At last month's Leipzig Games Convention, Konami mentioned that a new Xbox 360 limited edition controller would be coming to Europe. The company's spokesperson said that the green controller would be released alongside Pro Evolution Soccer 2009, and it was unveiled alongside the game at the show.

The Xbox 360 controller has received criticism for its directional pad, which is why this new pad sees a 16-way upgrade. That's up from the 8 directions on the regular pad, although everything else on the joypad remains the same as before.

Now that the big Radeon HD 4800 series card launches are out of the way, AMD is ready to fill out the rest of its product line-up with more affordable card options including several sub-$100 cards in the new Radeon HD 4600 family. We got our hands on an early evaluation ATI Radeon HD 4670 sample and made it do all sorts of naughty things with 3DMark Vantage, Call of Duty 4, and Crysis.

Sony Computer Entertainment America has followed up on Sony Computer Entertainment Japan's PS3 Bluetooth Wireless Headset announcement with a release date for North America. The headset will arrive stateside on October 14, more than two weeks ahead of the Japanese October 30 launch.

The headset will ship with the $59 SOCOM: U.S. Navy SEALs Confrontation bundle and it will also be available as a standalone peripheral for $49. Sony plans on unlocking additional headset functionality with an upcoming PS3 firmware update this fall. Here are the details from the SCEA press release:

• High-Quality (HQ) mode – This delivers high quality online voice chat and high bandwidth voice recording and playback, which is currently not available with any other Bluetooth Headset. For future PS3 games, HQ Mode also can enable or enhance advanced in-game features:
  • Voice command (the ability to direct AI characters using voice)
  • Voice animation (your in-game character mimics you during voice chat)
  • Proximity chat (high quality voice playback in full surround sound to match all of the sound effects and voiceovers in the game)
• When docked in the supplied charging cradle, the Headset works as a desktop microphone while charging
  • Automatic pairing of the Headset with PS3 system via a USB cable
  • Exclusive PS3 on-screen indicator displays connection status, battery charge level, speaker volume level and microphone mute status at a push of a button

Falcon Northwest recently shipped a high-end Mach V system to our office. Three elegant black boxes arrived bearing the Falcon emblem. Covered in a cloth-like shroud, we found our Mach V nestled inside a monolith of a box. The Mach V hung as if in mid-air. A strong clear plastic held the computer away from the sides of the box to protect it. The first of the smaller boxes contained a heavily padded instruction manual and some extra cables packed away in a cloth tool case. The second box contained a shirt, a hat, and of all things, Falcon Northwest branded coffee, and a Falcon mug. I don't know how they knew that my favorite way to game was with a mug of coffee while wearing a black baseball cap with a makeshift t-shirt do-rag underneath, but they had things just right.

If you're unfamiliar with Falcon Northwest, the company has been crafting high-end gaming rigs for countless years. Budget systems at Falcon start in the $2000 range. Although, even budget systems at Falcon are formidable, filled with high-end video cards, premium CPUs and copious amounts of RAM. High-end machines start in the $3000 range and can easily be configured to cost well over $10,000.

The success of the Wii has brought a lot of attention to motion-based game controls. Sony and Microsoft are undoubtedly working on their own motion-control systems right at this moment, but Motus, a company started by a team of MIT grads out in Cambridge, Massachusetts, has already demonstrated a new controller that has the potential to bring motion control to any gaming platform.

The engineers at Motus were able to develop its Darwin controller relatively quickly because they spent years learning about motion-sensing technology while developing their first product, the iClub, a hardware and software package designed for golf instruction. The Darwin controller shares the familiar wandlike shape of the vanilla Wii Remote, but has more internal sensors that promise superior performance.

We had a chance to speak with Motus CEO Satayan Mahajan to find out more about the Darwin controller and the company's plans to bring it to market.

GameSpot: What exactly is the Darwin?

Satayan Mahajan: The Darwin controller is basically a motion-based controller that is competitive to the Wii, designed for the platforms other than the Wii--Xbox, PlayStation, and PC.

GS: What kind of hardware does the controller feature? Accelerometers, gyroscopes?

SM: It's both accelerometers and gyroscopes, and magnetometers. All three of those combined in very clever ways give us what we believe are better capabilities than the Wiimote.

Sony has just announced a trio of new hardware products today at the Leipzig Games Convention including a new 160GB PlayStation 3 bundle, new PSP-3000 bundles, and a PS3 Wireless Keypad.

The 160GB PlayStation 3 will come in a limited-edition bundle packaged with Uncharted: Drake's Fortune, a PlayStation Network download voucher for PAIN, and a DualShock 3 wireless gamepad. The bundle will ship in November for $499, which is the same asking price as the current 80GB PlayStation 3 Metal Gear Solid 4 bundle.

Sony's second major announcment is that it's releasing new PSP Entertainment packs that include an upgraded PSP-3000 system. According to Sony, the new PSP will have a built-in microphone and an upgraded LCD screen with "a wider color gamut and higher contrast ratio to deliver deeper, more vibrant colors, as well as anti-reflection technology." The built-in microphone is a welcome addition because you currently need a headset to use communication services such as Skype and Go!Messenger on the older PSP systems.

The new PSP will be packaged with a Ratchet & Clank: Size Matters PSP Entertainment Pack and a new PSP 4GB Memory Entertainment Pack. The Ratchet & Clank package will include a silver PSP, a 1GB memory stick, a yet to be named UMD movie, and a PlayStation Network download voucher for echochrome. The Rachet & Clank pack will ship this October at the familiar $199 price point and expect the PSP-3000 to slip into the $169 PSP Core Pack later this year.

The last major hardware announcement is a new Bluetooth wireless keypad accessory for the PlayStation 3. The PS3 Wireless Keypad, designed to fit onto a DualShock 3 or Sixaxis gamepad, will give players an easy way to enter text on the PS3. Expect the PS3 Wireless Keypad to arrive this November.

PS3 owners planning to get the new Rock Band 2 and Guitar Hero: World Tour games (and possibly, Rock Revolution) can hold off on clearing out living room space to accomodate several sets of incompatible music peripherals. Sony has just announced in its PlayStation Blog that it's worked with Harmonix, Neversoft, Konami, and Activision to ensure "a basic level of gameplay compatibility" between the guitar and drum peripherals in all of the games. Here's the block quote from Sony director of publisher relations, Michael Shorrock:

For the most part, this means that the titles with musical peripherals will work with the other's software. A few specific examples include: Guitar Hero: World Tour's guitars and drums will work with Rock Band 2 and Konami's Rock Revolution software.

And yes, you guessed it, Rock Band 2's guitar and drum set will work with Guitar Hero: World Tour and with Rock Revolution.

Conversely, Rock Revolution's drum set will work with both Guitar Hero: World Tour and Rock Band 2.

In addition, Guitar Hero: World Tour and Rock Band 2 will both support the SingStar microphones.

This agreement currently doesn't guarantee peripheral cross-compatibility in existing games such as Rock Band and Guitar Hero 3, but Shorrock hopes "to have an announcement on that shortly."

Epic Games hasn't been a huge fan of Intel graphics. As you may remember, Epic Games executive Mark Rein has blamed Intel for crippling the gaming-capabilities of a large portion of the PC market by shackling systems with sub-par integrated graphics. Will Intel's graphics-capable Larrabee processor be more of the same or can we expect more out of Intel's latest hardware?

We caught up with Tim Sweeney, Epic Games founder, chief architect, and the man in charge of Unreal Engine development to get his thoughts on Larrabee. Intel's Larrabee-based graphics release is still over a year away, but it looks like the chip already has an important fan out in North Carolina.

GameSpot: Do you think that Larrabee represents where GPUs are going in the future?

Tim Sweeney: Yes. I believe the ability to replace large parts of the fixed-function pipeline, or bypass it entirely with a software-based renderer running on the GPU, will be the key to future rendering features. While the current GPU model has enabled an amazing 1000X increase in graphics performance, I remain mindful of the flexibility and potential for new features that we left behind at the end of the software rendering era in the late 1990's.

GS: What about Larrabee excites you the most and why?

TS: The most exciting opportunity for Larrabee is the possibility of Intel moving it down to the mid-range and low-end over time. If Larrabee eventually displaces Intel Integrated Graphics, that would bring compelling graphics to the masses. Intel could become a real force for good in the graphics market, which -- to be blunt -- hasn't been the case in recent years.

GS: Do you think that Larrabee would make sense for next-generation game consoles?

TS: Certainly.

Rock Band 2 clearly commands a great deal of attention at E3 2008, but the unsung heroes of the game are its peripherals. Of course, being a hardware guy, I feel that way about all doodads. But in this case, the guitars, mics, and drums really do contribute to the feel of the game. So when we found out that Harmonix partnered with Mad Catz for peripherals, we were totally thrown for a loop.

Most of us know Mad Catz for their budget oriented controllers. However, both companies stated in no uncertain terms that all products related to Rock Band will be made with the utmost quality in mind. We were told that around eighty percent of Mad Catz's resources were thrown at perfecting Rock Band related products. The folks at Harmonix also said that there had been lots of back and forth between the companies. Mad Catz plans to release an entire line of premium Rock Band peripherals, and even some totally new designs that are exclusive to them.