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Microsoft has indirectly announced that their Games for Windows LIVE service will be terminated on July 1st, 2014 through an information page regarding Age of Empires Online (seen here). This essentially means that Age of Empires Online and any game requiring the Games for Windows LIVE dervice will no longer work after the previously-mentioned date. See, this is why it's a great thing that Microsoft pulled the DRM out of the Xbox One, because this is what would've happened to the system when the fourth Xbox rolled around. The majority of games that currently require the GfWL service are, in fact, available on Steam; however, this means rebuying games and starting over on save files.

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Apparently this bundle was previously rumored, but has now been confirmed by Capcom. A 5-in-1 game package, Capcom Essentials comes with Devil May Cry 4, Resident Evil 6, Super Street Fighter IV, Dead Rising 2, and Mega Man 10. Kind of an odd combination, but its $60 price tag is a good deal for this many recent games. The games are packaged in a slip cover with two cases, each case holding two discs (meaning this is essentially a repackaging of four games into one bundle), while Mega Man 10 is included as a digital download code. Capcom Essentials comes out October 8th exclusively to the PlayStation 3, and even comes with a cool little travel bag.

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The official Pokémon YouTube account has posted a new English trailer for Pokémon X and Y, and some really cool things are shown in it, particularly the things previously revealed in a CoroCoro leak. The information has also been posted to the English Pokémon website. This will cover the burst of information, and the trailer, scans, and other images are embedded below the article.

First of all, three more Pokémon were revealed in the leak. The preevolution of Gogoat is a Grass-type called Skiddo (Meekuru in Japanese) with the Ability Sap Sipper. It will be a rideable Pokémon, as is Gogoat. This Generation's answer to Pikachu is a chubby little thing called Dedenne, an Electric/Fairy-type with the Ability of Cheek Pouch. It can apparently learn the new Electric-type move Nuzzle. Bunnelby (Horubii in Japanese) is a Normal-type bunny Pokémon with either Pickup or Cheek Pouch as its Ability. 

A new Gym Leader was shown named Korrina who apparently knows how Mega Evolution works. It's unknown what her typing specialty is.

Speaking of Mega Evolution, this is the big takeaway from all of this info. Mega Stones can be given to a specific Pokémon and, under certain conditions, they will Mega Evolve into a new form. In the CoroCoro leak, Mega Lucario, Mega Blaziken, Mega Ampharos, Mega Absol, and Mega Mawile were shown. The "Mewthree" that was leaked early on is actually Mega Mewtwo. Mega Pokémon will have alternate Abilities, Types, and increased Stats from its normal forms, but the form only lasts during the battle. The Pokémon will revert to normal after the battle is over. Mega Mawile gets the Huge Power Ability, Mega Mewtwo gains Insomnia, Mega Lucario obtains Adaptability and an Attack increase, Mega Blaziken gets Speed Boost, and Mega Absol gets Magic Bounce and an Attack and Speed increase. Mega Ampharos not only gets Mold Breaker, but the secondary type of Dragon. Mawile and its Mega Evolution are both Steel/Fairy type. The trailer shows off the transformation sequence as well as Mega Lucario, Mega Mewtwo, and Mega Blaziken in action.

Not every Pokémon will have a Mega Evolution; in fact, it seems like very few will have them, as the Mega Stones are named according to which Pokémon can use them (Lucarionite, Blazikenite, etc.). Even though Blaziken is getting a Mega Evolution, it seems not every fully-evolved starter is inclined to have one as well, because the Blazikenite item is not able to be obtained in normal gameplay. Instead, it'll be the hold item of a promotional Torchic. Said promotion will start at X & Y's launch and it's unknown how long it'll last. The Torchic will be pre-equipped with Speed Boost as its Ability.

Pokémon X and Pokémon Y launch worldwide on October 12th, 2013 for Nintendo 3DS, both retail and digitally on the eShop.

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Four new games have appeared on Club Nintendo, each being worth 150 Coins. No big blockbuster titles are in this lineup, however; the closest one would be Mario Golf.

• Mario Golf (3DS VC [GBC])
• Brain Age Express: Sudoku (3DS [DSiWare])
• Wario's Woods (Wii VC [NES])
• NES Play Action Football (Wii VC [NES])

Also recently available is a new Pikmin tote bag for 400 Coins.

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An exclusive trailer has surfaced out of the Summer of Sonic celebration this year for the Wii U/3DS title, Sonic Lost World. This is the first time we've seen extensive gameplay where a SEGA representative isn't taking his/her time with the game for demoing purposes, so it shows off how the game really plays. The Eagle Color Power is also shown. The trailer is posted below. Sonic Lost World launches October 13th, 2013 for Nintendo Wii U and Nintendo 3DS.

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Publishers of the Shin Megami Tensei, Etrian Oddessy, and Dragon's Crown series, ATLUS, has been hit with financial troubles as its parent company, Index Corp., filled for bankruptcy recently. However, they're not going down without a fight, as companies are looking to buy them out as their properties are incredibly successful. One of the companies to bid on Index Corp. recently was SEGA, and this is getting a pretty decent amount of attention; this had been a rumor for a while but was just recently confirmed. The bids on the company started at a whopping $200 million and said bids end at the end of August, meaning Index Corp. will have to chose which company to join by the end of the month. It'll be interesting to see where the SMT series lands, as Nintendo had recently announced a crossover with their Fire Emblem franchise. ATLUS going to SEGA wouldn't hinder the plans of said game, but other companies might have other ideas.

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Those who bought the Season Pass for BioShock Infinite and were starting to worry whether or not they had wasted their money, you can rest easy now, because Ken Levine has announced that DLC for BioShock Infinite is in the works. In fact, the first piece of downloadable content is already out today (on PC, at least). It's essentially a free-for-all challenge mode in which you have access to every ability, weapon, and powerup in the game, are given parameters for a mission, and are told to go nuts.

     "So I thought, maybe we can do something where we give the player the opportunity to just play with the full toolset, and all of the powers and upgrades and everything, and create far more challenging gameplay for them. So with that in mind, we gathered up the people really specialized in combat on Infinite and essentially told them the gloves were off, you guys can make whatever you want."
     -Ken Levine (featured in Polygon)

The next two DLC packs are story-driven, and are something I'm particularly excited about. They're meant to shed some light on the overall story of BioShock by sending you underwater; that's right, you're goin' to Rapture. Burial at Sea is a two-parter DLC setup that sends Booker to Rapture when it was in its prime way before even the events of BioShock 2's multiplayer. The second part of the Burial at Sea DLC will still, of course, be in Rapture, but this time, you'll take the reigns of Elizabeth.

     “We decided we wanted to shift things around a little bit for the third one, so the player character in the third DLC, you get to play Elizabeth and the gameplay is quite different as her. She’s not the tank that Booker is. And you’ll see how all the stories come together.”
     -Ken Levine (featured in Polygon)

The challenge mode DLC, Clash in the Clouds, is out now on PC for $5, and the PS3 and 360 versions are supposed to launch within the next day for $5 and 400 MSP, respectively. Date and price were not given yet for the Burial at Sea two-parter. Trailers for the DLC packs are embedded below.

(BioShock Infinite is on Steam, PlayStation 3, and Xbox 360. Check retailers for pricing.)

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Nintendo of America have announced that the all-black model of the 3DS XL will be coming overseas on August 11th, which just so happens to be the same day that Mario & Luigi: Dream Team comes out in the US. Perhaps this is their way of apologizing to us for not getting us that snazzy Year of Luigi XL model. The model was rumored to be coming to America after Cartoon Network aired an advert for the aforementioned Mario & Luigi game that featured the black system and leaked clippings of Toys 'R' Us promotional magazines had a deal on it for said console for $20-$30 off. Turns out the rumors held true.

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The 2008 Wii entry in the Super Smash Bros. series, Super Smash Bros. Brawl, gathered hype for its massive story mode, seen as a crossover featuring all the game's characters. However, Sakurai wasn't exactly happy that the cutscenes in said story mode were leaked to YouTube before the game's launch, so in the next Super Smash Bros. installment for Wii U and 3DS, he's nixing the story mode altogether.

     "Unfortunately, the movie scenes we worked hard to create were uploaded onto the internet. You can only truly wow a player the first time he sees [a cutscene]. I felt if players saw the cutscenes outside of the game, they would no longer serve as rewards for playing the game, so I've decided against having them."
     -Masahiro Sakurai (featured in Weekly Famitzu; translated by Kotaku)

Instead of having a story mode that consists of hard-to-make cutscenes that Sakurai now deems as a waste of development time, he plans on having one intro cutscene per character. While I was hoping for a sequel-type deal to the Subspace Emmisary in SSB4, I'm keeping in mind that Super Smash Bros. Melee got along just fine without any sort of in-depth story mode, so the next entry in the Smash Bros. series should be fun nonetheless. It's also worthy noting that Sakurai didn't say how long the character intros were; perhaps they could be entire fleshed-out videos? Sakurai also pointed out that the 3DS version will have some sort of exclusive feature alongside the regular VS mode in his featured article. It'll be interesting to see what the final product looks like as Super Smash Bros. for Wii U and Super Smash Bros. for 3DS hits in 2014.