Kotaku: NBA Ballers: Chosen One lead designer John Vignocchi recently gave his two weeks notice at Midway Chicago to help start a new venture capital backed studio in the city.

The new studio, located on the north side of Chicago, will concentrate on creating games for the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360.

Vignocchi leaves Midway after working on five games with the company over the past 8 and a half years. His departure is just the latest in a stream of lay-offs and departures in the financial strapped company.
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Console Monster writes: "As you may or may not already know, Buku Sudoku and Warlords are available to download from the XBOX Live Marketplace today as well as these:

Name: Battlefield: Bad Company Demo
Price: Free
Availability: Everywhere

Name: Buku Suduku - Theme Pack 1
Price: 150 Microsoft Points
Availability: Everywhere

Name: Buku Suduku - Puzzle Pack 1
Price: Free
Availability: Everywhere..."
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Video games and sports have always seemed like a match made in heaven, and game publisher Midway continues to mine the depths of sports gaming as the NBA playoffs enter full swing, announcing it has shipped NBA Ballers: Chosen One for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. The game packaging features Dwight Howard of the Orlando Heat and Al Horford of the Atlanta Hawks on the packaging, and music from artists like Jay-Z, Kanye West, Usher, Busta Rhymes, T.I., and others on the game's instrumental score. The game is the third installment of Midway's NBA Ballers franchise.
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See what to watch for in this week's new videogame releases for the Nintendo DS (The World Ends With You), PLAYSTATION 3, Xbox 360, Nintendo Wii and Sony PSP.
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Gamesite XGN posts her weekly European Xbox Live Marketplace Roundup. This week there are a great number of new demos released.
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The achievements for the upcoming NBA Ballers: Chosen One, brought to us by Midway, have been revealed by xbox360achievements.org. The list includes 20 achievements for a total of 1000 points, distributed over both single player and online ranked matches. Should be quite an easy 1000 points for the achievement junkies out there, considering how straight forward the achievements are. The complete list of achievements, follow the link below.
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Console Monster has posted todays XBOX Live Marketplace Update.

Name: NBA Ballers: Chosen One HD World Trailer
Price: Free
Availability: Everywhere

Name: GameRush afl59 Video
Price: Free
Availability: Netherlands Only

Name: 2007 MLG Pro Circuit: Episode 1
Price: 160 Microsoft Points
Availability: Everywhere

Continued at the source.
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If you never see the point of buying every yearly update of EA's sports titles, EA's about to give you one: from September 1 it will begin shutting down the online servers for most of its 2006-edition sports titles. As of that date, the online gameplay options on games like FIFA World Cup 2006, NBA Live 06, Madden 06 and Tiger Woods 06 will be rendered useless on all formats including PC. This means you'll have to purchase the newer editions of the games to continue the fight via the web, or ...
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Electronic Arts would be wise to buy 2K Sports, or so says industry analyst Michael Pachter for Wedbush Morgan Securities. The suggestion came amid the move from Wedbush downgrading Take-Two Interactive's stock from "hold" to "sell" Friday. Take-Two Interactive owns 2K Sports as a subsiderary.

"It is clear to us that Take-Two's sports business would have tremendous value to EA, as it would give EA a monopoly on football, basketball, baseball, and hockey," Pachter said. His analysis concluded that EA might purchase 2K Sports for as much as $200 million dollars, but he noted, "It is arguable that EA would benefit by as much as $1 billion if it were to obtain an exclusive; this does not mean that it is willing to pay $1 billion."
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Here is the list of the latest review scores from Famitsu.

The complete list:

Motorstorm (PS3, Sony): 8 / 8 / 8 / 6 - (30/40)
Sonic The Hedgehog (PS3, Sega): 8 / 7 / 7 / 7 - (29/40)
Lost Planet: Extreme Condition (Xbox 360, Capcom): 9 / 9 / 9 / 9 - (36/40)
Sonic The Hedgehog (Xbox 360, Sega): 8 / 7 / 7 / 8 - (30/40)
Seiken Densetsu 4 (PS2, Square Enix): 7 / 8 / 8 / 7 - (30/40)
Madden NFL 07 (PS2, EA): 7 / 8 / 7 / 5 - (27/40)
Monster 4X4: World Circuit (Wii, Ubisoft): 7 / 6 / 7 / 8 - (28/40)
A Ressha de Ikou HX (Xbox 360, Artdink): 7 / 6 / 7 / 7 - (27/40)
Metal Gear Portable Ops (PSP, Konami): 9 / 10 / 9 / 9 - (37/40)
Tales of The World: Radiant Mythology (PSP, Bandai Namco): 8 / 7 / 8 / 7 - (30/40)
Nounai Aesthe: IQ Suppli DS (NDS, Spike): 7 / 7 / 6 / 6 - (26/40)
Heisei Kyouiku Iinkai DS (NDS, Bandai Namco): 6 / 9 / 7 / 6 - (28/40)
Need for Speed Carbon (PS2, EA): 8 / 8 / 7 / 7 - (30/40)
Need for Speed Carbon (PS3/Xbox 360, EA): 9 / 9 / 8 / 8 - (34/40)
Need for Speed Carbon (Wii, EA): 8 / 7 / 6 / 7 - (28/40)
Need for Speed Carbon (PSP, EA): 8 / 8 / 7 / 8 - (31/40)
School Love! (PS2, Views): 6 / 6 / 6 / 6 - (24/40)
Intelligent License 2 (PSP, Now Production): 7 / 9 / 7 / 8 - (31/40)
NBA Live 07 (PSP, EA): 7 / 8 / 7 / 7 - (29/40)
Hamster to Kurasou (NDS, Interchannel): 6 / 6 / 5 / 5 - (22/40)
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