ENGLISH SPEED METAL BAND DRAGONFORCE TO DEBUT NEW SINGLE AS PART OF DOWNLOADABLE TRACK PACK FOR GUITAR HEROR III: LEGENDS OF ROCK

SANTA MONICA, CA - August 19, 2008 - Known for their out-of-control riffs, fast paced songs and twin guitar solos, DragonForce will ascend the virtualstage once again to unleash "Heroes of Our Time" - the debut single off their new album Ultra Beatdown - in a three-song track pack for Activision Publishing, Inc.'s (Nasdaq: ATVI) Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock.  The DragonForce track pack will be available on August 21, 2008 giving gamers the unique opportunity to download and play "Heroes of Our Time" in advance of the album release.

This morning the NPD Group released their July sales preview. While the monthly data that NPD typically sends out is hard numbers, these are all predictions based on their analysis of early sales. Those hard numbers won't be hitting till later this month.

The in-depth packet doesn't give us predictions of the top selling games of the month across the board, it does tell us that the group believes that the Wii will manage to outsell the Playstaiton 3 and Xbox 360 combined in July and than the DS will approach tripling Playstation Portable sales.

Wii

Japan - 530,000 (6.4 million)
North America - 2.5 million (13.1 million)
Europe/Aus/Asia - 2.15 million (10 million)
Total - 5.17 million (29.62 million)

DS

Japan - 580,000 (22.9 million)
North America - 2.7 million (25.1 million)
Europe/Aus/Asia - 3.65 million (29.5 million)
Total - 6.94 million (77.5 million)

Here is a summary of the Nintendo News Conference at this year's E3 convention.. Looks like its been a great year for Nintendo. First off, Iwata spoke about how the paradigm of games has shifted over the past 5 years.

Animal Crossing City Folk was unveiled for Wii, it'll offer Wii Speak which is a community mic..sounds interesting! 3 titles shown as videos: Star Wars Clone Wars with lightsabre battles, Rayman Raving Rabbids TV Party that has balance board support and COD World at War which has Zapper support and has co-op (although I'm not sure if its online or not)

Before the Press Briefing ends, Square-Enix has revealed to us that
Final Fantasy XIII will be coming out to the XBOX 360 as well.

 More after the jump

With Sony hot on their heels and planning to launch their own film & TV download service this summer, Microsoft today announced they'll not only be overhauling the Xbox 360's GUI completely, they'll be enabling live streaming from Netflix (full E3 presentation at Engadget) in a software update this fall. The partnership (in addition to a new deal with NBC Universal) would put the total Xbox 360 downloadable film and TV selection count at over 10,000.

The iPhone Games are here. The iPhone Games are here. Things are going to start happening to me now!

As of this morning you can download iTunes 7.7 and, with a little help from Gizmodo, manually add the App Store to your iPhone. Why would you do that? So you can check out the spiffy new games they have available. Yeah, I'm sure some of the seventeen games currently available will be shovelware, but that doesn't mean there won't be some gems.

Feel free to make requests in comments.

Hit up our guide to what's to come on the jump.

This week's chart is potentially less good news for the PSP, as two of its big sellers — Super Robot Taisen A Portable and Monster Hunter Portable 2nd G — fall out of the top ten. Will this spell the end to PSP hardware dominance in Japan?

01. Derby Stallion DS (DS) - 148,000 / NEW
02. Tales of Symphonia: Knight of Ratatosk (Wii) - 137,000 / NEW
03. Daigasso! Band Brothers DX (DS) - 120,000 / NEW
04. Hisshou Pachinko * Pachi-Slot Kouryaku Series DS Vol. 12: CR Neon Genesis Evangelion - Shito, Futatabi (PS2) - 55,000 / NEW
05. Higurashi no Nakukoru ni Kizuna: Dai-Ichi-Kan - Tatari (DS) - 42,000 / NEW
06. Wii Fit (Wii) - 34,000 / 2,292,000
07. Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots (PS3) - 34,000 / 566,000
08. Mario Kart Wii (Wii) - 31,000 / 1,508,000
09. Mario Super Sluggers (Wii) - 31,000 / 89,000
10. Mobile Suit Gundam: Operation: Troy (Xbox 360) - 28,000 / NEW

More after the break..

It should come as no surprise that Metal Gear Solid 4 was Japan's best-selling game last week, as publisher Enterbrain already chimed in with the PlayStation 3 game's first four-day sales. Fortunately for Konami and Kojima Productions, Old Snake didn't have much competition, as the only new title to crack the top ten was an Evangelion pachinko game for the Nintendo DS.

Tecmo will be less happy to see that Ninja Gaiden II has already dropped off the charts after an unimpressive showing last week.

01. Metal Gear Solid 4 (PS3) - 465,000 / NEW
02. Mario Kart Wii (Wii) - 38,000 / 1,444,000
03. Wii Fit (Wii) - 37,000 / 2,227,000
04. Jikkyou Powerful Pro Baseball Portable 3 (PSP) - 27,000 / 187,000
05. Monster Hunter Portable 2nd G (PSP) - 26,000 / 2,203,000
06. Hisshou Pachinko*Pachi-Slot Kouryaku Series DS Vol. 2: CR Neon Genesis Evangelion - Shito, Futatabi (DS) - 22,000 / NEW
07. Dragon Ball Z Burst Limit (PS3) - 18,000 / 111,000
08. DS Bimoji Training (DS) - 17,000 / 285,000
09. DS Yamamura Misa Suspense: Maiko Kogiku - Kisha Katherine - Sougiya Isa Akashi - Koto ni Maru Hana Sanrin: Kyoto Satujin Jinken File (DS) - 17,000 / 56,000
10. Fushigi no Dungeon - Furai no Shiren 3: Karakuri Yashiki no Nemuri Hime (Wii) - 14,000 / 73,000

More after the break..