It’s Saturday afternoon, which is means it’s time for my weekly roundup of gaming news. Yay! Rock Band 2 came out this week. People can now mod their Wii without modding their Wii. (What?) Sony has good games, that are going to come out! Eventually! And what, the XBox 360 is the top selling home console in Japan? You are a liar. This weeks news after the cut.

Alright, well as usual, let’s start with DLC news. On the 360 they released Domino Master, Feeding Frenzy 2, and some DLC for Ticket to Ride. And then all of Xbox Live collectively yawned. In 360 DLC to come, Duke Nukem 3D has been dated for, WHOA, next week. It was also announced that Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix might be out before the end of the year. Damn that is a long name. NEXT. On the PS3, nothing. I mean, there was some Rock Band stuff, but when isn’t there? However, it’s the PS3’s turn for Call of Duty 4 goodness this weekend, so the map pack price has been slashed to $4.99. Time to buy that if you haven’t already. On both the PS3 and the 360, the motorcycle update for Burnout was released. And it’s free. Go get it. Right now. On the Wii, Strongbad Ep. 2 was released and so was Potpourri, which is a puzzle game wrapped in fantastical bullshit. On VC they released Mega Man 2. Probably the best Mega Man game ever made so yah buy that. ALSO HEY HEY HEY Mega Man 9 comes out on Wii Ware on the 22nd! Exciting! It will be out on the 25 on PSN, and on October 1st it will hit XBLA.

Xbox 360 news is GO! So, first things first, what the hell is going on in Japan!? The Xbox 360 was the leading home console in sales last week, by a pretty decent margin. It outsold the Wii by over 1500 units and the PS3 by over 20,000 units! Apparently a cheaper price was all those Japanese consumers needed because they went 360 crazy last week. So, you like Halo? Chances are at least one person reading this said “yes.” Well, have I got news for you, one person. Microsoft announced that along with Halo Wars, there are 3 other Halo ‘things’ in the works. Four ‘things’, all set in the Halo universe, being created right now. That is insane. It’s like Microsoft is turning into Nintendo, and Master Chief is their Mario. There is no real word on what these things are, though speculation leads to the Peter Jackson project going by the name “Halo: Chronicles,” as well as a project being worked on by Bungie, and possibly a Halo 4. Why don’t Microsoft just cut out the middle man and release Halo 4 Arena. We don’t need single player in a Halo game Microsoft. Also the guys at iD said they had to cut back on the epicness of Rage due to the 360’s limitations. To be honest, I’m kinda glad they have to. The one thing I always liked about consoles was that there are strict rules for developers. You have to work within these limitations or your game won’t work. I like that. On PC’s you’re just expected to upgrade upgrade upgrade, so it’s nice to have a format where you’re good to go with anything that’s released.

Alright, Sony. The most anticipated PS3 game ever has a release date. LittleBigPlanet will be on store shelves in North America on October 21st, and on European shelves on October 24th. Hooray! Also, they announced some sweet Week One swag up for grabs for people that get it within the first week. One is an astronaut suit for your sackboy, the other is a t-shirt that announces that you were there when it all began. Check it out over at the PS Blog. Another highly anticipated PS3 game got a release date this week too. White Knight Chronicles has been dated for Christmas day in Japan. Of this year. It seems so hard to believe, doesn’t it. With such high hopes and such a long development time, let’s hope this game turns out awesome, and not like Too Human. Oh no he said it, yes I did. Also, Mirror’s Edge, announced to be released on November 11th in North America and November 14th in Europe, will feature exclusive DLC for the PS3. I’m not too worried though as it seems nothing is exclusive for long these days.

There is no real Nintendo news other than Miyamoto winning an award and OH WAIT YES THERE IS. This week saw the leak of Waninkoko’s Backup ISO Launcher. Of course this leak caused him to abandon the project. However it is out there. For those of you not in the know, this little piece of homebrew can be loaded using either the homebrew channel, or the Twilight Princess hack. It allows you to read backups of your games burned to DVD. This is great because now you can keep your originals safe while destroying your backups. Obviously this will lead to pirating, but what doesn’t these days? Also, unlike modding, this involves no hardware work at all. The leaked app should be available along the regular channels. For those of you that don’t know about homebrew on the Wii and would like to learn more, check out the wiki at Wiibrew. It will answer all your questions.

Okay, time for the mashup that is the rest of this week’s news. So get this, if you live in the UK, and you pre-order Guitar Hero 4, you might get a free guitar. What the hell. I want one. Also, another instrument was announced for GH4. Your PC. You will be able to transfer midi tracks from your PC directly into the game for use in the music creation tool. On the PS3 it will work on all instruments, but on the 360 it will only work on the drums. Which is pretty pointless. But whatever. Guitar Hero 4 seems like it’s going to be the clear winner this round in the GH v. RB wars. Rock Band 2, while awesome, is just more of the same, and Guitar Hero 4 really add a lot to the ring. I’m very excited about it, personally. In WoW news, Wrath of the Lich King has been dated for November 14th with a price tag of $40 for the normal version, and $70 for the collector’s edition. Let’s be honest though, it doesn’t matter what it costs, if you play WoW, you will buy it won’t you. I mean, how could you not? There is a shitload of stuff included with the collector’s edition, too much for me to bother listing it here. If you like swag, you’ll buy it. If you don’t, save your money.

Apparently EA have heard the cries of foul play from their customer base and are patching Spore to ease up on some of the restrictions of their DRM. Basically, you will be allowed to have more than one account in the game now. Meaning your whole family can do their own thing in the game, OFFLINE. Only one online account per game still. It’s a decent start I guess. At least they’re trying right? There was a baby uproar this week about an announcement Treyarch made about Call of Duty: World at War. They announced a Day One Advantage, which many people took to mean, “Big strong weapons available for DLC! Unfair cheat cheat cheat!” However, they later explained that it actually meant that people that pre-ordered the game from GameStop would unlock a gun at launch, rather than earning it later. Also, people that got the premium edition would get an exclusive SMG. Crisis averted, I guess. And finally, for the last time, Google is not buying Valve! I don’t know how this rumor got started, but it has been smacked down by Doug Lombardi of Valve.

Alright, time for lunch or something.

Originally posted at DanCrum.org