French developer Quantic Dream, the studio behind 3D adventure games Omikron and Indigo Prophecy, has partnered with with Sony Computer Entertainment Worldwide Studios for an as yet unannounced PlayStation 3 exclusive, with more details expected to be announced soon.

While little has been revealed as of yet, the companies note that the project “is expected to set a new benchmark in delivering emotionally compelling experiences to gamers.” Michael Denny, SCE Worldwide Studios’ vice president added belief that the game will “push the gaming experience to realise a new level of interactivity and, in particular, to engage players at an emotional level never experienced before.”

Here’s hoping the game will play a role in Sony’s upcoming E3 festivities.

With E3 on our doorsteps, there are few games I’m as itching to get my hands on as Harmonix and EA’s Rock Band. The game, according to this latest gameplay video first posted by GameSpot, seems to be shaping to to be a natural evolution of the Guitar Hero brand, rather than something wholly different. It is as if Guitar Hero somehow grew lungs, climbed out of the pool and tasted air for the first time.

And I’m okay with that.

Very okay, since from the looks of things I won’t have to perfect a whole new skillset, just build upon what I already know. I’m very curious to see how the game feels, and I’m sure I’ll find out soon enough, as Harmonix, EA, and MTV will be hosting a party next week in Santa Monica as part of the annual E3 festivities, which I will me attending (along with, according to the invite, some “super secret special guests”). So the question remains, should I take the mic?

Expect lots of impressions and personal embarrassment in the days ahead.

[Update: Harmonix has issued a response to this apparently leaked video with a post on its official forums:

[quote]The video of a trailer you may have seen on various sites was taken from a conference where attendees are generally encouraged to be casual and show off the new stuff they are working on privately. Apparently an attendee videotaped the talk.

The trailer was made from an old build of the game quite some time ago for internal purposes- basically to get people working on the game excited. The song was one we have considered for the game but haven?t locked down, and you may have noticed that the trailer footage was made so long ago that the people in the video are playing old instruments and prototypes.

I guess what I am saying is- this isn’t official and doesn’t really reflect the final game at all. We’ll be releasing a lot of info next week from much newer builds of the game with finalized songs.[/quote]]

With this year’s hotly anticipated E3 media throw down less than 550,000 seconds away, companies have begun to announce which titles they plan to bring to the shindig, including NCsoft, which just sent over a list that includes the company’s 2008 MMO Aion, as well as the upcoming Guild Wars expansion Eye of the North, and the free to download multiplayer title Dungeon Runners.

The MMO heavy portfolio will also see the latest version of Richard Garriott’s Tabula Rasa, which has been in closed beta testing since May and is set for launch this fall.

The news confirms that neither Lineage II nor City of Heroes/Villains content will play any role in the company’s presence at E3. Nor will Auto Assault, as developer NetDevil announced earlier today that NCsoft has opted to pull the plug on the vehicle based MMO, with the game effectively making its last lap on August 31.

Wrote a brief statement on the Auto Assault website:

“Today NCsoft is announcing that it will be closing down service for Auto Assault at the end of the summer. The service will close at midnight on August 31, 2007. As of today, any player currently in the service with an active billed account will not be billed again. If players have previously purchased time via multi-month billing or time cards that extends their service past July 31, NCsoft will reconcile these accounts appropriately. There will be more announcements coming soon regarding the shut down of Auto Assault and its impact on current accounts.”

Ubisoft has announced that it is bringing a version of Dark Messiah of Might and Magic to the Xbox 360 in early 2008 as Dark Messiah of Might and Magic: Elements. In this latest feature, we take an initial look at the game, as well as offer some insight from the game’s producer, Daniel Palix, who notes that balancing issues represented the most significant hurdle in bringing the PC action game to the home console market.

Says Palix: “The biggest challenge was having to rebalance the whole game because of all the changes we introduced. It is tricky to reach a good balance for all players, no matter what specialty they choose. We also had to ensure that the difficulty and challenge level would remain the same from beginning to end, meaning that getting a big sword and making extensive use of the environment with the kick move would no longer be an easy option to finish the game.”

You can read the entire feature here.