MyBrute gets its own connected battling iPhone community

As suggested by images on developer's Bulkypix's website and more formally when we interviewed CEO Vincent Dondaine - not to mention that leaked YouTube video - viral web community phenomenon MyBrute is coming to iPhone and iPod touch.

The web game, which is mixture of RPG and simple arena-battler, hosts 1.7 million visits per day and to date, over 70 million Brutes have been created.

Bulkypix's game will be a standalone version that's not connected to the web version.

Instead, working with MyBrute creators Motion Twin, Bulkypix has come up with version that will see you create up to eight Brutes, taking on a series of challenges, to gain experience and unlock up to 70 skills and weapons.

You can take on up to five opponents daily and they will be eight battle arenas. Obviously the goal is to be the Number 1 Brute in the world.

Community aspects of the game will be included via wi-fi and the OpenFeint platform so you can exchange ideas, challenge other Brutes as well as taking on pupils in your dojo. You'll also share victories and challenge friends on Facebook via Facebook Connect.

Bulkypix promises it will regularly provide new content and game modes too, to continually renew the game experience.


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PSP Go! and PS3 Slim: Latest rumors

In advance of E3 next week, rumors continue to circulate around the possibility of a new PSP and a new, slimmer PS3. Here are the latest:

• Ars Technica is reporting that the next-gen, UMD-free PSP Go! is "indeed real," according to a "trusty inside source" and should be announced at E3.
• The same Sony "mole" claims that the new PSP will be "lighter than its UMD-sporting predecessor, along with lower power consumption and possibly a lower price."
• The new PSP will be sold alongside the older version of the PSP (PSP-3000), according to the Ars report.
• The alleged source says, "A good number of titles will be released with both retail releases and digital downloads, with some games like Unbound Saga forgoing a retail release altogether."
• As for the slimmed-down PS3, it, too, is real, according to the mole--but Sony won't begin selling the new PS3 until stock dwindles on the PS3 currently on store shelves. The source is targeting August or September for possible launch dates.
• There's no word on if Sony plans to strip any features out of the alleged PS3 Slim or if it will cost less than the current model.
• The mole claims that Sony isn't expected to announce a price cut on the current PS3 to clear inventory, "but the possibility is certainly there." (This obviously has the biggest no-duh quotient of any of the statements.)

That's it. Nothing terribly exciting or new here, but it does make sense that Sony would wait to announce a new PS3 until it can clear inventory. Obviously, with all these rumors out there, it's going to be harder to move units without some sort of price drop.


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Spotify Releases Taster Of Android App, With iPhone To Come

Spotify, the streaming music service which is gradually gathering a large fan-base in Europe, and is poised to launch in the US, has been plotting a mobile version for a while. It recently hired a head of mobile and the speculation was that it would come out with an iPhone app first after releasing a teaser video. But today it's released video of an Android app it's being demoing to people at Google I/O.

The Android app is still very much a work in progress and subject to minor changes, but it gives a pretty good overview of their thinking. The demo highlights a number of features including playback, playlists, offline synch and music search.

For those of you who haven't seen it yet - the service has yet to launch in North America, although I'm about to send some lucky TechCrunch writers some preview codes we've gotten hold of - Spotify is a lightweight iTunes-like application for Windows and Mac that lets you search, browse and stream a deep collection of music.

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