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, Britain. When you gonna stop buying Harry Potter? Or Transformers? Flicks have been out for AGES, the hypes’ over. You can stop now. Aside from that, though, you did OK for the week ending August 25, with BioShock taking its rightful place at the top (with 88% of sales being the 360 version), a bunch of Nintendo titles taking up their regular positions and Blue Dragon doing a none-too-shabby job of making it to #9.
For our three readers who aren’t sick of BioShock posts comes this: the BioShock orchestral score. Best part? It’s free! Like totally free. 2K is releasing 12 tracks from composer Garry Schyman’s score. There’s some really beautiful music there. Free, too. Giant Ken Levine face so approves! Download the orchestral score [2K, Thanks Matthew!]
Time for another round of Quartermann rumours from EGM. Ever wonder how accurate these are? You’re so missing the point. These are for entertainment value! This month, three rumours, and they’re three awesome rumours. Awesome, that is, if you like getting your hopes up, only to have them cruelly dashed six months later when you remember none of them actually came to pass.
Yesterday, Microsoft hosted its X07 in Toronto. Hailed as the “Canadian gaming event of the year,” X’07 was put on by Microsoft Canada and apparently didn’t have anything nearly as notable as Leipzig or PAX. Reader Ryan attended, telling us that Halo 3, Assassin’s Creed and Mass Effect were all in appearance. However! AC was the same build they were showing off at E3 this year. And the show’s highlight?
Looking for big improvements or additions? A new graphics engine or something? Beat it kid, you don’t get how things are done around here. Sam & Max’s episodic debut was a big hit for Telltale, no way they’re going to go changing things for Season 2. As you can see from these new screenshots. Same deal, new puzzles, new jokes. Like rats vs babies, and oldie but definitely a goodie.
Just a reminder not to leave your Xbox 360 on all day in a plastic case. Not good for the machine! Rumours of better Elite performance aside, this must be the first conked Xbox 360 Elite I’ve seen. Bummer, because I quite like that sexy paint job. The platform’s good fun, too. Shame about the quality. Dead Elite [thesportsfix, Thanks Laird!]
Did you register for the Call of Duty 4 beta? Good news! Those who registered at the game’s site Charlie Oscar Delta (and live in the United States) will get a beta token. These tokens are going out in batches, but like I said, everyone who signed up (and lives in America) will get in. Foreigners and expats are shit outta luck. Well, unless you lied. Infinity Ward’s blog spokesperson Fourzerotwo has posted this: We’re going to send out congrats emails to all of you eventually, but keep in mind (again) the tokens themselves will be in waves. So you might get it today, you might get it tomorrow, you might get it later than that. So be patient, I know everyone would love to be in the first wave, but keep in mind this is a beta TEST, and this is one way were testing our servers performance is by ramping up slowly and tracking how it effects the game, playlist downloads, matchmaking, etc.
Infinity Ward will be offering more chances to sign up so stay tuned! Beta Registration [Fourzerotwo, Thanks AndrewMP!]
Movies used to be scary, but not anymore. Games, though…games are scary. That’s the argument made by Wired’s Clive Thompson, who’s currently peeing his pants over BioShock: …the best scary-game designers have quietly perfected the interplay of tension and release that makes for a truly cardiac horror experience. They have, in a sense, become even more faithful interpreters of the horror tradition movies than Hollywood directors.
Can’t help but agree with the man. Maybe not on BioShock, for some reason I’m more disturbed than terrified by it, but games like AvP, AvP 2, Doom 3…had to play those with the lights on. And my blankie. Which I don’t think I’ve had to do with a movie in the past, oh, 15-20 years. Gore Is Less: Videogames Make Better Horror Than Hollywood [Wired]
Is there MMORPG life after World of Warcraft? Blizzard’s first MMO has not only been a huge cashcow for the developer, but nothing sort of a cultural phenomenon. So bring on that follow-up! WoW lead designer Jeffrey Kaplan says: As for working on another MMO project or a WoW 2, obviously as a company we’d be very interested in further exploring the MMO space.
Gasp. Something that has proven very profitable, and Blizzard wants to further explore it? Kaplan also adds that Blizzard doesn’t have “anything official” to add and that the developer is “definitely looking towards the future as well.” Yes, the future! Future MMO [CVG]
Apparently so! Playlogic have told IGN that the fourth Simon the Sorcerer game, which is currently only available in German, will be translated into English and published in North America in early 2008. I never played the second or third games, but man, that first Simon the Sorcerer? I know it was a total SCUMM rip-off, but still, we had some good, good times. Simon the Sorcerer IV Headed Stateside [IGN]
