So if you were checking out any other sites yesterday (you weren’t were you?), you would have seen that at the upcoming Penny Arcade Expo (PAX) Microsoft has reserved two slots which are still titled TBA. This is at the end of both Saturday and Sunday after a full day showing Gears 2, the New Xbox experience, Popfly, Halo wars …

This video is nothing short of hilarious and really makes you think about the kind of exercise that your character has to keep up with in order to move your sorry ass around the world. What these two guys have done is link up two treadmills to their computers running the MMO game "World of Warcraft" or "WOW" for short and programmed them to convert their treadmill running into forward key pulses, so that their real life running is converted into in-game running. More details after the jump. What they do is then embark on a fairly common journey in the game world from one area to another to experiment with how much exercise it actually is to take a jog around the world. The results are quite startling and it really makes you realise just how much it would actually take out of you to run all over the place and that doesn't even include any combat! I really take my hat off to these guys for thinking of this idea as it's really very interesting as well as funny. Maybe we will start seeing peripherals like this when the next generation of gaming consoles arrive. Or not.

This developer diary video for Mercenaries 2 has an interview with the games director, Cameron Brown in which he discusses the importance and fun of all the destructive elements and possibilities in the game. Yesterday we posted up a trailer for Mercenaries 2 that showed off nothing but a huge amount of explosions going off in the game and you may be interested to know that Mercs 2 pretty much promises that there will be no limits to where and how you use all the massive firepower in the game. Is all the destruction a bit much? More after the jump. It does look amazing the way that you can level entire buildings in the game but I do think that some of it is rather questionable. Especially the one part in the developer diary where you see a character fire off an RPG at a block of flats only to have the entire building collapse as if it were a planned implosion. Yes, I will admit that it is still damn cool but it's just feels like its a little over the top. It almost feels like if you sneeze to hard you may take out half a city and the crazy thing is that it actually looks like you may really be able to destroy entire cities if you like. Regardless, the game is looking pretty good and should be a lot of fun if it plays as good as it looks in the videos so far and I was really happy to hear at the end of the video that the game has co-operative play.

The British classification board has checked out the bonus disc for Gears of War 2 and has slapped a 18 rating on it. They have also leaked quite a bit of information about what it includes and if you don’t want any spoilers then stop reading now. Last Updated: August 27, 2008

No PSN isn't broken but it has been down for some maintenance. The Metal Gear Online site has posted this statement saying: PSN Maintenance 26.08.2008 Maintenance will be undertaken on the “PLAYSTATION(R) NETWORK” between August 26th 16:00-21:00 (BST). During these times, customers may be momentarily unable to connect to the PLAYSTATION(R) Network . Please try after some time should this happen. After publishing some rumours recently about a possible date for the Home Extended Beta , Playstation news site FeedOnPS3.com is reporting that they think that this maintenance could be more than meets the eye. On their site, they say the following: We have just got word that on 08.26.08 (tomorrow) between 8:00-13:00 PDT the PlayStation Network will be down. We are skeptic, but this “Scheduled Maintenance” can be pertaining to the Home Extended Beta, or possibly even Life with PlayStation. This latest rumor would add up with the rumor we have previously reported. Only time can tell what is to come. Let's wait and see how things turn out.

Remember that little posting yesterday about the possibility of Gearbox making the next iteration of the Halo franchise? Well it has now officially been confirmed as a rumour by Gearbox themselves. Destructoid dropped Gearbox a line and asked them about it and received this response. Last Updated: August 27, 2008

It seems that we have our own local Jack Thompson and he is on a mission to get all games with violent content and music with violent lyrics recalled from local shelves immediately. Apparently this entire nationwide recall is required because some 16 year old kid dressed up as Joey Jordison, grabbed himself a samurai sword and killed someone. Error …

Sony may be about to pull a fast one the Xbox 360 in a way that I doubt anyone, possibly even Sony, had seen. The latest PS3 firmware 2.5 is rumoured to be adding the ability to screengrab from a game at any time and save that away securely to your hard drive. The guys over at CVG aren’t sure …