Finally! Crackdown 2 has just received an official release date in the UK. The title will be hitting shelves in the country on July 9.

Ruffian’s also released the first ViDoc for the game.

A summer release was originally mentioned a few months ago by Ruffian Games, but this is the first confirmation of an exact release date.

Full press release after the cut.

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It wasn’t too long ago that Movie Gallery announced they were closing over 800 Movie Gallery and Hollywood Video stores across the US, but now it seems like UK-based GAME is following in the footsteps, albeit on a much smaller scale.

12 GAME stores, six GameStations and 25 Debenhams concessions will be shutting their doors after a rough Christmas period resulting in being down 18% in sales.

“The majority of the identified sites are located close to another one of our stores, and we will help each customer affected by a closure to transfer to their nearest store as well as our online offerings,” GAME told Games Industry.

“We will provide extensive support to the teams in each store. However, with deep regret, we have had to offer redundancy to 247 employees. We will do our utmost to redeploy roles if possible, and have started consulting with all affected employees in the 43 sites.”

Sad day. :( More game stores closing.

ELSPA presented some rather interesting software sales figures today. In 2009, the Xbox 360 overtook the (until recently) unstoppable Wii as the biggest software-shifting format in the UK. That’s a first.

The Xbox 360 pulled in £459 million worth of software revenue in 2009, although the Wii sold a higher number of titles in general, shifting over 18 million games last year.

PlayStation 3 finally made itself competitive in 2009, with over 11.9 million games sold to consumers, up 1.5 million from the 10.4 million games sold in 2008.

In total, over 74.6 million games were bought by people in the UK last year, which roughly accounts for one video game per person in the country. If that’s not mainstream, I don’t know what is.

Based on figures gathered by MCV today, Modern Warfare 2 has sold approximately 1.23 million copies on it’s first day on sale in the UK, according to GfK-ChartTrack.

The figure is impressive. Do you want to know just how impressive?

It’s double the figure of GTA IV’s day one sales (609,000). This makes making Modern Warfare 2 the fastest-selling video game in UK history, with 1,230,588 copies sold in total day one.

This roughly means that Modern Warfare 2 is in approximately one of every 24 UK homes.

Impressive would be an understatement.

When we weren’t busy eyeing up Sony’s impressive booth at the Bullring Centre in Birmingham, England, another impressive show of force by Sony caught our eye – Nathan Drake is making his face known in style!

Take a look for yourself.

It’s rather impressive.

The GameStation store in the Bullring Centre is the largest games store in the UK (in terms of floor space), and Sony clearly hasn’t wasted any time in getting Nathan Drake’s face out there where people will see it.

The console industry is a huge and competitive market, Sony aren’t sitting on their laurels, and they’ve taken the fight to the Bull Ring.

The Bullring Centre in Birmingham, England, is one of the largest shopping centres in Europe. Imagine our surprise when we pop into the centre, only to see Sony had come out in full force to promote the PlayStation name to the public, with a truly impressive display.

A bird's eye view of one of the most recognisable symbols in gaming today. It's certainly a smart way to make people take notice of your brand logo!

The giant PlayStation logo above was only the start.

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According to the latest tweet from Europe’s Xbox Community Manage (there’s a mouthful title) Graeme Boyd, you’ll be able to watch TV from Sky on your Xbox 360 on October 27.

Pricing and channel line-up will be revealed at launch, according to the tweet.

October 27 – that’s the date when you’ll be able to watch TV from Sky on your Xbox 360. Channel line-up and pricing to come at launch

Thanks for letting us know, Graeme!

Surprising move, this. As you may already know, several retailers confirmed to the press today that the Xbox 360 Arcade SKU will be receiving a price increase (yes, you read that write) in the UK, up from £129.99 to £159.99.

It was also confirmed that Xbox 360 accessories will receive a price increase by at least one or two pounds. It’s important to note that this only applies to the UK as well.

This move is not entirely surprising. The pound sterling is currently a horrendously weak currency. Some may recall that Nintendo did the very same thing no more than six months ago, so this is hardly unprecedented.

In a move that’s a bit of a change to the normal process, Nintendo have announced that it intends to raise the UK trade price of the Wii by £18-20, due to the recent depreciation of the pound.

“We are only – reluctantly – raising our trade price now to retailers due to unprecedented and sustained depreciation of the pound,” Nintendo told VG247 in a statement today.

“This is a problem brought about by extreme currency fluctuations that are a symptom of the global economic situation.”

It should be noted that it’s only the trade price that is being increased; whether to retail price of the machine sold is store goes up will be entirely at the discretion of the retailers.

Are you a good gamer? Then Britain’s Royal Air Force might have just the job for you, though it may require some experience in flight simulators.

PressTV believes the RAF is trying to save money by replacing pilots with gamers:

The Royal Air Force (RAF) announced Saturday that pilots without full combat training will replace top guns in controlling unmanned Reaper planes in ‘frontline missions’ in Afghanistan as part of a plan to reduce costs…

Although a small mistake by the remote-controlled pilot can be lethal for civilians or friendly forces nearby, RAF chiefs, believe that ‘lower grade’ pilots with 30 hours’ basic flying training can fly sensitive missions over Afghanistan…

It appears that RAF chiefs have based their claim on studies suggesting that the best drone crews are often young ‘video-game players’ rather than ‘experienced fighter pilots’.

Sounds a bit strange to me, but if it works, kudos to the RAF.

Though nothing has been confirmed by Microsoft directly just yet, a number of new Xbox 360 bundles have been showing up on the retail websites across the internet, giving us a hint of Microsoft’s Christmas strategy this year.

Clearly Microsoft is to break the deadlock of the format in certain regions and catch up with the runaway success of the Nintendo Wii. – good luck with that – and these bundles are set to release in Europe (and presumably the UK) to help with that.

Consumers who purchase the arcade system will receive copies of Xbox Live Arcade Unplugged Volume 1 and Sega Superstars Tennis. Meanwhile, purchasers of Premium or Elite will receive Lego Indiana Jones and Kung Fu Panda: The Game.

The bundles look to be available from October 17th.

Not exactly a bundle for the hardcore, but it’ll definately attract the soccer moms.

Nintendo UK has officially announced that Wii Music will be hitting stores in the UK on November 14, a month after the US released.

The game will feature over 60 “instruments” including a cheerleader and a dog.

According to a recent press release, Microsoft has just confirmed that the Xbox 360 will receive a system-wide price cut in the Uk and around Europe this Friday, September 19, to the same prices as were shown in a recently leaked Woolworths catalogue.

The Arcade will drop in price to 129 pounds (179Euro), the 60Gb Pro to 169 pounds (239Euro) and the Elite to 229 pounds (299Euro), reduced from 159 pounds (199Euro), 199 pounds (269Euro) and 259 pounds (369Euro) respectively.