Cult of Mac reports with some degree of certainty that Apple is planning to construct a new Apple Store inside New York’s Grand Central Station. This would be the fifth Apple store in Manhattan, and, if opened this year as reported, would coincide with the 10th anniversary of Apple’s highly successful foray into the brick-and-mortar retail business.

The new store is rumored to become the largest store in Apple’s retail empire, surpassing in size its current flagship store in London, which has some 16,000 feet of retail space. But finding that kind of space inside Grand Central will be very difficult, suggesting that Apple may not simply be occupying existing retail space. Their source has suggested that walls may be coming down.

In addition to providing the most retail space, part of the function of the store seems to be removing pressure on the iconic glass cube store on 5th Avenue. Space in station will also provide easy access to the crowds around the Times Square area.

Apple is, true to form, staying tight-lipped on the subject, though Cult of Mac claims that an announcement is coming within a month.  If they go forward with these plans, Apple will face an uphill battle creating a space that is more stunning than the station itself.

(Cult of Mac, original image Cresny)

Earlier this week some handicammed blurry footage of what we were supposed to take to be a PlayStation phone surfaced and a reasonable amount of ado was made. This is not that handicammed footage.

This comes to the internet courtesy of Engadget, and there’s even a little bit more after the break, giving us a look at the (currently empty) games menu.

It wouldn’t be Comic Con with out some major news about the big bad comic book movies coming out in the next couple of years, and this year Marvel is ruling the roost. When it’s not displaying the throne of Odin for anyone to get their picture taken on, it’s letting Joss Whedon do what he does best:

Get people excited.

Ever since it was confirmed that Kevin Bacon will be playing the role of the villain in the upcoming X-Men: First Class, comic fans have been enjoying the speculation on which villain he is actually going to play. Names like Mister Sinister, Apocalypse, and even Proteus have been brought up and bandied about. But the only rumor that has actually attached itself to some semblance of possible credibility is that he will play Sebastian Shaw, Black King of The Order of the Phoenix The Hellfire Club.

Sorry, I got into X-Men through Ultimate, and the whole Hellfire Club/Dark Phoenix bit was my favorite part.

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UPDATE 2:34PM EST: WikiLeaks representative Daniel Schmitt told Geekosystem that he “couldnt [sic] even imagine a reason” why founder Julian Assange would be exiting from the website. In his e-mail response, he warned against having “fed the troll calling himself an insider,” writing:

The .is domain registration was supposed to happen much earlier, and I am more or less astonished it has only now happened. We control around 500+ domain names, and try to get wikileaks in as many TLDs as possible. This is a normal action to occur, has nothing to do with us moving to Iceland or anywhere else. WikiLeaks is as it is, and will stay the same, apart from a few changes and new features we have already publicly announced.

Re the legal team I am not aware of this issue. As much as I can tell, though based in Europe and not a lawyer, our legal team is working on this and has so far not been able to get in touch with Manning.

According to Schmitt, a press release will be pending, a point reiterated on the WikiLeaks Twitter account: “WikiLeaks will NOT be abandoned. Don’t listen to disinfo being spread! We’ll issue clarifications soon. Should’ve done earlier.” Read the original story after the break, in which an “insider” alleged that Wikileaks.org would be abandoned.

Apparently, remastering Star Wars went so well the first two times, they decided to do it again! Well, the sound at least. Sound engineers Matt Wood and David Acord spoke in a podcast about how they’ve re-remixed the Star Wars soundtrack, focusing for the most part on the detail of Obi-Wan’s epic bellow. But in addition to providing some great banter, the engineers revealed some pretty enticing snippets near the end of that episode of ForceCast:

And, to be honest, that sound effect has been changed again. So at some point the audiences will be hearing that scene again with the new sound effect.

WHAAAAT? What new presentation of the Star Wars films could this be for? Well, there are two main possibilities.

The buzz lately is that Marvel has been thinking about ways to bring its lesser known characters to the big screen, starting with giving them to smaller studios to make with smaller budgets. Less money, less risk.

Now the Latino Review has information from “a well trusted source” that Marvel instead may put

10 minute short films in front of their feature length movies that will introduce secondary characters like Black Panther, Luke Cage, Dr. Strange, etc.

This is highly speculative, but it’s just to weird not to mention.

Lady Gaga might be in an episode of Dr. Who. According to Gareth Roberts, scriptwriter for the show,

She is no stranger to dressing up and would be more than a match for the Doctor. It would be a great coup to get her.

The odds of a GoldenEye remake are looking better and better. A while back we reported that Activision had laid claim on the domain of goldeneyegame.com. Now Eurogamer is reporting that, according to their sources, it is totally happening.

They say the game will be officially announced in a couple of weeks at E3, and will be released in November.

File this under things that we really really really hope are true. A couple of different (Warning: The second link is NSFW and NWYT [not worth your time]) places around the internet are saying that gamemaker Team Ico, the makers of Ico, Shadow of the Colossus, and the upcoming The Last Guardian, are planning to re-release their much beloved first two games.

Ico is nearly ten years old, and Colossus half that age. Both were released with the best graphics that the Playstation 2 could offer, and a visual update, even if it’s just an increase in resolution, would be a welcome addition to the already legendary game mechanics and stories.

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