Bungie has been teasing Bungie Aerospace for a while now. The filler site and the speculation turned the expectation of Aerospace into Bungie’s next big project after Halo: Reach. Today, to the dismay of some and the joy of others, it was revealed that Aerospace is NOT their next major title.

Bungie Aerospace will be a resource for a slew of mobile and social independent developers to create new and engaging titles for new platforms. Their independent partners will have access to what they need to make these games such as the Bungie.net platform and a connection with the Bungie community. The first announced partner is Harebrained Schemes which will launch it’s first mobile game title, “Crimson”, on iOS and Android devices this summer.

While it’s not a new Bungie-developed game, they encourage that “great games are awesome, no matter who makes them.”

Sega’s upcoming survival horror game Rise of Nightmares, which is being developed exclusively for Kinect, has a Japanese release date. The game will hit Japanese shelves on September 8th and cost 7329 JPY (~$91(!)). For this somewhat hefty price, players will also get…an Avatar item?

While the games looks like an interesting mix between House of the Dead and Condemned (and is also being developed by the team behind the former franchise), I can’t help but feel that the Kinect controls will pretty much kill it. Since it’s, you know, Kinect. But we’ll find out soon enough, as the game is slated for a stateside release some time in September, probably not too long after the Japanese one.

You’re probably aware by now that some people are having a problem with Resident Evil: The Mercenaries 3D for the 3DS. When you begin the game, there’s no turning back and one cannot restart their saved game if they want to start over. This has come off as a ploy to discourage used game purchases. Some are upset by this while others could care less.

Well, today Capcom has made a statement about the game saves for The Mercenaries 3D. On the Capcom forums, a statement was released saying that it was a design decision to allow everyone to access content and that the sale of used games were not a factor in deciding this.

After the post was made, they promised to try to answer as many questions as possible about the game.

‘In Resident Evil: The Mercenaries 3D, all mission progress is saved directly to the Nintendo 3DS cartridge, where it cannot be reset. The nature of the game invites high levels of replayability, encouraging fans to improve upon mission scores. The save mechanic ensures that both original and unlocked game content will be available to all users. Secondhand game sales were not a factor in this development decision, and we hope that all our consumers will be able to enjoy the entirety of the survival-action experiences that the game does offer.’

So, basically if you buy it used, just think of it like going to the arcade in the old days and trying to beat someone else’s score.

Konami has just released a teaser trailer for their upcoming RPG Frontier Gate which is being developed by tri-Ace for the PSP. The trailer shows off quite a lot of gameplay footage which really looks intriguing if you ask me. But with tri-Ace handling things, that’s not all that surprising. Hit the jump to take a look at their newest effort, which is still in desperate need of an international release date.
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The free-to-play online multiplayer first-person shooter War Rock, created by the South Korean studio Dream Execution and hosted in the West by K2 Network is getting a facelift. As part of a large-scale update started on June 7th, the game received several graphical changes both obvious and subtle yesterday, such as new textures and more detailed models. Next on the list are changes to the overall game system, which will be implemented after July.

War Rock is sort of a hybrid between Counter Strike and Battlefield. Players choose between two teams and then duke it out in 6 different game modes. If you want to find out more or give the game a go, head on over to the official website. It’s free to play and definitely worth a try.

Just a month before the North American launch of El Shaddai: Ascension of the Metatron, Ignition Entertainment’s Shane Bettenhausen has confirmed to Siliconera that the company is shutting down their internal development studios and plan to stay in the business as a publisher only.

Bettenhausen stated that Ignition will still create new IPs by partnering with third-party developers. They are already working with Vanillaware, Renegade Kid, and Endgame Studios for some upcoming titles, two of which we know are for the 3DS.

While Ignition certainly isn’t going away, this means that current Ignition-developed titles could be handed off to their partners if they return in the future.

It looks like the upcoming installment in the long-running Tribes franchise (check here for our previous coverage) will be free-to-play. In order to make the game financially feasible, developer Hi-Rez is taking a hint from League of Legends and will make the players buy their loadouts. So if you want to play as a fast, nimble character, you’ll have to buy a loadout for that. Want to defend your flag with heavy weaponry? Buy a heavy loadout featuring heavy weaponry.

Hi-Rez plans to release new loadouts in regular intervals, mixing different equipment like armor, weapons, grenades, etc. , just like Riot does with Champions in League of Legends. To be honest, I’m not sure if this is such a good idea. Will the game be able to stay balanced when not everyone has access to the same loadouts? Will players actually want to own several different loadouts, or just buy the one that suits their playstyle? This announcement sure stirs up some questions, but I guess we’ll see how it all works out when Tribes: Ascend releases later this year.

I guess we’ll have to stay above ground for a little while longer, as Cave Story 3D, the reinterpretation of the indie classic heading to the Nintendo 3DS has been delayed until November. While this is a good 3 months later than the originally intended release date of August 3rd, at least it seems like the developers are using the time efficiently. From the official press release:

“We are currently undergoing improvements to enhance gameplay. Changes are in the
small details, but in order to satisfy both the fans and the new players we need to make
sure the game is done right. Please look forward to it this holiday season. Cave Story 3D
will be a blast.”  -Jack Niida, producer at NIS America

The new Survival Horror 1st Person Shooter Black Death (see the reveal here) has gotten an official website. Right now there isn’t much to see, but if you ask me, the game sounds interesting enough to keep an eye on.

With the 2011 release schedule for Wii being pretty much anemic, fans decided to take matters into their own hands. Thus, Operation Rainfall was born, a campaign to get Nintendo of America to release Xenoblade Chronicles, The Last Story and Pandora’s Tower, all games that have been available (and successful) in Japan but not considered for a release in the US.

While the first course of action was supposed to be a letter-writing campaign, some fans decided to take a different route: They started preordering Xenoblade on Amazon under it’s old title Monado. And lookie here: It’s on the top spot of Amazon’s “Bestsellers in Video Games” list.

Now as Kotaku reports, Nintendo of America reacted to the stunt on their official Facebook page by saying “Hey fans, we appreciate your enthusiasm. Look for more updates to come soon!”. While this doesn’t have to mean much, at least the campaign caught their attention.

So, if you feel like actually playing some games on your Wii again instead of using it as a doorstop, join the fight and preorder your copy of Xenoblade today.