BULLETCAST, July 14 – What you need to know now

Lots has happened in the last 24 hours. Get all the major headlines in one place. Don't be an idiot.

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• The first round of beta invites for Call of Duty: Elite is due to go out later today.
• Final Fantasy Versus XIII development hasn't even hit full production yet. You might want to stop holding your breath.
• Sony assured that HDMI will be only required for HD video on new PS3 models, not for games. Catch up on that here.
• Twisted Pixel’s Ms. Splosion Man and THQ’s Warhammer 40k: Kill Team went live on XBLA yesterday. Take a look at Kill Team here.
• Sony said yesterday it's to invest $20 million in its Pub Fund to develop PSN-exclusive games.
• Relic's said that customisation and army-building will both play big parts in Dawn of War III.
• Gears of War 3 will release in Germany uncut.
• We grabbed the English-dubbed Catherin demo and narrated it. See it here. It's out in the US later this month.
• Ace Combat director Kazutoki Kono has told VG247 that: “The Project Aces team is smaller than many will imagine, we don’t have enough manpower to create two franchises on console.” So don't expect any CoD-style franchise bombing.
• Capcom Vancouver's got a new site. And it's hiring.
• Zynga apparently offered PopCap $1 billion, but the Plants Vs Zombies dev picked EA as its buyout partner despite the inflated sum. Can't buy you love, and all that.
• Tickets for Call of Duty XP, September's giant CoD fan event, go on sale on July 19.
• New studio Flying Wild Hog showed a first glimpse of dark RPG Hard Reset this morning. Take a look here.
• Tim Schaaff, president of network entertainment at Sony, has told GamesBeat that this year's PSN hack outage was a "good time". We suspect he's kidding.
• Hi-Rez Studios is to publicly debut Tribes: Ascend during QuakeCon 2011 in Texas next month.
• Wedbush Morgan's Michael Pachter has said he expects EA to spend between $45 and $50 million on Battlefield 3 marketing.
• LA Noire and PSP won the Japanese charts this week.
• The ESRB has re-rated Parasite Eve II for PSP and PS3, and has listed Sony Computer Entertainment as the publisher.
• NCSoft will show Guild Wars 2 at EG Expo in September.
• The first video playtest of the upcoming Xbox 360 wireless steering wheel's been posted. This is due to ship next to Forza 4 later this year.
• Xbox 360's getting a new South Park game, apparently. 345 Games is doing it.