Develop reports that the property has been purchased by an anonymous American company, with no word on how the purchase will affect the 23 developers currently working on the game. One of the more optimistic scenarios has the American company temporarily hiring the Dundee-based staff in order to finish the project, but they may also opt to purchase the build and the IP and finish it themselves.

APB remains up for purchase, though interest in the sandbox MMO has reportedly been weaker than it was for Project MyWorld. According to numbers released by Begbies Traynor, appoximately 130,000 registered users play the game an average of four hours per day.

Responding to a report by Shacknews, founder Brad Wardell posted on the game's official forums, "Elemental's revenue was anticipated to provide the revenue both for our main games team's next project as well as a second team. Unfortunately, that is unlikely to happen so we've had to start laying people off."

Wardell said that the layoffs are the first since the company's migration from the OS/2 market in 1998, and commented that it "sucks for all of us to lay off anyone."

Mecha games have a curious history on consoles. While the PC hosted a successful run of MechWarrior titles (and some imitators) before developers and publishers essentially abandoned the genre, the console side instead hosted two basic interpretations: the expected action-simulator titles (Armored Core) and the somewhat-surprising tactical-RPG titles (Front Mission). Whether you prefer to pilot a giant bipedal tank yourself, or be the commander that oversees a squad of giant bipedal tanks, you were taken care of. The two series have traditionally stayed pretty close to their respective genres, so it's a bit of surprise to see that Front Mission, the tactical-RPG series, go into action-mecha territory with the upcoming Front Mission: Evolved.

For a quick story refresher (since Square games, especially, love to focus on backstory and the plight of their protagonists), Evolved takes place a few decades after the events of Front Mission 5; you play young wanzer pilot Dylan Ramsey who gets caught up in a conflict between the United Continental States and a mysterious faction that expresses its opposition by attacking New York City. With the game coming out on September 28, Square-Enix personnel recently dropped by to show off Evolved one last time before review.

When he wasn't busy discussing the return of Duke Nukem, Gearbox co-founder and CEO Randy Pitchford spent some time at PAX revealing that, around the release of the Borderlands Game of the Year edition (scheduled for October 12), Gearbox will update the game to increase the level cap by eight, bringing it to 69. They decided on an increase of 8 because they didn't want it to be too low, or as high as the 11-level increase that the General Knoxx brought.

Joystiq reports that Pitchford explained that Gearbox opted to make the increase a free update instead of including it in the Claptrap DLC because then "you'd have to buy every previous DLC." Also included in the free update will be a rebalancing of the original game to cater to the new level cap. Given that these are the sort of things you might expect to see in a premium DLC release, it's nice to see Gearbox instead release them to fans for free.

Why are Western game protagonists always bald, macho space marines? Why are Japanese protagonists always effeminate dandies? Those are two of the questions many developers discussed at this year's CESA Developers Conference (CEDEC) in Yokohama, Japan.

At the conference, Yosuke Shiokawa and Yuki Matsuzawa addressed these queries in a presentation titled, "First Time Japanese American Joint Development: Observations on our experience of taking direction from both countries." While both developers live in Japan, they are currently working on an as yet unannounced title that is being jointly developed in Japan and America. They claimed that this title will be a AAA title with a 90% plus metacritic score. Despite this, Shiokawa and Matsuzawa said they looked down on Western games. This attitude is still not uncommon in Japan, where until recently, the phrase "Western games are crap games" was taken as a self-evident truth by both fans and game makers.

The Gears of War 3 "Fate of Carmine" charity campaign officially closed this weekend at the Penny Arcade Expo. Cliff Bleszinski and Rod Fergusson from Epic Games appeared on video at the G4 panel to drop word that the charity shirts had raised 0,000 for Child's Play. No breakdown was given on the real shirts versus the virtual goods; but either way, that's a lot of votes for Carmine.

The two thanked everyone for buying shirts, whether for their Xbox 360 Avatars or the real life shirts sold by NECA, along with corporate sponsors and partners like Microsoft, G4, and Penny Arcade. "Although the fate of Carmine has been sealed, we can't tell you right now," said Cliff Bleszinski. This being a marketing event as well, we'll have to wait until Gears 3 releases to learn what happens to the poor, doomed schlub.

There's nothing else to be found on the site, but according to Siliconera, the domain was registered by D3 last month, so it doesn't look like a hoax. Most recently, EDF 2017 developer Sandlot was working on the Nintendo-published action game Zangeki no Reginleiv for Wii, which was released this past February. The last EDF game was released for Xbox 360 in March 2007. It wasn't a technical marvel but Scott Sharkey did give the game a B+ in 1UP's review, noting it was "like the best parts of every third-person shooter ever, boiled down to the most mindlessly fun essentials."

Besides a Rating Pending from the ESRB and the logo you see above, there's absolutely no information on the new site; not what platforms we can expect to see it released on or when more information will be released. We'll be keeping an eye on the site for any details that might come up.

Not only has Gearbox Software gained the rights to finish Duke Nukem Forever; the developer has also gained ownership of the franchise name. Gamasutra reports that Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford's decision to transfer ownership and finish the long-delayed title is partly due to his friendship with those at 3DRealms, like Scott Miller and George Broussard.

Pitchford credits Miller with getting him into the games industry, and he even worked on Duke Nukem Forever in the early days. When 3DR closed and the game seemed dead last May, Pitchford saw Broussard at a weekly poker game. "He told me it was the worst day of his life," he said. "I was worried about him. He was committed to the thing. He loved it so much he wanted it to be perfect."

Sometime in the past few years, shadows became a curiously pervasive trend in game design. Not the presence of shadows, but rather the ability to play as a shadow. XBLA's Limbo is the most recent high-profile example of the trope, but Wii gamers will be able to partake of the trend as well early next year thanks to Hudson's Lost in Shadow.

Lost offers a different take on shadow play than Limbo, though. Whereas the latter used its bleak graphics as an homage to German impressionist films of the early 20th century, Lost resembles nothing so much as Sony's PlayStation 2 masterpiece Ico. Its visuals are saturated with light, yet fairly monochromatic at the same time -- ethereal and dreamlike. Unlike in Ico, though, you're not responsible for the welfare of a scatterbrained princess, and you're not simply fighting shadows; you are a shadow.

From what I understand, the number four has a similar cultural connotation in Japan as the number 13 does here. Something to do with how their alternate, Chinese-derived pronunciation of "four" sounds the same as the word for "death," or some such. In that light, Sega seems to be courting bad luck with the fourth entry in the Yakuza series by offering a total of four different playable characters for the adventure. Maybe it's only fitting, though. After all, the Yakuza do have a reputation for gambling.

We're told that the expanded cast of protagonists -- Kazuma Kiryu and three of his underworld compatriots -- will come into play throughout the course of the story by offering different perspectives on the plot. Whether that will simply entail shifting the focus from character to character with each new chapter, or a complex, Rashomon-like tale that interlocks to reveal the true events and motives of its shadowy cast.