Here’s a roundup of today’s news found elsewhere on the internet:

"Big" Ubisoft announcement this week (eurogamer) - Ubisoft's gearing up for a headline-grabbing announcement this week.

Company community bods Aymeric Evennou and Kimi Matsuzaki both Tweeted in preparation.

"I'd only say: 'Big announcement coming up next week,' and I mean BIG," said Evennou on Friday.

"TGIF all! Looking forward to a Big announcement coming up next week," added Matsuzaki.

Evennou is based in Paris, but Matsuzaki is based in the US, in Raleigh, North Carolina - the home of Sinister Games. The latter has been consolidated with Ubisoft's Red Storm studio - the developer responsible for many of the Ghost Recon games.

Red Storm recently made America's Army: True Soldiers and the multiplayer for Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 1 and 2.

Are we about to see a new Ghost Recon? We'll keep our eyes peeled.

Jordan Thomas: Console wars are "silly" (eurogamer) - 2K Marin's Jordan Thomas has said that the console wars are "silly".

"There's a cognitive effect known as confirmation bias which leads people to latch onto conclusions that support their preferences and ignore data which doesn't," Thomas told Destructoid (thanks VG247).

"This leads to wild, unreasoning loyalty to a chosen platform, sports team, or brand of soda." There's only one Dirk Kuyt.

"From a development perspective, the console wars are a bit silly. Our target is consistency, and it's always kind of sad to see people throwing their energy into platform partisanship, because it seems to flood the critical channels and drown out other creative discourse."

Thomas is creative director on BioShock 2.

BioWare explains two Sith in SWTOR (eurogamer) - BioWare writer Rebecca Harwick has explained the developer's decision to create two Sith classes in its upcoming Star Wars MMO, The Old Republic.

Profiling the Sith Inquisitor class, Harwick explained, "When we set out to build our game, we knew we needed more than one Sith class. The original trilogy only has two Sith in it, but they couldn't be more different: the heavily armoured brutal physicality of Darth Vader compared to the frail but immensely powerful Emperor Palpatine.

"When we extend our inspiration to Episodes I-III and The Clone Wars cartoons, Count Dooku, Darth Maul, and Asajj Ventress further expand our concept of what a Sith can be. Is a Sith a lithe quick fighter who uses the Force to enhance his/her physical combat prowess, a calculating deceiver adept at Lightsaber duels, or a master manipulator and amasser of dark side secrets?... Having multiple Sith classes allows us to embrace all of those Sith inspirations, instead of having one Sith class that was the jack-of-all-trades and the master of none."

But Harwick said the decision was made for story decisions as well as class differentiation. "With two Sith classes, we have the opportunity to explore the Sith order from two very different perspectives, to develop a more complete picture of the Sith Empire at the time our game is set, and to present strikingly different character arcs and choices...

"And where that other Sith class starts in a position of privilege, born to lead and prepared from childhood for training at the Academy on Korriban, the Sith Inquisitor begins the game as a slave, plucked from obscurity and toil in a highly stratified, unforgiving Empire because of his Force-sensitivity and sent to become a Sith or die."

It's not just the Sith that get such close attention in The Old Republic; there are two Jedi classes too, the Knight and the Consular. You'll also be able to play as a Smuggler, Trooper, Bounty Hunter or Imperial Agent.

Star Wars: The Old Republic is due for release on PC in 2011.

Shepard is heterosexual "by choice" (eurogamer) - BioWare co-founder Dr Ray Muzyka has said that the absence of gay relationships in the Mass Effect games is a storytelling decision.

"In Mass Effect it's more a third-person narrative, where you have a pre-defined character who is who he is, or she is," Muzyka told IGN when asked why Dragon Age: Origins allowed for gay relationships while Mass Effect didn't.

"But it's not a wide-open choice matrix. It's more choice on a tactical level with a pre-defined character. So they're different types of narratives, and that's intentional."

The Mass Effect games are about "[Commander] Shepard as a defined character with certain approaches and worldviews", Muzyka continued.
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"So we constrain the choice set somewhat, but enable more tactical choices and enable a deeper, richer personality, because it's more focused around defining one character, it's not as wide open. But that's by choice."

Dragon Age, for its part, "is a first-person narrative" where "you are that character at a fundamental level", and that's the reason there's more scope for different relationships.

“Something far-reaching coming” for Mass Effect next year, says EA (vg247) - EA’s just confirmed it’s bringing “something far-reaching” for Mass Effect is coming next year.
We’re unsure who said it at the time, we think it might have been EA COO John Schappert, but the comapny did say it would be coming in the company’s Q4 FY11 line-up, which translates into January – March 2011.

We think the firm also mentioned something about the Cereberus Network for Mass Effect 2, but we’re not exactly sure exactly what. We’ll look at the transcript tomorrow morning and see what it was.

EA Plans Dead Space 2, Next Dragon Age For 2011 (Kotaku) - Electronic Arts has is aiming for the first quarter of 2011 for two of its bigger upcoming releases, pegging Visceral Games' Dead Space 2 and BioWare's next Dragon Age title for release by March 31 of next year.

EA also lists the Dead Space and Dragon Age sequels as bound for handheld platforms in addition to consoles in its quarterly financial update, with "Dragon Age Title TBA" also coming to the PC.

Handheld, in EA terms, includes mobile platforms, so don't be surprised if Dead Space shows up on your iPhone at some point in 2011.

Also coming sometime between January 1 and March 31 of 2011 is "Shooter from Epic TBA," the Epic Games/People Can Fly collaboration that might be known as Bulletstorm. It also has a new New For Speed game and "Action Title" planned for the same three month window.

As for this year, EA plans to have Crysis 2 out for PC and consoles sometime between October 1 and December 31, with Realtime Worlds' massively multiplayer cops and crooks game APB hitting sometime between July and September, a little later than we were expecting.