There’s a lot of gaming news, thankfully. It was sort of a dry last week, but moving closer to the holiday season always coincides with a glut of new releases. Expect there to be lots of exciting news for you fun junkies and adult kids in the coming weeks.

• There’s been a lot of discussion about Fallout 3, both in our forums, and around the web. Not sure why this game is lighting a fire under people, but love it or hate it, it’s doing well.
• Fallout 3 may be one of the many reasons that October experienced a 20 percent jump in video game sales. For the first time in what seems like forever, people are choosing games based on budgetary concerns because there are so many awesome ones.
• Speaking of which, this is a BIG release week for new games: We have the highly-anticipated World of Warcraft expansion: Wrath of the Lich King, the well-regarded Mirror’s Edge, and for JRPG fans, the new Tales of Symphonia sequel for the Wii. The original Tales was an excellent game, so I’m personally looking forward to the sequel.
• More Mega Man retro goodness for Wii owners: this week’s Virtual Console update includes Mega Man 3! Kids nowadays bitch that the new Mega Man 9 was hard… pfff. Go ahead and get through the Dr. Wily stage on MM3 and then tell me how hard Mega Man 9 is. Babies.
• If you are physically handicapped, hooked up to various machines, and you let it stop you from gaming, you are a pussy. Game on, my brother. This is livin’ the Icrontic Life for sure.
• The casual game of the day is another “gem” from Kongregate. Thank me later.

Seems like Obamafever is subsiding and news is starting to… You know, flow again. That said:

• Love it or hate it, Ctrl-Alt-Delete has been around for a while and… Well, like a bad soap opera, you get sucked into these things. “Congrats” to Ethan and Lilah…? I guess?
• Red Alert 3 producer David Silverman has a crazy idea on how to reduce game piracy: MAKE GOOD GAMES THAT PEOPLE WANT TO BUY. What a maniac!
• Bahahahahahhaa
• Xbox Live Arcade games portfolio manager David Edery thinks that games are an untapped source of free labor. GET BACK TO WORK.
• PSP multiplayer via the webternets by piping through the PS3 is now live in Japan. No word on North American release.
• Gamasutra crunched some numbers and came up with first- versus third-party attach rates for PS3, 360, and Wii.
• China has decided to tax income derived from sale of virtual items or characters. Gold farming just got 20% more expensive.
• Our casual game of the day is 99 Bricks. It’s like tetris but totally not. Thank me later.

Yesterday evening I got word that Raptr launched a public beta.

Raptr aims to be the final social gaming application on your desktop. It connects you with like-minded gamers, friends, and competitors which allows you to share information about your gaming habits, achievements, scores, and more.

The Raptr games list window

This is similar to Steam, but Steam can’t, for example, allow you to see when your Steam friends start playing Call of Duty 4 on the PS3 and then later switch to Castle Crashers on the Xbox 360.

Raptr ties in as many gaming services that they can get their grubby little hands on. Amidst yesterday’s launch, I was able to punch in my Wii, Steam, Xbox Live, and PS3 network information. It also has fields for World of Warcraft, Guitar Hero, and Xfire.

I’ve added a few friends, such as Icrontic’s Bryan Miller (Cyclonite); as soon as he fires up any game on any of those networks, I can see that. I can also send him a public “shout” since the Raptr client ties in with the Raptr website, or private message him.

The first thing I liked about Raptr was the fact that it scanned my system for, and found, every game I own. It even let me know that Age of Empires III was outdated, and started downloading the patch for it. This could prove to be huge. Trust me, keeping up with patches for my kids’ systems with all their games means I can spend hours on gamershell.com and other patch sites.

This is definitely a beta. I had some weird Adobe Air XML error when I tried to manage the patches that were downloaded for Age of Empires. Also, I didn’t realize that the download speed defaulted to 30K for patches - they took forever (you can change it in the options panel). It downloaded 11 patches to bring my game up to the latest version 1.12, even though I had 1.11 installed already and only needed the tiny 1.11 to 1.12 patch. Updates seem really slow, and I had trouble finding a few of my friends and ended up browsing through every single user to find them.

All in all, I see a lot of potential with a service like Raptr. I can usually tell right away whether or not a new app/service is going to click with me, and my initial reaction is “yes, this will click.” It clearly needs some polish, but since this is a beta, there remains a lot of potential for fixes.

BLOG: UPSLynx takes on the Nintendo Wii after being disappointed with E3.

Today at E3, Nintendo announced the WiiMotion Plus accessory for the Wii Remote controller. From the press release:

The Wii MotionPlus accessory attaches to the end of the Wii Remote and, combined with the accelerometer and the sensor bar, allows for more comprehensive tracking of a player’s arm position and orientation, providing players with an unmatched level of precision and immersion. Every slight movement players make with their wrist or arm is rendered identically in real time on the screen, providing a true 1:1 response in their game play.

I have a feeling this device will be required for certain games…. Perhaps a lightsaber simulator? If it works, and 1:1 control becomes possible, the lightsaber game that everyone’s been talking about since the Wii Remote was a twinkle in the internet’s eye may very well become reality. Anybody remember the 4mb RAM expansion cartridge for the Nintendo 64? It was required for Star Wars Rogue Squadron, but luckily came as a pack-in with that game. Sure, there were only a few games that utilized the extra RAM, but the Wii seems a tad more popular than its Granddaddy. I can forsee a time when the MotionPlus is a requirement for future games.

Say what you will about Nintendo, but they are at the top of their game right now.

Several eagle-eyed gamers noticed something odd about the box art on their hot new copies of Okami for the Nintendo Wii—a watermark for IGN.com. Apparently the graphic designer that Capcom hired couldn’t be arsed to get high res copies of the background he or she needed to complete the gig.

Capcom seems contrite, and they will be shipping replacement DVD inserts to concerned consumers.

Story found via Kotaku.

PS: Icrontic got the image straight from Capcom

Engadget is reporting that the Wii now has a region-free software hack available so you can play all the cool games like Zenkoku Dekotora Matsuri.

OMG!

Panasonic preps Wii-proof TV.

Today Icrontic rolls on and serves up another dose of shlongies. Too long to be shorties, too short to be long news posts, we give it to you in neat little morsels. Onwards!

• If you’re a musician of any sort, no doubt the cool new technologies at the NAMM expo will keep you interested for a little bit.
• Looking to run a thin client, or some other computer free of a ROM drive? Perhaps UNetbootin is the killer app for you. Install operating systems over the internet!
• Netgear has recalled more than 80,000 PLN adapters recently for fear of the little buggers blowing up on your wall. Yikes.
• The HTPC market is bigger than ever, with thousands realizing that you needn’t be tied to a receiver or a DVD player to get epic DTS surround. Elisa 0.3.3 for Linux hopes to capitalize on that trend in a similar way that Myth has.
• For an old-school Sega gamer like me, this is cool news (Would be better if I owned a Wii, though): It appears that Sega master system games are going to be showing up on the Wii for $6 a pop. NHLPA ‘93 and Shinobi for all!
• For those of you who have not yet upgraded to Windows XP, you’ll be pleased to know that refresh two of the Vista SP1 release candidate has hit beta testers.
• And the most frightening news of the hour: It appears there is mystery malware infecting *NIX servers at an alarming rate. It’s infecting numerous MIME types, and can’t readily be identified. Eep.

I don’t get it.

Have you ever been stuck outside of the fixed range of your WiFi signal and wondered what to do? There’s a cheap, easy, and effective solution: The Cantenna! Not only will it score you major geek cred, it’ll solve your issue for pennies on the dollar.

(more…)

Activision and Blizzard have said they will form “the world’s most profitable games business”. (via Digg)

Yay! Super Mario Bros. 3 is out on Virtual Console!

Nintendo thinks that the trend of releasing a new console every four years (whether they need to or not) is stupid, so they’re not gonna do it anymore.