According to the Bungie blog post, the Halo: Reach multiplayer beta will be released around “late morning” PDT. We’re assuming “late morning” refers to around 11:00am pdt, which would translation across to the following times:

Due to overwhelming demand, Activision and Bizarre Creations have worked with Microsoft to transition the Blur multiplayer beta program to a free download on the Xbox Live Marketplace. Starting today, everyone who has a Xbox Live Gold account will be able to join in on the open beta demo.

Pre-order exclusives seem to be the trend these days and it’s no different for the Transformers: War for Cybertron video game.  Eager fans that reserve a Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3 copy in advance of its summer release will be rewarded with access to exclusive playable characters within the game’s online multiplayer modes.

Microsoft have informed us that Alan Wake will be hitting stores across Europe on Friday 14th May. Yes, that’s a full week ahead of its original release date.

Microsoft have announced that it will be using PrimeSense’s leading-edge 3D-sensing technology in the Project Natal hardware add-on for the Xbox 360.

Major Nelson has informed us that the Xbox 360 system update which adds USB flash support is now available for download via Xbox Live. The mandatory update should automatically be applied the next time you try to sign into Xbox Live.

If you purchased Modern Warfare 2’s latest DLC “Stimulus Package” on the first day it came out, then there is some good news for you. Microsoft have decided to reward these customers by adding an extra 7 days to their Xbox Live Gold membership for free.

Well, it seems Bungie is very pleased with the level of polish they have stuffed into their upcoming multiplayer beta of Halo: Reach. Community manager, Brian Jarrard, mentioned to GameInformer that the Halo: Reach beta will have more polish than many finished retail titles, he asserted: “People will be surprised at just how polished the experience is”.

In an interview with IndustryGamers, Max Beland, the Splinter Cell: Conviction Creative Director, explained the reasoning behind why the team decided to revitalize the franchise and touched specifically on why the new stealth mechanic will be “something you want to use”.

An overwhelming number of gamers have been voicing their anger at what appears to be a Bad Company 2 server crash. Being disconnected whilst in the middle of a game of death-match is bad enough, but alongside this, it seems that all player stats (kills, deaths etc) have disappeared. [UPDATE: Some users are reporting their stats have been restored].

According to Visceral producer, Rich Briggs, despite DS2 leaning more towards action rather than horror, you better be prepared as Dead Space 2 is still going “scare the pants off you”. Speaking with G4, Briggs said: “we did a lot of research [...] and people were coming back and saying, ‘I never even listened to the logs sometimes because I was so scared of something jumping me out of a dark corner,’ and we don’t want people to be sacrificing their understanding of the story and their enjoyment of the environment because they’re always so scared”.

In preparation of EA Sports’ upcoming title, 2010 FIFA World Cup South Africa, the company has posted a detailed tutorial video showing how the new penalty kick mechanic works. They have increased the complexity of taking penalties by improving the power and aiming controls. Player will need to be more precise in their shots as it’s much more sensitive.

Yesterday, Microsoft (MSFT) filed a lawsuit against Datel, the British video game accessory manufacturer, accusing the company of illegally copying the official Xbox 360 game controller.

Microsoft stated that Datel’s “TurboFire” and “WildFire” wireless controllers infringed on a number of Microsoft patents. Consequently, the company is asking for an unspecified amount of compensatory damages for the profit Datel made from the sales and is also looking to get an injunction on the manufacturing of Datel’s 3rd party Xbox controllers.

2K Games’ hype machine is getting into full flow for their upcoming game, Mafia II. They have just sent through episode 1 of their dev diary. The video covers the story and characters within the game.

There has definitely been a graphical upgrade and I’m sure the story is going to be just as good as the original. If you’re interested in the game, or even if you aren’t, it’s definitely worth watching this video to find out more.

Remember when Bungie tweeted that we should expect “big” Halo news this week? Well, we all knew it was going to be an April Fools stunt, but we don’t think anyone could have guessed it would be a Halo themed Bollywood movie trailer made by IGN.

Microsoft has explained that the reason why no one could play the hugely anticipated Stimulus Package map pack for MW2 was due to a “process failure”.

That is a rather vague term, but according to Eric Neustadter, Operations Director of Xbox Live, the problems arose as the map pack did not coincide with a title update for MW2.