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 Nothing says new Michael Crichton book like, err, a DS Lite? In a truly bizarre contest, Harper Collins is giving away a DS Lite and a copy of his new book Next to one lucky individual and just copies of the novel to two other folks as well. And what does the Nintendo DS have to do with the Michael Crichton book? Absolutely nothing, apparently! Like I said, bizarre. Enter the Contest [Bucks Free Press via DS Fanboy]
Print is dead. Lot of people say it, or maybe substitute “death” for “dying”, but I don’t necessarily agree. I enjoy reading on the can, for example, and I’m not taking my laptop in there with me. Not even if I was going to be a while. Seems the latest Audited Bureau of Circulation figures from the UK agree with my optimism. Yes, some mags are/are still on the decline, but others are up, and some really up.
Those on the decline include the PC mags, Sony mags and, sadly, Edge:
Tri-Crescendo, the Japanese developer behind Eternal Sonata, wanted to make the game an Xbox 360 title from the get-go. While the studio had previously worked on GameCube title Baten Kaitos, the Wii was not the platform of choice. According to game site Siliconera, the controller and the graphics made bringing Eternal Sonata to the Xbox 360 a no-brainer. What about a PS3 version? Publisher Bandai Namco told Siliconera that it was “not aware” of a PS3 version at the moment. How could it not be aware of that? It’s friggin’ Bandai Namco! The Japanese box for Eternal Sonata (AKA Trusty Bell) doesn’t have an “ONLY ON XBOX 360″ stamp on it. Thus, the game should be treated as such. Eternal Localiser Talks [Siliconera]
Heard it sorta-once, sadly nothing came of it. Then. Now we’re hearing it again, courtesy of two GAF kids who pulled the info off their “coming soon” schedules, one from an EB Games, one from a…well, Gamestop. They say Samba De Amigo is listed, it’s listed for the Wii, and that it’s listed as coming in February 2008. Whether you believe this or not, I leave up to you, with a warning to exercise caution: Sega break hearts, it’s what they do. Samba De Amigo for Wii? [robut & ImNotLikeThem @ NeoGAF]
You know all is well with the world when the sun rises, sets, and you hear that the Tomb Raider series is still kickin’ around. Tomb Raiders Legend & Anniversary have given the once-flagging series a major kick in the ass, and now we have news that the next game in the series is well underway. No thanks to Core, though, they were stinking up the place, it’s all down to Crystal Dynamics. Eidos’ Ian Livingstone: The next Tomb Raider is well in development now. It was a very bold move for us to move the development from [developer]Core over to Crystal Dynamics in the US. It was a difficult decision, but we had to do it, because of Angel of Darkness not meeting our expectations.
Poor Core. They didn’t do it on purpose! Eidos’ Ian Livingstone On The Future of Tomb Raider [SPOnG]
Dragon Quest Swords did alright. The game sold something like 300,000 units in its first week in Japan, making it the fastest selling Wii game. The game’s art direction was a departure from the game’s typical Akira Toriyama look. Was all gothy. There was even a gothic lolita character named Setia. DQ Swords‘ fan service includes in-game up-skirts. Perfect fodder real life ones! Here’s costume player Ushijima doing her not-Square-Enix-approved take on Setia, upskirt homage and everything.
Full box art after the jump.
Quebec? Never really understood it, myself. A little French part of a British Commonwealth nation? How odd. Odder still is the fact the Quebec government want more videogames in the region to be in French. Turns out only around 40% of games available in the region are in French, and seeing as they steadfastly refuse to acknowledge the triumph of the English language over their own flowery speech, they’ve “struck a deal” that will see every game in the region available in French. Somehow, they’re getting publishers to pick up the tab for this. First, I can’t see this working (how many publishers are going to translate US versions of games like big RPGs into French for such a tiny audience?), and second, you want delays like PAL users have to put up with as games are translated, go right ahead. Be my guest. Quebec strikes deal to translate new video games into French [Yahoo! Canada, via Game|Life]
Crane games are old. In Japan, where they dish the future out like candy, crane games are controlled by robots. Well, this one is at least. The concept is currently being tested, but differs from traditional crane games in that it’s timed. So, instead of being given X number of moves to use the crane to snag loot, players must use the robot in a race-against-the-clock to bag their prize. Delightfully nerdy and TOTALLY AWESOME! Robot Crane Game [Gizmodo]
Talk about scraping in by the skin of their sack. Microsoft announced waaaaay back in March that Australia would be getting the Elite during our southern “winter”. March went by, then April, then May, and we heard nothing. June and July went by and we still hadn’t even had the announcement, let alone seen the console. But it’s OK! That announcement came through today, and the Elite will launch on August 30. Second-last day of winter. CLOSE. It’ll retail for AUD$729.95 (USD$572), which is only AUD$50 more than the 20GB Halo model.
OK, time to kick off the final discussion for Mr. Robot. Hit up the link below to join in the campfire. Remember this time around we are discussing the game up to the end of the cryo room. Joining us today is Georgia Tech professor Ian Bogost, the author of Persuasive Games: The Expressive Power of Videogames and a recent guest on the Cobert Report. So get your questions ready and hop on the link. If the room is full please follow along here, I’ll be keeping an eye on the discussion and trying to post questions from here into the room.
