Need for Speed ProStreet

EA has announced that the Need for Speed series has sold more than 100 million units since its launch in 1994.

Two new games are now available for download via Xbox Live.

John Riccitiello has unveiled the next Need for Speed game and confessed to "torturing" developers working on previous instalments in the series.

If life is, indeed, like a box of chocolates, then we'd opine that penning one of Eurogamer's review roundups is rather like a box of chocolates bought for you by a relative who doesn't like you very much, with the Tesco discount label only half peeled off. You never know quite what you're going to get, but the chances are you won't like many flavours, and may feel somewhat ill by the end. Not to mention fatter.

Now all that remains to be seen is whether this latest batch of PSP treats can dish up some unexpectedly delicious centres, or whether the chocolate will be cheap and the nasty chewy ones that stick between your molars all too abundant. Or, indeed, whether this metaphor will ever end. Sorry.

Fading Shadows

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Every now and then, someone pops out of the woodwork to complain that the games industry isn't innovative any more. This is clearly nonsense. Certainly, publishers might have an ongoing love affair with barely distinguishable sequels and a herd mentality that makes sheep look strong-willed, but consider this - year after year, the industry invents new and previously unheard-of ways to make you part with your cash. If that's not innovation, what is?

Download Content (DLC) is a new arrival in the exciting field of wallet-stripping, and the Xbox 360 is on the vanguard. Many Xbox 360 games have content available for download sometime after launch, allowing you to hand over a few measly Microsoft points for access to new maps, models, missions and the likes. It's a great idea in theory, obviously - who doesn't want to extend the life of their favourite game a bit? In practice, though, there's some suspicion about it. Nobody wants to find themselves paying extra money for content that should have been in the game in the first place.

Hence these DLC roundup features, where we'll be looking at the bits and bobs that have made their way onto Xbox Live - and, soon, PSN - in the past few months, and checking out what's worth whipping your card out for, and what deserves to sit, dusty and unloved, in the digital dustbins out the back of the Marketplace.

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EA is well aware its December Need For Speed ProStreet patch is irreparably corrupting PS3 and PC versions of the game.

Eurogamer is back for its latest tour of duty at the frontline of the console war with this new instalment in our rolling series of PlayStation 3 vs Xbox 360 cross-platform face-offs.

You know the form by now. We take an impartial look at a range of games that appear on both consoles, providing additional comment to the reviews already published on the site. Technical differences are highlighted, with any impact on the basic gameplay being of primary concern.

As usual, backing up the analysis is a range of comparison screenshots of each game, losslessly extracted with full 24-bit RGB precision from the HDMI ports of the Xbox 360 Elite and PlayStation 3 courtesy of a Digital Foundry HD capture unit. 720p shots are provided as standard for all games, but where the PS3 version supports 1080p (either scaled or native), we supply additional 'True HD' screengrabs to compare the games' respective performance for those privileged enough to have access to top-end displays.

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Electronic Arts has said that it regrets a promotion for its latest Need for Speed game which used Page 3 porn models for a topless photo shoot.

Once upon a time, reviewing handheld versions of popular video and PC games was a bit like inviting your old friends round only to discover they all secretly hate you and are recent burns victims. These days, though, the DS is big business to games publishers, so surely they're trying a bit harder. We tracked down five recent examples of "and on DS" to find out.

The Simpsons Game

Games that make fun of games can't really afford to be bad themselves. That was the problem The Simpsons Game had on telly consoles, and the same's true on the DS. Except this time the game bits are worse. (So, off to a bad start.)

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Rather than competing with the music industry, videogames are giving musicians opportunities that they didn't have before, says Tom Holkenborg.

Driving games have done a lot of odd things over the years to get noticed. Mario Kart gave you shells to fire. MSR gave you points for losing traction. Ridge Racer let you drive sideways round corners. Need For Speed was, on and off, about running away from the law. This one isn't though - this one's about street racing kids going straight. Which is an apt description, since you basically can't steer.

Things start off badly as you sit on the grid holding down the accelerator while your car visibly fits in front of you, bouncing around like a washing machine while a negligibly attired stripper pouts you down to the start. As soon as you hit the first corner you lose it, because turning further than 10 degrees at anything faster than a crawl isn't going to happen, leaving you to pump the brake for ages and ease almost completely off the accelerator in order to get the nose round anywhere near far enough. It's not that difficult to master the cornering once you accept these rules (and there are three degrees of Driver Assist options to help you if you struggle), but being proficient at ProStreet is more like being good at scouring pans than being good at, say, dancing. Or racing cars for sport.

Strangely it's all best played out in the wider third-person view, which pulls back as you accelerate, because this accentuates what speed you have and couples well to a physics model that really drags at your tyres if you let a wheel slip off the track into the dirt, and won't let you get away with mowing down sign-posts or anything like that, either. As a result, going fast is a precarious feeling, and the game's best moments involve threading your delicate, hand-built racers at pace through networks of long but slight opposing corners. The other camera options aren't really worth exploring - there's a bonnet cam instead of a bumper cam, which makes things feel floaty and slow, and a closer third-person effort, and for some reason the driver's-eye view feels more like you're pinned to the windscreen somewhere above the dashboard, so it's a bit like playing as a tax disc.

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With Need For Speed: ProStreet set to bobble tankerishly round the final bend into retail next Friday on PS3, Xbox 360, PS2, PC and DS, Electronic Arts has got in there early with some premium downloadable content on Xbox Live.

EA has whipped a new demo for Need For Speed ProStreet on to the Internet.

If you go down to the US PlayStation Store today, you better not go alone - you better take nearly 1.5GB of hard disk space with you in order to download TimeShift and Need For Speed ProStreet demos.

EA has eased a Need For Speed ProStreet demo onto the Live Marketplace starting grid.

EA bigwig Steve Schnur reckons music in games influences youngsters more than other media, like radio, GamesIndustry.biz reports. That's probably because they spend all their time talking and cut records off before they're finished.

EA has revealed that the latest instalment in the Need For Speed series will be available across nearly every format in the world ever on 1st November.

EA has unveiled the next game in the Need For Speed series, and has given us an exclusive trailer and screenshots to show it off with.