There's still some time to wait before David Jaffe's next Twisted Metal game is completed, so in the meantime Activision is looking to capitalize on the vehicular combat market with Blood Drive. Coming this November with a discounted price tag of $49.99, Blood Drive is a new car combat for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.

Its existence was actually first made public earlier this year when a listing for an Activision-published game called Death Drive showed up on GameFly, though if didn't offer up any information about the game. Then, earlier this month, "Blood Drive" was rated by the BBFC (via CVG) and a listing with some actual details about the game appeared on Amazon.

Activision officially announced the M-rated title today. The premise is that you're a driver on a TV game show where drivers try to kill each other while also competing against zombies, of which there are many varieties, including zombie frat boys, cops, strippers, and bachelorette partiers. It also promises to have multiplayer support for up to four players who can drop in and out at any time.

TimeGate has announced they'll be bringing out Section 8: Prejudice, a sequel to last year's multiplayer-focused shooter Section 8, early next year.

There aren't many details available yet, although you can see some gameplay footage in the debut trailer over on GameTrailers. But there aren't any specific new features to glean out of the trailer, besides vague hints from the narrator about "better technology" and "more powerful weapons" and "smarter soldiers."

If you never played the original Section 8, it had a couple of standout features to differentiate it from the glut of other shooters on the market -- most notably the ability to spawn in by dropping from orbit, controlling where on the battlefield your character will land and enter the fray (a feature that'll be returning in Prejudice, as evidenced by shots of orbit-dropping combatants in the debut trailer).

While various publishers (including EA, Ubisoft, THQ, and maybe even Sony) have embraced the "online pass" model to combat used games -- that is, charging used game buyers $10 to access multiplayer content -- Treyarch studio head Mark Lamia says they're going to try a different tactic: keep Call of Duty: Black Ops' multiplayer perpetually free, but make it addicting enough that no one will want to trade in the game in the first place.

"You won't see that for Black Ops," said Lamia to MCV, regarding the online pass model. "The multiplayer comes with the game you buy -- you don't have to do anything else for that.

"I want to take that in the other direction and bring consumers really great reasons to keep their games, rather than trade them in," Lamia said. "Multiplayer is critical to the success of this series. It has such tremendous staying power -- there are millions of people playing Call of Duty every day. It's entertaining people on a magnitude that's mind-blowing and we work really hard to make sure it's supported for a long time."

Capcom hasn't been terribly clear about what Mega Man Universe actually is. Its introductory trailer was like something out of a fever dream, and our own exclusive gameplay trailer didn't show off what makes this Mega Man game different than the rest. Now we're finally getting a look at what sets Universe apart: customization.

Joystiq reports that a batch of new screenshots and details from Capcom show off the character and level editing tools. Players assemble their own Mega Man by mixing and matching sets of parts, and his abilities will change depending on which parts you equip.

Players can also create their own stages and share them online. Capcom experimented with a level editor in Mega Man Powered up, but dropped a hint that this game will sport "a variety of custom stage parts" besides those from the Mega Man series. This leads us to think that, like the custom character features, the stage editor will let you add pieces from other Capcom franchises. The game is set to be shown at the Tokyo Game Show, so we'll keep you posted.

The NPD Group has released its videogame industry sales data for the month of August, 2010, showing continued growth in Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 hardware sales as the Wii continues to decline.

As it was in July, the Xbox 360 was the top-selling console for the month, pushing 356,700 units. The PlayStation 3 meanwhile sold 226,000, and for the thirteenth consecutive month, showed growth compared to its sales one year ago.

Valve isn't a company that gamers would generally associate with failure, but in an interview with PC Gamer, the subject of their biggest mistakes was raised and it resulted in some fascinating answers -- particularly when it comes to Valve's past on the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.

"PS3, so far. The way we've dealt with those customers so far, and the product that they have, and the lack of updates on the 360 for [Team Fortress 2] is also a total failure," said project manager Erik Johnson, reflecting on Valve's mistakes. "Those are the ones that sting the worst because it got all the way through to customers. It's like a bug. If you fix a bug before it ever ships, it's pretty cheap. If you ship it and then fix it, it's really expensive. Those ones are really bad."

Things are going better on the PS3, though, as Valve boss Gabe Newell says they're pleased with their newly repaired relationship with Sony. "That's why we're really happy with the current situation with the PS3...We're solving it now in a way that is going to work for our customers, rather than assuming something is going to emerge later that will allow us to fix this," Newell said.

Bethesda parent company ZeniMax has once again filed a trademark for a motion picture based on one of its gaming properties. This time the company is looking to secure the rights to create a film around The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion.

VG Tribune spotted the mid-August application (via Joystiq) for Oblivion, which covers "Motion picture film production; entertainment services, namely, providing motion picture theatrical films in the field of fantasy games."

ZeniMax picked up a pair of similar trademarks for movies and television series set in the Fallout universe well over a year ago. Nothing's come of that as of yet, so you shouldn't necessarily take these filings as a guarantee that an Oblivion flick is actually on the way anytime soon. We'll keep an eye out for any further developments, though.

There's been a lot of will-it-or-won't-it lately when it comes to what features Kinect will have at launch, but another ability we can add to the "wait a little while" list is the object-scanning shown off when Kinect (then known as Project Natal) was first revealed at E3 2009.

As you can see in the debut video below, Microsoft originally showed how Kinect could scan a real-world object if held in front of it, and then digitize it as an in-game object you can interact with (in the example shown in the video, a kid digitizes his skateboard to use it in-game). But speaking to Eurogamer, Kinect lead Kudo Tsunoda said it's a feature that'll be coming later on. "Being able to digitize real-world objects and take them into the virtual world -- we saw a little bit of that at E3 last year, but it's not stuff that we have in any of the launch games right now, and I think we're going to see a lot more games start using that as well as we go forward," Tsunoda said.

It's unclear whether that means developers simply didn't want to use the feature in any launch games, or whether they couldn't as Microsoft just hasn't worked out all the kinks in it yet. Either way, the end result is the same -- you won't be digitizing your stuff with Kinect until some time in the future.

The latest bit of Dragon Age: Origins downloadable content, which is meant to close the book on the game in preparation for its sequel, has run into an ugly bug for some users. The Witch Hunt DLC is apparently not recognizing some players' completion of the "Dark Ritual" near the end of Origins, creating what BioWare is calling a "continuity bug." The developer's executive producer, Mark Darrah, wrote on the BioWare forums that they are working to solve the problem.

"While this issue is not affecting the majority of people, it is still a significant issue that we will address," Darrah wrote. "We apologize for any inconvenience this may be causing anyone. Clearly, it was our responsibility to catch this sort of issue in the interaction of Witch Hunt with Dragon Age: Origins. Our team is doing everything we can to fix this in a timely manner so those who are affected can go back to enjoying Witch Hunt as soon as possible." BioWare's Fernando Melo also chimed in to point out that the team is also working on fixing a bug that won't let users create a save file after completing the DLC.

This is the final piece of DLC for Origins, and has been dubbed the "dramatic conclusion" to Morrigan's character arc. We expect to see her actions factor in to the future of the Dragon Age universe in some way, which makes it especially important for fans to complete the DLC, bug-free.

Heavy Rain was something of a surprise hit for the PlayStation 3 when it released earlier this year. So if you're developer Quantic Dream, what do you do for your follow-up? Consider expanding to more platforms.

"With Heavy Rain it was right [to be a PlayStation 3 exclusive], but after Heavy Rain the question can be asked whether we should stick to one platform or open out to different platforms," said Quantic Dream founder David Cage to GamesIndustry.biz. "Now that we're established, why are we limiting ourselves to one share of the market when we can reach more? There are pros and cons and it's not an easy decision."

But even as they're looking at possibly developing for new platforms, Cage also had nothing but nice things to say about their arrangement with Sony. "We're really thankful of Sony's support and the relationship we have because there are very few publishers that would have supported Heavy Rain the way they supported us," Cage said. "[PlayStation 3] was the right platform for what we wanted to achieve. It was the platform with the Blu-ray disc, promoting movies, promoting a more sophisticated entertainment experience."