It was recently made known that 200 of Game Crazy‘s 680 retail locations will be shutting their doors for good by the end of next month. This apparantly isn’t a sign of Game Crazy going under but instead a wise business decision by the company’s executives to weed out the under performing stores

Below is their official statement regarding the matter:

“Movie Gallery, Inc. is currently operating in an unprecedented consumer/retail environment. In order for us to continue to best serve our millions of customers across North America we’re addressing under performing stores and ensuring that there is sufficient [return on investment] associated with each of these stores going forward. The vast majority of our stores will be unaffected by these efforts.”

via joystiq

If you thought Capcom was going to be nice and give you downloadable characters for Street Fighter IV, you were wrong. Today, the developer has announced Super Street Fighter IV, a tweaked and improved standalone version of SF4 with 8 additional characters.

Of these characters just 3 have been officially confirmed:  T. Hawk, Dee Jay and Juri. Fans of the Street Fighter franchise will recognize T. Hawk and Dee Jay from previous titles while Juri is an all new character.

As for a release date, we’re looking at Spring 2010 for both the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360, with no mention of a PC release date.

Read (GameSpot)

VGChartz has recently posted up the results for the first week of sales for Halo 3: ODST and the results are sure to have both Bungie and Microsoft a bit excited. It seems that judging by “week one” sales alone, Halo 3: ODST is now the third fastest selling game of all time behind only Halo 3 and GTA IV with Gears of War 2 close behind in 4th.

However, you have to make note that ODST was released on a Tuesday while Gears of War 2 was released on a Friday, giving ODST 5 days in their first week of sales while Gears 2 only had 2. So, literally, it’s the 4th fastest selling Xbox 360 game but technically. it’s the third. Get it?

Anyways, sales were right around 1.8 million with 1.7 million of those copies being taken off store shelves in North America, 230,000 in the UK, 50,000 in France and about 20,000 in Japan.

So, it’s official, put Halo on anything and it’ll sell like hot cakes!

COO of Blizzard, Paul Sams, is looking away from Blizzard’s usual method of money making (ex. World of Warcraft) and onto less conventional things such as the NFL.

This news was made known after it was noted that Paul Sims and his family (wife and 3 kids) have been listed as part-owners of the Pittsburg Steelers. Sure, this news may not have much relevance to the video game industry but perhaps we can expect to see the Steelers appearing in Cataclysm? Then again, maybe not.

via kotaku

Capcom has today launched an all new Street Fighter IV teaser website that shows off the fact that they will be introducing a “new warrior” to the game on Tuesday, September 29th at 5PM in Japan.

Of course, as of right now we have nothing more than whats featured on the teaser website which is just a small video including the screenshot shown above. We’re going to assume that this “new warrior” is an all new Street Fighter character to be offered through Xbox Live, the PSN and through Capcom’s official website for the PC.

We’ll keep you posted as more information is made known.

via kotaku

Tower Defense games have seen an explosion in popularity ever since the first Flash game was released. They’re now practically everywhere, from consoles to the Iphone, however, only one game based on the Tower Defense concept can be found on the Xbox 360, Crystal Defenders from Square Enix, which was never that good to begin with.

Defense Grid: The Awakening is the second Tower Defense game on the Xbox 360, and it’s one of the best tower defense games to date, not just on the Xbox 360, but on all platforms.  Defense Grid was originally released on the PC last year, and even though the XBLA edition includes bonus maps, it retails for half the price: $10. In case you’re new to Tower Defense games, the player must build defense towers of all kinds of towers — usually certain towers are best against certain enemies — and wait for the enemy to arrive. The enemies travel alongside paths, and must not reach their destination, as it’s up to you to take them out before they do. While there usually is no story to such games, at least Defense Grid tries; it’s a story of humans vs. aliens, and you need to stop them from reaching their goals. READ ON »

Sony has recently sent a memo to IGN that has effecitvely let the entire internet know that come October 1st the Playstation Store will have 16,000 peices of DLC for use with the brand new PSP Go.

If you’re scratching your head at this number, Sony breaks it down into several catagories: they will have 225 full downloadable games (PSP Minis, full PSP titles, PSN titles etc.) in addition to 2,300 movies and 13,300 TV episodes.

Sure, the number got a bit of a boost from the TV episodes but it is in fact 16,000 pieces of DLC which is all that matters. Now we’ll just have to see if another actually wants the PSP Go, right?

Considering it’s massive scale (in terms of hype and such) you would think that Infinity Ward would want as much beta testing as possible for Modern Warfare 2 but it’s seems like they have got said testing covered in house.

A tweet posted up on Infinity Ward’s twitter today notified us of the unfortunate news:

@FTGDS No plan for a Demo before launch. The entire team is focused on polish all the way up to ship of the full game. (via @fourzerotwo)

Now if there are bugs in the game we can blame Infinity Ward instead of a careless beta tester. Woo!

We may be seeing much more feature extensive titles hitting the Xbox Live Arcade as it was recently announced that the file size limit for titles offered on the service will now be capped at 2GB.

News comes to us from Microsoft‘s Scott Austin who took center stage at TGS ’09 to say the following:

In order to continue fostering the creation of great titles on the platform, Microsoft has increased the file size limit of XBLA titles to 2 GB. We pride ourselves in being the premier destination for downloadable games, and the new file size limit allows developers to push their creative boundaries.

With this new file size increase the line between an Xbox Live Arcade title and a full fledged title will be drawn even thinner.

via destructoid

Plants vs. Zombies was, like many other PopCap games, has been a hit ever since it was released earlier this summer (read our Plants vs. Zombies review), and now the developer is offering the game to play for free on the official website. While it’s only a “trial” version, it still offers lots of play time, and you owe it to yourself to at least give it a go.