European game developers are outrage about a recent EU Commission proposal that, if approved, would require devs to abide by the EU Sales and Guarantees Directive, a rule that mandates “a minimum 2-year guarantee on tangible movable consumer goods.” While this guarantee sounds great for us the consumers, Dr. Richard Wilson, head of game developer advocacy group Tiga, is worried it may “stifle new ideas as [developers] could end up just playing it safe.” Basically they are worried that many of us might take advantage of it.

You should already know Guitar Hero 5 is coming. The new game offers the ability to create any combination of rock you want. Three microphones and one guitar? Go right ahead. Two drummers and two guitars? No problem. Four drummers? You should already know the answer.

Loose Cannon Studios is a new independent development team set up by two Sucker Punch veterans, Dev Madan and Matthew Scott, along with Ricci Rukavina, who previously worked at Universal Interactive Studios and Vivendi. According to the company’s website it was founded in 2005 and its employees have worked on such franchises as Sly Cooper, Spyro, Crash Bandicoot, Jak And Daxter and Uncharted.

DSi and Wii continue to remain behind Sony hardware.

The publisher of Call of Duty and World of Warcraft released a sunny financial report today, and revealed that Guitar Hero is big in Europe.
Activision Blizzard pulled in $981 million in revenue in the first quarter of this year ending March 31. That’s up from the company’s projected $860 million (which happens to be the revenue rival EA earned in its last quarter).

Activision has confirmed to Joystiq that the title is in development and will release sometime during the second half of this year. Activision could not confirm any songs, and only said the game will contain Van Halen’s “greatest hits,” as well as guest acts such as Queen, Weezer, blink-182, The Offspring, Queens of the Stone Age, and more.

Activision continues to “exploit” its Guitar Hero franchise this year with three new full titles coming this autumn. The newly announced Guitar Hero 5 will offer “the ability to drop in and out of songs and change band members, instruments and difficulty levels on the fly.” The press release contains no other details regarding the game, but you can bet it’ll be pretty similar to Guitar Hero: World Tour.

A recent Nintendo financial statement and press release was chock full of information. First was a mighty impressive sales figure — over the past fiscal year, 62 games (first and third-party) which have been released on the Wii and DS reached one million copies sold life-to-date. This brings the total number of million-sellers on Nintendo’s current batch of systems to 145. That’s a large enough number, even when you don’t multiply it by one million.

Legislators in Texas have proposed a bill that would expand what registered sex offenders would be required to disclose, including the release of online screen names. That could potentially even cover online gaming social networks.

EA embraced the Wii last year and the Wii embraced it right back, with the percentage of revenue due to the Nintendo console nearly doubling over the previous year.