Square Enix just revealed in the latest issue of Shonen Jump (via Siliconera) that a sequel to Dissidia: Final Fantasy will arrive on Japanese PSPs sometime in 2011. Titled "Dissidia Duodecim: Final Fantasy," the new fighter was created specifically as a challenge to website copy editors.

Outside of FFIV's Kain and FFXIII's Lightning, no other playable characters have been confirmed. We get the feeling you'll see an expanded roster of fan-favorite brawlers at next week's Tokyo Game Show.

"Mr. NBA 2K11" is still noticeably absent from NBA Jam's Eastern Conference roster, which does boast the likes of Bird, Dr. J and Jordan sidekick Scottie Pippen. Even Drazen Petrovic, who is said to haunt the original arcade game and was removed from console versions following his death in a car accident, has been resurrected as a Nets legend. Of course, the new NBA Jam will feature plenty of current players, including the Miami Thrice, when it's released next month for Wii and as a downloadable bonus with new copies of NBA Elite 11 for Xbox 360 and PS3.

Each team has 3–4 active players, as determined by fan voting (with the exception of Gilbert Arenas, who made the cut but was left out of the voting after that handgun fiasco), explains ESPN, which obtained the complete game roster -- the West's stars to be posted next week. Additionally, most teams have a "legend" or two -- or three for the Knicks: Ewing, LJ and Starks (hey, they need help!) -- on hand, with a preference for the original arcade's stars (sorry Zo!). Some teams don't have a long or storied enough history to feature a legend, in which case EA has added the team's mascot to the bench -- or in the Pacers' case (a contractual hiccup with Reggie Miller), there's simply ... Schrempf.

Some late summer trades also contribute to a few oddities in the final rosters, with Courtney Lee (now a Houston Rocket) still on the Nets and Al Harrington (now in Denver) still a Knick. It's unlikely the Wii version will be patched after release, and EA Sports community manager Alain Quinto recently confirmed (in response to the question) that it wouldn't feature online multiplayer either.

Head past the break for the full Eastern Conference breakdown.

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Square Enix has confirmed the forthcoming release of FFXIII on Xbox 360 in Japan, dubbed "Final Fantasy XIII Ultimate Hits International." The game will be released in December and features English voice acting with Japanese subtitles (other subtitle options are also available). Despite early reports of the release, no additional content will arrive with FFXIII -- it differs from the PlayStation 3 version in Japan in that it will feature content originally only in the US release. It will also add an easy mode and "Final Fantasy XIII - Episode 1" (a short story book).

Square Enix producer Yoshinori Kitase told Famitsu (via Gamasutra) that the new version was spurred by the launch of the remodeled 360 earlier this year, which aimed to bolster the console's install base in Japan. "We feel that there are ... a lot of people in Japan who own nothing but 360s. Thanks to the new system and such, the situation's a lot different than it was in July 2008," he explained. FFXIII will be the first Xbox 360 title released under Square's "Ultimate Hits" budget line, dropping at ¥4,980 ($59.50) on December 16.

Just when you thought you couldn't train your brain any more, Dr. Ryuta Kawashima – the Tokyo University-based professor who turned "brain training" into a video game hit with Nintendo's Brain Age series – is bringing his particular brand of supposed self-improvement to Microsoft's Kinect this November. Instead of using the DS stylus, Karada de Kotareu Atarashii Nou-tore (or "Respond With Your Body: New Brain Training," as translated by Andriasang) tasks one to four players with moving their body to solve problems. For example: Align your arms, analog clock-style, to match a digital time. Your performance will be used to assign an age to your brain (sound familiar?).

You can see some examples in the Japanese trailer embedded below; pay attention or you'll miss the Pac-Man-themed challenge right around the one-minute mark. The game was announced today in Japan as a November 20th Japanese launch title for Kinect, and will retail for ¥6,279. No word yet on a US release, but with the Tokyo Game Show next week, we expect to learn more.

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A month after popping up on the side of the Aussie Kinect bundle box, Microsoft has officially announced the existence of the Xbox 360 Kinect bundle with 250GB hard drive. The package, launching November 4, includes an Xbox 360 with a 250GB hard drive, built-in Wi-Fi, a Kinect sensor and Kinect Adventures for $400.

On the same day, the Kinect hardware will launch on its own at $150, alongside the Kinect 4GB Xbox 360 bundle for $300. There's also the option of purchasing the 250GB hard drive for the S version of the console separately, but that's $130. At this point, the latest announced bundle is the best value for those looking to get the whole package. Oh, and they still sell Xbox 360s that only come with plain ol' controllers, if that's your thing.

According to GamerBytes, leaderboard data shows that Dead Rising 2: Case Zero was downloaded over 300,000 times (328,290 at the time of writing). Even with Microsoft's alleged 30 percent cut, one can estimate that Capcom made roughly $1.15 million off the experiment in less than a week.

Publisher Capcom insisted on its blog that "these are NOT official numbers," though we think they serve as a good, early indication of success. Two interesting things are at play here: Will the Case Zero experiment usher in a new type of demo experience? And if sales for Dead Rising 2 fall below expectations, will Capcom place the blame on a $5 demo that proved a little too satisfying?

Are you tired of all the Farmville and Mafia Wars clones that plague Facebook? PopCap's chief creative officer Jason Kapalka believes that it won't be long until cheap copycats and their ilk will stop their rapid propagation. "You're definitely in the stage right now in social games where there's a lot of bandwagon jumping, where everyone sees moneymoneymoney and suddenly all these new companies appear," he told GI.biz. "It happened before in mobile, it happened before in casual – in the past it's tended to signal the beginning of the end."

Kapalka isn't suggesting that social games as a whole are going to die. Instead, he says it's the end of a "golden era," where the possibilities of the genre seemed limitless. Now that social gaming has taken root, the realities are becoming more evident: the extraordinary amount of competition, harsher restrictions from Facebook, slowing growth and dwindling margins will make it increasingly difficult for new social games to catch on. "Facebook can't go that much faster," Kapalka added. (Of course, Facebook would disagree.)

While Facebook and social games factor into PopCap's success so far, Kapalka doesn't seem too concerned about any sluggishness in the sector. The reason? PopCap has its hands in enough places to feel secure. "I feel PopCap's really diversified over the last ten years, we've never been necessarily the biggest company doing Xbox games or mobile games, but we've always been able to keep our hands in all these different areas, and sort of shift as necessary to whichever platforms are doing well." Plants vs. Zombies, for example, will continue its expansion to Xbox this week, and Nintendo DS next year.

Gameloft is porting yet another one of its iOS games to the PS3 for release on PlayStation Network. Dungeon Hunter, a classic hack-and-slash adventure is getting an HD remake exclusively for Sony's console. According to GamerBytes, the PS3 version features a "dramatic artistic makeover" over the iPhone original, inviting comparisons to Torchlight.

In addition to new visuals, the PS3 version of Dungeon Hunter will boast four player cooperative multiplayer, both online and off, making it one of Gameloft's most ambitious PSN games yet. Get a glimpse of the iPhone original after the break.

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Coconut Dodge developer Futurlab is working on yet another game for the PlayStation Minis platform -- this time a space shooter. The studio already has a concept: mixing classic vertical shooting with a new teleporting gimmick; and it already has some music. What it needs now is a name. This is where you come in. Like PixelJunk Shooter, the developer is asking for your suggestions, awarding prizes for the best name ideas.

Of course, it's hard to name a game without knowing more about it. "In our shooter, there is a reason the world scrolls vertically, and a reason that you can't turn around," explains Futurlab, "everything is being sucked into a giant black hole!" Additionally, you'll be able to "save other people that are being sucked into the black hole" via your ship's unique teleporting ability. And ... well, that's all we know.

Hopefully, you can come up with something a bit more fitting than our suggestion -- COOKIESz.

D3's Earth Defense Force 2017 wasn't a great game, but it holds a rather special place in our hearts. The campy action game had you running around, rocket launcher in hand, blasting apart swarms of giant alien invaders. Pretty much everything exploded on the screen, making it one of gaming's great guilty pleasures.

It seems like someone's prepping another title in the Earth Defense Force franchise. A teaser site reveals the new subtitle, Insect Armageddon ... and absolutely nothing else about the project. But, considering how straightforward these games tend to be, we have a pretty good idea of what to expect from this new title: insects and explosions. Lots of insects and explosions.

Stardock founder Brad Wardell (a.k.a. Frogboy) has announced on the official Elemental forums that this week will bring patch 1.08 for the game, which will finally implement multiplayer, as well as more performance optimizations and bugfixes in the wake of the game's troubled launch. Elemental's multiplayer was one of the game options that had been pushed back due to all of the other issues, so stalwart fans of the game are looking forward to mixing it up with others.

Wardell also says that the content connected with the Random House-published tie-in novel will be unlocking soon, so players who've bought the novel will get that. And Stardock is also planning to reveal some of the work going on for the mod community,
"along with easier in-game submissions of mods that aren't maps." Wardell says that's scheduled for the next few weeks, so it seems like he and his team are still working hard to win back players disappointed with how the launch went.

John Romero may forever be known as the man behind Doom and Daikatana to hardcore gamers, but he's since diversified his resume quite a bit. While he remains the head of MMO developer Slipgate, Romero is now acting as a consultant for casual game developer LOLapps. The company boasts over 100 million users of its various Facebook apps, such as Gift Creator and Quiz Creator; its most recent title is Critter Island (pictured above), "a game where you can decorate an island for tourists and invite friends to come visit."

Romero recently joined the team to work on an unnamed Facebook game, one that will likely follow the company's mantra to "[marry] web and game technology to the kind of mini virtual worlds that are popular on Facebook." We're not exactly sure what that means, but it should sound thrilling to venture capitalists.

"This is where the excitement is now," Romero told VentureBeat, marking the next step in the developer's rather unique career.

We absolutely recognize that we should focus on the new PSN game, TerRover, this week, and acknowledge that Dragon Age: Origins' "Witch Hunt" DLC is now available, but we we can't help but take note of something down in the "themes" section. There's a "Hot for Teacher" premium theme available now for PSP and PS3. We have no idea what it is, but now we can't get that Van Halen video out of our heads.

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According to andriasang.com, Dead Rising 2: Case Zero will hit Xbox Live in Japan starting September 8. The game was delayed last week, reportedly because of some inappropriate content contained in the free trial version of the game. We're not sure what's inappropriate about justly sentencing zombies to a gory death, but the issue has presumably been resolved. Would-be Japanese zombie slayers will be able to purchase the game for ¥600.

Of course, now we have to wonder if tomorrow's other undead XBLA release, Plants vs Zombies, will be deemed inappropriate as well. After all, flinging butter at an unsuspecting zombie is just wrong.