Round-Up: SCEA Games, 2K and Firaxis, AtomFilms on PSP

Today's round-up includes official game announcements from Sony America, Sid Meier's hook-up with 2K Games, and AtomFilms' PSP-formatted short movies, as well as the latest product news and job postings. - Sony Computer Entertainment America has announced six new games to be released throughout the rest of 2005, and which will be shown at the upcoming E3 convention. For PlayStation 2, the games are Neopets: The Darkest Faerie, an action-adventure based on the popular viral marketing virtual pet site; Genji: Dawn of the Samurai, a samurai action game; and Shadow of the Colossus, the next game from Fumito Ueda's ICO team. On PSP, SCEA will be releasing MediEvil Resurrection, a portable adventure starring skeleton Sir Fortesque; The Con, a 3D fighting game featuring several different fighting styles; and Neopets: Petpet Adventures: The Wand of Wishing, again featuring the marketably cute creatures. - 2K Games, a division of Take Two Interactive, announced further partnership with Firaxis Games, home of developer Sid Meier. In addition to 2K's deal to publish the upcoming Xbox version of Sid Meier's Pirates!, after Atari published the PC version in late 2004, 2K has also secured the rights to publish some of Firaxis' back catalogue on PC. The list of titles 2K Games will begin publishing as of July 1st includes Pirates! on PC, as well as the Civilization series. "Sid Meier's Pirates! makes an excellent addition to the 2K Games summer lineup," said Christoph Hartmann of 2K Games, "and we also look forward to expanding our catalog of products with the Civilization titles." - The first 1 million PSP Value Pack systems sold came with a free UMD copy of Spider-Man 2, to push the handheld's movie-watching capabilities; now Sony is continuing its drive to promote that aspect of the system through a deal with AtomFilms. Sony will sponsor a series of short films available for download through AtomFilms.com, intended to be transferred to a Memory Stick and viewed on the PSP. The first wave of films out includes "Football," "In God We Trust," and "Rockfish," and will be promoted through the new Mobile Movies section of the site. Sony will sponsor Mobile Movies through the end of May. - Also updated today: product news involving a new artificial intelligence toolkit from Spir.Ops, plus a fresh version of the Trinigy 3D Vision Engine, as well as newly updated jobs from Disney Buena Vista Games, Maximum Thoughput Inc., Pandemic Studios, Ubisoft Shanghai Studio, Visual Concepts Entertainment, Midway Games, Surreal Software, and Insomniac Games.