GAME Australia Lays Off 281 Employees, Closes 60 Stores 
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Dragon's Dogma: The Kotaku Review NintendoWorldReport are reporting (this is yet to be confirmed) that the Wii Remote’s wrist strap is now onto its fourth version. And this one’s all-new. Instead of the little sliding clip, it now appears the straps have a cute little lockable clip with cute little lockable jaws. Yeah, it’s overkill, but let’s also call it progress. New Wii Wrist Straps Circulating [NintendoWorldReport, via Go Nintendo]
It has just come to our attention that Microsoft and Kevin Ray have settled their lawsuit out of court, kissed and made nice. If you don’t remember, Ray proposed some class action finger pointing after the Fall 2006 update bricked his 360. The thing is, Kevin was actually able to get a warranty repair on his Xbox 360 after Microsoft moved the then 90-day warranty to 1-year, in December. (Of course, that was a long time ago, and we all know that the Xbox warranty stands at 3-years right now.) The kicker: since they settled out of court on an individual basis, and since Microsoft’s already addressed the warranty issue, none of us are getting any scratch out of the deal.[Seattle PI]
To: Ash and Flynn From: Crecente Re: Bashcraft on Japanese TV, Hates It
TV you say? I think you did fine on the GameHead stuff and I never noticed the reek of vomit in the room after you were done so I’m going to assume you never spewed either. You’ve got to make sure and send me the vid when it hits TV.
Man today was busy. We had three conventions to babysit, both remotely and up close and personally. McWhertor headed out to BlizzCon to cover all things WoW and Starcraft II (and unfortunately no things Diablo-ish) and I sat at my computer doing phone interviews, emailing and basically doing what I could to try and keep a handle on the news and info pouring out of QuakeCon and Fan Faire. Someone needs to talk to these companies about spacing some of this stuff out.
What you missed after the jump:
John Smedley is at Fan Faire talking to the masses about the past, present and future of all things Sony Online Entertainment. I’ll be remote liveblogging it for those of you too lazy to watch it yourself.
Hit the jump to follow along.
Sony have announced that Heavenly Sword is going to be released in North America on September 12. For the numerically challenged, that’s in five weeks. Pretty exciting! This is the first PS3 game I’ve actually looked at, looked into, and thought “yes, yes, I may actually part with money for this”, so here’s hoping it lives up to the hype. Or at least gives the hype a run for its money. Heavenly Sword Date Set [IGN]
I had a chance, last month, to meet with Sony Online Entertainment’s Denver studio and check out their now-announced online trading card game: Legends of Norath: Oathbound.
The Legends of Norrath game is based on the worlds of Everquest and Everquest II and, in an interesting twist, will be playing inside both of the massively multiplayer online games at in-world taverns and such.
Oathbound, the first set in the Legends of Noorath game, has more than 350 virtual cards in it and comes in both 60-card starter decks and 15-card booster packs. The Oathbound set was designed to tell the story of the servants of the Tribunal that rules the Plane of Justice. These masked and hooded servants swear an oath to Justice and must help preserve the balance between Order and Chaos.
At the end of the QuakeCon keynote Todd Hollenshead had Katherine Anna Kang, founder of Fountainhead Entertainment, take to the stage to show off a bit of Orcs & Elves for the DS.
After a bit of play, she announced that Orcs & Elves II will be hitting mobiles this holiday.
Speaking with id CEO Todd Hollenshead earlier today, he told me that Quake Arena is currently under development for a release on the Xbox Live Arcade. Pi Studios will be working on the port.
Hollenshead said id was very pleased with the Xbox Live Arcade version of Doom and that he had a lot of fun playing it.
“It was amazing, sales were incredible,” he said.
Enemy Territory: Quake Wars will be hitting the PC on October 2, id Software announced today during their keynote at Quake Con 2007.
Now word yet on when the title will be shipping for the PS3 and Xbox 360. One more reason to save up your money.
While not totally finalised, Todd Hollenshead confirmed with me today rumours that id Software has indeed licensed the film rights to an adaptation of Return to Castle Wolfenstein and that Roger Avary will both be writing and directing the movie.
