I attended a Q&A conference call regarding Bioshock 2 yesterday with several members of the game's development team. On the call were a lot of media outlets like Digital Chumps, and these folks from 2K and Digital Extremes:Jordan Thomas – Creative Director, 2K MarinZak McClendon – Lead Designer, 2K MarinHogarth De La Plante – Lead Environment Artist, 2K MarinMat Tremblay – MP Art Director, Digital ExtremesJesse Attard – MP Lead Programmer, Digital ExtremesAs most of you know, 2K Marin is handling the single player portion of the game, while Digital Extremes is putting their strong multiplayer experience to work in adding a multiplayer component to Bioshock for the first time. Dozens of questions were asked and answered, and following is a breakdown of the notes I took during the call. Enjoy, and be sure to come back for our full review of the game in about a week!

Much turmoil has ensued surrounding Seagate's drives this year, with many claiming that they're outright unreliable in the face of (seemingly) hundreds of thousands of them exhibiting a specific "click" and "freeze" behavior on various laptop models in which they happen to be installed (including, but not limited to, MacBook Pros and Dell Studios). Now, today, Dell has released firmware updates for the drives to supposedly fix the issue.  These fixes pertain to the following notebook models, per Dell's update site: Inspiron 1320 Inspiron 1370 Inspiron 1440 Inspiron 1470 Inspiron 1545 Inspiron 1570 Inspiron 1750 OptiPlex 780 Studio Laptop 1450 Studio Laptop 1457 Studio Laptop 1458 Studio Laptop 1555 Studio Laptop 1557 Studio Laptop 1745 Studio Laptop 1747 Studio XPS Laptop 1340 Studio XPS Laptop 1640 Studio XPS Laptop 1645 If we could figure out how to link directly to the Dell download page, we'd do so.  But until we figure that out (as apparently it's dependent upon session IDs, or maybe I'm just stupid), here are the direct links to the downloads.  Please keep in mind you will need to burn the firmware update to a CD and boot to...

I attended a conference call today with Erick Boenisch (Lead Feature Designer) and Rob Jones (Gameplay Director) who have been working hard on the 10th anniversary edition of 2K Sports' NBA 2K series. NBA 2K10 is set to take the court next week and will once again be facing rival franchise NBA Live from EA Sports, although the 2K series has been the champ for several years now. Numerous questions were posed and answered by Erick and Rob today, and following are the highlights that I took note of during the conference call.

Kotaku has got some gameplay footage of Diablo III, from Gamescom in Germany. Still no word on a release date for is going to be a huge PC title.The link: http://kotaku.com/5340525/thirty-seconds-of-diablo-iii-gameplay

We've spent some time this week with the new Map Pack for CoD: WAW. Adding three new multiplayer maps, a new zombie survival challenge, and ten new Trophies/Achievements, this is a fairly substantial update for the continually popular WWII action game.

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Following the (effective) death of the Wii verison of the game, we were interested in what exactly Tecmo's upcoming Tecmo Bowl iteration for Xbox Live Arcade might include.  Upon inquiring as to whether it'd merely be an updated port of the NES original or instead a remade version with enhanced presentation (as per many of the Live Arcade games), Tecmo had to say to us: "...we’re not sharing details yet, but given the target audience and platform, Tecmo realizes that many of gamers would like to play the NES original as well as an updated version of it." They also warn that they won't be announcing anything on the title at E3, so we'll have to wait for a while to hear more.  We'll keep you updated.

Such is the risk of saturating your library with non-games meant for grandmothers and gifters.  Tecmo confirms the latest casualty in the Wii WIP camp: Tecmo Bowl Wii.  Previously known to be in development for the console and expected as a 2009 release, a Tecmo rep has now confirmed to G4 that the project has been mutated into the considerably less-interesting Family Fun Football, a game that--preconceptions be damned--has "shovelware" written all over it. "As much as we’d like to say this [Family Fun Football] is a completely different game, it did start out as the 'Tecmo Bowl Wii' project," a Tecmo spokesperson told me this morning. "However, given the recent trend on the Wii and its target audience, Tecmo made a business decision to switch the project into a family oriented football game. So then what happens to Tecmo Bowl? For now, we're focusing on bringing Tecmo Bowl to the Xbox LIVE Arcade [in] early 2010."   [G4] The (only) good news is that we'll now be seeing Tecmo Bowl on Xbox Live Arcade. We'll have more on this development as it takes place.

The latest Nintendo Power apparently reveals that the highly-regarded Tatsunoko vs Capcom will, in fact, be making its way stateside.  The magazine suggests an end-of-year release, possibly complete with new characters.  There's even mention of possible online play being added, though that is unlikely if you ask us. So now, in light of this news, please allow us to respond in Stitch/Neogaf fashion: Dancing Kid Dancing Kid bigger Dancing Kid eats your soul Dancing Kid apocalypse

We think so.  Judge for yourself, and let us hear your thoughts in the comments below.

Contra Rebirth for Nintendo Wii WiiWare Following the success of Gradius Rebirth, Konami's now announced Contra Rebirth for Japan.  It'll be released on May 12 for 1,000 Wii Points there.  Here, well, nothing's been said just yet.  Let's hope we see something on it for Europe and North America soon.