Worldgaming.com has announced a couple of new promotions and tournaments, providing console gamers an alternative destination for challenging other players around the world for real money. To celebrate, WorldGaming will be hosting a 30-day online “Launch Party” (ends May 8, 2009) with daily tournaments, huge cash jackpots, and a host of sign-up bonuses.

Throughout the 30-day Launch Party, WorldGaming will be awarding every new registrant with a 25% deposit bonus and every 100th registrant will receive a $50.00 deposit bonus in their WorldGaming.com account, which can be used on WorldGaming.com to compete in tournaments and one-on-one challenges.

The bonuses will be capped at the 10,000th registrant, who will receive a Grand Prize of “The Ultimate Gamer Gear Package,” which includes the following:

1. Choice of either a custom WorldGaming Sony PlayStation 3 or Microsoft Xbox 360
2. $250 gift certificate from GameStop (www.gamestop.com)
3. $100 deposit bonus into their WorldGaming.com account

The 30-day Launch Party, which culminates with WorldGaming.com Grand Finale Tournaments to crown WorldGaming’s first-ever champions (various games and platforms), will see winners of tournament gameplay during the launch phase pitted against one another in the grand finales in order to attain championship status and the opportunity to win huge cash jackpots.

WorldGaming.com offers its one-on-one challenges and multiplayer tournaments in a variety of games across multiple genres, from first-person shooters like Halo 3 and Resistance Fall of Man to the most popular sports titles, including Madden Football, MLB ‘09 the Show, FIFA Soccer and many more – with new titles added regularly.

The site offers a quick and easy challenge process, automated results verification, player stat tracking and skill rankings, dedicated game lobbies with live chat for each supported title, and easy matchmaking.

(Source) Press

Will Wright departing EA
Amazon.com offers Xbox Live virtual content
Blockbuster Facing Grim Future
Dark Sector Game Review–Not Much Bright And Shiny Here
Meteos Wars Game Review–Action Packed Puzzle Fun
Molyneux Says Gaming To Produce Greatest Story Ever
Stargate Worlds Still In Production
Wii Least Played Console, PS2 On Downward Slide
PETA Invading World of Warcraft
Shadow of the Colossus Making Transition to Big Screen
FEAR 2 Toy Soldiers Pack Dated, More DLC Incoming
TimeGate Sues Paramount Over Section 8
Secret World Teaser Trailer Shows Milkshakes and Flaming Swords
Gametech Releases Xirrus Wi-Fi Arrays

EA has recently released a statement detailing the departure of video game developer legend, Will Wright after a near 12 year gig at the company. Wright fans need not be discouraged as he will go on to form a new studio called Stupid Fun Club which hopes to put out new games, toys, and even movies.

EA has bought a stake of the company giving both they and Wright the title of main shareholders.

If you don’t know who Will Wright is, he created a little thing called The Sims which went on to become the best selling PC game series of all time netting over 100 million units sold.

Read (Yahoo! Tech)

It seems Amazon.com is taking a step in the right direction having recently announced the addition of Xbox Live virtual content of all shapes and sizes to their online inventory.

This is good news for Xbox 360 owners who aren’t fond of the Microsoft Points system as you are able to buy not only Xbox Live subscriptions but also Xbox Live Arcade titles with actual money, not Microsoft Points.

You can check out Amazon’s current offerings here.

We’re a long ways away from digital distribution being the commonly accepted method of media consumption but it seems that an icon of the movie-watching ways of the past may soon be nothing more than dusty history. Investors in movie and game rental chain Blockbuster have been warned that the business might be doomed. Currently they’re trying to stay afloat despite a considerable load of debt, $781 million of it to be precise.

The launch of rental service Netflix was a huge blow to Blockbuster and they responded by abolishing late fees, but it seems that all their efforts might have been in vain. The ability to stream films directly to your computer, dedicated device or Xbox 360 put another nail in the rental company’s coffin. The ease of downloading films via digital cable or a console or other device at equivalent prices erased the appeal of having a local Blockbuster store.

If the rumors are true and Netflix will soon be streamable for the PS3 and Wii as well as the Xbox 360 it seems unlikely there’ll be anything that can save the company.

I really, really wish I could stop playing the same games over and over again.  I really do.  Sometimes, I think about all the great games out there just longing to be made, and then I pick up yet another third person shooter game and I think, why?  Why can’t I get anything but warmed-over hash like Dark Sector when there’s the next Fallout or Oblivion or Saints Row waiting to be made, but not being made?  But then I sigh and slap the game in my Xbox 360 and play on.

Dark Sector, today’s game of choice, is all about a special forces agent named Hayden who’s got a special disease that won’t let him feel pain.  Amazingly, this is a real disease, known as congenital analgia.  Anyway, Hayden’s been dispatched to Lasria, a Soviet Union offshoot that’s currently home to something called the Technocyte infection.  Technocyte is a disease that turns people’s skin into metal, and is so painful that it drives those infected with it utterly insane.  It’s not too surprising—the box art is going to make that clear enough—that it won’t be long before Hayden winds up infected with Technocyte too.  But here’s the kicker—because Hayden is incapable of feeling pain, the primary side effect of Technocyte, the whole insanity thing, bypasses him.  This means Hayden is now a living weapon, able to turn his skin into a massive three-bladed throwing star called a glaive.

From here, Hayden will go out and try to clear up the Technocyte infection from sweeping the rest of the planet and taking humanity into a new dark age.

This is, of course, a pretty interesting idea, and the storyline is definitely solid.  In fact, starting the game out gave me a lot of hope.  I took on an attack helicopter with a rocket launcher, for crying out loud.  Nothing says action like taking on a helicopter with a rocket launcher.  But then I got my shiny new Technocyte infection, and everything changed.  I could no longer pick up enemy weapons and use them, for example.  They’d put some kind of infection detector on the rifles and shotguns and such that caused them to “burn out” within seconds of my picking them up.  This meant I was taking on a small army with my sidearm (which didn’t have any Technocyte detector on it) and this absolutely idiotic glaive thing.  The biggest problem with the glaive is that it wasn’t a one-hit kill.  Amazingly enough, I could throw this gigantic three-blade boomerang into SOMEONE’S FREAKING SKULL and it wouldn’t be enough to kill them.  I’d have to hit them a second time, or get close in enough to use a finishing move.

If I wanted other weapons, I’d have to save up the roubles that I found scattered around the game play field to BUY them from a black market vendor who took out all the burnout circuitry.  This offended me.  Heaps of weapons, all throughout the play field, and I can’t use any of them for more than thirty seconds because my hand is a giant blade.

The best way to sum all this up is easy enough—Dark Sector was a decent idea that just got a really lousy execution.  It’s sad, because frankly, this game really could’ve been interesting, if it weren’t yet another third person shooter of the same stripe and pedigree that we’ve been seeing for years.

So I found a new game on Xbox Live Arcade and discovered that puzzle games can have action too.  What kind of game could yield such a combination, you wonder?  It’s called Meteos Wars, and it’s avaiable on Live Arcade for the relatively low price of eight hundred Microsoft points.

You play one of several different alien races, engaging in a war to end the world-destroying Meteos.  If they stack up too high, you see, they’ll destroy your planet.  But, if you arrange them in groups of three, vertically or horizontally, you’ll launch them directly upward and, hopefully, off your planet.  You’ll also pass the danger on to your neighboring planet, who will thusly become more likely to be destroyed by the meteos.

The result is a surprisingly fun and fast-paced puzzle game with plenty of action.  The gameplay is smooth and almost completely intuitive–I managed to play the game for one round without even reading the instruction manual.  We need more interesting, original games like this, and I’m glad they can even be found in the first place.

People always like discussing the best of something; the best band, best album, best restaurant, etc. Unfortunately people rarely agree, mostly because the word “greatest” is so unspecific. Does greatest mean the most profitable? The most critically acclaimed? The most popular? Books and films are especially controversial media to try and pin a gold medal on, since there are so many stories told in these media.

While it’s possible to narrow the list down to probably a few hundred or so contenders for the title, it’d be impossible for anyone to get people to agree with stories like The Godfather, Hamlet, Lord of the Rings, Citizen Kane and vast numbers of tales out there. One man however is sure that in time a single story will surpass them all and he knows where it will come from.

Shock of shocks, this bold statement is coming from the eternally timid and never boastful Peter Molyneux: “The greatest story ever told? I think it’s going to be in a computer game,” he said. “And I think that if I play the greatest story ever told in the same game as you play it, your greatest story is going to be different to my greatest story, and that is power.” Of course he hopes that his studio will be the ones to do this, saying that creating this story is “definitely something Lionhead Studios wants to do.”

Recently an interview with Stargate executive producer Brad Wright hit fan website GateWorld in which Mr Wright lamented the fact that the planned Stargate Worlds MMO wasn’t completed yet. When asked regarding the future of the title he said “we don’t know”, saying that “if it were going to be happening it should be happening now”. Unfortunately many sites took this as insinuation (or in some cases outright confirmation) that the game was dead.

The game’s senior marketing manager Kevin Ballantine was quickly clued into the story and spoke with its author. Ballantine gave him a detailed response to the article, which the GateWorld writer then declined to publish. Today Mr. Ballantine has issued a statement that while Brad Wright is in fact an important part of the game development, being one of the key players of the entire franchise he had unfortunately not been updated on the game’s progress before the interview. The studio has felt the crunch of the economic downturn, but they assure the public that they are getting enough money from investors to keep the development team at their desks seven days a week. He also reports that they’re currently negotiating deals to keep the funding coming.

Unfortunately Brad Wright is correct in his statement that now is the optimal time to have the game be on the shelves. The first spin-off series, Stargate Atlantis has recently concluded it’s televised run and though ephemeral wisps of news are circulating regarding the new spin-off, Stargate Universe, it’s a long ways from being on the air and in the mean time prospective players might be getting themselves entrenched into existing MMOs or simply moving on to other franchises.

Nielsen has released their newest round of data tracking the gaming habits of American gamers. Though the Wii still continues to outsell many other systems the console is getting the least play time. The only system that it’s beating in terms of how often it’s played and for how long is the Gamecube. The PS3 is getting the most play time. Though the PS2 has a higher average minutes per gaming session at seventy-one, the PS3′s sixty-four minutes is more substantial when you compare that the PS3 on average gets played almost daily (six point eight days per week) while its predecessor gets only 5.5 days of usage per week (435.2 minutes for the PS3, 390.5 for the PS2).

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