cost. But it’s plain to see that a full suite of Move hardware is going to be an expensive proposition: You need two of the controllers to play “Gladiator Duel” and the completely separate Sub-Controller attachment to play hardcore games like SOCOM.

For that kind of outlay, Sony’s going to need some better games.

Photos: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

SAN FRANCISCO — Think the music game market is already crowded enough? Here comes a new challenger, a full-band game that will use real electric guitars for controllers.

PowerGig: Rise of the SixString, published by Seven45 Studios, will be demoed on the Game Developers Conference show floor this week. It’s scheduled to be released this fall on Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. Wired.com got an advance look at the game and the guitar peripheral (above), which looks like a Rock Band plastic axe and an inexpensive real one had a baby.

For the most part, Guitar Hero fans will feel right at home with the gameplay: Colored Notes travel down the screen, and you hit them by holding any of the strings in that colored area of the guitar’s neck, then strumming. Easy enough. Where Power Gig gets complex, and where the game’s creators feel its appeal lies, is in the “chording” gameplay.

If you turn chording on, the colored notes on-screen suddenly have numbers inside them. A number “5″ inside a green note means that you have to hold down the fifth string in the green fret area, plus the fourth string in the yellow area. The game teaches you each of these chords and ramps them up gradually as you progress through the songs.

Since these are actual power chords, you’ll be learning to play the guitar. And since it’s an actual guitar, you can unplug it from the console, plug it into an amplifier, and wail away.

We didn’t get to go hands-on with Power Gig, so I couldn’t tell you if it’s any fun. And there are more questions than answers right now about the game: What music will be included? How will the drums and vocals work? How much will it all cost?

And will we really learn guitar by playing it? A music game that actually teaches you to play music is the Holy Grail of this business. It’s something that Harmonix has long hoped to accomplish, and with Rock Band 3 coming this holiday season, perhaps the originators will attempt something similar.

For the time being, you can head down to the Game Developers Conference to get the same brief demo we did.

Image courtesy Seven45 Studios

Portal 2 is real, and coming this Christmas, Valve said Friday. And it looks like Mac owners might get to share the love.

The Seattle gamemaker announced that it would release the sequel to Portal, its space-time-bending, hilarious 2007 sleeper hit later this year. If you want to know more, you’ll have to pick up the next issue of Game Informer magazine. And Valve’s not done making waves: A slate of teaser images released this week that the company is bringing its games, and Steam direct download service, to the Mac platform.

Portal 2 also had its share of teases: On Monday, an update to the original game brought with it a pile of hidden clues that suggested a sequel was inbound.

Right after leading fans down the Portal rabbit hole, Valve started teasing the notion of Steam for Mac. A series of ad parodies that mash Valve’s characters into retro Apple ads more than suggests that the company will be launching their game marketplace and social network for Mac computers in the near future.

We’ll make sure Valve gets us the official news when it’s ready to stop being such teases.

Image courtesy Valve

See Also:

• Geeky Clues Suggest Portal Sequel Is Coming
• In 'Portal,' Violating Physics Proves Weirdly Satisfying
• Portal Prodigy Vacates Valve
• Valve Says Downloads Picked Up Steam in 2009
• Valve's Newell: Next Console War to Be Decided by Steam-Like Services

After much deliberation, Microsoft has changed its policy about self-identifying one’s sexual preference, race, religion or nationality via its Xbox Live online service.

In an open letter written Friday, Xbox Live general manager Marc Whitten said that the Xbox Live Terms of Use and Code of Conduct will now allow players to “more freely express their race, nationality, religion and sexual orientation in Gamertags and profiles.”

Specifically, it is now kosher to use the words “lesbian,” “gay,” “bi,” “transgender” and “straight” in a user name or profile. The new policy does not yet outline proper uses for reference to race, religion and nationality.

Previously, Microsoft banned those expressions out of concern that they could be used as slurs. But an instance in 2009, when a lesbian gamer was banned for self-identifying as homosexual in her profile, resulted in a re-examination of the policy, executed in close collaboration with GLADD.

Now, perhaps Richard Gaywood — the gamer whose real name once ran afoul of Microsoft’s policies — will be able to get his old Gamertag back.

Image courtesy Microsoft

See Also:

• Xbox Live Bans Lesbian Gamer, Microsoft Apologizes
• Microsoft Forbids User's Name as Gamertag
• LGBT-Friendly Campaign Targets Insensitive Gamers
• Xbox Live Trash Talk Leads to Arrest