Sam and Max will bring their off-kilter humor to PlayStation 3 for the first time in The Devil's Playhouse: The Penal Zone, the first episode in a new season of Telltale's episodic adventure series. In a first for the PlayStation Store, the full season -- consisting of five monthly episodes -- will become available for pre-order on March 18, nearly a month before The Penal Zone launches on April 15.

While PC and Mac owners will receive substantial benefits for pre-ordering the full season, including a free game episode, access to developer chats and extra downloadable goodies, Telltale noted that it also has a deal in store (you know, actually in the store) for console players. According to Telltale PR manager Chris Schmidt, pre-ordering the full pack will reduce the cost to $29.99, a minor but not unwelcome discount from the regular price of $34.95.

Speaking to Joystiq at a meeting during the Game Developers Conference on Friday, Schmidt also addressed the obvious question: Will this season of Sam & Max come to Xbox 360 or Wii? He called it a "definite possibility" a few months down the line, and noted that it's in Telltale's best interest to work with more partners and deliver its games to as wide an audience as possible. Designer Chuck Jordan jokingly added that Telltale would ultimately like "to get the games on everything that has a chip in it."

Forget the 360 -- what could be better than getting Sam & Max in a tube of Pringles?

"I'm the voice of Guitar Hero 6," says KISS front man Gene Simmons during a video clip produced by Game On, a division of UK media site ITN. And that's all he says. The clip -- view it after the break -- has been removed from the context of what's assumed to be a full interview and essentially turns Simmons' statement into a gag line. Still, Simmons does appear to be the first "official" spokesperson to outright name the next iteration of Guitar Hero, albeit unofficially.

Activision previously dated a forthcoming Guitar Hero game for the "back half" of 2010. Presumably, that's "Guitar Hero 6" and the game Simmons will apparently star in. What? Activision didn't offer his crew a full-on Guitar Hero: KISS game? It's for the better, really, because all we want to do is get the digitized Simmons onstage and make him crank 'dat Soulja Boy!

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With the Japanese console release of BlazBlue: Continuum Shift approaching, publisher Arc System Works sent out a new trailer of the HD fighting followup. Instead of uninterrupted footage of giant sprites brawling, Arc has presented what looks like the game's intro, a hyperkinetic anime clip featuring dramatic poses, exciting fight sequences, and ... the Earth being shot from orbit?

At the end of the trailer, after the release date, is a brief reminder of the new character added to the console version of Continuum Shift: the new character μ-12. Aksys Games has yet to announce a localized version of Continuum Shift, but if you absolutely have to buy a new BlazBlue disc, the company released the PSP port of the first BlazBlue this week.

[Via GameVideos]

There is one drawback to seeing Uncharted 2's co-lead designer, Richard Lemarchand, unfurl the development process behind the most successful and most ambitious game in the studio's history. A post-mortem panel, held on Thursday afternoon at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, delved into developer Naughty Dog's pre-production process, its production pipeline and the climactic rush to a spectacular end. It also highlighted some of the studio's misjudgments, which resulted in a difficult crunch time toward the end of development.

And now, every time I play that incredible train level -- "an evil monster of a level," Lemarchand said -- for my personal enjoyment, I'll pull back the curtain and see programmers hunching over keyboards and nodding off into icy cups of coffee. Thankfully, Lemarchand painted a warmer picture, firm in his belief that the development team's intrinsic motivation to produce a character-driven blockbuster helped it overcome the final hurdles.

An important pre-production phase dominated the first six months of Uncharted 2's 22-month creation. "Messing it up often means messing up the whole project," Lemarchand noted. There were no deadlines or deliverables during this period, and the team was free to seek inspiration and consider the individual moments they wanted to explore in Drake's second outing. A single image would portend much of the game's direction: A photograph of the Tiger's Nest Monastery in the Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan.

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Having printed and shipped more than 3 million copies of BioShock 2 across the seas, publisher Take-Two is clearly leaning on its sequel to provide a strong sale wind to push the company through another successful quarter. Following its February 9 release, the Xbox 360 version of BioShock 2 cruised up the US sales charts, anchoring in the peak position, according to the NPD's monthly report. For the PS3 version, the journey was not such a breeze, as it appeared to have come up against some bad weather.

Despite the Xbox 360 edition's #1 ranking in US February game sales, the PS3 version of BioShock 2 was curiously absent from the top ten listing. An NPD representative told Joystiq that the PS3 game recorded roughly 190.5k units sold last month, "just outside the top 10 at #11." If anything's to blame for this somewhat modest debut month, it's Heavy Rain. In just one week of retail availability, the PS3-exclusive "Western Interactive Novel" had enough of an impact, with 219.3k units sold, to seemingly alter the sales course of BioShock 2 for PS3.

Now, just imagine how much trouble a rampaging "murder carousel" could stir up for BioShock 2 PS3 sales this month!

Lady Gaga was already announced for Rock Band's DLC update next week -- but she's bringing friends along. The pop sensation will be joined by some, ahem, actual rock bands.

Check out next week's full list of releases after the break.

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Naughty Dog's co-president Evan Wells is definitely interested in having people tuck Nathan Drake -- either halfway or all the way -- into their pockets and visit the world of Uncharted whenever they want to. He feels that there are a lot of stories to tell in that world, and that the PSP would be the perfect platform for it. Just imagine Uncharted: Sully's Adventure where you can wheel and deal in the black market, or Uncharted: Elena on Assignment where you're chasing a dangerous news story. Scoop!

"I think it would be fantastic to see the game (move) onto a handheld system," Wells told us. "Each one of the episodes is sort of like a standalone thing and I think we could do that pretty easily. If we can find a partner to work with, I'd love to do that ... we definitely wouldn't do it ourselves. We're trying to just focus on the PS3 technology and platform right now." He added, laughing, "But, if we can't find a partner, then maybe we're going to have to find a budget ourselves."

Laugh if you will, Wells. You're just toying with our heartstrings is all. We'd love to see Nathan Drake on our PSP. Make it happen. We have Ready at Dawn's phone number if you need it.

The Blue Bomber -- who is inconveniently red in the pic above -- returns in the retro-centric Mega Man 10. Those who returned to Rapture with BioShock 2 can also pick up the "Sinclair Solutions Test Pack" for $5. There's also the fourth episode of The Tester -- how's that going? Oh yeah, for those with an interest in baseball (it's a game played with a stick), there's a demo for MLB 10: The Show. For those with a PSP, it's another solid comic book update. Check out the full PSN update after the break.

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Earlier today, we noticed a report over on That Video Game Blog that stated Black Rock's upcoming racer, Split/Second, would only be available on the PC as "a limited online release." Turns out, that isn't the case, as a Disney spokesperson has confirmed to Joystiq that the game will be available on the PC both via retail and digital distribution on May 18, alongside its console cousins.

When questioned about which digital distribution services the game would release on, Disney couldn't say. So, as a peace offering, we were given a pair of new trailers: the first you can see above this chunk of text, while you'll need to click past the break for the other. We know, we push you guys too hard!

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Sony's GDC panel "Introducing the PlayStation Motion Controller was exactly that: An introduction to the newly named Move peripheral. David Coombes, Kirk Bender and Anton Mikhailov showcased a number of impressive tech demos, many of which demonstrated the Move's incredible precision and low latency. One of the most impressive demos showcased full body tracking using an on-screen body puppet, not unlike one of Project Natal's tech demos.

Body tracking is made possible by combining the Move and PS3's head tracking capability. According to the presentation, the PS3 can also detect faces, going so far as to identify individuals through face contour and feature detection. The software will be able to recognize gender, age, smiles and when eyes open and close.

Coombes explained that all the calculations necessary to handle image processing are done by the Cell CPU, which apparently excels at the doing floating point calculations. The raw data can be processed incredibly quickly by the PS3, taking "under a frame" to translate to a game experience. And while Mikhailov didn't reveal how much of the CPU's overall power the Move controller requires, he did reveal that the memory demands are truly "insignificant" -- 1-2 MB of system memory.

During an interview at the 2010 Game Developers Conference, THQ executive VP of Core Games Danny Bilson told Joystiq that market research creates "bland" titles, citing it is not a process his group is willing to utilize for future development. "We don't do research to find out what people want to play. If you need to do that kind of research you must not be playing games yourself," Bilson said, noting that research and overusing focus tests can "misguide creative forces."

According to Bilson, his core group at THQ is ruled by creating "excellent" titles. Put simply, Bilson says he will not ship a game if it's not "really good" -- noting that doing otherwise will make it impossible for him to "sleep at night." As an example of this process, Bilson noted his decision to push Darksiders from a 2009 release into the early-2010 calendar in order to ensure the game was of high quality. (Darksiders currently holds an average Metacritic rating of 83.)

"Inspiration comes from one place and research and focus testing will usually destroy it. It will usually create 'bland' and create something for everyone and really nothing for anyone," he said, praising the idea that publishers should not ship a game until it's ready. "If my teams make really good games, in the long run, that's what people relate to. They're not buying advertising, they're not buying Wall Street nonsense. They're buying what's on that disc."

The dog-gone long title of Sam & Max: The Devil's Playhouse - Episode 1: The Penal Zone will hop upon the internets for digital distribution on April 15. The first episode of the duo's third season of freelance police work will be available on PC, Mac -- and PS3, quelle surprise.

Pre-orders for the whole season on PC and Mac are currently available on Telltale's site for $35, which also comes with an episode from Strong Bad, Wallace & Gromit or a previous Sam & Max season for free. "Pre-orders on PlayStation Network coming soon."

Following up yesterday's announcement that Might and Magic: Clash of Heroes is getting an HD facelift and coming to Xbox Live and PSN, Ubisoft has revealed the first teaser trailer for the game. Amidst all of the quoted accolades and plumes of smoke are some actual tidbits of gameplay.

In short: this looks purty.

Microsoft's Aaron Greenberg is thrilled with February's NPD numbers, and for good reason. The Xbox 360 took the top spot in home console sales last month, despite not being a Wii. According to the NPD, it's the first time this has happened since the Halo 3 launch in 2007.

BioShock 2 seems to have had something to do with the boost, with the Xbox 360 version topping the software charts (and the PS3 version absent from the top ten). Other notable software milestones: Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 is now the third best-selling game of all time, and Just Dance seems to have made a better pact with Satan than even Dante's Inferno did. See the software top ten after the break.

-DS: 613K191K (45%)
-360: 422K89K (27%)
-Wii: 398K68K (-15%)
-PS3: 360K83K (30%)
-PSP: 133K33K (33%)
-PS2: 102K60K (143%)

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PlayStation Blog posted a developer diary featuring Zindagi Games, developer of the PlayStation Move minigame showcase Sports Champions. The devs demonstrate the abilities of the Move controller, showing lots of game footage and demonstrations of controller motions.

They also describe their excitement about Move and its new opportunities for control -- going so far as to compare it to the feeling of playing a 3D game for the first time. If you were developing one of the flagship games for the thing, you'd be excited too!