I haven’t had breakfast yet. I am starving and I’m not really ready for the ramifications of this advert from Japan.

I hunger when I hear the name of Burger

Now with 0.8% profit margin!

So while I was out and about today, saying farewell to a collection of highly average games, I got to talking to my local EB Games’ manager about the much maligned PSP-Go.  For those of you not reading inside the AU, EB Games is basically Australia’s main games-focused retailer.  The equivalent of GameStop in the US.  I asked him why EB Games wasn’t stocking PlayStation’s latest piece of portable tech.  His reaction?

You know what a store makes off your average new console?  Around three dollars or so.  Because of that, not selling a piece of hardware that is entirely reliant on downloadable products makes sense for us … [the PSP-Go] would cost more in advertising material than it would to sell.  I don’t think we’ll ever stock it.

Now while this obviously isn’t EB Games’ official stance on the issue, you can pretty much guarantee that every single store manager in the country is thinking the same thing.

So it seems like any people looking to pick up the diabolical DLC handheld in Australia better make their way to JB Hifi or Harvey Norman.  While the move is obviously purely profit driven, you can see their point.  Three dollars on a $450 sale isn’t going to inspire any retailer, especially when the customer you convince into a sale never needs to return to your store ever again.

The manager’s advice?

Save your money, just buy a PS3!

And don’t forget to trade in all your copies of Kane and Lynch toward your purchase, presumably.

Oooh, candy!

The results of the independent board review of Left 4 Dead 2‘s RC status in Australia have been released today, and the results are not good news.  Expected, certainly, but not great.

The long and short of it is that Left 4 Dead 2, in it’s unedited form, will remain Refused Classification in Australia.  Here’s a cut:

In the Review Board’s opinion, Left 4 Dead 2 could not be accommodated within the MA 15+ classification. The computer game contains a level of violence which is high in impact, prolonged, repeated frequently and realistic within the context of the game.

In addition it was the Review Board’s opinion that there was insufficient delineation between the depiction of general zombie figures and the human figures, as opposed to the clearly fictional ‘infected’ characters. This was a major consideration of the Review Board in determining the impact of this game on minors.

So it looks like it’s Left 4 Cute Bunnies 2 for all of us Down Under, and I doubt EA will be putting up the cash to resubmit it again when they’ve been given no indication of anything changing.  You can take a look at the full report on the Classification Board’s website.

Keep something in mind: we share a format zone with the UK.  Just a random piece of information I’m just throwing out there.

It was a dark and stormy night...

There’s nothing like a good franchise, when it comes to developing games.  Although the game is very well put together, I couldn’t shake the feeling that if ODST had not been prefixed by Halo 3, it wouldn’t have sold half the copies it did.  Which would have been a pity, because although this game certainly does take advantage of the fact that it’s fan-base has been established for well over five years now, it’s certainly the most interesting thing they’ve done with the franchise for a long time

For the campaign of Halo 3: ODST, players take control of the squad’s newest member: “The Rookie”.  For contextual reasons unknown, although possibly due to some sort of hilarious military hazing ritual, Rookie never speaks or removes his helmet.  He may also have to do the rest of the squad’s washing up and laundry, although the game doesn’t let you stay on your drop ship long enough to find out.  The action takes place somewhere around the end of Halo 2 in the series’ chronology.  The ODST squad is being deployed to take out the Prophet of Regret’s ship, which is hovering above the African mega-city of New Mombasa.  The squad’s new commanding officer, a Naval Intelligence officer called Dare, has other plans however.  Instead of assaulting the carrier she directs the squad to new coordinates inside the city, a move which essentially saves the entire squads lives as Regret’s carrier jumps to slipspace and destroys all the attacking dropships.

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Via a forum post at the Fanatics’ Forums, Sid Meier has announced a new version of the classic game Civilization.

Hello Civ Fans!

I wanted to let you know we’ll soon be looking for beta testers to help us develop a unique new way to play Civilization. Ever since we finished Civilization® Revolution™ last year, I’ve been looking at ways of expanding the Civ gameplay experience to include solo, competitive and cooperative play to take advantage of the uniqueness of social networks. We’re calling this project Civilization® Network™ and the full game will be available next year on Facebook. Civilization Network will allow you to join together with your friends to create the world’s most powerful, richest, smartest, or just plain coolest civilization. You can coordinate your strategy to win great battles, share your technology to jump ahead of your rivals, lobby your family and friends to form your own government and win vital elections, manage and grow your cities to maximize production and happiness, spy on your enemies, and work with your friends to create the great Wonders of the World. The game will offer everything you enjoy in Civ in a fully persistent environment – you can play as much as you like, whenever you like, and it’ll be free to play.

We’ll offer a closed beta of the game soon, so stay tuned for details on how you can sign-up to participate. The full game will launch in 2010. For more information about Civilization Network, including development updates and behind-the-scenes posts from me and the Firaxis team, join our Facebook fanpage here: www.facebook.com/civnetwork.

Thanks and Stay Civilized!

Sid Meier
Director of Creative Development
Firaxis Games

There seems to be a little bit of negative commenting going on around the place, comment sections having a few references to the fact that Facebook games – like Mafia Wars et al – are pretty repetitive and boring. I would concur with this. Most of the games tend to be uninteresting and more about who you can rope into joining the game than actually providing entertainment at all. I haven’t played the food/farming games though, so I can’t really comment on their playability (Lizbt and Jacalee, friends of ours, DO play them however, so maybe they’d like to comment on the fun to be had in having a Cafe full of ice cream and a farm of baby elephants?)

Should be interesting to see how Civilization pans out on a social networking site known for it’s lack of civility (Matt wouldn’t know anything about this, as he’s never even registered!)

You see what I did there?

Freddie would be excited, if you know he wasn't dead...and there wasn't a girl next to him.

Just released today,  you can now download some Queen content to Rock Band!

Included amongst the new tracks are:

• ‘I Want It All’
• ‘Fat Bottomed Girls’
• ‘Crazy Little Thing Called Love’
• ‘Another One Bites The Dust’

All of them cost 160 Microsoft rapedollars points each, 1280 for the ‘Pack’ of songs. Don’t get me started on Microsoft Points. I know we’ve all been burned.

Anyway! I can imagine some of the tracks have good guitar bits in them, but I don’t know whether that would be enough for the hardcore RB guitarist.  The singing opportunities however should be awesome.

Trying to stay true to George's vision, Moose is waiting for Greedo to shoot first

So we made our way last weekend to check out Armageddon Expo in Melbourne. The exhibition centres around anime and comics culture, but also had plenty of side booths for cinema and gaming.

Tell the truth, by the time we’d made our way around the expo floor twice we were a little disappointed. While the place was chock full of people (including a good split of both good and bad cosplayers), it seemed as through we’d bought tickets to be let in to go shopping in a geek bazaar. While there was plenty of cool stuff on sale, the problem was that most of it was just that, on sale.

So after meandering our way through crowds of anime fans and perusing several stalls for any cool merch, I made my way over to the games areas to see what was on show.

Not a whole lot, as it turns out, but I made the best of what was on offer.

At the Capcom booth I managed to have a play of Tatsunoko Vs Capcom, a game I was naturally drawn to after discovering a little while ago that Frank West from Dead Rising was a playable character. Moose attempted to make fun of me for being so excited, which I quickly remedied by schooling him with Frank West’s shopping trolley attack. (more…)

The much maligned PSP-Go

A report from The Age newspaper claims that the new PSP-Go system’s opening week sales may number in just the hundreds, as opposed to thousands down under. The anonymous informant, described only as “a games industry source with access to the official GfK sales figures”, claims that under 1000 PSP-Go units have sold in Australia in the system’s opening week of sales. Here’s a cut:

“[The PSP Go has] a nice design and I think it’s quieter [than the original PSP] and uses a little less power but those things are not worth the extra cost, they’re pretty cosmetic,” the source said.

“It’s $450 and you can get a decent PSP 3000 package for sub-$300, so it’s hard to see who it was aimed at.”

-An industry insider, stating the obvious

TL;DR? Basically all the points that everyone already critisizes the PSP-Go for, only this time with the dismal sales figures to back it up.

Sony AU seems to make no bones of the fact, stating that the official number sold is “not under 1000 but it’s slightly over 1000″. Even so, for a company as big as Sony to fail this shockingly on a new piece of tech is mind-boggling. There main problem is probably that, as the article says, they’re currently under-pricing themselves with both the PS3 and the PSP-3000, which only makes the Go’s cost seem even more unreasonable.

As it stands, they must have spend so many thousands of dollars more on advertising, manufacturing and marketing than they’ve seen return as profit. The story of Sony’s next-gen hardware life, I suppose.

Take a look at the full article over at The Age.

We’re welcoming two new writers to the site this month: Jess and Moose.  Moose is his real name, “Jess” may yet turn out to be a pseudonym.  They come from two rather diverse backgrounds gaming-wise, but mostly we’ve brought them on board to round out the site’s writing focus a little.  While out primary love is all things gaming, I’m not so o-fay with geek culture (despite all the horribly goofy t-shirts I own).

Jess has already started her posting, and I imagine Moose will do sometime soon also (once he decides what he wants to write about).  Say hello in the comments section, if you feel like it.  They’ll both be joining us at eGames Expo this month too, to help us report on all the goings on.

I’ll update the About page with bio details soon.  We may have one more new writer in the shape of my brother, if he can ever pull himself away from online poker, but most likely he’ll simply be writing guest articles, so I’ll mention him when he’s ready to go.  I’ve also been fiddling around with our sidebar navigation to incorporate the staff expansion, so you can now access individual blogs through there.

Content out the wazoo on the way, I’ve got two more days until a fortnight of time off!

It seems while the focus of most gaming accessories seems to be on entertainment, there are still a few companies who are willing to put the time and effort into producing console versions of household tools.

This week’s new controller patent, developed by “top scientific minds”, continues this lesser known tradition in housework simulation. Care to get in touch with your inner maid?

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