Capcom confirmed to us the landing dates for Lost Planet 3: June 25 in North America, and June 28 in Europe. The game was previously earmarked for early 2013, but early 2013 has all but come and gone, so the delay is not too surprising, but at least Spark Unlimited's third-person shooter now has its dates.

Developer Hardlight Studios let slip via quickly deleted tweets - which Sega Driven also spotted before they ran off - Sega's iOS endless runner Sonic Dash is making a midnight sprint for the App Store tonight. According to those deleted tweets, the game is priced $1.99 in the US, and £1.49 in the UK. That's backed up by Sonic Dash already being out in New Zealand, which traditionally gets App Store content hours ahead of other regions because of wibbly-wobbly time zone differentiation.

As the App Store gallery and description indicates, Sonic Dash is a fair bit reminiscent of the Temple Run formula, which to us seems fair enough since the blue hedgehog was doing the Temple Run thing as far back as Sonic Adventure. The description also reveals that, for those that can't get enough of the hog's critter chums, Sonic Dash lets you play as Tails, Amy, and Knuckles McGee (Knuckles for short).

Sega has just announced that Company of Heroes 2 will march to retail on June 25 in North America and Europe.

Company of Heroes and developer Relic Entertainment were the most expensive properties in the THQ asset auction earlier this year, going for $26.6 million. The studio and franchise almost ended up in the hands of Zenimax Media, the parent company of Bethesda Softworks (Fallout, Elder Scrolls), for $26.3 million.

"Our acquisition by Sega has given us the chance to work with a new partner that has a great track record of working with long standing PC franchises," said Company of Heroes 2 executive producer Jonathan Dowdeswell. "It gives us great confidence to know that we have a well aligned team working to bring the best experience we can to gamers around the world."

Sega is one of the few publishers supporting high-quality real-time strategy games in the market. The publisher is also responsible for the Total War franchise.

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Wasteland 2 is still early, but Brian Fargo's inXile Entertainment has just launched another Kickstarter, this time for Torment: Tides of Numenera, the Planescape: Torment-inspired role-playing game set in the world of the Kickstarted tabletop RPG Numenera.

Torment: Tides of Numenera is a single-player RPG in which you play a "single, specific character" joined by NPCs. As the "Last Castoff," the last incarnation of the Changing God, you find yourself hunted by the "Angel of Entropy" in a world full of mysterious, magical ruins. You can read much, much more about the storyline and setting on the Kickstarter page.

Torment is being developed in Unity for release on PC, Mac, and Linux. In its first morning, the drive has already exceeded $86,000 of its $900,000 goal, with the total rapidly growing. inXile has proven to be good at Kickstarter – or its fans just that ravenous for old-school RPGs – as it raised over $3 million for Wasteland 2.

Square Enix trademarked and registered domains for something called 'Deus Ex: The Fall' this week, adding to the speculation of what's up next for the franchise. Meanwhile, it's emerged Deus Ex: Human Defiance, which the publisher trademarked last week, is likely the name of the film in production; after associated domains were registered by CBS Films.

In the case of Deus Ex: The Fall, however, Square Enix Europe filed both the trademark and the domain registrations. Square Enix hasn't announced a sequel to Human Revolution, while developer Eidos Montreal, who unveiled the Thief reboot this week, is working on an unannounced third project alongside the Deus Ex and Thief franchises.

This week's wave of Gold-exclusive Xbox Live Arcade deals rustles up four Sega fighters, including the AM2 trio re-released a few months back. Sonic the Fighters, Fighting Vipers, and Virtua Fighter 2 are knocked down from 400 MSP to 160 MSP each, while Virtua Fighter 5: Final Showdown is a steal at 400 MSP, just a third of its regular price.

If you're after something a bit less punchy, why not book a half-price ticket to Nightopia - NiGHTS into Dreams is down to 400 MSP. There are two more 50 percenters to finish us off: the Karateka remake kicks in at 400 MSP, while JoJo's Bizarre Adventure HD is at 800 MSP.

BioWare has announced another Mass Effect 3 multiplayer event, but this is no standard combat skirmish: Admiral Hackett says this is "the largest-scale attack in the brief history of this war."

Instead of just a weekend special, Operation Lodestar will last from today through March 10, which means you'll have five days to complete all three tiers, and earn three Commendation packs and a special banner.

To pick up all three rewards, players will need to finish and extract from missions against all four enemy factions on Platinum difficulty. Extracting on any difficulty wins you the first award, and beating Silver difficulty wins the second. It'll be good practice for taking on the Citadel DLC, which you can also find in Mass Effect 3 starting this week.

This week's PlayStation Store update is truly conducive to the reclusive, enabling downloadable versions of Tomb Raider, Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance and MLB The Show 13 . There's no need to leave your cave, cut your way through other consumers and then do some kind of baseball thing.

Bit.Trip's auto-running champ, Runner2: Future Legend of Rhythm Alien, is also available for $15 (or $12 on PS Plus), as is a cross-buy special edition of When Vikings Attack.

Check out the full list of updates over at PlayStation Blog.

The Astronauts are working on an eerie, macabre, non-combat game called The Vanishing of Ethan Carter, and while we're still not sure exactly what it is, one thing is certain – it's not AAA. After founding People Can Fly, working on Bulletstorm and Gears of War, and leaving to start an indie studio, designer Adrian Chmielarz says AAA games have lost their appeal.

"We're no longer excited by mammoth-sized games," Chmielarz tells Games Industry International. "We're still very interested in high quality, but now and in the future we want to focus on smaller projects."

The Vanishing of Ethan Carter will involve death and murder, but won't feature any shooting. It's a game of discovery, similar to Dear Esther, but with more corpses, as Chmielarz describes. Horror is thriving on the indie scene, he says, and he hopes Ethan Carter shows that video games can offer a broader range of experiences. But if no one understands this approach and the game bombs, The Astronauts may need to come back to Earth.

"If we don't slip, we'll have just enough money for this first project, and then it's sink or float," Chmielarz says. "Kickstarter was tempting, sure, whether we like it or not it's a great marketing tool and gives your project that extra visibility boost. But we think that Kickstarter should only be used by those studios for which there's just no other way without losing their freedom. We're just old-fashioned this way."

The Vanishing of Ethan Carter is due out on PC this year.

Journey took top honours at this year's BAFTA (British Academy of Film and Television Arts) game awards, with five different gongs going to thatgamecompany for Artistic Achievement, Audio Achievement, Best Online Multiplayer, Best Game Design, and Best Original Music.

The Unfinished Swan picked up two awards, for Game Innovation and Debut Game. Dishonored won the award for Best Game in 2013, and iOS tactile puzzler The Room picked up an award for the Best British Game.

Valve's Gabe Newell was given an Academy Fellowship award for his storied career, while the "Ones to Watch" award (meant to showcase the best young game dev talent) was given to a game called Starcrossed, made by students working with the Dare to Be Digital competition.

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DMC: Devil May Cry gets an extra dose of brotherly love today, courtesy of the new "Vergil's Downfall" DLC. The content stars Dante's brother, Vergil, and features a new story along with new weapons and enemies. Vergil's Downfall runs for $9 and is available today on Steam, and will hit PSN later today with the weekly update. The DLC will arrive on Xbox Live tomorrow.

If you're on the fence, Joystiq should have a review later this week.

Valve will give Steam Box prototypes to "customers" within the next three or four months, bossman Gabe Newell told the BBC. Newell didn't specify if these customers were developers, anyone in the gaming public or your cat, but he suggested that Valve is focused on the Steam Box's development.

"We're working with partners, trying to nail down exactly how fast we can make it. We're also working hard on the input side to try to take a step forward in terms of the kinds of games you can play," Newell said. "We'll be giving out some prototypes to customers to get their reactions, I'd guess in the next three or four months."

Valve has a few controller prototypes now and will ship those along with the Steam Box. We've long heard of Valve's love affair with biometrics, and some form of player feedback will be implemented with the hardware.

"What we've found is you can directly measure player state and it turns out to be very useful," Newell said. He continued, "You need to be able to directly measure how aroused the player is, what their heart rate is, things like that, in order to continue to offer them a new experience each time they play."

Disney and Imangi Studios are collaborating again with Temple Run: Oz, a mishmash of Temple Run 2 and the coming film Oz the Great and Powerful. The two previously played nice on Temple Run: Brave.

If you've played Temple Run 2 – and it would appear at least 50 million of you have – this latest version has the same running, jumping and sliding gameplay, but now with a yellow brick road.

The gameplay isn't just confined to the wizard's inexhaustible stamina; there are sections where players will be tasked with guiding a hot-air balloon. Unlike Temple Run 2, which is free, this movie tie-in will set you back $1, but comes with 1500 coins of in-game currency.

Jamie Keen, lead game designer on Ubisoft's upcoming open-world action game, Watch Dogs, is rumored to have left the company. According to his altered LinkedIn profile (pictured below), Keen has taken a new position with EA at Ghost Games, the Gothenburg, Sweden studio rumored to be working on a new entry in the Need for Speed series.

Aside from his work on Watch Dogs, Keen also worked on Far Cry 3 as a writer while at Ubisoft Montreal. Before his time at Ubisoft, he did a stint at EA where he served as a producer on Battlefield: Bad Company.

Ubisoft has not officially provided comment on the matter.

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