[ At the D.I.C.E. (Design, Innovate, Communicate, and Entertain) Summit in Las Vegas, the gaming industry's leaders meet up for a few days to discuss the business of creating games. This year, we're putting some of the world's best game developers in the hot seat for the D.I.C.E. Poll. Our five questions are designed to gain some insight into what makes them tick. ] Jun Takeuchi, Director of Resident Evil 5, is the latest developer we've hit with the Poll. Apart from the upcoming blockbuster, he has been a rather instrumental development figure at Capcom, having worked on Lost Planet, Onimusha 3, and the first two Resident Evil games. Takeuchi kicked off today's D.I.C.E. lectures with a session titled "Creating Entertainment for a Global Gaming Audience."

The Warhammer Fantasy world that serves as the basis for Warhammer Online presents a remarkably horrifying take on a traditional Tolkien-esque fantasy setting. It's a world where the best most people can hope for is a quick death that won't violate too many bodily orifices and/or laws of physics. Still, unrelentingly bleak is simply not a good way to go when you're building a universe. One needs some comic relief to break the tension and avoid turning into a pretentious mood piece. No one understands this better than the folks over at Games Workshop, who have made an entire race the proud holders of what comedy there is to be found in unrelenting warfare. That race, of course, is the Cockney-accented Orcs.

Uplifting news comes in by way of the announcement of the existence of Bonfire Studios, a new 35-person development house that consists of ex-Ensemble Studios talent. Bonfire represents the second new outfit to be born out of the esteemed Ensemble Studios (recently shuttered by Microsoft), and is said to be beavering away on a brand-new IP which will be revealed "in the coming months." "Ensemble had an incredible group of highly talented people and the companies coming out of it are really made up of the best of the best. Ensemble was one of the few studios with two A-teams," said David Rippy, president and CEO of Bonfire Studios. "We are already working on an original IP that we'll start talking about in the next few months."This news comes hot on the heels of the announcement made earlier this week about the formation of Robot Entertainment, headed up by Ensemble co-founder Tony Goodman.

[ At the D.I.C.E. (Design, Innovate, Communicate, and Entertain) Summit in Las Vegas, the gaming industry's leaders meet up for a few days to discuss the business of creating games. This year, we're putting some of the world's best game developers in the hot seat for the D.I.C.E. Poll. Our five questions are designed to gain some insight into what makes them tick. ] For this D.I.C.E. Poll, we spoke with Emil Pagliarulo, Lead Designer at Bethesda Softworks, who has just wrapped up Fallout 3. Previous games he has worked on include Elder Scrolls: Oblivion and Morrowind as well as the Thief series. He worked at Looking Glass Studios and Ion Storm Austin before joining Bethesda.

[ At the D.I.C.E. (Design, Innovate, Communicate, and Entertain) Summit in Las Vegas, the gaming industry's leaders meet up for a few days to discuss the business of creating games. This year, we're putting some of the world's best game developers in the hot seat for the D.I.C.E. Poll. Our five questions are designed to gain some insight into what makes them tick.] Bethesda Softworks has enjoyed huge success since releasing a game that depicted an America quite literally torn to shreds. In reality we're in the middle of a real-deal crisis that's more or less just as scary as their fiction. The irony of this probably isn't lost on Executive Producer and Game Director Todd Howard. We hit him with our D.I.C.E Poll earlier today, and he seemed pretty unflappable.

3 new Impact Punches, with high risk and high reward - put down your opponent or get knocked on the canvas. Players are only one punch away from the entire dynamic of the fight changing!

Clench down on that mouth guard, rookie! Super Punch lets you feel the impact of a devastating punch, as the boxer's face ripples from that blow

Design a fighting style all your own, and see how you match up against the authentic signature styles from the world's best fighters

Establish rivalries by intimidating opponents before the big fight with heated press conferences, trash talkin', and fights at weigh-ins

Watch ESPN Classic footage of real-life bouts or re-create the greatest fights from past and present

Minimum Hard Drive Space Required: 116MB; Minimum Processor Speed Required: 800MHz; Minimum RAM Required: 512MB

45 tracks at launch plus full support for downloadable content delivers never-ending challenges. New content will be available every week.

Mold a unique rocker avatar using Rock Band's character creator. Chose from gender, body shape, face, hair, clothes, tattoos and signature moves. Don't forget to pick your specialized rockin' instrument.

Showcase a real drum solo with Rock Band's freestyle drum fill windows featured in each song. Break out your own rhythm and style as anything goes!

Call out the crowd! Vocalists can bring the crowd to their feet during Rock Band's freestyle vocal fill windows. Ad-lib your own words or shout to the crowd to raise the rock intensity of the performance.

Requires a drum, microphone, or guitar controller to play

Activision Blizzard's conference call today with investors didn't have too much in the way of news; no new games were announced and only one delay (Activision's next James Bond title won't be out this year but instead will be pushed back until 2010). Indeed it seemed to be all about hints than actual news. One of the hints came when Blizzard's COO Paul Sams mentioned that a beta release for their long awaited RTS game StarCraft II will be released in "the coming months."

With the release of Pokémon Platinum a little over a month away, we're beginning to find ourselves relapsing into feverish pokémania. If you've ever known the thrill of a full-to-brim Pokédex, we're sure you've got the bug as well -- which is why we're sure you'll be excited to hear that Toys R Us will be offering a free download of the legendary Grass-type pocket-sized monster, Shaymin, from now until Saturday. Just pop into your local TRU with your copy of Diamond or Pearl in download mode, and snag the lil' guy.