Sony has officially announced today that United Front Games will be bringing its PlayStation 3 “Play, Create, Share” racer,ModNation Racers, to the PlayStation Portable. The title appears to sport all of the features as its big brother — kart customization, mod creation, full track creation, as well as single-player and online-multiplayer game modes. Impressive… if they can pull it off. The game’s trailer, exclusive to GameSpot, makes it appear that theycan....

Sony Europe has announced that they will be re-releasing a range of PSP titles at a discount price under a new “PSP Essentials” banner. Priced at a nifty £9.99, twenty titles have been announced as part of the program to be launched in June. Additional titles will be added to the line in months to follow. Looking over the list, there’s a fair bit of good stuff.Patapon 2,Ratchet & Clank: Size MattersandDaxterin particular look to be excellent choices at that price....

1,099 videogames games were released to retailers in America this year according to Electronic Entertainment Design and Research. That’s a little more than the amount of games released in 2008, which was 1,092. While it would seem that the amount of new game releases is holding steady, EEDAR’s Jesse Divnich believes that a number of factors are going to cause these numbers to drop over the coming years. EEDAR toldGameSpotthat shelf space, consumer spending and of course, digital distribution, will contribute to the decline of new games hitting retail....

…it does.Just a little bit, though. This is especially true sincethe folks interested in the idea– Vicious Cycle – are the very ones who made the previousRobotechtitles (Battlecry,Invasion), as well as theMatt Hazardgames, all of which are middling at best. Vicious Cycle CEO Eric Peterson noted that: “They’re going to want to have [a sequel] because they’re hardcore fans, and we’d love to give it to them. It’s an opportunity that could sell and the first game was a wonderful experience for us....

[Update:KAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHN! We’ve been informed by SEGA that Aliens is not playable at PAX, contrary to what their press release had said. Well, that’s ruined my LIFE!] SEGA has revealed its PAX lineup for this year, revealing thatAliens: Colonial Marineswill be among theplayabletitles. Excuse me while I vomit rainbows from my eyes in merriment at this news! The Gearbox game is looking very promising, and I can’t wait to try it....

Okay, we get it Namco Bandai.Armored Core Vis going to be full of fast-paced action. Did you really need to send out so many blurry pictures of the game though? People want to see how good it’s looking. The people at home can simulate the blurry effect themselves by violently shaking their heads when looking at the images in our gallery. Jokes aside,Armored Core Vis looking prettygood. The game is still on target for a late release this year in Japan and early next year here in the US and Europe....

WithThe Witcher 2: Assassins of Kingsreleasing today, CD Projekt RED has announced thatalldownloadable content for the PC roleplaying game will be free from here on out, beginning with an all-new sidequest today! “Let me announce that all our DLCs will be FREE. All of them,”announced the studio. “If anything will be for purchase, those will be expansion packs.” The first free bit of DLC will be a quest calledTroll Trouble....

The most important segment of the video game purchasing public is the mainstream; the mothers and fathers who want their kids to love them instead of their spouse, so they go out and purchase the new video game console that their little mistake won’t stop talking about just to get some peace and quiet. Apparently, those people are in for some severe sticker shock this holiday season. Compete, an analyst firm,recently released a surveyfrom October of this year, that shows that 48% of those considering a PlayStation 3 for purchase assume it will cost $300USD or less....

EEDAR analyst Jesse Divnich has criticized the investors who pulled stock out of THQ following mixedHomefrontreviews, arguing that reviews are no guarantee of sales, and that review scores are the wrong way to judge a title’s profit potential. A friggin’babycould’ve told them that. “As an industry — and this is specifically targeted towards analysts and investors — it is easy to become too reliant on a single metric, which may erroneously drive forecasts and/or investment decisions,” he argues....

RememberManhunt 2? Of course you do, but not because it was a good game (because it definitely wasn’t), or because it did anything revolutionary. Nope, we all rememberManhunt 2because of the controversy that swirled around the game thanks to its uber-violent tendencies. The game was crap, the controversy was overblown and it pretty much faded into obscurity never to be… heard… of… oh,here it is again. The faux-controversy-ridden game is getting a PC release next week (Nov....

Game Center, Apple’s new multiplayer and social networking functionality, will not be supported by those rocking an older iPhone 3G. The folks with the second-gen iPod Touch are also screwed. Apple’s answer to Xbox Live will provide friends lists, leaderboards, and achievements when the version 4.1 of iOS goes out, but the new developer beta shows that your old phones won’t be able to use any of it. I’m guessing the reason lies with the phone’s lack of processing power....

Gamers are a stingy bunch. They expect developers and publishers to devote precious resources to creating bigger and better content for existing games, and then whine when it’s not free. In fact, the entire Destructoid staff is so cheap, that we packed one pork chop sandwich for our entire E3 trip, and shared it amongst one another. The leftovers were distributed amongst community members at PAX. Ubisoft can relate, and they’ve released theGhost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2“Throwback Pack 2” DLC pack on Xbox Live today … for free....

Major props must go out tocharliesuhfor making such awesome Mr. Destructoid fan art. What separates this from regular fan art? He made it all on the Nintendo DS! His first creation was Mr. Destructoid in wheel mode. Thanks to BackFlips whining, charliesuh made his second drawing the flying version of Mr. Destructoid. Then he made the really good one which you see above of Mr. Destructoid ripping the head off of some n00b....