The campaign demo for God of War: Ascension will be released via the PlayStation Network “later today,” according to a Sony blog post. The demo will feature a taste of the game’s new combat, new combos, and new systems.

In addition to the demo, Sony has also released a proper single-player trailer for the game. It contains a bit more detail and a few more monsters that haven’t already been seen, so it could be considered a bit spoilery. Really, though, Ascension is a prequel – there probably aren’t going to be any earth-shaking revelations revealed during the game.

Those who do pre-order with GameStop will be able to start playing “OverRun” at 3 am EST Saturday, March 16. The early access will run until the launch of the game on March 19. During that time, players can earn XP that will carry over to the full game. The pre-order also comes with a “Young Marcus” character skin and a Lambent weapon skin.

For those who don’t want to order from GameStop, or aren’t sure if they want to buy another Gears title, a demo for the “OverRun” mode will be available through Xbox LIVE on March 19 when Judgment launches. “OverRun” is a new class-based multiplayer mode that pits COG players (soldiers, medics, engineers, and scouts) against Locust players who can take on the role of wretches, tickers, grenadiers, ragers, kantus, giant serapedes, and maulers.

Sony knows, however, that not every fan of God of War is also a fan of Naughty Dog‘s (the developer of The Last of Us) Uncharted series. So, much like how the demo for Ascension was bundled into the Blu-Ray copies of the Total Recall remake, Naughty Dog today announced that copies of Ascension will come with access to a demo of The Last of Us.

Luckily for gamers, it doesn’t appear that Ascension will be the stinker that Total Recall was. Their peek at The Last of Us will come with a fully playable prequel to God of War.

The demo won’t be on-disc, though, and it also won’t be downloadable immediately when Ascension launches on March 12. Instead, gamers will find a The Last of Us listing on the main menu. Following it will lead to instructions on how to access the demo when it finally arrives.

For God of War fans who haven’t heard of The Last of Us, the game will follow the characters Joel and Ellie as they brave the ruins of civilization following some sort of pandemic. The game wowed crowds at last year’s Sony E3 presentation with its portrayal of brutal and realistic violence.

Luckily, gamers will get a chance to try out the action this January, when a demo for the game will be released. The demo will hit Xbox LIVE and the PlayStation Network starting January 22, just weeks before the game’s February 5 release date. Xbox gamers will also have the opportunity to play the demo starting January 15 if they sign up for early access on the Dead Space website.

The co-op in Dead Space 3 revolves around series protagonist Isaac Clarke and the mysterious John Carver. Due to his dementia, players who take on the role of Carver will experience different things on-screen than those who play Isaac. It’s a thoughtful touch that should help differentiate the gameplay from other bland co-op modes.

Hopefully, the demo will demonstrate whether this mechanic works for the story and gameplay. It would be sad to see such a promising franchise go the way of Resident Evil 6 – bogged down with over-the-top action gameplay, mandatory campaign partners, and ResidentEvil.net.

Sony announced today that most European and Australian copies of Total Recall‘s Extended Director’s Cut on Blu-Ray will include access to the single player demo of God of War: Ascension. A voucher code on an insert inside the case will allow gamers to download the demo via the PlayStation Network.

U.S. God of War fans are being left out of the deal, perhaps because Total Recall‘s box office totals there were so poor. Germany has also been excluded, but gamers in the U.K., Ireland, France, Italy, Spain, Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden, all Nordic countries, Australia, New Zealand, Hungary, Poland, Portugal, Russia, Greece, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Israel, Turkey, and South Africa will be able to get the demo with the Blu-Ray.

The demo will be the one seen at this year’s E3, presumably with the bipedal elephant mini-boss. Sony stated the demo will give players a chance to experience the game’s new combat system and gameplay elements before its release in March. Gamers will have to decide whether the demo is worth over €20 and whether it’s worth the possibility of being caught owning a Blu-Ray copy of Total Recall.

However, the Devil May Cry games have always been about more than the art, though that has been an integral part of their charm. The other major factor in the series has been the gameplay. Leveling up into new combos and powers until Dante or another protagonist is an unstoppable combo-chaining, gun and blade-wielding tornado of destruction is where the real fun comes from.

Devil May Cry fans worried that the new title might not play as elegantly as past games will soon get their chance to vet the game themselves. Capcom announced today that the demo for DmC is headed to Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 on November 20 in North America. Europe will get the demo on either November 20 or 21. From the announcement:

The demo will contain a few of the game’s difficulty modes, including the remixed “Son of Sparda” mode, which becomes unlocked after one completion. You’ll also have access to a variety of the game’s weapon upgrades and maybe a couple secrets along the way

Capcom also stated that the demo will feature two “action-packed” missions and a “big ol’ boss battle.” Hopefully that will be enough for Devil May Cry’s fans to determine whether it’s any good.

The video, called “Twisted Metal Greenlight Video,” shows an early in production version of Twisted Metal. It’s narrated by Jaffe himself as he gives a tour of the features coming to the then early version of Twisted Metal. There’s even a look at a mode that never made it into the full game. Here’s Jaffe’s description of the video:

“As we make the games, we often go to meetings and/or send videos to meetings of company execs to show progress. This is one such video that shows a number of variations on the modes and gameplay that ultimately made it into the final version of PS3 Twisted Metal.I miss CHASE TO VEGAS tons…really wanted that to work but there just was not time.”

We as gamers don’t get to see videos like this that often as they are intended for the suits funding the game. Gamers usually get a glitzed out trailer that shows little gameplay in favor of hyping up players with fancy visuals or a pre-rendered cutscene. After seeing this though, I think games need more trailers like this. We’re supposed to be getting hyped up for a game, not a movie. Show us the gameplay and explain the various modes. That’s far more effective than just a pre-rendered CG video of people shooting guns to dubstep.

Should game trailers become more like this? Or do you like the big hype-inducing trailers? Let us know in the comments.

Firms are increasingly using networking software to share documents and collaborate in ideas, the research found.

And while more work-specific systems, such as LinkedIn or bespoke in-house software tended to be used for work matters, the likes of Facebook, Bebo and MySpace still had a place, said Peter Bradwell, a Demos researcher and the report’s author.

Demos says that when companies restrict access to social networks, it could have a long-term negative impact, because communication methods are limited. "They are part of the way in which people communicate which they find intuitive," says Bradwell. "Banning Facebook and the like goes against the grain of how people want to interact. Often people are friends with colleagues through these networks and it is how some develop their relationships."

Demos basically takes the position that employees who abuse their social network privileges should be under stricter watch. Productivity has of course been one of the biggest concerns regarding social media in the workplace, but according to Demos, it could actually have the opposite effect. Bradwell noted that it can build closer links with ex-employees and customers to boost productivity.

When it comes down to it, this is an issue that will continue to be debated, mostly because there’s no concrete way to measure the productivity (or lack thereof) against whether or not the time used would be better spent doing something else. There’s no doubt that there are plenty of potential benefits for businesses using social media, but bosses are going to have a hard time being convinced without seeing concrete results.

I guess Google has noticed that most people only use one thing, the search engine (Eric Schmidt, Google’s CEO, was quoted as saying that even its most die-hard fans can’t remember many of its major products).

Well, remember that Adobe Acrobat 8 video demo I put up last week? Turns out it had 50% more visits than our other podcasts last week. This isn’t the first time I’ve noticed that, either. Over on Channel 9 our videos regularly got more visits than the Web site for the product or service we were discussing.

It’s a YouTube, er Google Video, world.

So, here’s a little test I did. I searched for:

Blogger Demo video. None found.

Google Calendar Demo video. Google+Calendar+Demo+video&btnG=Search” class=”bluelink”>None found.

Google Desktop Demo video. Google+Desktop+Demo+Video&start=0&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official” class=”bluelink”>None found. Even worse is that there’s one of my videos there from Channel 9 showing off a competitive product.

Google Dodgeball Demo video. Google+Dodgeball+Demo+Video&start=0&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official” class=”bluelink”>None found.

Google Earth Demo video. Google+Earth+Demo+Video&start=0&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official” class=”bluelink”>None found. Oh, there’s another one of my Channel 9 videos again.

Google Groups Demo video. Google+Groups+Demo+Video&start=0&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official” class=”bluelink”>None found. Another one of my Channel 9 videos are there.

Google Maps Demo video. Google+Maps+Demo+Video&start=0&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official” class=”bluelink”>None found. Another one of my Channel 9 videos are there.

Should I go on? I could – seems like almost none of the Google product teams has put a simple video demo of its products up online and if they have, they certainly didn’t make them findable. Seems to me that this would be a great thing to do for Google. I’m sure such videos would be linked into Wikipedia’s list almost instantly.

So, here’s my offer. I’ll come over and do an interviewwith each of your product teams and get a five-minute demo of your products. With my sooopppeeerrrr dddooooppppeeeerrrrr Sony HD camcorder. For free.

That’s what we did on Friday for Scrapblog and Jajah (I don’t charge for this, and am doing it for lots of little companies – we’ll even have a new show we’ll announce soon where it’ll be even easier to get your demo online, you won’t even need to convince me via email that I should come over).

Even better offer for Google? I’ll even put all the Google ones up on Google Video as well as put them on the ScobleShow.

Oh, how powerful is this? Well, do a Google search for “Adobe Acrobat 8 video demo” and what do you find? My video. And, yes, we’re getting visits from Google so I know someone is looking for video demos of products.

Anyway, want to do a demo? 425-205-1921. You won’t even need to pay $30,000 like you would if you were going to this week’s Demo conference (everyone who gets on the stage there pays for the privilege and everyone in the audience pays too).

Why do they pay? Because they know the power of demoing to an influential audience. Funny thing is that there’s a far cheaper (and more effective) way to do the same demo on my show. By the way, the number of people who’ve now seen the Adobe Acrobat 8 video I did is many times bigger than the attendance of the Demo conference this week.

It’s amazing to me that Google hasn’t done this on its own, actually.

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Robert Scoble is the founder of the Scobleizer blog. He works as PodTech.net’s Vice President of Media Development.

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