Blizzard has confirmed that attendees for this year’s BlizzCon will be receiving StarCraft 2 beta keys within the next two weeks. Initially, Blizzard offered BlizzCon 2008 attendees vouches for StarCraft 2 beta, but simply ran out of keys. Now they’ve promised that those who were left behind would be getting a chance to check out the beta as well.

Whenever there’s a short supply and a high demand, the price naturally goes up. This is definitely the case for a load of beta keys for StarCraft 2, which have been spotted on eBay from $300 and some have even been sold for as high as $450. These keys were initially given out during last year’s BlizzCon, and if you feel tempted to buy one, keep in mind that a lot of them are simple scams.

Uncharted 2 has gone and pretty much swept every award it was nominated for in the past few weeks, and now it has claimed one of the more important ones: the Writers Guild of America’s game writing award. The award was accepted by Uncharted 2 lead writer Amy Hennig.

Webbush Morgan analyst Michael Pachter, one of the most recognized game’s analysts, predicts that Microsoft will launch Natal at a $50 price point this Fall.

He thinks that Microsoft won’t be making money initially with the motion sensing controller, as he thinks it costs Microsoft anywhere from $50 to $80 to manufacture the hardware.

Microsoft will launch the Natal (which is still a codename) motion sensing controller this Fall.

Video games are quickly approaching Hollywood movies in terms of budget size, and often surpass then altogether. In the early 90s, video game budgets were around $100,000 — when Doom was released in 1993 it had cost $200,000 and was touted as one of the most expensive games at the time. Today, that barely covers one month worth of production. Here are the top 10 most expensive video game budgets ever:

10. Killzone 2: $45 million

One of the most anticipated PS3 titles, and one which has been in development for over four years, Killzone 2′s budget was originally $20 million. Then it was upped to $30 million. As development was extended by another full year, the budget went north of $40 million, and most estimates put it at $45 million. Higher estimates put it at over 41 million Euro, which translates to $56 million USD — but this number has never been confirmed by anyone at developer Guerrilla.

9. Final Fantasy XII: $48 million

The Final Fantasy games have been known for their outstanding quality, length and sheer production value. They’ve also been known as some of the most expensive games to have ever come out from Japan, and Final Fantasy XII had a budget of a whopping $48 million, excluding any marketing costs. The sequel, Final Fantasy XIII is rumored to have had at least a 50% higher budget, however, this hasn’t been made official (yet).

8. LA Noire: $50 million

La Noire was recently cited as “one of the most expensive games in development today”, by Tom Crago, the president of Game Developers’ Association of Australia. While this might have been exaggerated in order to shine some spotlight on Australia’s game developers (LA Noire is developed in Australia), it’s no secret that Rockstar has given LA Noire a massive budget, upwards of $50 million, to create a truly cinematic video game, where most of 1940s Los Angeles has been recreated and is fully explorable.

7. APB, $50 million

APB has been in development close to 5 years now, and Realtime Worlds have often stated that it’s the most expensive game they’ve ever worked on — Realtime Worlds founder Dave Jones had to raise Venture Capital, $50 million of it, to make sure that APB has enough money to sustain further development. The official budget is exactly $50 million, but Realtime Worlds is set to spend millions each year supporting and expanding the MMO.

6. Halo 3, $55 million

The Halo franchise has been so successful for Bungie and Microsoft that they virtually had an unlimited budget on Halo 3, as it had to be the best and most impressive game in almost all aspects when it was released. It pretty much was, at a price of $55 million, which excludes over $200 million Microsoft spent promoting the game.

5. Metal Gear Solid 4, $60 million

The biggest, pretties and most complex Metal Gear Solid game, one with hours and hours of cut scenes, amazing production values and one of the best visuals at its time, Metal Gear Solid 4 took 4 full years to make, at a price tag of $60 million, shared between Kojima Producitons and Sony.

4. Too Human, $60+ million

Sometimes, game budgets, just like movie budgets, tend to go over board and the final product ends up costing a lot more than originally planned. Too Human faced many issues during its development time, chief of which was the long and expensive struggle between Epic Games and the Unreal Engine 3, where developer Silicon Knights abandoned the engine and started making their own — at a time when the game was almost complete. This added at least another $10 million to the budget, according to some sources.

3. Shenmue, $70 million

A game which held the record as most expensive game for nearly 10 years, Shenmue’s budget was unheard of at the time of its development — a $70 million budget for a SEGA Dreamcast game. Shenmue offered a vast and explorable area, a complete weather system, and so many fine details and features that games even today don’t have. However, many failed to notice everything the game had to offer, and the game ultimately disappointed in sales.

2. Gran Turismo 5: $80 million

What’s set to become the biggest and greatest racing game in history, Gran Turismo has been in development for over 5 years now, and features over 1,000 cars, each painstakingly recreated for with extreme realism (and perfection) in mind. Its official budget as of mid 2008 was $60 million, and two years later when the game hits the stores, it will reach a staggering $80 million, making it the second most expensive game in history.

1. Grand Theft Auto 4: $100 million

When it comes to sheer production values, sheer amount of features, the details, no game beats Grand Theft Auto 4. The scope of the production dwarfs any other game: over 1,000 people worked on the game for over 3 and a half years, doing everything from studying New York city with cameras that recorded city traffic for months, to contacting over 2,000 people just to obtain the rights to the hundreds of music tracks that can be listened to in the game. Price to record a master for each track ran at around $10,000 and that excludes the license and royalty fees. There’s enough content in the game to keep the average gamer immersed for at least 100 hours. There should be, with a budget of $100 million, GTA 4 is the most expensive video game ever made.

Those looking to play the newest Command & Conquer on LAN are going to be disappointed. It was recently announced that Command & Conquer 4 will include absolutely no LAN or dedicated server functionality. This is sure to be a blow to the tournament organizers who were planning to use C&C 4 in their events.

The reason for this is apparently the leveling system used in the game. Since it spans single player, multiplayer and skirmish it makes it impossible for LAN or dedicated servers to make sensey. Of course, they could have just left the leveling system out for LAN but you know, that’d just be too easy.

via destructoid

The original Alien vs. Predator was a welcomed shooter and was pleasantly received by both fans and critics, but that was, well, 10 years ago. Now a true remake has been made by the original developers, and while it was hyped extensively over the past few months, no concrete gameplay footage or campaign missions were revealed. Now we know why: Alien vs. Predator neither lives up to the hype nor its predecessor.

Aliens vs. Predator follows the same principle as the predecessor; you’ll play three different campaigns as three different races, Aliens, Predators, and Humans. And each campaign, with each race, will play differently with different controls. So far, so good, right? Well, not exactly, as on paper, the game looks promising, but in reality, well, read on to find out. Read the rest of the review

Before the PSP Go was released, it seemed like a pretty cool device but once it was actually released it kind of failed to deliver. It just doesn’t seem like the world is ready to go completely digital, just yet. However, Sony has come up with a new promotion that is sure to push a few more consoles.

Those who pick up a PSP Go from now until March 21st will be given a voucher to download either Assassin’s Creed Bloodlines or LittleBigPlanet PSP from the PlayStation Store. All you have to do is register for the PlayStation Network and SCEA will e-mail you the voucher. Seems easy enough.

via joystiq

It seems that Battlefield: Bad Company 2 is really shaping up to have the glory that the first gave shot for. In fact, the demo for the game has been downloaded an astonishing 3.5 million times to date. Some stats include 500 million kills, 100 million vehicle kills, 30 million vehicles destroyed and 10 million head shots. Quite impressive numbers for just a demo.

If you haven’t already gotten the demo, you definitely should as there are just 6 days left to snag it.

The actual game will be out on March 2nd of this year.

via thatvideogameblog

Max Payne 1 and 2 were developed by the Finnish studio, Remedy. The first game went on to recieve all sorts of awards while the second game didn’t recieve as much hype. However, after that the Max Payne franchise was shipped off to Rockstar Vancouver for development. But does this mean the end of Remedy’s involvement in the series?

That looks to be the case as in a recent statement to VG247, Remedy currently has no plans to ever revisit the Max Payne universe. However, Remedy’s Oskari has seen some screen shots of Max Payne 3 and is pleased with what he sees and trusts Rockstar because they “don’t make bad games”.

If you’re wondering when Max Payne 3 is out, well, no one knows exactly but it’s supposed to be sometime this year.