Frankly, I think the four bucks is a small price to pay to improve upon Ayane’s look and give Rachel something more business-like to wear. But it’s also four bucks worth of virtual clothing. You’ll have to judge for yourself.

Gearbox Software released a batch of new media for the Borderlands expansion, content that looks like it would’ve been great to play on or around Halloween and will give my Siren a bluish hue that I’ll really enjoy. More reanimated screens below.

GameStop announced today that it would hold the “world’s largest” Modern Warfare 2 tournament kicking off November 20 both online and at 2900+ US GameStop locations. I wonder if the fact that it’s the world’s only Modern Warfare 2 tournament makes it the world’s largest…?

There are actually three different tourneys. The first is the US-only Xbox 360 one-on-one tourney where Round 1 takes place in-store, Round 2 takes it to Xbox Live and the finals go down in some as-yet undecided location — grand prize is $US5000. Then there are the International four-on-four tourneys for Xbox Live and PlayStation Network, which you can find at gamebattles.com/gamestop. The top four teams from each platform will go to the finals to duke it out for a $US10,000 grand prize.

Get more details here.

Image Cred

Atlus will be responsible for bringing the lush pixelised environments of 3D Dot Game Heroes to North American PlayStation 3s, publishing duties that we sincerely appreciate. So what is this game all about?

The standard fantasy drama formula is lovingly applied to 3D Dot Game Heroes. Peaceful civilisation thrives under the protection of some glowing orbs, evil shows up, threatens peace, orbs are scattered and a lone, superdeformed hero signs up to save the day. Along the way, a Legend of Zelda overworld theme homage plays and virtual legends are made.

What makes 3D Dot Game Heroes different is its lovely presentation, layering on the 8-bit retro style and player character customisation. It’s formally announced for a May 11, 2010 release date with a $US39.99 price tag.

PSP owners with a hunger for playing people over the internet via their PlayStation 3’s should grab the adhocParty app, then show your interest in seeing more games support the feature. And if you’ve got six bucks left in your wallet, a download of Resident Evil 2, one of two new PSone Classics, might be an amusing trip down memory lane.

There’s plenty of new content dying to get into your download queue, all of which is after this…

Apps
adhocParty (free)

Games & Demos for PlayStation 3
Peggle ($9.99)
PSone Classics – Resident Evil 2 ($5.99)
PSone Classics – Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver ($5.99)
Smash Cars demo

Games & Demos for PSP
Assassin’s Creed: Bloodlines ($39.99)
PSP minis – D-CUBE Planet ($3.99)
PSP minis – Echoes ($2.99)
PSP minis – Circles ($3.99)
PixelJunk Monsters Deluxe demo
LittleBigPlanet demo
Promethus demo

Expansions & Add-ons
Peggle Nights ($4.99)
PAIN: Flavor Flav character ($1.99)
High Velocity Bowling: Psychedelic 60’s Ball Pack ($0.99)
High Velocity Bowling: Techno Modern Ball Pack ($0.99)
Way of the Samurai 3 Accessories (free)

Guitar Hero 5 tracks

• “Lick It Up” by KISS ($1.99)
• “Modern Day Delilah” by KISS ($1.99)
• “I Was Made For Lovin’ You” by KISS ($1.99)
• “KISS Track Pack ($5.49) – “Modern Day Delilah”, “Lick It Up “, “I Was Made For Lovin’ You” by KISS

Rock Band tracks

• “Beautiful Thieves” by AFI ($1.99)
• “End Transmission” by AFI ($1.99)
• “Love Like Winter” by AFI ($1.99)
• “Medicate” by AFI ($1.99)
• “The Leaving Song, Pt 2″ by AFI ($1.99)
• “AFI Pack 01 ($8.49) – “Beautiful Thieves,” “End Transmission,” “Love Like Winter,” “Medicated” and “The Leaving Song, Pt 2″ by AFI
• “Walk Like An Egyptian” by The Bangles ($1.99)

The Beatles Rock Band tracks

• “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (Reprise)” by The Beatles ($1.99)
• “Within You Without You” by The Beatles ($1.99)
• “When I’m Sixty-Four” by The Beatles ($1.99)
• “She’s Leaving Home” by The Beatles ($1.99)
• “Lovely Rita” by The Beatles ($1.99)
• “Fixing A Hole” by The Beatles ($1.99)
• “Being For The Benefit of Mr. Kite!” by The Beatles ($1.99)
• “A Day In The Life” by The Beatles ($1.99)
• “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (Album) ($13.49) – “Fixing a Hole,” “She’s Leaving Home,” “Being For The Benefit Of Mr. Kite!,” “Within You Without You,” “When I’m Sixty-Four,” “Lovely Rita,” “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (Reprise),” and “A Day in the Life” by The Beatles

Game Videos
Pulse 11/19 Edition
Pain: Flavor Flav Trailer
Jak and Daxter: The Lost Frontier Launch Trailer
Uncharted 2: Among Thieves 15 sec Accolade TV Spot
FIFA Soccer 10: Director’s Cut Trailer
Madden NFL Arcade Trailer
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 Flag Runner Trailer
NBA 2K10 TV Commercial
Assassin’s Creed II Arsenal Trailer
Assassin’s Creed II TGS Trailer
Assassin’s Creed II Dev Diary 3
Assassin’s Creed II GP Trailer
Critter Crunch “Feeding Time” Trailer
Army Of Two: 40th Day Extraction Trailer
Peggle Trailer

Themes & Wallpapers
Peggle theme (free)
Celtic Maidens 2 Premium Plus Theme ($1.99)
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 wallpapers
Topatoi wallpaper
Peggle wallpaper

Better textures, improved lighting, more pixels, less clothing on the female characters… it’s all here! And it can be experienced there — and by “there” we mean Japan — on February 25 of next year. A North American and European release, sure to be announced by someone — a publisher whose name rhymes with Ubisoft, perhaps — is almost a given.

For now, enjoy a batch of No More Heroes: Heroes Paradise screens below.

Those 33 million users download a staggering 25 petabytes of data a month. More importantly for Sony, they’re also spending three times what they did last year at the PlayStation Store.

Sony’s presentation highlights what it called a significant revenue in downloadable games and add-ons. The company also pointed out that its video delivery service now has more than 2417 movies and 15,047 television episodes.

A final point made in the slide presentation by Sony about the PlayStation Network is that a new revenue stream is coming from a subscription model.

Reached for contact this morning, SCEA told Kotaku that in terms of the PlayStation Network and subscriptions “we’re looking into a variety of options, but nothing to announce at this time”.

The news supports previous reports on Sony’s 3D PlayStation 3 strategy, suggesting that a firmware upgrade would introduce the capability to existing consoles. Not only does Sony plan on upgrading the console to support 3D, but release games in 3D as well in order to take advantage of the enhanced capabilities.

Of course, 3D games and 3D televisions would go hand-in-hand, so adding the capability to the PlayStation 3 would definitely help drive at least a few television sales.

Would you purchase a new television to support 3D gaming, or is Sony seeing things?

“Our work is already bearing fruit,” Howard said, according to the Associated Press. “We still have more work to do.”

After its second year of losses in the current fiscal year, which ends March 2010, Stringer said that Sony’s target is to turnaround their game business and have it be profitable by March 2011.

The company plans to use a two-prong strategy to achieve that goal. Sony believes they can improve profitability through cost reduction, becoming more efficient internally and getting internal divisions to work better together.

Sony also sees a growth in hardware, software and network services pushing sales up in the gaming division.

Stringer says that Sony’s PlayStation 3 has five key advantages: The incorporation of a Blu-ray player, the Playstation Network, PSP linkage, upcoming 3D games and their recently announced motion controller.

The Motion control, he said, uses the PlayStation Eye camera, can track depth, position and motion by “sphere, gyro and acceleration sensors” and vibration feedback and “rendition by light”.

And that’s about all we know at this stage, other than a title, No More Heroes: Heroes Paradise.

But we can’t say that No More Heroes making the high-definition transition from the Wii to the PS3/360 is much of a surprise. Grasshopper lead Goichi Suda has previously expressed his interest in bringing Travis Touchdown and crew to other consoles.

And, considering Suda’s interest in Project Natal — and presumably Sony’s PS3 motion controller — the No More Heroes franchise seems like a no-brainer kind of port.

Or maybe Suda and crew were motivated by No More Heroes’ Japanese publisher Marvelous Entertainment, which has expressed its disappointment with sales, hinting at the possibility of up-res ports of its moderately selling Wii games.