As revealed through his LiveJournal, psychedelic game creator Jeff Minter announced that he will release Gridrunner++ on Xbox Live Arcade. The game is already available on PC and Mac, with demos of the respective versions up on the official Llamasoft website.

Minter is known best for Space Giraffe (Xbox Live Arcade) and countless music visualizers ranging from Winamp to the Xbox 360.

“I already have it running modified for the different aspect ratio and working off the x360 pad as opposed to the mouse, and I’m changing and extending the gameplay; it’ll be a much more involved game than the PC-only predecessor,” he wrote on his blog. “I’m getting all the gameplay working first then I’ll overhaul the graphics; we’ll likely go for algo generated 3D shapes rather than the hand-drawn sprites of the PC original.”

Shacknews reports that programmer-turned-musician Jonathan Coulton will have one of his songs included in the upcoming Orange Box from Valve, which includes Half-Life 2 Episode Two, Team Fortress 2 and Portal.

“I am delighted the Valve design team selected me to help make the surprise single a success. If it’s not every geek’s dream to be immortalized in a video game, it was mine,” he said.

It wasn’t mentioned how and where the song will be placed, but the site hints that it is part of the ending credits sequence.

Fans of Jerry Seinfeld can now download a demo of Bee Movie Game from Xbox Live, offering a sample of the game-movie tie-in to the upcoming kids movie. The demo features one full level from the game.

The full game is expected later this Fall for PS2, Wii, DS and Xbox 360.

It’s been a while since I’ve seen such beautiful tattoo work, let alone a game tattoo. This one is on a woman (no less!) who got her full back covered with gaming stuff ranging from Pac-Man to Resident Evil, along with a NES controller labeled with “Leave Luck to Heaven.” Instant classic.

After saying there’s a possibility of Crysis coming to consoles (see the post below), Crytek boss Cevat Yerli (pronounced “Chevat Yarli”, in case you didn’t know), says that Halo and console FPS games are years behind their PC based counterparts.

Here’s what he had to say about Halo 3:

No. I don’t want to talk bad about it. The trailer looked great. I know there are millions of people who love it. I tried to play Halo 1, I tried to play Halo 2. (laughs) I really didn’t get it. It didn’t get me, well I bought copies though. Again, conversely the Bioshock demo got me. It’s not that it’s not possible, but console shooters are at the level of PC shooters 5-6 years ago. The gameplay has to be more sophisticated—more thinking then shooting.

Yerli of course has a point – unlike Bioshock, Halo 3 didn’t bring anything new to the table in terms of first person shooters. But it sure as hell is selling a lot of copies.

You might have not heard of Super Computer International, but you have probably played multiplayer games on servers powered by SCI. EA has announced that the company has acquired the server and client provider Super Computer International, for an undisclosed sum. EA will shift assets, technology and employees to the EA Online Technology Group. SCI, founded in 2001 and based in Atlanta, has worked on online gaming technology and software, powering games such as the Battlefield series and America’s Army.

GamesIndsutry.biz brings news that Sony will be cutting the price on the PlayStation 3 console in the UK, and issimultaneously introducing a 40 GB version. The new price for the 60 GB version is £349, down from the previous £425, and it will still include two games and one extra controller. The new 40 GB model will only feature 2 USB ports, no memory card slots, and no backwards capability, but it will cost only £299. The price effective October 10.

Compared to the 40 GB , the 60 GB now seems like a great deal: for an extra £50 you get 20 GB more storage, 2 games, extra controller, two extra USB ports and memory card readers. The console war just got more exciting, if only in Great Britain (for now, hopefully).

Gears of War is still the best selling Xbox 360 game, as Halo 3 has been on the market for just over a week, and it’s still a popular game on Xbox Live, second only to Halo 3, of course. A movie is, or was, in the works, but details are, or were, sparse. According to movie site IESB.net, the movie is getting over budget for studio New Line Cinema to stick with the production. But according to the screenwriter who is supposed to pen the Gears of War script, Stuart Beattie (who wrote the excellent thriller Collateral), there is still hope;

“[300] was shot completely on green screen, which is amazing when you actually see the film. It’s probably how we’re going to do Gears of War. There’s no way to build that world any other way, really.”

As he puts it, 300 was entirely shot on green screen (for better or worse), but it still didn’t come in cheap – the budget was around $50 million, which is more than New Line Cinema is willing to pay for the Gears of War movie.

In an interview with GameTrailers, Assassin’s Creed producer Jade Raymond confirmed that there will be no demo. She pointed out that the game features “sandbox gameplay”, in other words, huge and fully explorable cities, which would be hard to cut down in order to make a demo. The game is scheduled for launch this November on Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. The PC version will be released some time in 2008.