MTV Multiplayer recently posted a short interview Rob Pardo, the EVP of Game Design over at Blizzard about the progress of the World of WarCraft movie. “We’re still super excited about it,” he says, “but it’s still in that story-development phase.”

The World of WarCraft movie is based in the WarCraft universe, the setting of the strategy trilogy and wildly popular MMO. Coming from Legendary Pictures, the movie was first announced in 2006 and Sam Raimi, of Evil Dead and Spider-Man fame, attached to direct last year. Having just released massively critically and financially successful StarCraft 2: Wings of Liberty, MTV asked if the other Blizzard properties would be coming to the silver screen as well.

“We’ve always had an interest in seeing our stuff on film or TV,” Pardo replied. “It’s just tricky to find the right partners. We probably could have made a ['StarCraft'] movie or something on TV years and years ago, but it’s really important to us that we find creative people that are really talented but also really excited about our properties. That’s always been the challenge for us. I think if Jim Cameron came to us tomorrow and said, ‘You want to make a ‘StarCraft’ movie?’ we’d probably sign that … That’s why we did the ‘WoW’ movie. We were really excited about being involved with Legendary Pictures, who we thought had a really good track record with these sorts of movies that would make sense for our franchises.”

It’s interesting to note that the WoW film is currently in development hell, with few people actually expecting it to go anywhere. That being said, maybe in a few years people will stop attaching such a stigma to films related to video games. Yes, I’m referring to Scott Pilgrim.

PS3 owners who felt snubbed by Ubisoft opting to not bring Sam Fischer’s latest adventure over make have cause to rejoice come November. Siliconera reports TheSixthAxis has found a listing on Amazon France for a PS3 game called Splinter Cell Trilogy. While there is a lack of further information at this time, the most obvious conclusion is that this is the newest title in the Classics HD line, a series of PS2 games remade and remastered in HD. If this is in fact true, it would be the first series that was not a Sony owned property to receive this treatment. There have been two other HD remakes on PS3 thus far: the first is the God of War Collection, which bundles God of War and God of War II; the second is the upcoming Sly Collection, which will bundle Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus, Sly 2: Band of Thieves, and Sly 3: Honor Among Thieves, along with some additional PlayStation Move based mini-games and will also support 3D. The Sly Collection comes out in October, which would make the timing of the Splinter Cell Trilogy odd, assuming this is more than just a rumor.

The internets are abuzz about some random Bayonetta news. All because of a single tweet from Producer Yusuke Hashimoto, which reads; “Good morning. We should be able to reveal new news related to Bayo[netta] this week. Look forward to it.”

I would take this news with a grain of salt; unless an account says verified, anyone can claim to be anyone else on twitter. It’s always best to wait until there is an official announcement. However, never fear, Bayonetta fans. I’m sure you’ll see this sexy angel in a new title soon enough.

I’ll be honest. I would normally be witty and throw some prose in here about the game and maybe a pun or two but my sheer enthusiasm for this game makes me a slack jawed idiot.
A recap of the characters announced so far:

American McGee and EA have finally announced the sequel to the much-loved Alice—which was perhaps the darkest interpretation of Alice in Wonderland known to mainstream audiences. With Alice: Madness Returns, we can perhaps expect even more insanity from the world. Here is an analysis of the teaser trailer.

Sega offers Genesis and Master System games on Virtual Console. Later this year, XBLA and PSN will get Dreamcast games as well. But what abut the Saturn? Sega’s Yosuke Okunari, producer of the Dreamcast re-releases and former producer of the Sega Ages 2500 series of remakes/re-releases on PS2, offers hope in an interview that was posted today at Impress Watch (translated by Andriasang).

Impress Watch asked why Sega skipped from the Genesis to the DreamCast. “When you look globally,” responds Okunari, “the Genesis and Dreamcast are well known, but Saturn is unknown. During that period, PlayStation and Nintendo 64 were a success overseas, but to be honest Saturn was not a success. Because of this, we decided on Dreamcast.”

The guys at Technologizer have found that in the source code for Hulu Plus; “devices” page, you can find the following point:

“The instructions below will help you install Hulu Plus on your PS3. Note: you must be a subscriber of the Playstation Plus Network.”

While not displayed on the actual page, it is in the code at time of publishing.

Level-5′s White Knight Chronicles is coming to the PSP, according to Andriasang. The tentatively named “Shirokishi Monogatari New Project” appears in leaked images of Famitsu’s table-of-contents under the PSP section (Shirokishi Monogatari is the Japanese name for White Knight Chronicles).

In the same issue, Famitsu has released their review of White Knight Chronicles 2, giving it total score of 33/40, a modest improvement over the 29/40 that the first game got. Famitsu states that the game fixes most of the problems of the original including the map display, chat interface, and other interface areas as well. They also note the “tremendous volume of content” which they appreciated. There are clearer differences between weapons, adjusted skills, and the general tempo of combat has increased. The sequel hasn’t been formally announce for foreign shores, though an announcement is expected, as the first game ended inconclusively.

GameInformer is reporting that Patrice Désilets has left Ubisoft and the Assassin’s Creed franchise. He is a creative director who had been with Ubisoft since the studio was founded, and was instrumental in the return of the Prince of Persia franchise, which went on to receive multiple awards, as well as the creation of the Assassin’s Creed franchise, which has become one of the higher profile series that Ubisoft controls. Ubisoft recently announced plans to annualize its major franchises much in the way of Activision. It is not known if this effected Désilets’ decision. This could prove to be quite a blow to the Ubisoft Montreal studio, as they recently lost Far Cry 2 director and Splinter Cell mastermind Clint Hocking, and Jade Raymond, who went to head the new Toronto studio. While not the most mainstream of names, he is respected among his contemporaries. In an interview translated by 1UP, Metal Gear creator Hideo Kojima had this to say:

“I think there are three games that stand out above the rest of the pack in the remainder of this year. One is Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2, one is Uncharted 2, and the third is Assassin’s Creed II. I think a lot of recent Western games concentrate on style and the ‘you are there’ feel, but Patrice’s games are still focused squarely on game design. The graphics have improved, but the system itself is a definite improvement over the last game. I think there are very few sequels like that. Any sequel needs to take in feedback from users and try to do what couldn’t be done last time, but with Assassin II, they worked really hard to advance the real core of the game, the way you assassinate people. It’s really great.”

Game Informer was able to confirm the departure with Ubisoft. Ubisoft released the following statement:  ”With his role on project essentially done, Patrice Désilets has decided to take a creative break from the industry and is no longer working on Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood.”

So Rare is doing/announcing something in 6 days (or 5 depending on your location).

What could they possibly be hinting at?

And what goes down in  5 days?