We were a little startled when Eurogamer revealed Ratchet and Clank: Quest for Booty was a 3.2 GB download. We knew the game had junk in the trunk, but the last we heard it was around 2.3 GB. With no Blu-ray disc planned for North America, the less time we have to spend waiting for the interminable download from the PSN (plus install) this Thursday, the better.

We contacted Sony and were told that the difference between the European and NA version could be blamed on the 11 languages being included with the former, with two .pkg files containing 5-6 languages each. Not that a file size would have stopped us from getting the $15 game, but why do the Europeans keep getting Blu-ray releases of PSN games while North American consumers learn to macrame waiting to download another hefty PSN title? Come on, Sony. We're North America, we're not used to gaming inequity like Europe. Give us the disc and make them wait. It's just the way things are supposed to be.

PSN title Novastrike will receive a major update in the next few weeks. Kevin McCann, president of Tiki Games, writes on the PlayStation Blog that the patch will tame the difficulty levels a bit, add Trophies and make several other tweaks to the top-down omni-directional kill-anything-that-moves shooter.

For those who purchased the $10 title, the list of changes made appears to be quite significant and might be worth giving the title another spin. McCann writes that he's looking forward to hearing from those who stopped playing the game due to the difficulty issues once the patch is released, while reiterating that a European release for the game will happen "as soon as possible."

Clarifying its stance on rhythm game compatibility issues, Microsoft's Gamerscore Blog announced today that all the instruments for Rock Band 2, Guitar Hero: World Tour and Rock Revolution will be "cross-compatible" on Xbox 360.

Sony announced yesterday that PlayStation 3 would feature full cross-compatibility among the three games as well. Guess that leaves only Nintendo to make it official.

Update: The Instrument Compatibility Matrix has been updated
[Thanks, Mike]

FIFA 09 cover athlete Maurice Edu has been traded to another team, meaning EA Sports will, yet again, have to change the box art on one of its games. Edu, who would have been featured on the cover wearing his Toronto FC jersey, will now wear the uniform of the US Men's National Team -- not Scotland's Glasgow Rangers, which is the team he'll actually play on. EA Sports tells IGN that the cover of the game will ship with the correct art -- no "print out" version necessary.

This would be the second time in a month that EA Sports had to dump extra resources into changing a cover due to an athlete changing teams. Earlier this month the publisher had to fix the art for perennial high-profile American football title Madden 09 when cheesehead favorite Brett Favre unretired and left for New York New Jersey.

The crack refinement corporation disguising itself as a game company -- also known as PopCap Games -- has announced that the Bejeweled franchise has sold over 25 million units across all platforms. The definition of "all platforms" would consist of online, mobile, retail, "in-flight" and other channels.

PopCap also noted that the Bejeweled series has been downloaded 350 million times from the interwebs and makes up one third of the company's billion-plus downloads. The game has earned over $300 million in revenue through sales and "tens of millions" in online advertising. Jason Kapalka, co-founder of PopCap, says online distributors wanted no part of the game when it released eight years ago -- he vividly remembers buyers telling him, "It's not even a game."

Patrick Aiello, the producer for the upcoming film Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li (starring Kristin "Lana Lang" Kreuk!), believes Street Fighter IV will launch alongside the film. Aiello tells GameDaily that the "film and game release dates will coincide." According to IMDB, the Street Fighter movie currently has a release date of February 27, 2009.

Although hardcore Street Fighter fans may be upset that the game isn't coming out at the end of this year as originally announced, there's always the option of playing it in arcades at diverse locations on this little planet.

Update: Sony tells us that shipments of the "new 80GB PS3 started this week, and retailers can sell them as they receive the inventory." Go get 'em!

We're currently checking to see if they should be "officially" on sale, but it appears the 80GB PS3 models, with DualShock 3 included, are now roaming the lands of retail in some locations. The Sony Style store has a release date "on or about" September 1 for the SKU, and we've also been informed by some of our retail contacts that the model has arrived in their stores. The 80GB model costs $399 and replaces the 40GB model -- neither model features backwards compatibility.

As PS3 Fanboy points out, this means there are currently two 80GB PS3 SKUs available as the 40GB slowly fades away. The other version is the 80GB Metal Gear Solid 4 bundle at $499, with a copy of the game and limited backwards compatibility.

Flagship Studios' founder Bill Roper recently spoke with 1Up about how the Hellgate London developer ended up becoming another cautionary tale for young developers out there. Roper explains that the revenue model on Hellgate was broken and much of the money coming in went into keeping the game online, instead of expanding content like it should have.

Roper also admits the quality of the title wasn't great. He blames the PC market for being "lousy last year" and concedes Flagship didn't have unlimited money to hold on to Hellgate any longer. He also confesses that the company overreached trying to make "an MMO and an RPG and a shooter," attempting to please everyone and (obviously) satisfying very few at the end. Roper explains the Flagship Studios disaster in 1Up's interview in detail -- definitely worth a read for any aspiring studio head.

IBISWorld, publisher of "business intelligence research," released a report today that foresees the video game industry growing 10% annually and hitting a high of $63.2 billion in global revenue by 2013. The report notes the industry currently brings in about $40 billion globally, "with a loyal client base regularly topped up by a fresh generation of users with older players failing to desert the sector at the age originally expected." Age originally expected? Are people expected to abandon movies, music or books?

Anyway, the report believes gaming parents are "ripe for the picking." It notes that 93% of gamer parents play with their children and, with half the games sold in 2006 being E-rated, that mom and dad are a viable market. Not to rain on the revelation parade, but didn't Nintendo already figure that one out?

GameDaily reports Joshua Larson, former VP of Games at CNET Networks and the man often blamed for GameSpot's Gerstmann-gate scandal, has been named VP of Business Development at in-game ad agency Double Fusion. Please let the deliciousness of that flow over you for a brief moment.

Double Fusion's President and CEO announced Larson's hiring along with several others, saying that the new folks share a love of games and a "history of strong results and success in their prior roles." Larson's previous role was to manage business strategy and product direction at GameSpot.com. He's been dubbed the point man in the firing of Jeff Gerstmann and the exodus which followed, leaving GameSpot an editorially tarnished brand. If "success" is determined through money and not reputation, then it's probably being used to describe Larson's small roll in CNET's purchase by CBS for $1.8 billion earlier this year.

Blizzard announced today that World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King's opening cinematic will premiere at the Leipzig Games Convention. The clip will be shown this Thursday, August 21, at 1PM German standard time (7AM Joystiq time).

We'd speculate about what Blizzard has in store for a big reveal at Blizzcon, but with Diablo 3, Starcraft 2 and WoW in play, who knows what the company could announce. We'll see what happens on October 11.

[Via WoW Insider]

Rhythm games have certainly been keeping the tempo up for financial growth in the industry. GameDaily notes UBS analyst Ben Schachter's report, showing "music-themed games" have made up 15% of software sales year-to-date and 32% year-over-year growth so far.

The Guitar Hero franchise is already up 82% this year, with Guitar Hero: On Tour taking in $15 million in July alone. Meanwhile, Rock Band, across all platforms, took in $47 million in July ... and that doesn't even count any DLC sales. Unless the rhythm game bubble bursts in the next few months, GH: World Tour and Rock Band 2 sales -- along with their respective DLC sales -- could make up a significant portion of another record-breaking year for the industry.

Ubisoft is planning on putting a two-for-one stock split to a vote at its September 22 annual meeting, Reuters reports. The French publisher's shares closed at €66.64 last Friday.

We checked with analyst extraordinaire Michael Pachter to find out what this stock split means. Poking his head up from charts and graphs – flicking his abacus a few times just for show – he simply said, "It's not really a big deal." Pachter explains that commissions are higher if an investor buys fewer than 100 shares so: 100 shares at €65 requires €6500 in funds, or around $10,000. Since individual investors don't like investing that much in a single stock, by splitting the stock, the cost of 100 shares is cut to around $5000.

That explained, Pachter turned his attention with giddy anticipation to the crystal ball he just received from Mystics 'R' Us in Eastern Europe and concluded, "It's really that simple."

Just a little while ago, Take-Two announced that EA has agreed to sign a confidentiality agreement and review the object of its hostile financial affection's business plans for the next three years, turning this hostile takeover into something more ... amicable. Take-Two has also confirmed that it intends to let the clock run out on EA's $25.74 per share takeover offer, which expires today at midnight.

At face value, what this means is that EA still wants to buy Take-Two, and that the current offer still isn't reasonable to the Take-Two board. Meanwhile, the FTC will have finished its anti-trust probe on the issue this Thursday. Perhaps once EA gets a look under Take-Two's hood the two companies can come to a mutually agreed upon price to end this saga -- or some other publisher could come out of left field and scoop Take-Two up.

Get ready to whip it good (even though that song's not in there), as Devo and Duran Duran bring a new wave of music to Rock Band's store next week. Prices return to normal this week (everything's back to $2), except for the song "Get Your Rock On" from the American Mall soundtrack.

Individual songs

• "Girl U Want" - Devo (160 / $2)
• "Through Being Cool" - Devo (160 / $2)
• "Girls on Film" - Duran Duran (160 / $2)
• "Rio" - Duran Duran (160 / $2)
• "Get Your Rock On" - The Janitors (80 / $1)

Videos for the tracks can be found after the break. The songs will be available for download next Tuesday and Thursday for Xbox 360 and PS3, respectively.