Prince of Persia 2008

Prince of Persia finished

Three years after Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones arrived on the last generation of consoles, Ubisoft has completed development of the next proper chapter in the franchise. The publisher today announced that the simply titled Prince of Persia has gone gold for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and PC, and will arrive in stores December 2.

The game marks a new beginning for the franchise. Cutting ties with the Sands of Time trilogy, the series revamp features a new Prince with a new art style, as well as new gameplay mechanics. Players will work their way through the game with the aid of Elika, an acrobatic match for the Prince who helps him fight a corrupting force sweeping the land.

Another new addition to the series is the potential for downloadable content. The game's developers have said that have plans for additional Prince of Persia offerings that would give players more than the new costumes and weapons that so often comprise other games' add-ons. If the Prince of Persia downloadable content materializes, the developers want to give players "a new experience" and tell a new story.

For more on Prince of Persia, check out GameSpot's previous coverage.

If brevity is the soul of wit, this week's release list is a charmer of Oscar Wilde-an proportions. The river of top-tier games has dwindled to a trickle, with a few final high-profile releases dribbling onto store shelves less than a month away from New Year's Eve.

New Releases: Dec. 7-13, 2008

Persona 4 leads a week of slim pickings.

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First and foremost on this week's docket is Atlus' Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 4 for the PlayStation 2. The sequel to GameSpot's top role-playing game of 2007 features similar gameplay, but increases the emphasis on story and character. It follows a silent protagonist staying with relatives in Inaba, a quiet town tucked away in the Japanese countryside. Things don't stay quiet for long, though, as players quickly find themselves embroiled in a murder mystery that bridges the real world and a supernatural realm extant inside TV sets. (Insert "Kill Your Television" joke here.)

Other than Persona 4, the biggest release of the week is the PC edition of Ubisoft's second reboot of the Prince of Persia franchise, which garnered solid reviews when it was released on the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 last month. Not so the PlayStation 3 version of Sonic Unleashed, which follows in the footsteps of its critically savaged 360, Wii, and PlayStation 2 siblings on Tuesday. The week also sees the launch of C.O.R.E., a first-person sci-fi shooter from little-known developer-publisher NoWay Studio.

On the downloadable front, the top gun is Meteos Wars from Tetsuya Mizuguchi's Q Entertainment. Previewed by GameSpot in October, the expanded Xbox 360 version of the highly praised 2005 DS title will go live on Xbox Live Arcade on Wednesday for 800 Microsoft Points ($10). Today, Nintendo's console got two WiiWare title: The puzzler Bruiser and Scratch and Canadian-friendly Hockey Allstar Shootout, as well as a Wii Virtual console classic, Sonic the Hedgehog (Master System edition).

This week's new releases are listed below (list taken from retailer information--actual dates may vary).