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 So, we’ve posted the crap out of the Haruhi Suzumiya dance. For that, forgiveness please. But, one last time, humour me. Here’s a clip of folks around the world doing the dance from the anime and upcoming video game. Keep an eye for the two French fellas, the Portuguese schoolboy and a drainpipe, a Bolivian top hat and picnic tables, and New Zealand’s wtf. Do stick around for Australia’s entry. It’s AMAZING.
So did you watch the G-Phoria awards? No? I didn’t either. I instead relied on news to filter down from people who had, letting us know who won what. And while much will be made of Gears of War winning six awards, the real star of the night was Dead or Alive stalwart and Kotaku favourite Kasumi, who won “Hottest Babe”. List of other, lesser winners follows.
Label fun time! The good people over at Insert Credit bring word of the Atari 2600 Label Maker. It generates customised “authentic looking Atari 2600 ‘Picture Labels’ using your own image and title. Check out the hilarity Brandon Sheffield from IC created. Non-stop giggle factory, this. Make Your Own [Lable Maker 2600 via Insert Credit]
Here then, both for the sake of consistency and for the fact it’s the last one, the third Metroid retrospective from Gametrailers. Covers the GameCube era, enjoy.
So Sega have a new brain training game on the way. While I’m sure it’ll be a hit with the brain training set, it’s name’s could do with some work. In its native native tongue it reads äº¬éƒ½å¤§å¦ é˜¿è¾»å“²æ¬¡æ•™æŽˆç›£ä¿®è²¡å›£æ³•äººæ—¥æœ¬æ¼¢å—能力検定å”会å”力漢å—トレーナー ãƒãƒ¼ã‚¿ãƒ–ル, which translates roughly to Kyoto University’s Professor Atsuji Tetsuji Foundation’s Japanese Kanji Ability Official Certification (in collaboration with) The Kanji Association Trainer Portable. Not so catchy! Then again, they’re just following precedent.
Those Hot Shots Golf 5 upskirts we posted were NOTHING — shamefully close but no cigar. Now that the game’s been out for a bit, and folks with discerning tastes have have more time to perfect things. You want pantsu? They’ve go clear, unobstructed pantsu. The above clip has the art of the Hot Shots upskirt down. What we learned? There are matching multi-coloured underoos like white, blue, green, pink and black. Because in golf, coordination is everything! This clip clocks in at 8 minutes — too long for some and not long enough for others.
Hrm. We’d all been working under the assumption that Auran’s upcoming MMO brawler Fury would be free to play. Mainly because, well, they told us it’d be free to play. And it still is, but today they’ve announced that there’ll also be a USD$10 a month subscription “option”, which grants you a whole lot of stuff you won’t get if you’re playing for free. Pay your $10 a month and you get stuff like (and this is lifted straight from their email):
Sure, loads of British people aren’t happy with the PS3′s price. They get fucked badly enough on console prices as it is, let alone staring a £425 (USD$860) price-tag in the face. Time for some British retailers and publishers to speak out. First up is Duncan Cross, who runs the games section for giant supermarket chain Asda: I think for us and for Asda’s customers there’s no doubt that we’d like to have seen some price movement on PS3. The US have got a cut and we’ve got the games bundle but it’s just not the same. I think the console needs an extra something to really get it up to full speed.
Sometimes (actually, all the time), it pays to be a savvy consumer. Example: Guy by the name of AlteredBeast, a reader over at Kotaku blood-brothers The Consumerist, was having Xbox 360 troubles. Like, he was on his sixth unit after things like the red rings of death and poorly-handled refurb units (they’d arrive having been broken in the mail). When he called MS support to complain, he was bumped all the way to the top of the customer service chain, at which point he was told there was nothing he could do. Oh, wait, there was something he could do. He could email Steve Ballmer. So he did, and two days later got a new, working 360. Let’s hear it for the little guy! Friendly Email To Steve Ballmer Results In New XBOX 360 [Consumerist]
Earlier this summer, we posted that the Sofmap in Akihabara had moved Nintendo goods to the first floor and Sony products up to the third floor. For over ten years, the PlayStation brand had dominated the store’s ground floor, an area that obviously draws the most foot traffic. This isn’t that big of a deal, really, but retail can be really telling on just how the demand has shifted. Fliers decorating the store list the Wii and the DS as “popular.” What about in-store PlayStation fliers? That, dear reader, after the jump.
