Come on. Got to be at least some of you care enough about a new Diablo game to want to part with $US 300 for a statue. It's by Sideshow Collectibles, showing Diablo III's Barbarian in some kind of primal howl. Know that, yes, it really is $US 299, but know also that this is an unpainted prototype (so yeah, sorry, they're going to add colour to this as well) and that there are two versions, one sans helmet and a limited edition one with a helmet. Just like the game, there's no release date.

It's Friday! Time for, that's right, TELL US DAMMIT. here's how it works: We ask a question, you answer it. Simple and no strings attached! This isn't some marketing survey or whatever. It's an emotional investment in you. Yes, we're interested in knowing you, Kotaku reader person. You probably know fucktons about us -- more than you even want to, we're sure. But, hey, we'd like to know about you. That way you won't be some faceless blob -- and we might feel a tinge of guilt when we ban your arse. Or not, because really we're incapable of human emotion. Not sure!

There are many different game genres. We don't want to know which is your favourite, but rather:

Question: Which game genre is easiest for you or which one do you excel at?

Ah, Valkyria Chronicles. Like World War II, if history's bloodies conflict had instead been played out through a children's colouring book. Japan's already enjoying it, but when can we expect a Western release? November. That's when. Specifically, it'll be out on November 11 in the US, while Sega have confirmed with us it'll be out in Europe sometime in November as well. As a token of your gratitude for waiting, while the game has been faithfully localised, you'll have the option of playing through with the Japanese language track, should that be more your kind of thing.

Valkyria Chronicles comes out in November with voiceover options [Siliconera]

And not any ace, says Bionic Commando producer Ben Judd in his ear wax shirt, but a "fucking ace". At a small event for the launch of Bionic Commando: Rearmed, Judd said that the downloadable title was doing way better than it had been targeted. "There were people at Capcom who told me not to make this game", Judd said. While BC:R is doing well, Judd says that it won't do nearly as well as the upcoming 3D version, which has apparently gotten a recent control tweak to make the game less frustrating. "Store retail games always do better than downloadable games", he added. As Judd goes off to Sweden to oversee developer GRIN's finishing of Bionic Commando, he stated:

We still have a fucking ace up our sleeve. It's an ace, a fucking ace... At TGS (Tokyo Game Show), the Capcom booth stage is going to make people's balls pucker up. It's going to be big.

When questioned further, Judd would not reveal what this ace was. Wonder what Capcom still has left to announce for Bionic Commando...

Thanks Jon for the iPhone pic!

You like Braid? We like Braid. Loads of people like Braid, in fact, as it's doing all kinds of excellent things to the Xbox Live Arcade sales charts at the moment. Yet creator Jonathan Blow isn't busting out the high-fives and popped corks just yet: he said earlier in the week the game still had some selling to do to get him out of the red. Seemed an odd thing to say at the time, but now we know why: Braid's told the Wall Street Journal that he sunk an estimated $US 180,000 of his own money - over a three year period - into the project, which if true makes it surely not just one of the most expensive indie projects of all time, but one of the ballsiest.

Time Out of Mind [WSJ, via GameSetWatch]

Activision think they know how to "win" the music game arms race. They think signing big artists to "exclusivity" deals - where they can appear only in Guitar Hero games - will help tip the balance in their favour. They can think what they want, it's rubbish, as all it does is piss the people off who already bought the "other" music game. Plus it makes Activision look really mean. Refreshingly, that's a sentiment shared by Harmonix's Eric Brosious, who told IGN:

We prefer not to sign exclusive deals with artists because while it seems like the competitive "business" thing to do, in the long run, it's really not good for anyone. We think we should be working to get more music out to more people.

Our hat is tipped to you, sir.

Rock Band 2: Behind the Music [IGN]

Lucasarts Totally Pissed Over Wii MotionPlus
Comment by: EmpressInYellow
Nominated by: cheez

With the original Wii-mote, the controls were only precise enough to allow for broad gestures and hand movements.

Apparently, the Wii MotionPlus's 1:1 control is so precise, it can actually detect when you're giving 3rd party developers the finger.

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The fourth annual I Am 8-Bit art show debuted in Hollywood last night, taking over the World of Wonder Storefront Gallery on Hollywood Boulevard, attracting hundreds of video game-loving, art-appreciating Californians. Everything about the show — from the venue, the crowd, the artwork on hand, the massive queue of patient fans — was bigger than last year. It was even stuffier, more humid and hotter, seemingly in an attempt to outdo every aspect the 2007 edition of I Am 8-Bit.

Arriving well after the suggested time — and half an hour after the show had officially opened to the public — we were met with an insurmountable crush of people. It wouldn't have been a surprise to learn that those who showed up when we did, sans press access, faced a two-hour wait to get in. And when they did, the vast majority of artwork on hand had already been sold to a collector.

Our favourite piece from the show, a moody Link versus Ganon painting, shown after the jump, was fortunately priced out of our range, so that particular sell-out didn't phase us.

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Hoping for a PS3 price cut at Leipzig next week? Foolish optimist. There'll be no such thing, with SCEE's Nick Caplin telling Reuters "It's not going to happen. If you're coming for that you'll be disappointed". Might be disappointing, but not unexpected, as it fits with Sony's plan to reduce the cost of the machine on their end (so they can make some money back), not the cost of the machine on your end.

Sony plans no PS3 price cuts at Leipzig games fair [Reuters]

Sony Online Entertainment announced today at its Fan Faire gathering that both the original EverQuest and its sequel, EverQuest II, would see a new expansion each. EverQuest Seeds of Destruction, the 15th (!!) expansion for the MMO, will be released on October 21, with EverQuest II The Shadow Odyssey available on November 18. That would be EQ II's fifth expansion, if you're keeping count.

The good news for those who paid good money to get to Fan Faire was that each attendee would get the expansions free. Well, you know... "free"

The full list of features, including new zones, new dungeons and a higher level cap, in both SOE expansions is contained within the press release after the jump.

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Oh, hey, Disaster: Day of Crisis. Man, it's been awhile. We thought you were dead. Fortunately, the Monolith Soft developed action game for the Wii just got an M rating in Australia, so we know it's alive and... well, alive. The Classification Board lists the game as potentially objectionable for its "Violence, themes and infrequent coarse language". Nowhere is tardiness mentioned.

Keep in mind that the Classification Board rating applies only to Australia and that we have no idea when it will be released — or if the rating is an indication it will be released any time soon. Perhaps we'll see it at Games Convention next week? Nah, doubt it.

Disaster: Day of Crisis [Classification Board via Vooks]

The Heavy's second unlockable weapon has been announced — and it's another girl! Natascha the Level 5 Minigun will act as a replacement for Sasha, the Heavy's default primary weapon in next Tuesday's Team Fortress 2 update. This little lady won't dole out as much damage as the original, but it will slow enemies down, guaranteed. It's perfect for leveling the playing field against those speedy Scouts, but won't go shot for shot with a Heavy wielding a Sasha gun.

Natascha [Steam]

Codemasters are to release a sequel to their 2007 minion-wrangling game Overlord that will pit the player-controlled title character and his chaotic army against an uptight, by-the-book Empire.

The original game challenged you to be either evil or really evil. This, apparently, was just not flippin' evil enough to satisfy developers Triumph.

Game director Lennart Sas told Eurogamer, "Now the choices are between lawful evil and chaotic evil, which usually translates to either enslaving the population or all-out scorched earth".

Major changes to the game include minions with proper names and personalities as opposed to just random flunkys. This will establish "relationships between master and underling" which frankly sounds a bit pervy. And evil. Definitely evil.

Codemasters unveils Overlord II [Eurogamer]

Legendary has been in development now for more than three years by a team at Spark Unlimited (not the same ones who did Turning Point). With a little more than a month left before the Sept. 30 ship date for the Playstation and Xbox 360 (the game hits PC on Nov. 4) I'm posting this look at all three Legendary Behind the Scenes videos.

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Accessibility is the keyword for the Battlefield Heroes dev team and I've never been happier to hear it. I like my WWII shooters just fine, but they do start to feel a little stale after the fourth or fifth version; and it gets really hard to get into a series once the established fan base is dead-set on going after the blood of noobs in multiplayer. And now that Battlefield has gone back in time and to the future, where else can the series really go?

To Toon Town, it looks like. And that's not a bad move if the idea is to net the casual crowd and attract people who aren't into any of the other Battlefields. Heroes aims to be for everyone with its charming, cartoon-y look, basic gameplay mechanics, and extensive online community support. Like Team Fortress 2, Battlefield Heroes will feature special abilities depending on what class of soldier you play (invisibility for snipers, whoo-hoo!) - but the similarities stop there. For one thing (and this is most important), it's free to play. You'd think that'd count against the game in terms of depth and detail, but Heroes is actually way deeper than it's cartoonish looks and $US 0 price tag lead people to believe.

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I made a name for myself in video games by savaging Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix on DS. It was the most awful, most painful, most broken game I've ever endured and it's my tendency to sneer at most movie-based video games anyway.

So what did I expect from Half-Blood Prince on the Wii? Certainly not all the fun I had.

The events demoed at EA's Showcase were Potions class, Quidditch and Duelling. Before we got to try the game ourselves, we got to watch two cute EA kids go at it in Duelling. They shook the Remotes and mashed the A buttons and bobbed and weaved their heads in time with the motions on screen. Harry dodges Malfoy's Stupify, Malfoy gets off a freezing spell that knocks Harry off his feet. Back and forth went the magic spells until Malfoy ran out of health icons and the Duel ended with Harry winning best two out of three.

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Slate is running a story covering the debate about whether pilots of drone aircraft (which feels rather like playing a video game) suffer the same stress as pilots in actual combat.

We've all felt a bit stressed when playing a video game - whether its the tension of creeping around a Doom map that you know contains a Cyberdemon or just the feeling of panic as the Tetris blocks creep inexorably up the screen - if you game you know that it can take a real mental toll.

Of course, there is a big difference between BFGing some demons and guiding an actual missile that you know will kill actual human beings. Could it be that the reverse is true & that the video game nature of drone piloting gives a sense of distance that insulates people from killing?

As an aside, current recruitment ads for the British Army show someone piloting a recon aircraft using an Xbox 360 controller. Make of that what you will.

Ghosts in the Machine [Slate]

I had only so much time to spend ogling iPhone games at EA's Showcase - but really, what's the point of a mobile game if you can't experience it on the fly? So, in one whirlwind tour, I took in Spore, Scrabble Bonjour, Sudoku and Tetris and now I'm regurgitating for you everything I can remember from the brief blitz.

The most amazing iPhone game at the EA Showcase was Spore Origins - even if it hadn't been up against such visually uninteresting things as Scrabble and Sudoku.

Set to release at the same time as the PC version of Spore, it might be a while before we see the final product. But this primordial version looks mighty good and I had a fun time tilting the iPhone this way and that to guide my single-celled organism through a sea of sperm-shaped DNA thingies. Eating these things filled up my DNA meter and when I was at full, the level ended and I could spend the DNA points on upgrading my microbe. While not as detailed as the Creature Creator, it's just as addictive on the iPhone to pinch and stretch your creature's spine into different shapes while adding multicoloured coats of paint (er, skin).

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Nvidia have produced a proof-of-concept demo that shows how standard (albeit powerful and heavily tweaked) graphics processors can be used to render raytraced scenes in real time.

The demo showed animation running 30 frames per second at 1,920 x 1,080. Nvidia cranked the demo up to 2,560 x 1,600 but would not reveal the frame rate. This could have huge implications for in-game graphics, although as the system currently requires 4 parallel Quadro GPUs with 1GB memory apiece, costing around $US 10,000 a pop it may be a couple of years before this hits even the most hardcore PC gamer's desktop.

Quoth Nvidia, "the ray tracer shows linear scaling rendering of a highly complex, two-million polygon, anti-aliased automotive styling application". Which certainly sounds impressive. What this appears to mean is "Look! A shiny car that we can move around real quick!" and, you know, that may well be enough.

Nvidia demos real-time GPU ray tracing at 1,920 x 1,080 [CustomPC]

Lamar Roberts, one of the two teenagers implicated in the death of seven year old Zoe Garcia, entered a plea of "not guilty" today, according to Colourado's 9 News. Roberts, who told police that Garcia's death was the result of him and Heather Trujillo recreating moments from Mortal Kombat and claimed to be drunk at the time, is charged with child abuse resulting in death.

Trujillo was sentenced in July and will not face time in prison. Roberts' trial date was set for January 12 of next year.

Sorry, but this likely won't be the last time you'll hear from these two little monsters.

Teen charged in 'Mortal Kombat' death pleads not guilty [9 News]

Bubba, the starfish, is dead. Long live the anorexic tweens that dominate Boogie SuperStar - the new EA "casual" title aimed at young-ish girls who long to shake their underage booties and karaoke to their hearts' content.

Boogie SuperStar is all about moving in rhythm to dance moves or singing karaoke on-pitch (but not both at once). The set-up is you make an avatar (skinny boy or skinny girl) who then gets scouted to attend superstar school. From there you dance or sing your way through competitions set to more than 40 girl-centric songs like "Bleeding Love" while you collect points for style and moves. The idea is to max out all the stats, unlock all the outfits and become the all-time SuperStar, despite Judge Vicki's attempts to sabotage you.

I'm all about having games for girls; and I totally get that there is a demographic out there who likes stuff like Imagine: Babies and doesn't feel the least bit insulted when people sneer at the Wii as a "girl's console." But do we really need to "empower" preteen girls with games designed to embarrass them?

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Go!View is ushering in the new football season by offering downloadable highlights of the Barclays Premiership (the top level of competitive football/soccer in the UK) on their PSP video-on-demand service.

For a mere five English pounds (or 7 Euros - weirdly, there are no US Dollar prices. Can't think why) you can fill your PSP with 45 minute chunks of footy clips provided by Sky Sports as well as other sporting highlights in the Go!View Sports Pack.

Hit the jump for the full press release, with more details of what will be shown

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I received a box set of Halo 3 Covenant Plasma Pistols in the mail yesterday. The two guns and two targets are sold together as a Halo-themed laser pursuit game. I haven't had a chance to play yet (that's for this weekend), but they seem like they're pretty well put together and have a nice set of rules backing them. For instance you can fire off super shots with the gun by holding down the trigger for a few. You can also run out of ammo and shield. I'll make sure to update everyone on Monday about how they worked out. In the meantime check out the unboxing.

I'll be honest; I didn't spend more than twenty minutes with this game. Can you blame me? It's a hodgepodge of sports minigames with some celebrity likenesses slapped on. I played as Mia Hamm because Sugar Ray Leonard was taken and Fergie makes me physically ill.

There's a slew of sports to choose from - skiing, tubing, badminton, dodge ball... I faced off against the PR rep in a tubing race where the idea is to gather the most stars. The Wii motion controls worked fairly well. Jerk the remote up to jump and flick it down to slam your airborne tube onto a competitor and make him lose his stars. On a skiing level, PR totally destroyed me as we sped down the slopes, trying to do tricks whenever we caught a jump.

The thing that has the most potential for drunk-fun are the rowing games. We played co-op on this level and each had to control a paddle by moving the Wiimote in a rowing motion while held sideways. I confess I blew it by dropping the remote twice. Nailing that synced rhythm with your partner is way harder than it looks even if you aren't a klutz like me.

The game ships in October.

"On the seventh day, we ran out of candy..".

Rare continue their series of Halo 3 'tribute' virals with this nod towards the 'Museum' ad.

For my money, it doesn't work quite as well as 'Believe' - mainly because the sombre woman in a Piñata mask they have got to play Leafos seems to be on the verge of turning the proceedings into a Bat For Lashes video.

It might seem weird that Japanese independent studio Grasshopper Manufacture is partnering up with US powerhouse publisher EA; but it seems weirder to me that wacky, artsy Suda 51 is pairing off with serious, horror-loving Shinji Mikami of Resident Evil fame.

I went into my interview with the two Japanese developers with a bunch of questions I knew I couldn't ask; I lived in Japan long enough to learn that the direct approach is usually not the best. The questions I did ask, though, had some fun answers:

"What do you think of MadWorld?" I shot this one off at Suda directly and he didn't even wait for the translator. His face lit up and he exclaimed something about how cool it looked - like Sin City. And something about how he had a similar idea, but my Japanese ain't that great, so I had to wait for the translator to explain that Suda had a similar idea for a futuristic game that now he couldn't do because it would look too much like MadWorld.

Mikami didn't seem as thrilled. He's an "external board member" at Platinum Games, so he probably knows all the guys on MadWorld's dev team and wouldn't want to comment on anything of theirs that could be secret. Mikami is the man for horror, though, and that's how this odd partnership came about.

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This weekend should be full of "Oh shit!" moments, as Kotaku Towers West and Kotaku Annex Atlanta prep for the Leipzig Games Convention. We're mostly caught up on our bookings, but I still need to score a train ticket from Frankfurt to Leipzig, as well as book my German vacation days. You won't have this editor to kick around post Games Convention, as I'm taking my first vacation days of the year after the con. Speaking of, any Munich-based Kotaku readers with some local recommendations?

In my downtime (ha!), I'll be relaxing with some Soulcalibur IV and pulling my hair out with some PixelJunk Eden. I'm surprised to find myself only halfway through my Spectra collection and completion. There's little doubt that Q Games gives you plenty of value for your dollar.

What about you? What are you playing this weekend?

You say Fuzzball, I say Football, but lets not call anything off just yet.

The 2008-09 season of the UK Premier League is preparing to kick off on Saturday but if you prefer the less energetic, pub-based version of the Beautiful Game (and don't want to leave the house) 505 Games has launched Table Football for the Nintendo Wii.

The game is fully supported by the International Table Soccer Federation, which means that A) you can play with the full ITSF rules and B) there is an International Table Soccer Federation.

Who knew?

Full details after the jump...

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Except there's not much to tell. Yet.

Just yesterday it was announced that Epic Games would be joining EA as one of two new partners along with Grasshopper Manufacture (of Suda 51 fame).

I got some face time with Michael Capps, President of Epic Games, to see how the little independent studio that could feels about going with a Big Scary Publisher - especially one like EA that's got a reputation for ruthlessness with smaller development houses.

"The EA five years ago is not the same EA they are now. We wouldn't have partnered with them five years ago," Capps counters - shooting a furtive look at the EA handler at the interview. He scratches the back of his neck and removes a square of tape. "From the [stage] microphone," he says.

Sure, I believe him. He's not going all Manchurian Candidate on me.

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SF4: Direct feed of Gouki in action!!!! [The Street Fighter Blog via the Shoryuken Forums]

Eurogamer hosted a live chat today with Spore executive producer Lucy Bradshaw, in which she discussed the possibility of a demo (none), copy protection (included, of course), and plans for expanding the game once it's released. Rather than just produce gameplay add-ons, EA plans on capitalizing on the popularity of the game's editing features as well.

"When we started Spore, we were thinking about how we'd make an engine that had the possibility of expansion, so yes, we'll add to the experience", she said. "I think, however, we have a very cool opportunity to take Spore in a few different directions too. The editors are so cool and fun, that we want to advance those as well as the gameplay that we put into the core game".

One of the planned additions is a flora editor, that will allow players to customise the plant life in the game just as they customise the animal life. I, for one, cannot wait for the influx of sexually suggestive ferns.
No Spore demo, but expansions planned News [Eurogamer]

Aren't you supposed to release the game on earlier-generation consoles and *then* release it on the more powerful ones? KOEI gets things ass-backwards, but PlayStation 2 stalwarts won't mind as the company announces Dynasty Warriors 6 for the PS2 and PC, due out November 18th. While the PC version will be similar to the original release, the PS2 game will ship as a massive two-disc collection, which includes the full original release along with new "Musou" mode stories, new weapons, five new stages and ten new scenarios.

Long live the PlayStation 2!

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Empire Total War's naval battle sequences are a feast for the eyes, no doubt about it. In this new trailer we get to see how you might go about blowing up or capturing an opponent's ship.

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That humble, almost nondescript building is a beacon — a shining light of hope in a black sea of impossible. In America, a country where gaming used to mean arcades but now means home consoles, that glimmering building stands out. For some, American arcade gaming is dead. For Kotaku reader Ryan Harvey, who contacted us after the Arcade Mania book announcement, American arcade gaming is well worth bringing back to life.

New Year's Day 2008. Austin's last-standing coin-op, Einstein's Arcade, was shuttered. That's where Harvey played Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike every damn day and duked it out in countless tournaments that drew up to 80 spectators. This is where he practiced for the Evolution Championships series. "It was a moment of despair in my life", he recalls. That was his hotspot, his hangout, poof gone.

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Screenshots of the new Eidos Batman game Batman: Arkham Asylum showed up on developer Rocksteady Games website, only to be taken down relatively quickly. Not quickly enough, apparently, as NeoGAF member Endless managed to collect the whole set, which we now present for your viewing pleasure. Very nice looking screens, a bit reminiscent of Starbreeze's The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay. Hell, if you replaced Riddick with Batman and tossed the Joker into that game you'd have the best Batman game ever.

NeoGAF Post By Endless [NeoGAF]

Frogster has provided a bit of information on the character building system for their upcoming fantasy MMORPG Runes of Magic, which features a rather interesting dualclass system of character creation, allowing players to combine the powers of two classes into one character. Players can choose both a primary and secondary class and swap them out as they wish, sort of like Final Fantasy XI, but unlike FFXI they can learn secondary abilities for each class that can be used no matter which class they are playing as their main. The example given in the document, found in full after the jump, is of a character with a Rogue secondary being able to use "Training: Assassin's Weapons" to throw daggers.

The game also features a talent point system similar to World of Warcraft, allowing players to spend points as they level to focus on their powers and abilities. It sounds like an interesting system that will make for some nifty tactics in both PVP and PVE situations. I'll be checking out Runes of Magic at the Games Convention in Leipzig next week, so keep an eye peeled for more information on this rather intriguing little MMO. Hit the jump for the full document and some shiny new screenshots.

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With less than two weeks before I need to get on the road to drive to Penny Arcade Expo, I figure now is probably the time to see if anyone is interested in joining me for a two day drive to Seattle and all things Penny Arcade. Unlike those hardcore trekkers partaking in the Cross Country Supertrip, my plan is to break the nearly 1,400 mile drive up with my wife and son over two days.

We plan to leave the Denver area the morning of August 27 and drive about halfway (which will put us somewhere in Idaho, likely near Heyburn). Then the next day we'll drive the rest of the way to Seattle. That's two 10 hour or so treks.

If anyone is interested in meeting up with us in their own vehicles drop me a line at editor at Kotaku dot com and we'll figure out which parking lots to meet in. I'd rather not detour from the drive, so if you're interested you'd probably have to meet up with us along the way.

I figure this year is a dry run. If things go well, and there's enough interest, next year I might try expanding it to a longer route and even see if we can throw together some sort of on-the-way pit stop with food and games. So I also need to know whether this sort of thing appeals to you at all or if it's just a really bad idea. Go crazy in comments.

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