It’s priced at R$799, which works out to be about $500. So, yes, it’s expensive to buy video games in Brazil. Our man Pedro tells us that with a nine-year-old console only just launching, there obviously isn’t an official PS3 presence, though he says Sony do sell some older PS3 games. For R$199 ($125).

Ever wanted to know why piracy was rife in South America? Those prices might get you in the right direction.

Sony traz PlayStation e jogos oficialmente para o Brasil. Não comemore [Gizmodo BR]

I’ve been playing around with the PSPgo Sony kindly sent me earlier this week and my feelings on it are somewhat mixed. The most immediate plus is it does actually live up to its name: this PlayStation is genuinely portable; it fits in your pocket in a way neither the original PSP, the PSP Slim nor the PSP-3000 can. It’s considerably smaller and lighter than a DS Lite or DSi, too. I can carry a PSPgo and my phone in the same pocket, something I wouldn’t have even bothered trying with the older models.

I was surprised by how comfortable the smaller design feels when in use. If anything, it’s even more comfortable than the Slim, perhaps because it’s nowhere near as heavy. My hands didn’t feel cramped and even the tweaked positioning of the analogue stick required only minimal adjustment before my thumb rested in a natural state.

Slightly spoiling all this is the slight “rattle” it makes when you move the system around or press heavily on the buttons. This is due to the fact the sliding screen means the unit is essentially in two connected sections, and they bump together at times. I found it a little disconcerting.

In theory, the download-only model appeals to me. For one, I simply don’t have that many PSP games, so I’m personally not too fussed about not being able to play my old UMD games on the PSPgo. For the new user, of course, this is a total non-issue.

And generally speaking, it’s more convenient to not have to carry around those silly UMDs and simply have all your games permanently stored on-board. Of course, with a memory stick of appropriate size, you can do this with the existing PSPs, too. (But do you actually carry it around? I never did.)

But ultimately, my reservations about the PSPgo are almost entirely centred on the price. It’s far too high for what is basically the same hardware in a smaller, more pocket-friendly shape. The PS3 “Phat” became the PS3 Slim and shed $200 off its price tag. Now the PSP shrinks and suddenly it’s $170 more expensive. It’s ridiculous.

Sure, some retailers, such as Big W’s $398 deal, are currently offering the PSPgo for less than RRP, but it’s still vastly overpriced. Personaly, I quite like it as a piece of hardware – size is important – but unless money is seriously no object whatsoever, I couldn’t possibly recommend buying one.

Let me know if you are getting a PSPgo today and why you decided to take the plunge. Also, if you’ve spotted any good launch day deals, pass them on to the Kotaku community in the comments below.

I came late to the party and by the time I’d snapped a few photos of the Warthog and taken some amateur video footage the organisers of the event were calling out raffle numbers. Winners of this raffle were to receive a free ‘hot lap’ in the Warthog on Wednesday. The guy in the line next to me (I ended up near the very, very back) showed an organiser his bona-fide Halo tattoo and scored a free one. I was glad he got some sort of compensation for corporate sponsorship.

Over a loudspeaker that wasn’t very loud, the reverberant calls of ‘Red Forty Seven!’ and other combinations of colours and letters were a fitting counterpoint to the American Gridiron game I’d been watching literally right before attending. The crowd of fans snaked around the upper level of Westfield Penrith an easy 200-deep, looking so much like a rabble of linebackers. Teens and young adults, kids with parents, they were all waiting patiently for Halo 3: ODST’s Australian launch.

16 minutes till midnight. The two mid-twenties gamers in line next to me (one being the be-tattooed gentleman, the other his bespectacled friend) were quizzing each other on Halo trivia – “What was Johnson’s first name again? Leroy? No? …Oh, that’s right, Avery!” They were effervescent in their excitement (they later joked about how one of them had had two coffees and wasn’t really a coffee drinker). A father and his two sons were in front of me in the queue and I bet the Dad plays more of that game than the kids tonight. I kinda wish my Dad were into games, but then if he were I’d probably never get to play them.

10 minutes. The heat was becoming stifling as Westfield staff didn’t seem to think it worth turning on the air con for 200 sweating (mostly male) gamers. It started to feel like every LAN party I’ve ever been to, and not in an entirely good way. The list of games name-checked by the two gamers next to me in line will by the time I leave with ODST in hand include: Command and Conquer 2; Metroid 3; Total Annihilation; Supreme Commander; Counter-Strike.

We chatted about nerd stuff—the usual things you do at a midnight launch, I suppose—and discussed a mutual appreciation of political science, The Late Show era comedians like Tony Martin and Judith Lucy, a hatred of all the Resident Evil film sequels, and sharing a love for movie soundtracks. We miss the actual count down to midnight in no small part because I’m impressing my two companions with the information that I once interviewed Marty O’Donnell for a university thesis. We’re so far back that we barely hear it anyway and it’s another 25 minutes before we get to the door into the store.

As the line inched forward, I overhear organisers reminding people to get their pre-order receipts out and I pondered the fact that I had neglected to pre-order the game. I also consider skipping the new Halo 3: ODST game altogether and instead present at the counter with a nice copy of Nintendogs Daschund edition. A store employee however suggests that the Labrador version is clearly the superior product.

Unfortunately my skills lie outside the realm of deadpan comedic timing and delivery so I line up like everyone else, bribing the guy on the door to get me in without a pre-order receipt. He really was very kind about it, and the manager at the counter let me off with a warning and made me promise to ‘never do it again’.

My purchase complete, I stumbled outside collecting my poster and lanyard and that was that. I somehow lost my line companions inside the store, however, and I felt kind of sad that I didn’t manage a polite goodbye. It highlights the kind of beauty of midnight launches — and indeed of the often accepting gamer culture in general. Sure there are plenty of idiots online who hide behind the anonymity of Xbox Live to try and insinuate derogatory things about your sexual orientation, but in person most gamers are lovely.

If you know the Halo tattooed man and his bespectacled friend, whose girlfriend apparently lives next-door to a friend of my own (small world, huh?), would you mind saying hi to them for me? And then remind them they owe me a copy of Nintendogs. The Daschund edition, thanks.

One last little bit of analysis: I’m not really sure why Penrith was chosen for the national midnight launch. If it was purely a business decision with the Penrith EB store willing to pay the most money for the privilege that would be a rather boring footnote. I’m hoping, however, there’s a bit more of an interesting story behind it. Maybe the #1 Halo fan in Australia lives in Penrith or something, even if it’s just “Western Sydney has the most Halo fans”. If I hear back from my contact at Microsoft I’ll update to let you know.

Ben Abraham is the author of the SLRC blog and co-founder of Critical Distance. When he’s not writing about video games there, he’s writing about them here.

The beta testing is over, the Earth has been destroyed, and the monkeys are a great deal more intelligent now in Fallen Earth, the post-apocalyptic MMO that combines shooter style with RPG progression to create a persistent world title not quite like any other. The game is now available to purchase and play through Steam and other places like it, with a retail version recently added to the mix.

“The thoughtful development and diligence of our team is realised in a physical product, and that’s exciting,” said Jessica Orr, product manager for Fallen Earth. “We are pleased to add another avenue of purchase for our fans in conjunction with our existing digital sales.”

Fallen Earth will be hitting store shelves on September 30th, or you can buy it right now at FallenEarth.com.

“There are more people waiting in cues [sic] to start the game than there are in the game itself,” writes one tipster. “and this is just the people with pre-orders. This will be a nightmare when the game actually launches.”

In that screen above, you see one poor guy is facing down a seven-hour, 30-minute wait at position 2994 out of 3188 in the queue. Others have sent in screenshots showing much shorter wait times. But wait times nonetheless. It seems fair to say NCsoft wasn’t prepared for its Head Start campaign to get this much buy-in. I’m sure many are hoping that day one of the full release will open up some sort of extra server capacity, but unfortunately, I have no information. I’ll update if I hear anything. Aion players, please do share your experiences in the comments.

It certainly says something about nProtect GameGuard when a major MMO developer out of Korea decides that removing it is the best course of action. Commonly used in Asian MMO titles as an anti-cheating device, GameGuard seems to cause more problems than it solves, crashing programs, not playing nice with Windows 7, and just generally behaving like a root kit, which no one enjoys. Odds are if you’ve had trouble running Aion, this little bastard is the cause. NCsoft recognises this.

After analysing our open beta test results Aion will not feature GameGuard at launch. We will however continue to pursue ways to effectively utilise GameGuard within Aion in the future. Right now we’re focused on providing players with the best possible Aion experience.

Now the skeptic in me reads that as “right now we’re focused on providing players with the best possible Aion experience, and we’ll screw that up with GameGuard later”, but hopefully NCsoft will step into the light eventually and just drop it altogether.

Aion Launch Version! [Official Website - Thanks Carlos!]

For an Eastern import, Aion has been making quite a lot of noise among MMO circles, taking the beauty of a Korean game and marrying it with a design meant to appeal to Western gamers. Judging from the pre-order numbers NCsoft is definitely doing something right, though calling it the “biggest MMO launch of the year” isn’t really saying much, considering the only real competition it has had is Champions Online, a superhero MMO from the same company that created the other superhero MMO currently on the market for NCsoft.

Each of the nearly 400,000 pre-order customers gain access to server pre-selection tomorrow, as well as an early jump start that kicks off on Sunday, two days in advance of the official release. I have several different groups of friends who plan on playing, so I currently have no earthly clue which server or side I’ll wind up on.

It appears that EA and MTV Games have been hamstrung by a very limited supply to retail. We’ve heard that many stores are already out of stock, unsurprising since we’ve also heard that individual stores were receiving quantities in the very low single digits. Some, apparently, were lucky to receive even one copy.

UPDATE: We’ve heard that a mere 4000 units of the full instrument bundle were brought into the country for launch. It seems the Wii version occupied the greatest share, so if you want it on 360 or PS3… good luck!

If you’ve been out trying to buy the Beatles today, let us know what your experience has been like in the comments below.

“If you are talking about the basic demand for the newly designed PS3, it seemed so-so,” Inakoshi blogs. There was no line in front of his landmark Akihabara shop, he writes, and the first customer on that day did not buy a PS3 Slim, but a copy of Konami DS dating sim title Love Plus.

Inakoshi pegs three things as the problem: “Lack of preparation, lack of recognition and a weekday launch”. The ad campaign didn’t seem to help, either — Inakoshi calls it “creepy”.

The shop did sell out of the PS3 Slim stand; however, that seems to be because Sony did not provide enough product. The one good thing Sony Computer Entertainment did? The company was able to help Messe Sanoh set up a demo kiosk of the new Gundam Senki title, which appears to help the shop sell through all copies of the game as well as the PS3 Slim Gundam bundle.

第33回：新型プレイステーション3発売。 – 『メッセサンオー稲越のテレビゲームの売りかた』 [Famitsu]