GAME Australia Lays Off 281 Employees, Closes 60 Stores 
How Diablo III's Always-On Internet Requirement Makes It A Better Game GAME: No Buyers Yet, Crisis To Drag On For Another Month 
Have Your Say On Video Game Pricing 
35,000 Telstra Passwords Reset After Games Services Hacked 
Dragon's Dogma: The Kotaku Review Hey, Australia. Like the PS3 “Starter Pack”? Enjoy it, because on August 31, it’s done. Eagle-eyed reader McDave was combing the offer’s fine print over the weekend when he spotted the termination date, which specifies: Offer commences 2 August 2007 and ends 31 August 2007 in Australia (or earlier, while stocks last) and for New Zealand the offer commences 1 August 2007 and ends 30 September 2007 (or earlier, while stocks last).
No such condition can be found on the Starter Pack in Europe. So is Australia about to get something else? Different games? An 80GB model? A price-cut? Or just the loss of the bonus games and controller? Who knows. Well, Sony do, but they’re not talking, instead saying that information on “future offers” will be available later in the month. Until then, let’s speculate.
So it looks like McWhertor and I have finally found some cosplay we can agree on. The ever travelling McW snapped this photo a few nights ago at BlizzCon and lo and behold the gal in the costume was the big winner of the whole BlizzCon costume contest kittencaboodle. I can see why she won, it’s really quite impressive.
You can see some of the other contest entrants here and here.
[via Wonderland]
The email that this link arrived in was titled “Disturbing Pac-Man Wallpaper” and of course anything labelled “disturbing” gets me to open it faster than a kid opening presents on Christmas morning. While I don’t find it particularly disturbing, I do think it’s pretty cool. It was created with a combination of Blender and Photoshop and is available in just about any size you could possibly want for free. The artist is also selling signed prints for £25 including p&h.
Pac-Man Wallpaper [PokedStudio] [Thanks, John]
No, it’s not the next Zhang Yimou film (wouldn’t that be a trip), but a post over at Only a Game – I’m not so sure it’s as bad as forecasted, but some interesting points are made in terms of balancing the market to reach the market extremes of casual, never-had-a-console gamers new to the medium and the ‘purists,’ or gamer hobbyists. The potential double-edged sword – with the market finally widening in its appeal, the more hardcore gamers may be shafted when it comes to new and innovative games in ‘typical’ categories (FPS, RPG, strategy) seeing the light of day – is one that I’m not so sure needs to be feared, but it is something to think about.
The Hardcore gamers, or gamer hobbyists, are justifiably concerned that Nintendo is screwing them, and Nintendo is not blind to this concern. Although, as Corvus and others discuss, Nintendo has already paid its fans in full by making the great games that they have already made. It is not that the Hardcore gamers will not get more of the games they want – they are still the people handing over the bulk of the money at the most regular intervals – it is just that the disparity in development spending will now begin to rectify itself, choking experimentation in games with gamer hobbyist appeal.
Another set of shaky cam vids of Blizzcon presentations. This time around we get two clips showing art and flythroughs from the newly announced WoW expansion, Wrath of the Lich King. Not being a WoW player myself, I just sort of watched the pretty pictures roll by and that was enough for me. But, for you WoW fanatics out there, I’m sure you will be ooh-ing and ahh-ing along with the rest of the crowd.
No HMV shenanigans here! Rock Band: Special Edition is now ready for pre-order on Amazon.com. Both the PS3 and Xbox 360 versions are available for $US199 (shipping is free within the United States). They currently have it listed as shipping on Nov. 20, but as we all know, these things can change.
Here’s one person’s take on the best of the indy/browser-based games scene, which made me happy since I never complain about getting easy access to a variety of sometimes intriguing, sometimes ‘Well, that was interesting, and not in a good way’ games in one fell swoop. Some on the list aren’t terrible surprising – Orsinal has long been one of my favourite spots for soothing and well produced little games to while away an hour or two with – while I’m wondering how I missed others for so long (Pac-Mondrian? “Pac-Mondrian closes the perceptual distance between fine art and video games by combining Piet Mondrian’s Modernist masterpiece ‘Broadway Boogie Woogie’ with Toru Iwatani’s classic video game Pac-Man.” I’m totally in). An interesting list and some of them are a good way to spend an overcast Sunday. [via Independent Gaming]
One of the things I enjoy about the internet, and gaming in particular, is getting other people’s views on games and how they see them, because let’s face it, everybody plays and enjoys games differently. Play.tm has a great little article up from the perspective of a family gamer. A guy with a wife and a couple kids and how they enjoy gaming together is quite different from say, the way I enjoy games with my friends. It’s a smart and funny that and takes a look at current gen gaming through the eyes of a parent:
We already covered the basics of what went down last week when “Operation Tangled Web” took place. GamePolitics has had continuing coverage of some of the little details – like the guy who had a grand total of one mod chip seized from his house. I think most people agree that piracy is generally a bad thing and causes problems for everyone, but shouldn’t they be going after heavier hitters (like this guy who was sentenced to two years in prison for making a significant chunk of change off of pirated game and DVD sales) instead of guys with…one mod chip and a soldering iron? Links and some choice quotes after the jump.
Kotakuite Baltech sent in this snap of a sticker he found hanging about on a pole in Austria. If you were ever curious about which side of the fence those 8-bit invaders were on on the subject of sexism, now you know. I didn’t even know those little guys had a gender. Although when you shoot them all down, more just show up so they must be coming from somewhere.
For those of you that would like to make the pilgrimage to see what’s sure to be the hottest thing since the Virgin Mary appeared on a taco shell, Baltech sends along the location of this wonder which is in the city of Klagenfurt at the intersection of Perhartgasse and Dr. Hermann Gasse. And you better hurry because it looks like someone’s already trying to scratch it off.
