The cool female character in Resident Evil 5 (Sheva Alomar) is modeled by Australian actress Michelle Van Der Water (pictured). Van Der Water was brought up in Oz, but moved to LA a few years ago to become an actor. She's also a former model and, judging by her filmography, this may well be her biggest role to date. (Side note: another Australian actress Anna Torv who will play FBI agent Olivia in the upcoming Fox series Fringe, stars in the PS3 title Heavenly Sword. She also played a rather hot lesbian in the miniseries Mistresses.) That's some great female representation!

Iwata says next gen Nintendo hardware is "in development"

Don't go throwing away your Wii's yet — it could be in development for ages (and may be the new DS we'll cover further on). Iwata was quoted this week as saying ,"We are always preparing for the next hardware. We are under development,". He also said unlike Sony, there can be no definitive replacement date (i.e. a six year turn around), it should be replaced when developers can no longer innovate on the present system.

More survival horror for Wii
Cursed Mountain is a survival horror game produced exclusively for Wii developed by Deep Silver. The game is set in the late 1980s and players take on the role of a fearless mountaineer as he (of course, he!) climbs the Himalayas on a quest to find his lost brother. As he ascends the mountain, he encounters an ancient curse: The souls of the people who died in that region are stuck in limbo, caught in the Shadow World. Sounds spooky, but yet another male hero.

Fat Princess upsets feminists, not so much lesbian gamers and heroines

Our Fat Princess post at LesbianGamers.com sure got a response. The feminists are a tad annoyed at the upcoming PS3 downloadable game which sees the princess fattened up and needing to be rescued. Bonnie Ruberg over at Heroine Sheik also covered the controversy.

Sid Meier's Pirates! For Mac gets dated

Feral Interactive has announced the release date for the Mac version of Sid Meier’s Pirates! Jot it in your Mac loving diaries, it's August 29th. Sid Meier's Pirates! invites you to live the life of a 17th century Caribbean pirate captain in an open-ended seafaring adventure. On release it will retail in the US for around $30 and in the UK for around 20UKP.