14 DAY TRIAL // This week, we took a close look at the way Ubisoft revitalized the Prince of Persia series with The Forgotten Sands, with both a review of the title and a series of game diaries offered to those who want to know more about it. We also have a review of the fresh Magic the Gathering game on Xbox Live Arcade and Steam and those who want to read more can also check out a Weekend Reading feature about World of Warcraft and its inevitably free to play move and an EndWeekGame piece about our gaming habits. Of course, we also have a selection of the biggest news of the week that was.
On Monday, we found out that the Nintendo 3DS could actually come to North America before the end of this year, courtesy of a television appearance of Reggie Fils-Aime, just as Blizzard announced that those who subscribe to the World of Warcraft MMO in South Korea would also be getting access to Starcraft II for free when the game launches in July.
On Tuesday, Team ICO fans were pleased to hear that Amazon was listing a collection of the developer's titles as coming to the PlayStation 3 in full High Definition and Nintendo generated interest in Japan by revealing that the new Pokemon Black and White had a launch date of September 18.
Wednesday was the day when it was unveiled that Madden NFL 11 got a new stat for each player, named Swagger and built-in cooperation with Old Spice. Meanwhile, Battlefield: Bad Company 2 got a long awaited patch but a few players still complained about problems with their multiplayer experience.
On Thursday, a few words from a Blizzard executive led to the world speculating about the possibility of World of Warcraft going free to play at some point in the distant future, while SEGA confirmed that it might digitally distribute remakes of old Saturn games.
Friday was dominated by the NPD numbers for May, which showed an industry wide decline, with Red Dead Redemption dominating the videogame chart in the United States and with the Nintendo DS reaching the top position in hardware. Things were spiced up with an announcement from 2K regarding new single player content for BioShock 2.