AusGamers :: News

Vote for the Dark Templar Unit in StarCraft 2

AusGamers Pty Ltd

Blizzard are taking an interesting route in deciding which model to use for one of the units in StarCraft 2 - letting the community vote on it:

The protoss dark templar has always been one of the StarCraft community's favorite units -- now, the community has a chance to participate directly in the dark templar design process for StarCraft II! Over the course of the next month, players will vote to decide which dark templar model will appear in StarCraft II multiplayer matches.

There are two alternative designs you can vote for, or you can select for them both to be in the game and they'll spawn randomly. Head over to starcraft2.com to vote for your preference!

Halo Wars Dated, Demo Coming

AusGamers Pty Ltd

Microsoft's Keynote presentation at the 2009 CES expo just wrapped up and while gaming news was a little dry this year, they did confirm a couple of things for the upcoming Halo Wars.

Halo Wars, the Xbox 360 exclusive real-time strategy game from Ensemble Studios (Age of Empires) will be released world wide on February 28 2009. A free demo of the game is also due to hit Xbox Live a few weeks earlier on February 5.

Grey's Anatomy, the Video Game

AusGamers Pty Ltd

As part of our ongoing coverage of the occasional game that you can use to distract your girlfriend so you can get some real gaming done - Ubisoft sent through some information about a new game based on the TV series Grey's Anatomy, coming for PC, Nintendo Wii and DS.

In Grey's Anatomy: The Video Game, fans will have a chance to take on the roles of all of their favourite doctors in an all-new original storyline. As each doctor, players will make important personal and professional decisions, explore the direct relationships with each other, and perform the delicate surgeries the series is known for, all through fun and engaging game play.

Not a lot of other information is available but we've got a few screenshots on our game page.

Play Wii Tennis Against Novak Djokovic

AusGamers Pty Ltd

Nintendo have let us know that they're offering the chance to play Wii Sports Tennis against Novak Djokovic, the Australian Open 2008 defending champion.

Djokovic will be visiting the Wii Tennis Club, one of Nintendo's two dedicated areas at the 2009 Australian Open, and one lucky fan will be invited to come down and take on Djokovic in a match of Wii Sports tennis.

You can enter the competition on the Nintendo Australian Open site (it's a 25-words-or-less dealie).

Apple Ditches DRM in iTunes Music Store

AusGamers Pty Ltd

At MacWorld this week, Apple announces that the iTunes Music Store is going DRM free after reaching an agreement with the major labels that also sees more variation on pricing, ending the US$0.99/track "monopoly" that Apple was forcing on them. The Wired blog has a writeup on the changes and some more detail about them.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation have boldly declared that "DRM is good and fully dead for digital music", but also urges us not to forget that DRM isn't just about music, with a wrap-up of Apple's other DRM systems and how they attempt to provide safeguards to eliminate competition and cripple interoperability.

Guitar Hero World Tour Australia Day Track Pack

AusGamers Pty Ltd

Activision have announced a new Aussie track pack to be made available on Australia Day (aka Hottest 100 Day):

Featured in the downloadable content is Silverchair�s 1995 hit "Tomorrow", which found early success as one of their first songs when it won a local music competition run by Australian television network SBS. Rounding out the Track Pack is the GRAMMY Award winning Wolfmother with �Dimension� and The Vines with their hit �Outtathaway!�

The Australian Track Pack and will be available on Xbox LIVE� Marketplace for Xbox 360� video game and entertainment system from Microsoft for 440 Microsoft Points (or 160 points per single) on 22nd January. Following that it will be live on 5th February for the PLAYSTATION�Store for the PLAYSTATION�3 computer entertainment system for $9.95 (or $3.45 per single) and Nintendo� Wi-Fi Connection for Wii� for 160 Wii Points per single.

Capcom Giving To Gamers For First Half of 09

AusGamers Pty Ltd

Technically I'm not back until next week, but couldn't leave this one sitting in my inbox. Capcom have reminded us they'll be serving up some seriously cool gaming options for the first half of 09, beginning in February with the release of Flock through Xbox Live Arcade, the PlayStation Network and on PC.

Street Fighter IV follows with its console releases for the Xbox 360 and PS3 on February 20th, while the Wii-ified Dead Rising update, Chop Till You Drop, is also slated for a Feb drop.

Finally, Resident Evil 5 is scheduled to arrive on Xbox 360, and PS3 this March, fittingly landing on store shelves worldwide on Friday the 13th (oh Capcom, you're oh-so clever).

Also the next-gen update to Bionic Commando will land in gamers' laps in the first half of 09 according to Capcom, though a specific date has yet to be announced.

Hit the title links for their specific AusGamers game page for more media with the exception of Flock, which we'll be updating very shortly.

2008 was Xbox 360's Biggest Year

AusGamers Pty Ltd

Many, many years that have passed since the Xbox 360 was unleashed, and Microsoft have just announced that 2008 was the "biggest year ever" for its gaming console:

Despite a tough economy, the gaming industry held strong in 2008 and Microsoft Corp.'s Xbox 360 video game and entertainment system recorded the biggest year in Xbox history, with more consoles, games and online entertainment experiences sold than any previous year. It was a year in which life-to-date unit sales of Xbox 360 systems climbed to 28 million consoles worldwide -- expanding the product's lead over Sony PlayStation 3 to more than 8 million units.
...
Xbox 360 is experiencing record-setting sales around the globe, particularly in Japan and Europe, nearly doubling market share in these key territories. In Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) specifically, Xbox 360 has now sold more than 8 million units, extending its lead over the PS3 by more than 1 million units.

If you picked up a new console over Christmas, what was it?

Smokin' Guns, a Free Western Shooter

AusGamers Pty Ltd

On the first day of the new year, the Smokin' Guns team released version 1.0 of their total conversion based on the Quake 3 engine. This was formerly the Western Quake modification for Quake 3, but since the open sourcing of the Quake 3 engine it has been made into a standalone game:

Smokin' Guns is intended to be a semi-realistic simulation of the "Old West's" great atmosphere & was developed on Id Software's Quake III Arena Engine.

This total conversion includes completely new weapons created with historically correct information about damage, rate of fire, reload time, etc. It also includes new gametypes and maps inspired mostly by movies. And to increase the feeling of a "gunslingers atmosphere" we also created music tracks and sounds adapted to this time period.

More information and screenshots on our game page, and you can download the client for Windows and Linux locally from AusGamers.

Welcome to 2009!

AusGamers Pty Ltd

After a nice two weeks off pretending the Internet stops for the Christmas and New Year break, we're back in action! We hope everyone had a good holiday season (hopefully even those unfortunates that still had to work managed to squeeze in a bit of merry-making) and we can move into a new year of gaming for 2009.

There's a bunch of good stuff already on the horizon - next week we'll be having a look at some of the bigger games that might be gracing us with their presence this year (could 2009 be the year of Duke Nukem Forever?!?), so stay tuned.