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More Roy Orbison and two KISS classics (live!) are coming toRock Bandnext week, everyone! The three Orbison tracks are part of the “Roy Orbison: 75th Birthday Pack,” which you’re able to get for $5.49/440 MS Points/550 Wii Points. Buy all of those tracks individually for $1.99/160 MS Points/200 Wii Points, which is the same price as those KISS ditties. Both “Only the Lonely” and “Rock and Roll All Nite” — two songs guaranteed to impress potential significant others — are eligible for “Pro” upgrades....

Kick, kick, kick… crunch Oops, did yourRock Banddrum pedal break? It’s probably not the most suitable piece of plastic when you think about how many times it’s going to be stomped on during game play. Was the inclusion of this breakable pedal just crap planning, or was it something more deliberate? The lawyers for Kansas resident Monte Morgan think that Rock Band’s makers were out to “cheat large numbers of consumers out of individually small sums of money” by selling kit with a “design defect,” says GameCyte....

Electronic Arts has been taking some interesting risks as of late.Dead Spaceis,by my reckoning, one of the best horror games to come about in years despite being a genre largely untapped by the company in the past. Then we haveMirror’s Edge,with its parkour-flavored action, on the horizon which has more than a few of us at Destructoidsalivating. Now,Varietyis reporting that EA has an unannounced title in the works based on one of the greatest literary masterpieces of all time....

According a rumor yanked from the latest issue ofOfficial Xbox Magazine, Gearbox may currently be working onHalo 4as a launch title for Microsoft’snextconsole. While rumors and speculation are all well and good, Gearbox CEO did hint that they were working on a huge project. “I’ve started a new project,” he wrote on Gearbox’sofficial forumsback in February. “It’s big. It’s, like, look-at-our-line-up-and-imagine-something-even-bigger kind of big. I’m directing it myself. I can’t mention it publicly yet....

Hey Wii owners, if you had any Christmas parties planned aroundRock Band 2, here’s some harrowing news: the game/instrument bundle may not see release in 2008. Our GameStop moles just shot us an image of a disturbing email, one that says the Wii version of theRock Band 2bundle has been delayed until January 2009. More specifically, the email details that the game will ship on January 6, and that reservation customers will be contacted by an automated, dream-crushing call....

I hope that none of you have had the misfortune of missing out on theSamurai Shodowngames, as they’re some of the best 2D fighters ever produced. But if you have been avoiding the series for whatever reason, there’s still hope: a compilation disc will be out later this year that containspracticallyevery title in the franchise (Samurai Shodown,II,III,IV,V,V Special, andVI). Thanks to aninterview with SNKat GDC, we know thatSamurai Shodown Anthologywill be out in Q4 for PS2, PSP, and Wii....

Hype. It’s the game industry’s lifeblood, but also its poison. Developers and publishers prey upon the expectations and excitement of their customers, doing whatever they can to generate and maintain a buzz around their upcoming projects. We in the press are no better, all too eager to give game makers the platform they need to whip public interest into a frenzy of eager hope. Sometimes a ride on the hype train pays off, with recent games likeDead SpaceandFable 2benefiting greatly from the extra attention and living up to their publicity....

Unfortunately, if you’ve read the headline of this story then you’ve already got through most of the information we have on this one at the moment. Today,Kotakugot confirmation through from Activision that a thirdSoldier Of Fortunegame, subtitledPay Back, is in development. Activision’s statement didn’t give much away, stating only that: Soldier of Fortune: Pay Back is being published by Activision’s Minneapolis office. We have no further information to share at this point, but hope to very soon....

Sony Ericsson’s newly patentedOrientation based multiple mode mechanically vibrated touchscreen displaylooks like the long-time rumored PSP phone. But it has a touch screen. Yeah, I don’t quite get it either. Not suprisingly, this device packs in every gaming and gadget tech idea out there. Shiny touch screen? Check. Accelerometer? Check. It makes calls and it plays games. It has a haptics tactile feedback mechanism, which replaces the need for real buttons....

Sony hasn’t done a great job of veiling its attempts to undermine the launch of Kinect. Afterboasting about the EyeToy on Kinect’s launch day, the publisher is now producing slick graphics to show that its own waggle controller, PlayStation Move, is going to be a rip-roaring success this holiday season. According to the distractingly busy picture, more than 60% of those interested in Move are Wii owners, purchase intent has more than doubled since May, half of the prospective Move buyers are parents, and 30% are female....

So PlayStation Network is down, the reasons for which are unclear to us. Sony, too, apparently. And according to Patrick Seybold, Sr. Director, Corporate Communications & Social Media, it may be awhile before it gets back online. “While we are investigating the cause of the Network outage,” Seybold wrote on the PlayStation Blog, “we wanted to alert you that it may be a full day or two before we’re able to get the service completely back up and running....

All eyes are onPortal 2and its potential early release, it would seem. But what about lonely oldTeam Fortress 2? It’sjust been updated— without the inclusion of any hats. This one’s for you, anti-hat crowd. Most notably, there’s the Koth_Badlands map, improved voice chat quality, rejiggered AI bots, a new voting system, plenty of weapon tweaks, and some sort of system for coaching players, among other things. If you don’t have all of the Potato Sack indie gamesrunning in the background, you should consider loading upTF2for the evening....

The latest update toTeam Fortress 2, which is now available for download,added a bunch of fan-made hats, weapons, and items — hell, I think I even saw a chocolate bar. All of these ideas were submitted to Valve via the “Contribute!”Web site, in case you were wondering. Over on theofficialTF2blog, the ever-vigilant team at Valve had this to say: “Starting from our core belief that entertainment products should be services, we’ve tried to increase the set of ways our community can impact our games, and the ways in which we can reward you for it....