After the successful debut of Deus Ex: Human Revolution, Eidos Montreal would be crazy not to revisit the franchise once again, right? Sure enough, it’s come to light that a “major Canadian company” is hiring for a “semi open-world action adventure title that responds to player choice and interaction.”

While the job listing on LinkedIn via Twitter doesn’t exactly spell out Deus Ex 4, the franchise has been particularly revered for its open-ended gameplay set within a structured world. Additionally, the project is based on an “existing IP” that combines “elements of choice and stealth within the gameplay.” Yeah, this sounds like Deus Ex. While Thief 4 could be a possible candidate as well, that’s already been announced for PS3, Xbox 360 and PC.

What’s more, is that project is being built from the ground-up to take advantage of next-generation platforms due out within the next few years. A wide range of vacancies are open, from senior gameplay programmer to cinematic director. Next-gen can’t come soon enough, eh?

Ubisoft is celebrating the warm month of May with some impressive deals on a bunch of games. If you managed to blaze through Max Payne 3 and/or are currently disliking Diablo III and you need something to play, you may want to check out Ubisoft’s discounts, which were announced on the PlayStation Blog.

PlayStation Plus members get 50 percent off, while all other PlayStation 3 gamers will be able to snag some titles for 30 percent off. The sale covers a wide variety of games, from smaller downloadable titles such as Scott Pilgrim vs. The World: The Game to digital versions of retail games like Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood. DLC is also discounted, and HD remakes like Beyond Good & Evil HD are included in Ubisoft’s May sale, as well.

You’ll find the full list of discounted games below, with prices for PlayStation Plus users and standard PlayStation Network folks. Personally, I would recommend Outland to anyone who hasn’t already played it. The game is a beauty to behold, and its strong soundtrack and great platforming/bullet hell gameplay make it a truly special little download.

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Gamers are irate over the fact that they were unable to play Diablo III last night. Servers were down, and players weren’t allowed to enter the game, even if they wanted to play on their own. This is due to Diablo III‘s required internet connection, which bars any players from entering the game’s world unless they’re online.

Additionally, Blizzard’s DRM tomfoolery isn’t helping, and this has become one of the main reasons for some huge criticism among players. As a result, Diablo III has received a massive amount of negative fan reviews on Metacritic. Gamers are calling the title a disaster, and they even go so far as to unleash their verbal hatred for its gameplay and graphics, with people saying that the game is boring and repetitive, all the while failing to deliver decent visual design.

I haven’t had the chance to play Diablo III, and because I mainly use my rig to play indie games, the chances of that happening are pretty slim. But wow, guys, is the game really that bad? Does it deserve the 3.6/10 rating that it’s gotten from gamers on Metacritic? If so, I’m glad I never invested any time into the series, because this just seems like one steaming pile of disappointment.

GPU manufacture NVIDIA today announced GeForce Grid, a cloud gaming platform capable of “streaming next-generation games to virtually any device, without the lag that hampers current offerings.” The tech leverages NVIDIA’s Kepler-based family of graphics processors to deliver low latency gaming over the cloud. A single Grid instance can simultaneously encode up to eight game streams, allowing providers to scale efficiently with less overhead in regards to power and costs.

What’s under the hood? A Grid GPU boasts 3,072 CUDA cores — the same as NVIDIA’s flagship GTX690 card. It also includes 8GB of VRAM, with memory and shader performance clocking in at 320 GB/sec and 4.7 TFLOPS, respectively. The wattage rating comes in at a respectable 250W — reasonable when you consider how much power the card is packing.

Impressively, with the Grid tech, NVIDIA says server power-consumption per game stream has been reduced to about one-half that of previous implementations. Under ideal conditions, the Grid platform reduces server latency to as little as 10 milliseconds. According to NVIDIA, “gamers will feel like they are playing on a gaming supercomputer located in the same room. Lightning-fast play is now possible, even when the gaming supercomputer is miles away.”

OnLive competitor Gaikai will be one of the first providers to deploy the new tech. Additionally, several industry figures and developers have praised NVIDIA’s latest effort.

“Cloud has the potential to deliver an even more powerful experience in the future by enabling ultra-high-end GPUs like the GeForce GTX 680 to stream ultra-high-quality graphics such as those made possible by UE4 to a huge range of devices, well beyond console capabilities. The result will be that more people can enjoy EPIC’s games on more devices at higher quality,” said Epic Games founder Tim Sweeney.

“It is exciting to watch how cloud gaming is becoming mature and gives better and better user experience — and NVIDIA’s GeForce GRID technology is example of it. We are looking forward to see how cloud computing using this technology will change the future of gaming and the overall gaming experience and how it will affect consoles and PCs,” said CD Projekt RED lead programmer Bartlomiej Wronski.

Many have questioned the viability of cloud-driven gaming platforms in the past, but it goes without saying that NVIDIA’s Grid tech looks to be a game-changer. Going forward, it’ll be exciting to see how the platform evolves.

Sony Computer Entertainment Japan’s PlayStation Vita Heaven event in March brought a wealth of announcements for the company’s new portable, including the revelation that Phantasy Star Online 2 was in development. Unearthed by this week’s issue of Famitsu, it’s been revealed that Sony is prepping another Heaven event in June. A specific date wasn’t mentioned, though it’ll likely take place sometime after E3.

Viewers of the last Heaven event enjoyed several game trailers, including that of Persona 4 The Golden. It’ll be interesting to see what Sony has in store for us the second time around. For Japan, it’ll be hard to top the Phantasy Star announcement, but we’ll see.

South Park: The Game, also known as South Park: The Stick of Truth, and referred to by me as “that one South Park game that’s going to come out” has been pushed back until 2013. Originally, the game was potentially slated for launch sometime during the second half of 2012.

As revealed in a recent financial report from THQ, it looks like that won’t be happening anymore, though, and South Park is now set to release during the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2013. In other words, the game will be available sometime in early 2013.

Obsidian, the developer behind South Park, had a number of layoffs in March. Numerous employees who were let go were actually from the South Park team, so it’s possible that the delay could be related to the layoffs.

South Park seems like it could potentially be pretty awesome, so if it takes a delay to ensure that gamers get a great product, there won’t be any complaints from me. Watch out for the game sometime next year.

The Q-Games-developed PixelJunk 4am has landed on the PlayStation Network. The sad news is that this means the awesome PixelJunk sale that kicked off last week is officially over. Did you snag all of the PixelJunk games for cheap? I sure as hell did!

Sad news aside, there’s also some happy news! That happy news is that there’s a new PixelJunk game, which is great. PixelJunk 4am provides an experience unlike previous games in the series, focusing highly on visual and audio elements that utilize the PlayStation Move controller.

If you take a look at the comments section on a PlayStation Blog post by PixelJunk 4am lead designer Rowan Parker, you’ll find a lot of individuals who don’t seem too keen on the game based on their experiences with the beta. As has been explained in that same comments section, the PixelJunk 4am beta didn’t allow gamers to play the game and instead only allowed them to listen to other players’ (press and friends of the devs) performances.

It may take a while for some good content to come from other players now that the game is available on the PlayStation Network, but in the meantime, why not create your own mixes? PixelJunk 4am is available now for $9.99.

The PlayStation 2 is one of the most successful video game consoles of all time. Not only did it sell like crazy, but it had a library that was practically unmatched. That’s not to say that the GameCube and Xbox didn’t have some stellar games, but as far as the sixth generation in video games is concerned, the PlayStation 2 was king.

That’s why it’s strange to see how Sony has fallen from its throne with the PlayStation 3, a platform that former Microsoft Entertainment and Devices Division President Robbie Bach states helped the Xbox 360 manufacturer reach great heights. “Some of the success of Xbox was due to the fact that Sony did some really not so smart things,” Bach told GeekWire. “They mismanaged their 70 percent market share. It’s a long conversation. The transition to PlayStation 3 was really, really bad. And really hard. They mismanaged their partners, they mismanaged their cost structure. They made their next platform so complicated that developers couldn’t develop for it.”

I’m a fan of Sony’s gaming platforms, so it goes without saying that it was a bit distressing to see the PlayStation 3 fail to perform at the same level as its predecessor, which easily qualifies as many gamers’ favorite console. The PlayStation 2 is certainly one of my favorites, and though I game a hell of a lot on my PlayStation 3, I would still say I’ve had far more fond memories with Sony’s previous machine.

Despite some bad failures, though, Sony continues to stay in the console race, capitalizing on its brand name and incredible exclusive IPs. Here’s hoping the company stays in the game, learns from its mistakes, and continues to give gamers content to look forward to, all the while avoiding making the same errors.

Looks like you’ll be hearing more about Silent Hill Book of Memories at this year’s E3, rather than playing it. Konami’s confirmed that Silent Hill Book of Memories has been moved to October, according to a Game Informer report.

Although it was supposed to release next week, the abrupt delay isn’t too surprising, considering the company has been dead silent regarding the title for months.

In particular, Amazon is specifically listing an October 31 release date now, though in all likelihood that’s a placeholder. We first caught wind of the title at Sony’s pre-E3 presentation last year, before the NGP was officially known as the Vita. Since then, the title was revealed as a co-op focused horror title with plenty of action elements and Diablo-style corridors. Needless to say, it hasn’t exactly won over the fanbase.

The Xbox 360 adaption of Minecraft has already proved itself a hit on Xbox Live, selling more than any other title in the first 24 hours of availability. On top of that, it was also profitable in its first hour of release. Now Microsoft has taken the opportunity to gloat some more, announcing that the title has tipped one million in total sales – one week after release.

Additionally, Microsoft PR guru Major Nelson reveals that a whopping 5.2 million hours have been spent in the game, with a total of 2.4 million hours going towards the multiplayer component. To date, 4 million multiplayer sessions have been created. Impressive statistics all around.

Clearly, console gamers were frothing at the mouth for Minecraft. Here’s hoping 4J Studios deliver on their promise to bring the Xbox edition up to parity with its PC brethren, which can look really nice with a few graphical enhancements as shown in the screenshot above.