Earlier in the week, someone broke NDA and it was leaked that Ezio Auditore da Firenze would be a guest character in Soulcalibur V. Today, I can confirm that the leak is absolutely true! Ezio will be available for both consoles on launch, and as it stands, is the only confirmed guest character.

Also announced during Monday's press conference is confirmed release dates for western release. Soulcalibur V will be released on North America on January 31, 2012 and February 3, 2012 in Europe. Now I know what you're thinking, but I can tell you, I had a bit of time to play the game and its far further along than you may think.

Okay, so technically, we all knew these characters were coming... Nightmare was leaked by Daishi several months ago on his Twitter, Leixia was soft-announced at this year's EVO, and Raphael was pseudo-revealed through some clever detective work dealing with the resumés of musicians.

I myself got a chance to play these characters and more at the closed-door press conference earlier in the week and I will give some short impressions about them, and the game in general tomorrow. There are many more announcements coming during the next few weeks, so keep paying attention!

As most of you probably know by now, there was a press event held by Namco-Bandai today in San Fransisco. During the event, I got to spend some time chatting with FilthieRich, Hisaharu Tago and Michinori Ozawa!

Details of the event will be released throughout the week, so be sure to follow the official Soulcalibur Facebook page, @filthierich, and of course, @Daishi_CALIBUR.

We will keep you updated with the pertinent information as it becomes available.

Vincent may not have won Devastation 2011, but he certainly won our hearts, and this despite being a known Canadian. After clutching out an impressive victory against LP (and avenging a loss from the day before in the process), he was given the stream mic and used his moment in the sun to grace us all with two nuggets of unadulterated profundity: "I just want to get laid," and "we played casuals . . . I lost like fifteen in a row to him, but then I won two."

We got a few entries for the previous topic, and some people decided to take it in interesting directions. This week's topic is much more relevant to Soulcalibur 5. Concept Box Art! At the moment, Namco has yet to reveal the box art, nor the release date for SC5. So now you'll be able to send in your own box art ideas... As usual, be as creative as you want.

After enduring weeks of pressure from the darkest, slimiest, most megalomaniacal corners of the community to comment on the issue of online versus offline play, I've finally acquiesced. Don't expect a simplistic "offline good, online bad, stfu scrub" treatment here, though--we're going in-depth. Why? Because Hate Speech is about not only stepping up your game and making you think, but also about peace, brotherhood, and all kinds of other new-age hippie crap.

Devastation is now live with Day 3 finals action from the event which is being held at the Phoenix Convention Center in Phoenix, Arizona. The finals for Soulcalibur IV are now over with lolo your Devastation 2011 champion.

Check after the break for a rundown of the top 8 finalists, matches and aftermath.