This is good news, but it opens an old wound. There was much uncertainty surrounding the PC version of The Force Unleashed; gamers expected it, but Lucas Arts wasn’t talking about it. In May of 2008 producer Cameron Suey addressed the issue saying there would be no PC version of the game. He cited scaling issues:

“The PC being the gaming platform that it is, someone with a $4,000 high-end system would definitely be able to play the Euphoria, the DMM and really technical elements of the game. But someone with a low-end PC would have a watered down experience, they would have to turn all the settings down and it wouldn’t be the same game.”

That line was as much a load of bull then as it is now; if an Xbox 360 can run a game, so can a $500 PC built in the last two years. There’s a reason people are amazed to see CryEngine running on a console while still looking decent. The Force Unleashed is said to be coming this Fall, and I have a feeling I’ll be playing it using the PC I built in January of 2008 for $700.

The fangirl inside me is squealing right now.

“I understand you work for George Lucas, how has that prepared you for this loss here today?”

I am so glad that these Civony/Evony people are finally getting called out. Their shady ads featuring stolen art assets are everywhere. I can only hope they haven’t tricked many people into playing, but I know that mammary glands are powerful things.

This is a big one, and I will admit that I skimmed a bit, but there’s some interesting stuff here. Particularly, the acknowledgment that the general perception of the PC gaming market’s health is largely due to a lack of marketing and representation; that’s interesting coming from a PC manufacturer, not to mention a founder of the PC Gaming Alliance. Next up: much respect to Chris Remo for not letting the comment about $1,500 – $2,500 being what somebody needs to spend on a gaming PC slip by. The notion that a person needs to spend more than $700 to play any game is one that is hurting the platform. Finally, I very much like the idea of Steam being pre-installed on Dell and Alienware systems. I’m no fan of crapware, but if they’re injecting new machines with a bunch of it anyway, they may as well throw in something great like Steam.

This just tickled me.

I am ambivalent to this bit of news. It would be unfortunate if Microsoft decides not to bring Alan Wake to PC, but I can’t say that I would be surprised. Very little concerning Alan Wake’s very existence was anywhere near set in stone until this year’s E3, after all.

No, wait. Come back; this is a top 10 list that isn’t terrible.

I got a big kick out of this article. Enjoy.

Nothing interesting happened this week. Seriously. There was a whole bunch of StarCraft 2 stuff, but I don’t need to talk about that here. Surely, you’ve already absorbed it all elsewhere! So…

I thought I’d call attention to a blog post made this week over at Schnauzer Studios. The funkdacious Rob Geboers (whose March of The Zombies was recently featured in Audiosurfing) shared what he remembers about his time making music with Amiga systems as a youth. He’s even posted a couple of his creations for us to hear, one of which is all about peanut butter. Anyway, I hope you enjoy this as much as I did.

Paul Wedgwood of Splash Damage brings to our attention what seems to be common sense, but may not be. I’ve never considered, for example (and maybe I’m just out of touch here), that I can’t think of a single developer who has a history of making licensed games and/or ports that eventually went on to make a break-out hit. I’m sure there has to be some exception to the rule, but I can’t think of one.

Maybe I didn’t react as harshly as John Romero did, but I was definitely caught way off guard by the news of ZeniMax buying out id Software. Once my brain caught up with my gut, though, I decided it might not be such a bad thing for id to have some stability in a publisher. Reading this interview earlier today put me further at ease.

The only thing I’m left wondering about now is, how does Splash Damage and their collaboration with Bethesda on Brink fit into all of this? Did SD play matchmaker? Is an acquisition in their future as well? After all, the partnership was announced way back in May of 2008, well before the E3 meeting between id Software and ZeniMax.

Ah! News like this frightens me. Remember Westwood? What’s left of them are called EA LA now. Admittedly, this is a different EA than the one that acquired Westwood, but this development still gives me pause. For purely selfish reasons, I’m glad to see that BioWare seems to be The Top in the relationship.

Ooh! fanboy fodder! Really, though, this is a good thing. Activision won’t seriously ever stop supporting Sony consoles. This is actually one of the least-evil things they’ve done or said lately. It’s a fact that the Playstation 3 is too expensive. Most gamers agree, most of the press agrees, and the sales numbers of multiplatform games make developers inclined to agree. Any other day I’d be jumping at the chance to hate on Activision, but as a person who wants to play some PS3 games, but doesn’t have a PS3, they’re right; that machine’s too expensive.

It’s going to be great when we no longer need to ask questions like this.

Yes, you read it right. The Ghostbusters developers didn’t include multiplayer in the PC version so that they could make the console versions better. Meaning the Xbox 360 version, apparently, since the Playstation 3 version renders at a lower resolution and has lower resolution textures. To be fair, the PC version is $30 instead of $50, but I’d rather have more co-op and less $20.

It’s really too bad that I’ll probably never own an iPhone (or an iPod Touch… or any other piece of Apple hardware, for that matter), because I’d really like to play this game. I can only hope that Carmack’s enthusiasm for the iPhone does not translate to him being exclusionary to other mobile platforms with his games.

This just isn’t that amazing to me, considering that if you have an SOE account for games like EverQuest, Vanguard, PlanetSide or Star Wars Galaxies, you already have the beginnings of a Free Realms account. All you have to do is go to the Free Realms website and log in. Don’t get me wrong, it’s cool that people seem to be into the game (I like it, though I’ve played very little), but I thought I’d try to put things into perspective.

If you’re aching for new hints at what Guild Wars 2 will be like, look to the blog that’s linked above. These pieces of concept art shed more light on the game’s setting than anything that ArenaNet has said or shown so far.

Herein the controls for Dragon Age: Origin’s Xbox 360 version are detailed. While the gamepad controls sound cumbersome, they also sound like they’ll work fine enough. And although having to pause will probably be off-putting for most console players who aren’t used to RPGs of this type, I’m glad that BioWare doesn’t seem to have compromised on the number of spells and abilities available due to the limits that a gamepad imposes.