There's no pictures to go along with the news like in the Halo 3 preview below, but the newest issue of Electronic Gaming Monthly has these new details towards the end of the magazine:

"If you're hankering for a virtual fistfight, top-quality options about -- the Virtua Fighter, Tekken, and Dead or Alive franchises all offer satisfying punch-up action. But if you're truly looking to give your opponent something to cry about, it's all about wielding sharpened steel, and nothing beats Namco Bandai's Soul Calibur series for weapon-based fighting thrills. In our world-exclusive preview, we'll reveal the future direction of this beloved series."

We still don't have any confirmation of when to expect the fourth game, or which consoles to expect it on, so hopefully the new EGM issue offers even more insight. I haven't received my copy in the mail yet, so feel free to give us an update if it's already arrived at your place.

Despite the Wii bringing new life to Nintendo, its game magazine sales are still plummeting thanks to countless sites like my own. According to IGN, the end of Nintendo Power might be near: 

"the company may be planning to close or restructure its official Nintendo Power magazine. Sources close to the publication tell IGN that mass layoffs are underway and that employees are being told to look for new work by September of this year."

It's not official yet, although Nintendo Power started back in 1988, so a huge change definitely wouldn't hurt. Did they honestly think that stretching Nintendo images across the spines of several continuous issues would be enough to keep us interested? Even as a young gamer I could tell the magazine sucked, the writing wasn't even effective enough to make their obvious bias have any impact on the readers. I'd just flip through the pages looking at the pictures and then toss it for Electronic Gaming Monthly's articles. And even EGM went through a large layout change a few years ago, so I doubt Nintendo Power will call it quits.

If they've lost their magazine mojo then all they need is a little boost to keep surviving. They should start writing with power gloves and actually give us previews that help. The last time they offered anything we couldn't get on the Web first was an early look at Twilight Princess. Dozens of Wii games later and they're still being useless. When Time Magazine has more popular gaming stories than your gaming magazine, you know you're in trouble.

The newest issue of Electronic Gaming Monthly magazine has some interesting stories in its rumor section, check this out PS3 gamers:

"The biggest is that Team Ninja apparently have an exclusive new Dead or Alive game in the works for the Sony console. Also interesting is that Capcom is apparently remaking the original Mega Man with new graphics for download on PSN. And for RPG fans, Nippon Ichi is working on a new Disgaea for PS3 and Square Enix has a new Kingdom Hearts coming -- though it won't be Kingdom Hearts 3 (that will be coming later)."

If all the rumors turn out to be true, then that's great news for several different genres. It looks like Kingdom Hearts will be ripped to pieces as much as every installment of Final Fantasy has been recently. I remember when I heard about Final Fantasy X-2 and could barely grasp the concept of another FF game without it being FFXI. For the most part I'm glad to see them continue their stories past the scope of just one game, and if FFXIII turns out to be multiple games that are all the same story from different perspectives, then I'm all for it. I'm just afraid it's their excuse for working on ten different games at once, and giving us only 1/10th of the content and story we expect in each installment. These are all just rumors though, so only time will tell.

It's getting late and you don't want to read, I understand. I'll shut up, just check out the high resolution pictures for yourself - there's plenty of new pictures to make it worth your while. The full one page EGM article is in the gallery below, plus write ups from two other magazines' May issues. Don't expect many FFXIII details though, most of it is just glorifying the console with technical possibilities we're all already aware of, but Shiva sure does make a good spokeswoman for the PlayStation 3.

If you enjoy paying for outdated gaming news that's already online for free, then at least save yourself a little bit of money. Nintendo Power magazine is normally $12.00 for a year's subscription, but this site is selling it for just four dollars. Electronic Gaming Monthly only dropped from $20 to $13, GamePro changes from $18 to $14, PSM and Xbox Magazine down to $5, and PC Gamer down to $5 from $15. There's a few more obscure gaming magazines included in the offer too. If there's one magazine you spend money on, I'd suggest only Electronic Gaming Monthly.

Every year I look forward to Electronic Gaming Monthly's April Fool's joke. My favorite one was when they told their magazine readers that they could unlock Sonic and Tails if you devoted enough time to Super Smash Bros. Melee. It was the easiest photoshop job possible, yet everyone believed them for a month and wasted dozens of hours trying to open the extra character slots on the play select screen.

This year they've come up with something more creative, and even put in the time to make convincing 3D images to sell their lie. I'd love to play a Mushroom Kingdom Hearts game, but it's pretty obvious that this is their cruel joke in the April issue of EGM.

The image on the left is the page scan, and I typed up the blurry text from the article:

 

The original idea for Kingdom Hearts was absolutely absurd. A role-playing game featuring characters from Final Fantasy and Disney? Hell, that's as asinine as combining Legos and Star Wars (wait - scratch that). But the only dumb ones were the ones who doubted it'd work - the unlikely combination actually toucheda helluva lot of gamers' hearts. So now that we're used to seeing Mickey Mouse and the rest of his cartoon clowns muck it up with the Final Fantasy crew, we thought we'd seen the last of these oddball pairings. Boy, were we wrong - publisher Square Enix is ramping up a radically new Kingdom Hearts sequel . . . only this game isn't set in under the sea, but rather under the pipes of the Mushroom Kingdom. We don't know much of the juicy deets right now (all Square Enix gave us was this early logo) but we were able to squeeze out some helpful intel.

First off, Mushroom Kingdom Hearts is a We [spelled wrong on purpose] exclusive and will feature a cast of over 41 Nintendo characters. Not only that, but it will also feature Sora, Mickey, and a flock of other favorites from the first two Kingdom Hearts. And as far as the story goes, all we know is Mario will get his hands (and feet) dirty hammering down the Heartless . . . oh, and apparently some princess needs saving, too.

So, basically a glorified Paper Mario game. Since this isn't just some hidden feature fib that EGM made up, it'd be cool if Square Enix actually gave this idea some thought, but I'm not getting my hopes up. Or maybe this preview is actually real and EGM still has us tricked - Halo 3 actually doesn't exist at all. That would be quite the bloody Sunday come April 1st. Thanks to Pedro for the scans. 

For those of you who enjoy the often month-old, yet still highly informative and entertaining, gaming news found in Electronic Gaming Monthly magazine, or even the up-to-date news and media sites 1UP.com and GameVideos.com, then you know that the company that owns all three is in a lot of trouble. When William Ziff's publishing portion of the company sold for $1.4 billion in the middle 1990s, things were looking good. Then, Japanese company Softbank later bought the publishing portion for $2 billion and things peaked, promising an eventful future.

Unfortunately the events were less than desirable, and Softbank sold their involvement for a measly $780 million. Ziff Davis continued to show signs of weakness a few months ago when they announced that their U.S. PlayStation Magazine would be discontinued in January of 2007. No biggy, they moved on at Titanic speeds, Dan Hsu got his aristocratic naked portrait, and the iceberg tore a hole in the company that ensured its death. If there was a 911-style conspiracy video covering all of these events, this would be when the Fight Club background ambient music picks up and starts to get into the depressing lyrics.

1UP even tried sleeping with ESPN to help save them, but Ziff Davis announced a while back that they would be selling EGM, 1UP, and other legendary gaming news sources to the highest bidder after a fiscal quarter brought a half million dollar loss in revenue. I naively thought Z to the D had nothing to worry about, they'd pull an Enron or sleep with some other company, but it appears that they will not be receiving a shitty football movie happy ending in the fourth quarter. It appears that the deadline has come, and the fate will be decided in the next day or two, leaving their gaming baby businesses separated to different families and living in a broken home lifestyle from here on out:

"For the current bust-up, the company is being split into the gaming group, which includes video gaming magazines and Web sites, and the enterprise division, which includes PC Magazine - once the biggest magazine tracked by the Publishers Information Bureau in terms of ad pages.

Bidders still looking at parts of the company include Apprise Media and Viacom's MTV publishing unit. Quadrangle is said to have dropped out."

Nothing great can come from that, Ziff Davis has met its Clubber Lang and the end is inevitable. Looks like it's time to run that million penny scheme floppy disc, grab your staplers, and fly to a foreign country. We now await with watchful eyes - if black smoke comes out of the 1UP headquarter chimneys, then they have been sold off but the 1UP employees get to keep their jobs. And if we see white smoke? Then it's their ashes.

It's sad to see the big guys going down fast. Baseball and football super stars only fall from fame if their drinking habits get the best of them, it sucks to see some of the first well known gaming writers get their retro rugs pulled out from underneath of them. Good luck fellow gaming writers.

What's your guys' opinion on all of this? On one hand, EGM isn't as great as it used to be, but I don't think a pitchfork riot is justified. But if anything drastic happens then the gaming industry might suffer. There's plenty of other gaming sites ready to step up, but when a magazine charges $10,000 per one page ad in their monthly publishings, you can tell that the companies really rely on them to help game sales. Magazines are definitely a thing of the past for gaming news, but it'll blow if their Internet brother gets the brought down with it.

Ziff Davis, the big shot company that runs both EGM magazine and 1UP.com, has announced that it will discontinue the publication of their official U.S. PlayStation magazine after its January 2007 issue. A big selling point for the magazine had been offering discs inside the magazine that would give subscribers extra content like game demos, but in today's internet world they just couldn't keep up.