(click to play the video)Paradox Interactive has just released brand new footage for their upcoming strategy game, Victoria 2. Watch as Producer Johan Andersson takes viewers through the title which calls upon players to guide their chosen nation from the era of absolute monarchies in the early 19th century through expansion and colonization, and then ultimately become a great power by the dawn of the 20th century.

“Victoria 2 is an economical game in its core,” says Johan, when stressing the title’s large focus on simulating the economy and political landscape during an era which featured the largest free market in the world. For fans of Paradox’s war strategy titles, Johan adds, “there is of course, still war.”

Victoria 2 is scheduled for a Q3 2010 release.

After decades of TV, movies, cartoons, and books, Star Trek fans finally got an online game today, and over one million players have already signed up. In the game, players start out as a Starfleet officer, choosing specialties such as science, engineering, or tactical. The players can then progress to become a starship captain. You can fight other players in fleet battles or beam down to planets to conduct missions with Away Teams on the ground.

The game is set in the year 2409, about 30 years after the storyline of Star Trek Nemesis, and follows canon of the original Star Trek, including the events of the Kirk-Spock era, the events of Deep Space Nine, Star Trek: Voyager, and Star Trek: Enterprise. Leonard Nimoy, who played Spock, provides the voice narration, and Zachary Quinto, who played Spock in the Star Trek film in 2009, provides the voice of the game’s Emergency Medical Hologram tutorial character.

The game costs $50, plus $12.99 to $14.99 a month for a subscription, and is rated T for teens 13.

Source: GamesBeat

There has been much speculation has as to whether or not Bungie will integrate Microsoft’s Project Natal into Halo ever since the motion-sensing device was revealed at the 2008 Electronic Entertainment Expo. Though Microsoft initially hinted that this might be the case, Bungie has just confirmed that Natal support in Halo won’t happen “until it makes sense.”

Bungie reports that Halo: Reach will not make use of Project Natal when it arrives for the Xbox 360 later this year. “Halo: Reach is NOT a Natal title and is being developed expressly with the traditional Xbox 360 controller in mind,” the developer said in a post to its official site.

Source: GameSpot

Sony’s PlayStation 3 is proving itself to be much more than a simple gaming system. The console’s price-to-performance ratio inspired one Air Force research team to place an order for 1,700 of them to go with the 336 they already have, and no, it’s not for their new USO center.

The Air Force Research Laboratory in Rome, N.Y., is clustering the consoles, along with some off-the-shelf graphic processing units, to create a supercomputer nearly 100,000 times faster than high-end computer processors sold today. Key to the whole idea is the console’s cell processor, which was designed to easily work in concert with other cell processors to combine processing power and has been critically acclaimed for its number crunching ability. This lets the researchers leverage power toward running such applications as Back Projection Synthetic Aperture Radar Imager formation, high definition video image processing, and Neuromorphic Computing, which mimics human nervous systems. Because of the way the consoles connect online or to each other is relatively slow compared to regular supercomputing setups, the group is limited in what type of programs can be efficiently run on the PS3 supergroup they call the 500 TeraFLOPS Heterogeneous Cluster.

Source: Stars and Stripes

According to someone from Warner Bros. Interactive in Germany, Batman Arkham Asylum 2 could arrive as early as October. That’s certainly the current listing for it, ahead of any officially announced release date. The sequel was revealed at last year’s Spike VGA show, although little more than a teaser trailer was shown. Warner Bros. has denied the release date and pulled the info, but the info was definitely there.

Source: Destructoid

EA will make its Super Bowl debut on Sunday with a Dante’s Inferno commercial. With an estimated ad spot cost of $100,000 a second, EA is sure to have something that might even make this year’s game worth watching up their sleeve, as the ad airs during the fourth quarter.

According to EA President, Frank Gibeau,”even within the spectrum of live sports events, the Super Bowl stands apart, almost as a national holiday. The Super Bowl is a bull’s-eye in terms of cross-over to our core demographic and the reach is outstanding. Not only does it draw 100 million viewers, but most people watch the Super Bowl live, a rarity in the world of DVRs. While digital outreach to Facebook, Twitter, and online bloggers is a core part of our marketing strategy, we felt that advertising during the Super Bowl is an excellent way to introduce this new IP to a massive cross-section of people who are likely already familiar with the dark and twisted Divine Comedy.”

Vampire Origins is getting closer to hitting the App Store. The game pits Dracula’s arch-rival Van Helsing against legions of underworld creatures. If you fancy Gothic adventures paired with intense fighting, Vampire Origins might just boil the blood in your veins.

A simple battle system ditches complex inventory and weaponry in favor of a point-and-click approach of attacking creatures by tapping them. Fast, very agile enemies leave you little time to ponder your next move or marvel Gothic architecture. Although the game is an adventure, with some puzzles and lots of exploration, action and killing enemies come before everything else.

EA has launched the multiplayer open beta for Command & Conquer 4: Tiberian Twilight. To sign up, register for your free GameSpot account and wait for the key to arrive. The beta gives players access to four maps, including Afflicted Arena, a Polynesian GDI military dock under siege by the Brotherhood of Nod.

“We could not be more excited to give fans a taste of what’s in store for Command & Conquer 4 Tiberian Twilight with the new multiplayer beta,” said Lead Designer, Samuel Bass. “Players can expect the fast-paced strategic RTS action they’ve come to know and love in the Command & Conquer franchise augmented with new gameplay elements that really ratchet up the intensity, especially in our 5v5 multiplayer modes.”

Source: Kotaku

Following up on the warning that PAX East will sell out, Joystiq discovered that the inaugural East Coast edition of the show will have over 60,000 attendees. Robert Khoo, President of Operations for Penny Arcade told them that they can’t release final figures until the show is over, but are “looking at more attendees than the last PAX in Seattle.” PAX 2009 sold out with 60,750 participants.

PAX East organizers plan to make an announcement this week that the show has fewer than 1,000 3-day badges remaining. (Thankfully your Avault crew – Billy, Chris and Mike Smith already have theirs.) At this point, PAX East has no announced speakers, music guests nor sponsors, but we’ll keep you posted as the information comes in.

Strawdog Studios, an independent multi-platform game developer, has announced that its arcade game, Space Ark; will be launched into orbit at the Xbox LIVE Arcade this spring. With your crack team of animal ‘arkonauts’, you have escaped your once peaceful solar system, which has been shattered by a wandering black hole, and are now looking for new places to live. With a trail of damaged planets left in the black hole’s wake, the animals board the Space Ark and fly across the galaxy on a mission to repair the damaged worlds. At each planet your arkonauts must bounce in the air and bag DNA combos, power-ups and all the fruit they can catch so ultimately the inhabitants can return.