We'd already heard that Nintendo's Wii MotionPlus controller add-on was at least loosely tied to the launch of EA's Grand Slam Tennis game, but it now looks like the two may be even more closely linked than previously thought. According to a listing on Amazon.de, the add-on will actually be available in a bundle with the game (in Europe, at least), which will set you back €53.99, or just over $70, when it launches on July 2nd. As Joystiq speculates, however, this move could also be just the excuse Nintendo has been looking for to delay its own Wii Sports Resort game, which itself was supposed to come bundled with MotionPlus add-on but has been largely missing in action since its debut at E3 last year.

[Via Joystiq]

While we're still waiting for our PS3 price drop, Sony has announced the release of a newer, cut-rate PlayStation dev kit. While the current Reference Tool is priced at a mere $10,250 and has all the personality of a Betamax VCR, this new guy is going for a jaw-droppin' $2,000 and shares the PS3 form factor -- not that you're buying these things for aesthetic purposes, but it's true! The company promises "enhanced technical support for developers, an optimized PS3 compiler (SNC PPU) to improve efficiency, and better documentation for PhyreEngine." Looks like Sony's hoping sales will benefit from the "flood" of new releases this move is sure to instigate. Unless, of course, this was one of the demands of the Sony France hostage debacle. Libération de la PlayStation!

What if you could stream games, any game, over a decent broadband connection to your PC or Atom-based netbook at the same quality as the PS3? Would you walk away from your beloved console? That's the of hope of Palo Alto-based OnLive. But this is much more than empty rhetoric -- OnLive's been dropping jaws of the press who've seen it working this week. GameDaily dubbed the play "fantastic" after seeing Crysis streamed "smooth" off a server to a plain ol' MacBook laptop. See, OnLive claims to have perfected the interactive video compression technique so that latency is low enough to support on-line multi-player setups. Broadband connections of 1.5Mbps (71% of US homes have 2Mbps or greater) dials the image quality down to Wii levels while 4-5Mbps pipes are required for HD resolution. At the moment, OnLive is showing 16 high-end titles at the Game Developers Conference (GDC) in San Francisco and expects to be able to release new games within the same window as traditional retail launches. The games can be played on "any PC (Windows XP or Vista) or Mac" without the heavy cash-burden of a high-end graphics card, fast disk, quad-core proc, and truck-load of memory. Otherwise, OnLive plans to release what it calls a MicroConsole with Bluetooth (for voice chat) and optical audio-out that can be connected to your HDTV over HDMI -- pricing has not been announced but it will cost less than a $250 Wii. There's a community element too, of course, with OnLive reps boasting about it operating on an "unprecedented scale." This includes the ability to join live games at any point, the creation of "brag clips" that saves the last 10 seconds of game play for sharing, as well as leaderboards, rankings, and the rest. And if you think publishers will never buy in to the model, think again: Electronic Arts, Ubisoft, Take-Two Interactive, Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment, THQ, Epic Games, Eidos, Atari Interactive and Codemasters are already on-board. Expect OnLive to launch this Winter with monthly subscriptions available in "a variety of different pricing packages and tiers, competitively priced to retail." Damn.

Update: GameDaily's quote of 1-ms latency is in reference to encoding/decoding video, not Internet delay, obviously. Added a few more pics including one of the MicroConsole to the gallery.

[Via FT and Venture Beat]

Poor Pandora. It looks like the shock of actually being nearly finished has turned it stark white. The little trooper was still able to make it through its latest demo video though, and it looks to be running better than ever, with it sailing through Quake at the handheld's native 800 x 480 resolution and at a full 60 fps. Just as importantly, the d-pad, nubs, action buttons, and keypad are all now apparently in their final or nearly final states and seemingly up to their all-purpose tasks, as are the all-important blinkin' LED lights. Head on past the break for the full show, and keep your eye out for a promised follow-up video (including some Quake 3 action).

A little while back, Activision -- the fine folks responsible for bringing Guitar Hero to the world -- confirmed that it was working on a similarly named new title, DJ Hero. Well, the official site's appeared, and though it gives us no information about the actual game itself, well, you get the idea, right? Please, please let the above setup work in cooperation with Guitar Hero so that we can finally fulfill our dream of playing the part of Mr. Hahn with the rest of our band, Linkin Park.

[Thanks, John D.]