Who knows, maybe the game will actually make it out this year. Little to no promotion for this version makes me think that Harmonix had trouble delivering on their promised goals. Thanks to Kolma for the heads up.

Hey, guess what? Today is a day that ends in “y” -- and coincidentally, here’s another rumor that Metal Gear Solid 4 is making its way to the Xbox 360! This one seems at once more concrete, and yet more circumstantial, than anything we’ve had so far. The header image was screencapped from this Web site, which is a simple Flash placeholder that’s linked from Kojima Productions’ English page (see upper right). The site merely rotates between the above image and Konami’s logo.

Destructoid tipster extraordinaire Joe Burling and I have been brainstorming for the past half hour about what exactly this could mean, because it’s important to note that -- of course -- this confirms nothing. Sure, the image is in neon green, which instantly brings the Xbox 360’s ring of light to mind ... but if you think about it, that symbol is recognized worldwide as a power or on/off sign (after all, the PS3’s power button looks like this). After racking our brains and considering the facts, we’ve come up with a few observations and notes.

Both the URL of the Flash site itself, and the URL of the linking image, feature the phrase/initialism “MGST” -- though we’re pretty much stumped as to what that could mean. Joe instantly thought of “Metal Gear Solid: Tactics,” which could suggest: (A) an entirely new game in the franchise, (B) simply an altered name for the 360 version, and/or (C) the “special edition” of MGS 4 that we all guessed was coming after Substance and Subsistence. Another interesting thing to note is that MGS 4 came out on June 12, 2008, and today (December 5) is exactly one week before the six-month anniversary of the release.

In addition, Konami’s stock has been flagging of late, so Joe speculated that this could be the precursor to some sort of announcement to try and reverse that trend. Still, the iconography here must be of some significance -- exclamation points appear above soldiers’ heads in the games when they’ve spotted you, but why are two of them inverted here? Orcist wasn’t so quick to jump to the obvious conclusion (i.e., that MGS 4 is coming to the 360), saying that he figured Kojima would have something more mysterious up his sleeve in this age of viral marketing and alternate reality games. So hit the comments, Dtoiders, and help us out with your thoughts on what “a next Metal Gear is...”!

Unfortunately, we are going to have to wait until February to get our hands on the game. Joost van Dongen of Ronimo Games has confirmed that Swords and Soldiers has been bumped back to February 2009. At least we can be sure that they are working on upping the quality of what already looks to be a fantastic title. Thanks to AtomicOctopus for the heads up!

Link

Cliffs Notes: The transfer was supposed to work.  It didn’t. Petitioned November 26. No response.  Updated petition. No response. Made a forum post.  No help there.   Last resort = Blog post to make noise about it.

Long version/forum post:

My guild transfered off of Wolfenburg to Dark Crag on November 26. I went through the transfer process, following all of the procedures to the letter, and the guild was disbanded on Wolfenburg accordingly. The next step was the create a new guild on Dark Crag after transferring my character. Upon creating this new guild my previous guild’s level and renown should have transfered to the new guild. Well, it didn’t. It created a new guild without the renown or the level. I promptly relogged, refreshed my UI, asked other guildies, and reread the transfer process several times. Nothing on my end went wrong or should have gone wrong.

When I exhausted all self-troubleshooting I sent in a petition. There wasn’t a reply so I updated my current one and still have not heard anything. It’s been over a week now and my guild is rather agitated that we don’t have our guild heraldry or scrolls, or any of the other perks we spent time earning from launch until this point.

Has anyone else experienced similar problems? I heard from someone that this happened to other guilds during previous transfers and the issue was resolved. Does anyone know how I would go about getting this resolved? Obviously the petition isn’t doing anything.

Help is appreciated.

So now I have posted this here on my blog because, honestly, I have no other place to turn. Do I call CSR’s and complain or hope that one day my in-game petition is answered?

Someone in the forum post that I made had this to say:

“Our guilds petition for them to fix it was in the hands of CSRs for over a month(we were rank 19). They didnt help us and around when our “new” guild hit rank 9 — every single officier we had quit the game. They do not even have a category for guild issues on the appeal thing.

My best advice to you to avoid heartache is to merge with another guild NOW and count the old one lost.”

I’m trying to be cool about it, but honestly it’s killing my desire to log in. I don’t want to get nasty or start throwing out wild accusations about customer service’s performance. I’ll simply leave it at this for now: Please help, Mythic. (Character name: Morkeen // Guild name: Happy Fun Guyz // Server: Dark Crag)

C3: Considering the strong sales of Shadow Dragon in Japan, will you be trying to bring more of the ‘classic’ Fire Emblem games to a larger audience by remaking them on DS or Wii (such as Thracia 776)?

Horikawa: First of all, our priority is to ensure that this title is favoured by enough many customers all around the world, achieving a great final sales figure. This is a message to every game player out there - please give Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon a try!

C3: Now that development of Fire Emblem on DS has been completed, can fans expect a new Wii version from the team or will development continue on DS?

Horikawa: As for sequels, I think time is not ripe yet to disclose such information, either what our exact plans are or what platform we will focus on next. However, hopefully I will be able to announce something in the near future that will make all fans very excited…

Full interview here

Do you love preview trailers but always feel that they aren’t quite direct enough in explaining exactly what a game or does? Then just check out the above Godfather II trailer and have all your desires put to rest. The short, new trailer basically outlines how one plays and beats the game. Take over territories, keep them and make your “family” stronger and stronger. It seems that shooting people and kicking ass is also in the cards.

It looks like the took plenty of the new features from the Wii version of the original Godfather game (the best version) and have implemented them into this second game. I’m just wondering if beating people up will ever be as much fun without those perfectly exectued motion controls.

You know I had just been thinking that the Wii didn’t have enough games on it that appealed to children. You know the kind of game where on every other system the game looks cool and realistic, but on the Wii everyone has been given a big head and cartoonish looks. Well have no fear because EA is bringing us NASCAR Kart Racing, the only NASCAR game on the Wii, on Feb. 10, 2009. You’ll get to race as all your favorite drivers, but they’ll look funny and be in kart version of their cars.

I hate NASCAR to the bottom of my very soul, but if I had to choose between real NASCAR and cartoon NASCAR I’d go real any day. Come on, the Wii is built for a solid NASCAR game, but heaven forbid developers try to appeal to anyone else but those who have fallen in love with Mario Kart. As if that weren’t enough the game is clearly looking like another Mii-rip-off art style. At least Shaun White Snowboarding: Road Trip aimed for a different look. Boo and hiss.

• A clipboard in all dialog boxes. You can even copy from upper screen, holding "L" button.
• Using up to three servers at the same time.
• DCC chat support and file transfer by DCC in both directions
  
• Storing of logs directly to flash.
• Identification of server answers by numbers. I.e. not an interface only but the great deal of server answers is in English (for non-english servers).
• An alternative mode of nicklist request. Now you can see user's "away" status plus a complete list of his modes on server.
• Flexible settings of colors, highlights, etc.
• The prototype of scripts for advanced users. You can set commands, which will be executed after opening or closing of DS (turn away automatically, for example). You can previously make a list of commands for channels, privates and nick list, where the appropriate variables will be substituted as well. I.e. mIRC popups' analog 
  
• All settings can be changed during a program work - it's no need to bother with ini files.
• Something like multitasking. At the same time you can download several files by DCC, get a list of channels and chat. Practically all tasks are working simultaneously, except the moment of connection.
• Nick autocomplete on "tab".
• Special mode for left handed people.
• Input history.
• Ignore.
• Russian in/out and interface (only for Russian version)

• ClIRC 0.04 - Ruddian-friendly IRC client for DS
  

Article here