If there’s one thing I love about the 3DS, it’s the giddy excitement that it seems to inspire from jaded writers and world-weary developers alike. Electronic Arts is the latest to radiate the hyperactive glee of a small child with a new toy, with COO John Schappert calling it magical. “The 3DS is just incredibly cool. The 3DS is magical. You put that in your hand, you look down, and all of a sudden it’s in 3D without glasses....

Back in May, we got ourfirst look at Call of Duty Elite, a set of tools introduced by Activision to enrich the game experience. Introduced to players was in-depth stat tracking, video sharing, training tools based on your gameplay experience, and more. What Activision wasn’t talking about is how it would integrate with the upcomingModern Warfare 3. At Call of Duty XP this week, Activision is finally ready to spill the beans on how Elite andModern Warfare 3will work together to provide a deeper social experience than before....

Gears of War‘sseries senior producer Rod Fergusson hasrecently admittedthat Epic wasn’t feeling as confident as it could have when writing the story for the original game, something he intends to change forGears of War 2. Fergusson has stated that his team is now far more bold in working on a story-driven game, and promises a plot with some “risks” this time around. “In [the first]Gears Of War, it’s been a long time since Epic did a story-driven game, and so we weren’t as confident as we should have been in telling theGears 1story, and there were certain choices that we didn’t take, because we just weren’t confident that we could pull it off, or that people would believe it, so we backed off of that,” explained Fergusson....

Epic’s Mark Rein has made himself look like a bit of a tit if Positech’s Cliff Harris is to be believed. The indie developer was at Brighton’s annual Develop conference, claiming that indie developers have an advantage over big-name companies due to the personal relationship they can build with customers. Apparently, Rein didn’t think this was worth taking seriously. “At this point, there was this derisive snort from this guy in the front row, who said something to the effect of ‘one guy?...

The containers are ready, the consoles (all 35 of them) are ready, the TV’s are almost ready (six are set up, HDTV is on the way, and a few more regular TV’s are on the way as well. The living-room setups have been made (seats and all), the camping ground is ready and last but not least, we’ve quadruppled last year’s space! The only thing we still don’t have enough is registered guests!...

A Collector’s Edition version ofRatchet & Clank: A Crack in Timeis coming to participating European retailers. Revealed this morning on the officialEuropean PlayStation blog, the Collector’s Edition has a fewRatchet & Clank-themed treats for those with the necessary clink in their pockets. Coming in a lenticular-fronted foldout package, the edition contains an artbook containing exclusive Insomniac art, SCEE Product Manager Kevin Smyth’s foot, and a voucher for a bit of European exclusive content called the “Discovery Package....

According to our man at EVO2K11 Jesse Cortez, Capcom’s Yoshinori Ono has just announced thatSuper Street Fighter IV: Arcade Editionwill be getting a full rebalancing update later this year. Ono-San felt so badly about the game’s balancing issues that he convinced Capcom to give this rebalance project a relatively large budget, which includes money to be put towards playtesting in Japanese arcades before the update hits consoles. Ono-San also formally apologized to the attendees of EVO for the game’s unbalanced roster, bowing with his trademark Blanka toy, before giving every attendee of the tournament a free copy ofSSFIV:AEon PC....

The latest issue of Famitsu has hit the shelves in Japan and it features four pages on a newResident Eviltitle,Resident Evil Revival Selection. Well, okay, it’s probably not a “new” game. What we’re hearing is that the title features HD remastered versions ofResident Evil 4andCode: Veronicaand will be releasing for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. No word yet on if additional features will be added to the games, though andriasang has been told thatResident Evil 4will contain Ada’s “Another Order” mode....

Has your laser harp been sitting in the basement collecting dust? Got no all night raves to bust it out for? Wait. You don’t have a laser harp? You mean you didn’t rush out to make your own the second you saw Stephen Hobley’s video ofhimself playing his homemade laser harp? Man, you clearly need to get you’re priorities straight. Best to run out and buy one now, because the laser harp also happens to be the future of music gaming....

Our first look atTribes: Ascendin motion naturally includes plenty of soldiers zipping across large spaces, and many a firing laser rifle. What else did you expect from aTribesgame? This beta footage comes with the news thatAscendhas now moved itself into free-to-play territory; I feel like I’ve written this story five times in the past week alone. The announcement makes sense given the title in question, and seems like something Hi-Rez Studios would do....

In a mere eight days after its demo release,Star Wars: The Force Unleashedhas reached one million downloads over Xbox Live. According toEdge(viaOXM) this is a record. I would like to meet the man that keeps track of these numbers. I have come to the conclusion thatStar Warsfans have broken this record by deleting and downloading the beta continuously. Just like how fans clog the movie theatres for days at a time to watch George Lucas butcher their favorite fiction....

RememberHoopworldfor Xbox LIVE Arcade? Yeah, I wouldn’t blame you. The game had been announced, was even playable, but was never released. What happened? It was being turned into a WiiWare game that’s — surprise! — coming out next week on July 19. Originally set to be some kind of odd basketball/dodgeball/party game mash-up,Hoopworldis now a 3-on-3 basketball title. The game retains it’s whacky, bright-colored look and feel, with seven teams and six outdoor locations....

This week’s comic hails fromGone with the Blastwave.It’s a great comic, but it doesn’t get updated very often. What is there, though, is hilarious. The comic started in July of 2005 and gets updated every once in awhile. The story revolves around a group of red solders in a post apocalyptic world as they fight blue and yellow solders. All of them are stuck in a city and they have no idea how to get out....