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 Doesn’t do much more than tease, but then, that’s the whole point, isn’t it? Nice blood.
Pretty safe to say BioShock’s a winner. Definitely a hit with both the 360 and PC kids. At least some of the credit for its success has to go to its marketing push, for which it was remarked more than once around Kotaku Towers “could not put a foot wrong”. Gamedaily has an interview with 2K’s “marketing partner” RDA, which is an interesting read: If you saw the description of BioShock on paper, you’d never say that its success was going to be a slam-dunk. This was a risky game if ever there was one. I mean, this wasn’t just a shooter that had you firing at aliens. This is a game about an industrialist in the 1940s who builds an underwater society that begins breaking down because a discovery is made about the peoples’ DNA that causes them to go insane and they begin splicing their bodies and … well, try distilling that down into a 30-second elevator pitch.
They didn’t bother, instead emphasising things like playing on the notion that it was a “thinking man’s shooter”, building a community around the Cult of Rapture site and getting fan input on the collectors edition. All of which seem to have got the job done just fine. RDA and 2K in Rapture [GameDaily.biz]
Think Rez was the only too-good-to-be-true announcement for Xbox Live Arcade at the Microsoft Japan presser? Hah. WRONG. Not only are we getting Rez, we are also getting another Dreamcast favourite. Ikaruga. For real. Same colour-crossing, same perfect shooter, just with shinier new graphics. Please, begin pinching yourselves. We need to make sure this isn’t some mysterious, mass hallucination.
Kyle Gabler used to work at Maxis. Dude left, started up his own company, 2D Boy, along with Ron Carmel (also from EA). Their first game? This, World of Goo, which looks pretty special. Please, watch it. World of Goo Gameplay Trailer #1! [2D Boy, via TIGSource]
Analysts love conference calls. It’s as if they are bears, and the money-talking words of a group of businesspersons at a long oak table are sweet, delicious honey. They also love predictions. I love this prediction. Ben Schachter, Evan Wilson and The Pachter all agree that Take-Two will be digging up two franchises in the next couple of years. One is Max Payne. The other is Red Dead Revolver. That would be great! I’m a man who loves his Leone westerns, and Red Dead was just one long slightly-interactive tip of the hat to those classics. A current-gen sequel, where the gameplay actually matches the mood and setting, would be a winner. Analysts’ double-take on Take-Two earnings [GameSpot]
We saw the leaked screens this morning, but Microsoft just confirmed, in their presser, that Ninja Gaiden 2 is official. Release date: 2008.
Sakaguchi just confirmed the Lost Odyssey Xbox 360 release date at the Microsoft Pre-TGS Presser. It’s going to be 6,800 Yen on December 8, 2007 in Japan, January 2008 for other parts of Asia, and February 2008 for America and Europe. See the liveblog for more info.
