Gadgets and Video Games

“A two pack?” you ask, confused by today’s announcement of the Borderlands DLC retail package. “But doesn’t that game have three DLC packs ? And aren’t there more coming ?” Yeah, sure, and you might even have a point! But for now, 2K Games chose to announce the release of The Zombie Island of Dr. Ned and Mad Moxxi’s Underdome Riot , together on disc, for $19.99 (starting on April 6 in North America and April 9 everywhere else). More confusing?

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Borderlands ‘Double Game Add-on Pack’ arrives April 6 in NA, April 9 ‘internationally;’ not coming to PS3

We were busy ogling the suitable-for-framing cover art of the May issue of GamePro just posted by mag boss John Davison when we noticed a title we didn’t recognize: Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions . Considering how well-informed and handsome we all are, we were understandably stymied. Unfortunately, Activision declined to comment so we don’t know any more than you do about it at the moment, though we have to assume this is the previously-announced upcoming Spider-Man game, which supposedly won’t suck .

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Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions teased by GamePro

How many of you right now are playing games and using your plain-jane television speakers to blast the sound out? With so much focus on high-definition visuals, gamers tend to treat sound as an afterthought. Especially if you have several systems, which means a tangle of spaghetti wires held together with spit and baling wire

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Joyswag: win an Astro Gaming A30 headset for your games, music, phonecalls

When EA DICE decided to release some downloadable armaments in the original Battlefield: Bad Company , it proved to be a fairly unpopular decision . However, the recently found a way to outfox the gaming community, releasing Bad Company 2 DLC without drawing our ire. How did the studio accomplish such a feat? Easy — it just released the DLC in a completely different game . Battlefield Heroes recently received a large push of content inspired by Bad Company , including six modern weapons and the outfits of George Haggard and Kirilenko

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Battlefield Heroes gets decked out in Bad Company 2 gear

As part of the GamesBeat “fireside chat” series during GDC 2010 , Bungie’s Joseph Staten and BioWare’s Ray Muzyka discussed some of the challenges with maintaining big, huge franchises with Spike TV’s Geoff Keighley . Staten noted that Bungie originally “had absolutely no 10 year plan” for the Halo franchise. Now, for Bungie’s next project — the one that isn’t part of the Halo franchise — Staten said that “the responsible thing to do” is to “create something with legs,” adding that it’s easier to secure funding with a project that has long term potential for investors. Muzyka added that it’s important to create a product that keeps players emotionally engaged, so that they anticipate the next installment. When asked about how much consumer feedback, affects the development of a franchise, Muzyka pointed to the many changes that BioWare made to the various systems of Mass Effect when creating Mass Effect 2

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Bungie & BioWare discuss franchise maintenance at GDC

In the video game industry, the talent (read: game developers) are often “hired guns,” if you will — part of a developer that is either wholly owned by a publisher (i.e. Infinity Ward’s relationship with Activision) or a developer that’s being contracted for development by a publisher (i.e. Ruffian Games ‘ relationship with Microsoft). Rarely, if ever, is an individual (or individuals, as is the case here) represented by a talent agency, nonetheless a fancy, bigtime Hollywood one like Creative Artists Agency.

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Ex-Infinity Ward heads now represented by Creative Artists Agency

PlayStation Home director Jack Buser kicked off Sony’s final day of GDC 2010 panels, announcing that the virtual community’s worldwide userbase now stands at 12 million. The population has grown by two million users since December 2009, and is double of what it was in June of last year. Buser expanded on the stats, pointing out that these numbers aren’t based on one-off visits; according to Sony’s data, 85 percent of users who create a Home avatar return more than once. The average citizen, he said, spends an hour in Home each visit.

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PlayStation Home population at 12 million

The first details about Mistwalker’s mysterious Wii RPG The Last Story have been released, in the form of a blog entry on Nintendo’s Last Story site . The game takes place on Ruri Island, which, as home to a necessary harbor, has become a wealthy and important city. The affluent island is run by “Lord Arganon,” a power-hungry ruler who is well-versed in magic

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The Last Story’s first concept art

While we’ve yet to meet those amongst you reppin’ Farmville and swearing allegiance to Facebook, we worry that today’s announcement of MySpace making a stronger push into the casual gaming market may stir those folks from their dismal, musty resting places. Alongside a revamped and relaunched gaming section on the site (the “MySpace Games Gallery”), co-president Mike Jones told GamesIndustry.biz that the company plans on pushing into the gaming world in the same way it’s pushed into the music world. “Just as they use MySpace to discover and listen to music, I want them to use MySpace to discover and play games,” he said in an interview this week. One of the ways that Jones plans on implementing the new initiative is by making game suggestions to new users at the same time the site normally suggests music a new user might like. “We’re making sure that when users sign up to MySpace, on the first screen after sign-up they have recommendations, which include games and bands — at the same time …

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GDC: MySpace making a push into games, hoping it’ll be as popular as music

Sony’s GDC panel “Introducing the PlayStation Motion Controller was exactly that: An introduction to the newly named Move peripheral. David Coombes, Kirk Bender and Anton Mikhailov showcased a number of impressive tech demos, many of which demonstrated the Move’s incredible precision and low latency. One of the most impressive demos showcased full body tracking using an on-screen body puppet, not unlike one of Project Natal ’s tech demos

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PlayStation Move requires 1-2 MB of system memory