Okay, for all intents and purposes, E3’s pretty much over. The announcements have been announced, the press conferences have been pressed (or conferred?) While we sort through the aftermath of it all, I have one question left… Where The Wipeout At? (more…)

Spin, spin, spin! The E3 hype machine is starting a bit early this year with some mighty spin coming from Redmond, Washington.

Microsoft announced a few things “officially” this morning, including the “temporary” price drop of the 20GB Xbox 360 Pro model… I say temporary because this is nothing more than a clearance sale to purge those models from the pipeline. The only way to get rid of those in any speedy fashion is to lower the price and entice retailers to add their own incentives to them in the form of “bonus” gift cards. For someone wanting an Xbox 360 and not minding the hard drive is only 20GB* (*barely over half that is usable by you,) then yeah, your deal just got $50 better.

If anyone thinks I’m going to let a move like this “slide by” as a “price drop” after all the crap everyone gave Sony about the 60GB PS3 price drop being a clearance sale, well… that’s just not going to happen. This is 100% “turnabout is fair play” and 0% related to my dislike for the 360. I love tossing Xbot logic back in their own faces. They usually resort to ALL SORTS of hilarity when that happens. (more…)

As a gamer, we have games and advertisements targeting us. As an older gamer, some of those ads and games miss me as a target. I had the pleasure of attending Boy Scout summer camp as a parent/leader with my son last week and partway through the week, I realized something… I was surrounded by the lower end of the “gamer” demographic.

Find out what else I noticed, after the jump… (more…)

I love media. Really, I do. I love music, movies, TV, games, magazines, websites, podcasts, etc. At times, it’s even clear to me that I might go a bit overboard in the amount of media I consume in a given week, but this past week, I went cold turkey. I had access to nothing, zip, zilch, nada…

and it sucked!

Catch the full story after the jump… (more…)

[Update]: Apparently, Harmonix isn’t satisfied with simply making all Rock Band DLC compatible with every game in the franchise. Kotaku has reported, based on statements made by IGN’s Nate Ahearn, that Rock Band 2 owners will essentially be getting two games for the price of one. That’s because every song that shipped with Rock Band will be available to download free of charge.

This is great news for those of us (myself included) that never purchased Rock Band. However, once again, early adopters seem to get screwed. Though, this free DLC will come in handy when you are craving REM’s “Orange Crush,” but don’t want to switch game discs.

This week has been a great for fans of Harmonix’s Rock Band platform.

On Monday, it was revealed that Rock Band 2 would be released in September for the Xbox 360 and later this year for the Playstation 3, Wii and Playstation 2.

Tuesday’s episode of X-Play aired a screenshot that was apparently taken from Rock Band 2’s in-game set list (9 new tracks revealed). A second list of leaked songs hit the Internet Wednesday, when a user on the ScoreHero forums, who claimed to have played the highly-anticipated sequel, posted 11 additional songs.

The full list of songs can be found here.

Alex Rigopulos, the CEO of Harmonix, recently spoke with CNN about the upcoming sequel to one of 2007’s best games.

Hit the jump to find out what he had to say. (more…)

Wii developers have a special place in my thoughts. It’s not a pretty place. Hell, it’s not even a static place. In fact, the place set aside for Wii developers is on the move… and it’s not going to be a pretty journey I’m afraid. They’re on a crash course for the very same spot I’ve set aside for professional spammers.

Let’s jump into the flame war together, after the jump!

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Have you recently visited the homepage of World of Warcraft developer Blizzard? If the answer is ‘Hell yeah!’ then you may have noticed a minor change to their front page. Well, I say minor, but it’s actually a pretty major change that’s impossible to miss.

Hit the jump for all the speculation.

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Laurent Fischer spent last week mending fences. Why? Well, as you may have heard, the managing director of Nintendo Europe made derogatory comments about Wii owners. Specifically, when he responded to questions about gamers clamoring for additional storage space said that only “geeks and otaku” would want additional space. Fischer, the genius that he is, obviously felt 512 MB was sufficient and created a firestorm amongst gamers around the world.

Fischer has since rescinded his “geeks and otaku” remark.

Read part of his “apology” after the jump. (more…)

People have been piling on Soul Calibur IV for months. Many fans of the franchise seem agitated that Namco decided to include popular Star Wars characters in the next installment of the franchise. Gamers seem especially vexed by Yoda’s inclusion. Some have compared him to Gon, the pint-sized dinosaur from Tekken 3, who was difficult to hit due to his small stature.

A recent post over at Kotaku detailed the release date and box art for the Japanese version of the game. Two of the guest characters, Darth Vader and Yoda, will be prominently featured on the cover when the game releases in Japan on July 31. This seemed to be too much for the author, who declared the Soul Calibur franchise dead.

Find out why this was a gross overreaction, after the jump. (more…)

The first round of Black Sarcastic Gamer T-shirts have shipped to SG Community members who ordered through the SG Store.

NOW is the time to go ahead and grab one, as we;re submitting another order on FRIDAY.

PLUS, for a limited time get a free SG mousepad with each order of a black SG T-shirt, and pay NO additional shipping. Just select a Black T-Shirt and the mousepad will automatically ship with your purchase.

This offer ends SUNDAY.

Visit http://sarcasticgamer.com/store

For those that already ordered, I’m happy to say that this includes YOU as well. If you already bought a mousepad with your shirt, you’ll get an extra one!

Thanks for supporting Sarcastic Gamer!

For those of you living under a rock, GTA IV came out April 29th touting many more than a dozen online play modes. For those of us with the (highly reviewed) PS3 version, the multiplayer modes have been a real sore spot, as a large portion of us have experienced periodic or persistent issues with the game. The problem seems to stem from faulty network code that even affects single player games while the network connection is active.

Today, Rockstar released the first patch for the game. A patch that according to early reports seems to have alleviated the issues. Honestly, that’s great. It’s what I’ve been wanting since I first experienced issues with the game-freezing. Not content to just give us a patch, Rockstar’s parent company Take-Two Interactive had to go and re-piss me off though… (more…)

It’s been a while since I’ve gone off on a good rant and I think it’s about time I got back to form. GTA IV is out, the anticipation is over, and we’re looking to see what’s out on the gaming horizon again. Frankly, I don’t care for a lot of what I’m seeing. If you’ve read my rant column before, I’m sure this comes as no surprise. For those that haven’t, or those that share my general sentiment… let me tell you why I absolutely HATE stressful games. (more…)

From time to time, new words, or phrases pop up that are appropriately formed, but not entirely intuitive. For those instances, you can count on Sarcastic Gamer Dictionary to enlighten us all. Today’s phrase is “Digital Euthanasia,” a simple enough phrase, but the meaning might not be clear…

Let us open the Sarcastic Gamer Dictionary for the definition.

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