[ 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.

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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.

Maybe time to introduce some new footage from Splatterhouse we somehow are lost in the shuffle Nyuyokukomikkukon. Video, by chance, guts, violence is horrific, bloody. In addition, those who are in that sort of thing is completely rawkin the 'soundtrack has. For those who do not know what kind of, well, we hope to please the BGM volume options.

What business does Street Fighter IV producer Yoshinori Ono have in wanting to see Namco's flagship fighter Tekken and PlayStation social network service Home come together? Ono told Famitsu (via IGN) that he'd like to see a Tekken 6 tie-up with Home, suggesting that both the Street Fighter and Tekken communities could form some sort of cross-community tournament. A sort of Fight Club perhaps? Those guys at Capcom sure love those, don't they?