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Microsoft Game Studios' immensely promising competitor to Sony's Gran Turismo series, Forza Motorsport, has been set back to 3rd May in the USA according to Microsoft's official US website.

A new European publisher has emerged this week with an eclectic portfolio of niche titles including several Harvest Moon games from Natsume - and has stated that its goal is to reduce the period between Japanese and Western releases.

Having finally revealed pricing and launch information for the PlayStation Portable in North America ($249.99, 24th March, with a free UMD movie of Spider-Man 2 for the first million - in case you missed yesterday's excitement), Sony has also now taken the wraps off the list of 24 titles to be made available in the North American launch "timeframe". We don't expect them all to be available on day one, but they will all be available shortly after the US launch.

"This game contains scenes of violence and gore". Cue a gigantic SMASH as Dante's size tens boot the television screen in. "Sweet dreams!". Talk about setting the tone.

When Microsoft first admitted its intentions with Forza Motorsport, it may as well have said, "We're going to fly to Pluto." Translated, Microsoft said publicly and in no uncertain terms that Forza is directly aiming to compete with the absolute giant of console racing games, Gran Turismo. There is no bigger target. GT is PlayStation's biggest game, the fourth version of which hits Europe in March, and with aspirations at this level, the pressure on Forza is absolutely immense. Early code turned up last week.

Sony has revealed its launch plans for the PlayStation Portable in North America, with the console set to arrive on March 24th at a price of $249.99, and a free UMD movie disc of Spider-Man 2 to be bundled with the first million units sold.

Sony Computer Entertainment Europe has announced that it will publish God of War, from the Santa Monica Studios subsidiary of its American arm, in the second quarter of 2005 exclusively on PS2.

Did you know they'd already agreed to do a Shrek 3 film? We've obviously not been paying close enough attention. But hey, we liked the first two really quite a lot, so we're not that bothered. The news that Activision's already working on a Shrek 3 game for release alongside the film in summer 2007 is, however, slightly less exciting.

When we reviewed Resident Evil 4 recently, we asked whether it was worth buying a GameCube simply to play. Well, whether or not you think so remains to be seen, but Nintendo clearly does because it's launching an £89 Resident Evil 4 GameCube hardware bundle this 18th March alongside the game.

Ubisoft has announced details of the various multiplayer modes its lining up for Rainbow Six: Lockdown on PS2 and Xbox, adding that it plans to unveil more in the coming weeks "that will revolutionise the world of online gaming". And yes, co-op is most definitely in.

British developer Sports Interactive and its publishing partner Sega Europe have announced that they will be donating a percentage of all revenues from their titles to international children's charity War Child.

Blizzard Entertainment has revealed that World of Warcraft will make its highly anticipated European debut next Friday, 11th February, in regular and special collector's edition versions.

LucasArts has released a chunky PC demo of its forthcoming PC and Xbox squad-based shooter Star Wars: Republic Commando, which you can download today from a variety of locations including 3D Gamers and GameSpot.

Xplosiv has announced its first batch of new budget PC releases for 2005 set to go on sale in the UK this March at £4.99 and £9.99 price points.

Some of us haven't even seen the film yet, and the original game is still fourth in the UK charts, but that hasn't stopped publisher THQ from announcing this week that it plans to release a second game based on Disney/Pixar's The Incredibles this autumn.

As promising as Snowblind has looked and sounded over the past nine months or so, you'd have to be Timmy Mallet after a particularly severe Tartrazine overdose on the sunniest day of the year not to be slightly suspicious at the presence of another videogame prefixed with the word 'Project'. Eden, Gotham, Zero, Rub, X, Nomads, Entropia, Earth, Justice have all Projected upon us, and now it's Snowblind's turn to join the merry throng. But even though most of those have served the Project word just fine, we'll just settle for Snowblind, thanks.

The Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences has announced the latest addition to its "Hall of Fame", with Electronic Arts founder Trip Hawkins being inducted into the elite group at the DICE Summit in Las Vegas.

Ubisoft is planning to publish a pacifistic pirate MMO this April as it aims to expand its range of massively-multiplayer titles. Developed by Three Rings Design, Puzzle Pirates is already available to trial and play online.

Konami has finally outlined the full extent of Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater's European additions ahead of the game's release in PAL territories on 4th March.

Ubisoft has released a 10MB video of Rainbow Six 4: Lockdown in action (mirrored on Eurofiles here) featuring members of the development team discussing the sense of immersion they were striving for and how they went about that.

Sony has declared that Gran Turismo 4 is complete and will be released across Europe on 9th March after four years in development. What's more, the PAL version will feature 10 additional cars on top of the 700 or so that made it in to the Japanese version.

Bandai has teamed up with Bones animation studio and Hakuhoudou DY Media Partners to launch a new anime series and PlayStation 2 game pairing called Eureka Seven. The anime series will debut on Japanese television this 17th April and run for a total of 50 episodes, while the game is due out in the summer.

Konami has added a two-player wireless multiplayer mode to its PlayStation Portable title Metal Gear Acid, the company revealed at a recent press event in the States, having had to leave it out of the Japanese version released on 16th December last year due to time constraints.

Ascaron is preparing to publish The Great Art Race, a game that sees you building up an empire to fund art acquisitions, in the first few months of 2005. TGAR is being angled at the family market and supports a five-player hot-seating multiplayer mode.

My main activity in City of Heroes this week has been dying.

Valve's critically acclaimed first-person shooter Half-Life 2 has clocked up almost 1.7 million retail sales since its launch less than two months ago, according to the latest information from publisher Vivendi Universal Games.

Nintendo DS will launch in Europe on 11th March priced £99.99 or €149, Nintendo has revealed at a press conference in Paris this afternoon, and the platform holder is planning to ship more than 650,000 in the initial run.

Capcom Eurosoft has offered assurances that the European version of Resident Evil 4 will not be censored; despite confirming that the Japanese version released this week has had decapitation animations removed.

Up to now, as impressed as we've been with a lot of the DS output, there are only so many remakes and updates that we can reasonably be expected to get excited about. The last thing we want the DS to turn into is Nintendo's next shovelware system, with a check list of N64 games making an inexorable march into the 'games we've bought twice' category. And with that in mind we made an immediate beeline for the games being shown off at Nintendo's Parisian DS event that were new to us. Of which Kirby certainly looks one of the most promising.

A group of homebrew development enthusiasts attempting to get Linux running on the Nintendo DS have made something of a breakthrough this past week, managing to get a homebrew demo running on the dual screen handheld through a pass-through.