EA’s skating sim Skate 3 released around the world last week on Xbox 360 and PS3, and if you’ve been enjoying your time with the game, you may be able to increase that enjoyment by a few factors with a special bonus character – Isaac Clarke, the heavy-suited protagonist from EA’s horror action game, Dead Space.

You can unlock Isaac Clarke as a playable character in Skate 3 by entering the code “DEADSPACETOO” in the game. Head on down below to see Isaac ‘cutting it up’ in Skate 3’s environments, and perhaps even ‘flipping’ and ‘grinding,’ too.

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Visceral Games and EA have today jointly announced the existence of Dead Space 2, the sequel to 2008’s excellent horror-imbued action adventure game.

The protagonist from the first entry to the franchise, Isaac Clarke, returns in the sequel, which is said to be a “thrilling action-horror experience,” while players will gain access to new tools with which to “gruesomely slice and dismember the Necromorphs.”

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Via a post on what appears to be the official Twitter account for the Dead Space franchise, a Rorschach-like inkblot image has been posted to possibly hint at the next entry to the series, with mirrored images of the games’ familiar necromorph enemies.

According to The Escapist, the accompanying scrawls are actually text in the Unitology script, and reads: “the nightmare is over but it will not end.”

Chilling.

Check out a larger image of the inkblot below to see what you can make of it:

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After top EA developers Glen Schofield and Michael Condrey left the publisher and their newly renamed studio, Visceral Games (Dead Space, Dante’s Inferno), earlier this year to pursue further careers at Activision Blizzard, not much was known about what they would be up to next at EA’s rival, aside from the news that the pair would be leading a new studio to work on a game based on one of Activision’s past franchises.

This secret new studio, previously only known as ‘Activision Bay Area,’ has now been formally named by Activision as Sledgehammer Games, based in Foster City, California, with Schofield (as Vice President and General Manager of the studio) and Condrey (as Vice President and COO) at the helm.

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After worse than expected quarterly financial results, and poor market reception to its original intellectual property (IP) such as Dead Space, Mirror’s Edge and Brütal Legend, EA has revealed their future strategic plans, and it doesn’t look good for original, innovative content.

In the wake of the announcement that EA is to cut 1500 jobs across all of it studios, and the revelation that nearly a dozen, unannounced titles currently in development at the publisher had been cancelled, EA CEO John Riccitiello has pointed the way forward for the company:

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Two new full, current generation games have just been added to Xbox LIVE’s Games on Demand service today, namely the excellently moody third-person action adventure game, Dead Space, as well as the original (also excellent) off-road rally racer, Colin McRae: DiRT.

If you’re not familiar with Dead Space, the setup is summed up nicely, thus:

“When an immense mining ship, the USG Ishimura, comes into contact with a mysterious alien artifact in a remote star system, its communications with Earth are mysteriously cut off.

“Engineer Isaac Clarke is sent to repair the Ishimura’s communications array, but he arrives to find a living nightmare-the ship is a floating bloodbath, the crew unspeakably mutilated and infected by an ancient alien scourge. Clarke’s repair mission becomes one of survival as he fights not just to save himself, but to return the artifact to the planet … at any cost.”

Check your region’s pricing for Dead Space over here, and watch the original launch trailer a little further below.

What about DiRT, though?

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Microsoft has released a list of the next batch of Games on Demand titles to become available on Xbox LIVE Marketplace over the next few weeks, and surprisingly (or not), a few titles that are hardly a year old, such as Grand Theft Auto IV, Dead Space and Army of Two, will be available on the service later this month.

Dates and titles of upcoming Games on Demand additions follow below:

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Dead Space Extraction, the first-person on-rails shooter heading to the Wii, and based on EA’s Dead Space intellectual property, is looking very interesting… and very creepy!

Extraction takes place directly before the events of the Xbox 360 and PS3 game, but during the same time period as the comics and animated feature film, as the space ship you’re on, Aegis VII, is slowly being taken over by the infestations found in the original game.

Dead Space Extraction has a fourth quarter release window, exclusively (and built for) the Wii. Check out the rest of the screenshots, as well as a developer interview with executive producer Steve Papoutsis which includes in-game footage, below:

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Yesterday, EA let out the word that the next entry to their Dead Space franchise would come in the form of a Wii game by the name of Dead Space: Extraction, being built from the ground up for the Wii and releasing this autumn.

Today, you’re able to have a gander at some footage released for Dead Space: Extraction. Creepy as it may be, it’s also visually impressive and will make a grand addition to the Dead Space universe as it attempts to tell the backstory behind the first game. Watch below:

Earlier in the month EA announced that it would be bringing Dead Space to the Wii. Today the publisher revealed that the game would be a new chapter titled Dead Space Extraction.

Developed exclusively for the Wii and built from the ground up, Dead Space Extraction will be a prequel that reveals the events leading up to Isaac Clarke’s mission on the USG Ishimura in the original action horror game released in 2008. According to the press release the game will “marry the innovative motion controls of the Wii Remote with a frenetic first person perspective to create a new action-packed horror experience.”

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EA have announced their intention to place more emphasis on the Wii, focussing development efforts on that platform, in an effort to “rival Nintendo on their own platform” as well as “get noticed [on Wii] in ways that no other third party will.”

While EA’s Sports division will continue to focus on the Wii, they also intend to take advantage of people’s “fascination with fitness” through their EA Sports Active brand.

EA CEO John Riccitiello also revealed that a version of EA’s Dead Space will be making its way to the Wii, re-designed to take advantage of that console’s specific abilities.

Riccitiello went on to describe, what he calls, the three ‘buckets’ of the game industry, which are online games, Wii Games and Xbox 360 and PS3 games combined (which doesn’t account for EA’s mobile and casual online businesses).

“We’re proud to have great marketing partnerships around key exclusives, but in general, think of us as having those three buckets,” said Riccitiello, although EA plans to give the Wii ‘bucket’ as much focus as the Xbox 360 and PS3 ‘buckets’ combined, continuing on to say; “Nintendo is the leader; they’re getting half our emphasis in terms of title counts.”

“You live, you learn, you adjust and improve. This year’s [Wii] title slate [from EA] is a significant improvement from last year.”

For everybody looking for a good, free time on Xbox LIVE today (and the PlayStation Network on Thursday), you’ll be able to get in on the Dead Space action by downloading the demo.

The ‘Dismemberment Demo’ apparently “showcases the critically acclaimed combat and strategic dismemberment of the epic sci-fi action game. As Engineer Isaac Clarke, strategically dismember the Necromorph hordes as you carve a bloody path to survival.”

Sounds just great! Go get it now, if you’ve got the stomach for it for that is…

If you happened to get the chance to watch the Dead Space launch trailer last week, it’s possible you may have seen part one of the Sci Fi Channel’s Dead Space documentary.

Well, if you did see it, here’s part two of that documentary, further examining EA’s use of the ‘science of fear’, to get maximum scares out of gamers. UK and Europe get Dead Space later this week, on the 24th of October.

For those of you in the know, you would already be familiar with the news that Dead Space, a creepy survival-horror shooter from EA, has already been released in the US for Xbox 360 and PS3. You may also know that the game will be available in the UK and Europe on October 24th. You may know these things… but have you seen the new launch trailer?

If you have, then that simply means you get to watch it again. If you haven’t seen it - bon appetite.

After clicking below, you can also watch a Sci Fi Channel documentary exploring EA’s ‘science of fear’ to make Dead Space an awesomely scary game.

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EA have announced that their upcoming horror action game, Dead Space, is now officially done and dusted and will be working its way to a store near Europeans on the 24th of October on Xbox 360, PS3 and PC, while stores across North America will contain less PS3 and Xbox 360 shelf space on the 14th of October. Dead Space releases in North America on PC October 20th.

If you’re into games that mess with your mind while traversing a shelled out super-spaceship and battling extremely persistent monsters, then the box art to your right is what you should be looking for come release day, with the hand and the blood and the emptiness of space. Definitely alludes to the content. You can read some more about Dead Space, as well as catch an extremely creepy trailer, over here.