With titles like Dead Rising and Lost Planet, it seems that Capcom has developed a taste for western cuisine, at least in how it applies to game development. This observation was echoed by Capcom exec Christian Svensson, who in a recent interview noted belief that the Osaka, Japan-based company could look to add an established Western dev to its portfolio in the near future. Confessed Svensson, "I would be sort of surprised if we didn't acquire a western studio in the next two years."

But Capcom knows that it has the pick of the litter, and it isn't about to let just anyone into its ivory tower. "We're not going to acquire anyone that we haven't done a game with," noted Svensson. The exec also stressed that chemistry would play a "critical" role in any future match, leaving just 28 other dimensions of happier, healthier relationships to be sorted out.

Lost Planet: Extreme Condition Colonies Edition -- known around these parts as Lost Planet: Colonies or Lost Planet 1.5 -- has finally been officially announced. The game is a repackaging of the full Lost Planet title, plus a bunch of additional multiplayer and single-player extras. The good news: It'll cost about $30. The bad news: Colonies Edition multiplayer will be incompatible with current Lost Planet games.

Scheduled for a May 27 release on 360 and PC, Colonies mainly adds new, creative multiplayer modes to the original game. Several are based on holding checkpoints and CTF variants. Our favorite, however, lets one gamer control an Akrid, with the others teaming up to try to take down the alien. Different creatures are available, and we recently saw a demo showing how a spindly, player-controlled giant can make quick kills with its swiping legs.

New playable characters, new weapons, and new levels are also added. Many of those are tuned for these alien battles, giving bunkers for humans to hide from the less-mobile aliens. Xbox 360 and PC players can play against each other using paid, Xbox Live gold accounts. Non-paying PC gamers will still be able to play online, but they'll only face other PCs.

Some games seem destined for pre-announcement leaks. Add to that list Lost Planet: Colonies, the supposed next entry in Capcom's third-person action series. First came name drops by both the German ratings board and the ESRB. Now, more embarrassingly, comes a full list of Xbox 360 achievements for the game, before the game has even been officially announced.

360sync stumbled across the achievements, which they were later asked by Capcom to remove. We've confirmed that more information will be made available about the title next week, which leaves us plenty of time to speculate.

The impressive list of achievements hints at a full single player campaign, as well as a bevy of multiplayer modes, leading us to believe that this may very well be a retail title after all, and not simply a downloadable spin-off. Check out the full list of achievements after the break.

[Via X3F]

Not through pummeling your pixelated pals with PAIN? Well, this week the PSN update will allow you to procure for a pittance a pirate to persistently pound into pavement. Skurv Dogg is a new downloadable character for PSN's PAIN at a mere $.99. Beyond that there's your normal serving of Rock Band DLC with a side order of No Doubt for Guitar Hero III. Want more? Um, there's the Star Trek teaser trailer in glorious HD to fill your television screen for a little over a minute.

Check out the complete list of content after the break and go say hi to the gentlemen at PS3 Fanboy for European update details.

Capcom US's official blog is reporting that the Lost Planet: Extreme Condition demo has been safely returned to the Playstation Network, in good working order. According to Capcom, the original problem stemmed from over 100,000 people downloading and running the online demo in its first 24 hours, causing a bit of unexpected server stress.

The Lost Planet demo features elimination and team elimination modes on the Pirate Fortress map, and is limited to 8 players per match. The full title is due out in North America on February 26, and will feature all the additional content from the PC version (and yes, that includes Frank West from the 360-exclusive Dead Rising -- irony of ironies).

Last week's PSN update brought us the demo of Lost Planet: Extreme Condition, but numerous glitches and user complaints have forced Capcom to pull the demo from the Playstation Network, promising to return it once the problems have been solved.

Posting on the official Playstation.Blog, a Capcom representative states that the fixed version will "accurately reflect" the game's online features. The servers for the demo have been also been shut down temporarily, so anyone who has already downloaded the demo will find themselves unable to log on to play. The Capcom rep promises that the team is working hard to deliver the update as soon as possible.

Though removing content for bug-fixes is a tad more unorthodox than simply releasing an update, we assume the issues with the Lost Planet demo were severe enough to warrant its removal, and we're all for whatever gets that content as clean and optimized as possible.

[Via PS3 Fanboy]

The PlayStation Network becomes host to a misplaced celestial body this week, with a Lost Planet multiplayer demo allowing up to 8 PS3 owners (16 in the full version) to stomp through the snow and park a bullet in someone's parka. Sure, the quality of writing in this post just took a dive, but it's all in service of a segue to Go! Sports Skydiving, a new downloadable $5 title.

Check out the complete list of content after the break, including PC Store additions – or head over to PS3 Fanboy for European update details.

Although Capcom has yet to announce Lost Planet: Colonies (or even explain what it is), Gamespot has pointed to the Xbox 360 and PC game's existence on the ESRB's frequently revelatory database. The mysterious Lost Planet: Colonies was first discovered last year, when Germany's USK rated the game and fueled speculation regarding the game's genre and relation to Capcom's 2007 action smash.

The ESRB also lists an equally unannounced Assault Heroes 2 for Xbox 360, which logic would dictate is a sequel to XBLA's well-received Assault Heroes.

Do we continue to write Lost Planet posts no matter how insignificant simply because the headlines practically write themselves? No. Don't be ridiculous: We're professionals. Now, do we post about Lost Planet because our collection of Photoshops based on it continue to make us laugh? ... Yeah, OK. You got us on that one.

But hey, don't scroll away just yet, this is Lost Planet info that you might actually find pretty useful. Capcom has announced that the PS3 version of the shooter will be arriving on February 26. In case you've forgotten, this version also ships with a new playable female character, Luka, in tow. We're just happy to hear she got off the second floor.

Apparently fighting giant alien bugs on a snowy world isn't just a man's job anymore. Famitsu reports that the PS3 version of Lost Planet will allow gamers to play as Luka, the leader of the Snow Pirates from the original game.

Additionally, the PS3 version will also include Joe, Mega Man, and Dead Rising's Frank West, who were originally playable in the PC version. Hey, remember when Lost Planet was a 360-exclusive? So that lasted a while, huh?

[Via Siliconera]

Pac-Man Championship Edition (XBLA)

If not worthy of a Top 10 spot, then certainly Pac-Man deserves Joystiq's 'Comeback Player of the Year' award. I covered Pac-Man CE's overblown launch in early June, but it wasn't until I became a devoted player at home that I realized the sheer genius of the first true Pac-Man sequel since 'the Ms.' hit the maze in '82. Designer Toru Iwatani managed to scrape off a quarter-century of rust and fashion a remarkably relevant game that held me down during an otherwise punishing summer drought. Geometry Wars might be the most celebrated, but Pac-Man CE is Xbox Live Arcade's true star.

Korean actor Byun-hung Lee, whose likeness was used for the protagonist Wayne Holden in Capcom's Lost Planet: Extreme Condition, has been casted in the upcoming G.I. Joe film to play Storm Shadow, according to the official Capcom blog. The film is expected for release in 2009.

On a related note, has anyone ever noticed the alternate text when highlighting your mouse over Capcom blog links? We particularly laughed at the text for the link related to the G.I. Joe movie: "Directed by the guy who directed Van Helsing? Danger!" We laughed. The screenplay for G.I. Joe was written by Stuart Beattie, who is penning the film adaptation for Deers Gears of War.

Lost Planet Colonies was today rated by USK, the German ratings board, fueling further speculation that a sequel to Lost Planet is already in the works. According to the entry, Colonies is a "3rd-person shooter" being developed for Xbox 360 and will be published (in Germany) by CEG Interactive Entertainment, a European subsidiary of Capcom.

The "Lost Planet Colonies" trademark first surfaced in late May, but Capcom would not confirm that a sequel was in development. A few weeks later, Dutch distributor Nobilis listed Colonies as an Xbox 360 and PC release due in January 2008 -- but again, Capcom remained ambiguous about the alleged title. Today's development is the most definitive evidence of a true Lost Planet continuation, but it's still weak. The USK listing could be an error, and instead of a sequel, Colonies could be the subtitle of the meaty PS3 edition of Lost Planet -- or something entirely different, or nonexistent.

Lost Planet was an early success for Capcom's global initiative (though it flopped in Japan), so it seems likely that a sequel will eventually work its way through the pipeline. Still, there are a lot of other Capcom properties that could (even, should) take precedence.

[Via X3F]

After initially speculating that their frozen shooter Lost Planet could come to PS3, then stating (quite unequivocally) that neither Lost Planet nor Dead Rising would find their way to the Wii or PS3 (for reasons which, at that point, were apparently "quite convoluted"), Capcom has announced at their London Gamer's Day event that Lost Planet will indeed be on PS3 "early next year." A wise choice, considering the Xbox 360 shooter did quite well in North America but didn't make a dent in Japan (... we wonder why).

Games Radar says the PS3 package will sport 16-player online over PSN, as well as include "all bonus characters" from the PC version and "extra downloadable content" from the 360 version (apparently "made possible" by the platform's capacious Blu-ray format).

While Capcom's love affair with the PlayStation 3 has had all the warmth of a vacation to E.D.N III, the upcoming year will see the company begin to move away from PS2 development in favor of creating games for Sony's latest console. The announcement, made by Capcom president Haruhiro Tsujimoto, is sure to usher a sigh of relief from PS3 owners, who in lieu of Dead Rising and Lost Planet have been forced to roam shopping malls and suck on ice cubes as they pine for better days.

Tsujimoto also remarked that Capcom will also begin to embrace projects that can be developed for both the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 in order to 'maximize profits,' rather than look to platform exclusives, marking the second such time we've heard Capcom officials make this stand. We've already seen Devil May Cry 4, once believed to be Sony's alone, become monogamously challenged, with Capcom set to release the forthcoming title on both the PS3 and Xbox 360 in simultaneous fashion early next year and Resident Evil 5 likewise coming to both consoles someday.

Interestingly, no mention of the Wii was made in the company's cross platform plans, though it seems likely that the console's nature will continue to spark more unique efforts like the dismally boring Umbrella Chronicles and the smart adventure/puzzler Zack & Wiki. One thing's for certain -- the coming year is going to be very interesting for Capcom.

[Via PS3 Fanboy]