Blur comes into focus Nov. 3

Activision Blizzard led the month with news of its mostly stellar first-quarter earnings, reporting a $195 million profit on $1.04 billion in sales for the April-June quarter. As part of that announcement, Activision Publishing president Michael Griffith mentioned during a post-earnings conference call that Bizarre Creations' all-new arcade racer Blur would pull out onto the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and PC in November.

Today, Activision made Blur's track date a bit more official, announcing the game will be available in North America on November 3, with the European launch following on November 6. Blur is the first project from Bizarre Creations since the Project Gotham Racing developer was purchased by Activision in September 2007.

With Blur, Bizarre Creations has attempted to meld the party-style racing of Mario Kart with the more realistic racers, such as the Project Gotham Racing franchise. The game features more than 50 licensed cars, as well as a variety of real-world locales, such as Barcelona, Spain, and San Francisco, California. These tracks are made all the more interesting by a variety of power-ups that gamers can acquire during the course of the race to give them a competitive edge.

For more information, check out GameSpot's new hands-on preview of Blur from this year's GamesCom in Cologne, Germany.