The store lets you sort all of the games’ music by a selection of categories, view original album art for the masters recordings, listen to song previews and check out some extended information about specific songs, like the difficulty rating for each instrument.

We had a chance to check it out in Harmonix suite during the Game Developers Conference earlier this year and were pretty impressed. The menu allowed you to sort by artist, song, genre, album, pack and the difficulty of the song.

Selecting the Music Store from the main menu brings you to a slick interface that allows you to quickly look at new releases, a list of songs available for purchase, song packs and, eventually, entire albums for sale. The front page of the Rock Band Store will also include a sizable box that can show off cover art for the latest album, pack or song and an place where Harmonix can add a message to gamers.

Hopping into the list of songs, gamers can quickly sort by a number of options. When a song is selected on the list, located on the right side of the screen, box art for the music swings down on the left side. It can also show the album name, genre, year it was released and other information.

Hopping into an actual song will bring up an option to preview a snippet of the music as well as a break down of the song’s difficulty for each instrument. It will also include a listing of which DLC pack the song is part of.

When Mark and I checked it out at GDC we were very impressed with what we saw, the store will not only help gamers sort through what is increasingly becoming an unmanageable selection of songs, it also looked really damn neat.

Valve Publications [Valve via GameSetWatch]

We’re proud of the mature plots that we build into our games. They’re really appropriate for the type of story we’re trying to convey. And romance is part of that. It’s part of life. It’s part of an interaction — a healthy relationship with other people.

The full interview is in a video hosted by MTV, which means if you’re in one of the unlucky countries like me (that’s anyone with an IP in Canada, the UK, or Japan), you can’t see the vid. So check it out and let me know what other fascinating things he said!

Bioware Talks Video Game Romance In The Post-’SeXbox’ Era [MTV Multiplayer]

Shortly after the release of Age of the Chosen, Auran was able to confirm that it had even more updates in the pipeline, but surely, three months on, what developers are left have to be operating on two cornflakes and half a can of Red Bull?

Apparently not. MMORPG.COM managed to get a hold of Auran’s CEO Tony Hilliam at GDC 2008, and Hilliam was able to reassure the site that the 13-year old company is committed to Fury. Yet, my eyebrows couldn’t help but elevate at a few of Hilliam’s comments:

Tony informed me that the game has done pretty well in Australia, and wasn’t far behind their expectations for that region.

According to previous comments by Hilliam, Australian sales surpassed that of the States, which the man himself conceded was far from a good thing. It also seems that Oz sales have been upgraded from “okay” to “[have done] pretty well”.

Obviously the game isn’t going to go much farther without additional funding or a sale, and Hilliam says that Auran has a few options:

Tony said that there were several interested parties, but he couldn’t say much as nothing had been finalised at the time of the interview.

I’m surprised there’s any activity at all after the sledging Hilliam gave the Oz development scene not long ago. Still, you have to give the guy credit for not giving up on his baby.

Catching Up With Fury [MMORPG.COM, via Blue's News]

The group covers a variety of topics, including the responsibility of a game journalist, the role of the reporter versus that of a critic, the impact that the emerging casual game market is having on game journalism, and one question from an anonymous contributor about the pay structure of gaming sites. One of the most interesting discussions, though, surrounded the influence giving a score to a game has on not only the game, but whether people will read the article:

“I hate game scores”, Crecente said. He cited a film reviewer’s quote that if you put a letter or score on a review, no one will actually read it. Keighley agreed that the score-driven culture bothers him because the industry views the score as “objective”. “You never hear someone say [that] about a music album”, he noted.

On the other hand, I’d think that the game score means a lot to the game industry, since that number (or letter, thanks to 1UP) may be what makes or breaks someone’s interest in the game. Those scores are also a factor for advertisers when looking around at what games and publishers to support. Having that score could potentially be what gives other games from a publisher or franchise a future. The rest of the discussion is definitely worth taking a look at.

Best of GDC: The Game Industry Confronts The Press [Gamasutra]

Crook points out some growth challenges to free to play, though he notes these are definitely not deal-breakers for the business model. First, there are virtual property challenges. “At some point that’s going to be decided by the courts. Hopefully we’re out ahead of it,” Crook said, pointing out Eric Bethke’s forward-thinking endeavor to create an avatar bill of rights. Second, there are differing broadband speeds. And rising development costs will become an issue now with the advent of Electronic Arts’ highly-polished Battlefield Heroes. Larger-scale F2P products are going to raise the quality bar, Crook says.

The talk clocks in at a little over half an hour, but if you’re interested in the free to play model, it’s definitely worth taking a look at.

The Slidecast from my F2P GDC Presentation [Free To Play]
Adrian Crook Talks Free To Play [Worlds In Motion]

“You can roll this around a map and it’s like this clean blank canvas for combat,” he said. “When it’s driving around it works as a mobile forward spawn point and when you spawn into it you get additional equipment.”

Jobe said the APC will also be able to deploy a piece of equipment that is “like the mother of all bubble shields” and is a couple of hundred feet wide.

Enemies won’t be able to shoot into it but allies will be able to shoot out and when a Warhawk gets too close to it it came become unstable and explode.

While the APC won’t have a weapon of its own it does have a turbo boost, Jobe said, which can turn the entire vehicle into a giant missile of sorts.

“I’ve had kills before where I’ve launched through a Warhawk in an APC,” he said.

The booster pack will come with a new battlefield which has ten layouts and it will also include new layouts for existing maps.

While Jobe was hesitant to peg a specific date, because the pack is still being play tested, he did say that he hopes to get it out by the end of next month of the first half of April.

While Operation Broken Mirror won’t come with new gameplay modes, Jobe said they are talking about creating some and if they do come they will likely be released as free patches.

“I’d hope we would add new game modes, game modes are things I don’t think gamers should have to pay for,” he said.

I also asked Jobe about the possibility of a single-player campaign being released for Warhawk, which was once meant to include single-player play, either as an expansion pack or episodic content.

“We made a conscious strategic decision to go multiplayer only, If we were to go single player we would probably address it in another product,” he said. “As a player I don’t know if I would want to play single player through episodic content. I’d be hesitant.”

Jobe added that Incognito isn’t just 100 percent Warhawk nowadays either.

“Right now we are working on some exciting things,” he said. “But we can’t make any announcements.”