It was big news when Activision made plans of acquiring Blizzard last year. For this year, CEO Bobby Kotick has announced the plans made by the company for popular game titles such as Guitar Hero and World of Warcraft. Details in the full article.

Here's a quick update for those keeping their eye peeled for any updates regarding the gamer's edition of the Guinness World Records. The book's official site is announcing a worldwide Guitar Hero 3: Legends of Rock marathon that's being prepped for this February, in celebration of the book's 2008 Edition launch. Wondering how to join up? Read on and find out!

Got some cash to burn on video games? Well you might want to check out the "monster sale" that Play.com is having. They've got some pretty good titles such as Conan for the Xbox 360 and the World of Warcraft Battle Chest for PCs and Macs.

Want to find out more? Head on over to the full article for more details on the sale.

It seems safe to say that World of Warcraft and the PS2 are still some of the best bits of gaming you can find anywhere. The Nielsen Company agrees wholeheartedly, as their Top 10 lists attest.

The Nielsen Company recently came out with their Top 10 lists for 2007, and according to their research, WoW happens to be the king of PC gaming and the PS2 is the king of consoles. For the full story, click on "Read More" to know more.

What are they playing over at Sweden? Aren't you curious? This bit of info just might save your life one day, y'know. The region's data trade firm, Dataspelsbranschen (now try saying that as fast as you can, ten times consecutively), has just released the top sales charts of video games for Sweden.

The Multiplatform chart is dominated by the MMORPG mogul that is The World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade from Blizzard. This is followed by Pokémon Diamond on the Nintendo DS. MotorStorm and R:FoM have also landed a place in the multiplatform chart, and unsurprisingly, both titles get bragging rights in the PS3 chart.

The 360 chart has Guitar Hero II fronting the musical act - and smack dab in the middle is Gears of War on fifth place. The Wii has Leon Kennedy and Ashley Graham running up to first place with Resident Evil 4: Wii Edition, while Twilight Princess is galloping up to the Top 2 spot.

On the handheld side, the DS chart has both Pokemon (Diamond and Pearl) titles on top, while the PSP chart has Pro Evolution Soccer 6 kicking into the goal - Konami's sports title is enjoying the kingly spot on top.

 Multiformat

1. World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade (PC)
2. Pokémon Diamond (DS)
3. World of Warcraft (PC)
4. Counter-Strike 1: Anthology (PC)
5. Guitar Hero 2 Rock the 80´s (PS2)
6. The Sims 2 H&M Fashion (PC)
7. Pokémon Pearl (DS)
8. Motorstorm (PS3)
9. Resistance: Fall of Man (PS3)
10. Singstar 90's (PS2)

Check out the Full Article link below for each individual chart per platform!

Want to see how games fare in the land down under? Games Industry GfK Australia gives you the skinny on what games wins the Aussie's hearts - and wallets - with its list of Australia's top-selling games for the first half of this year. In this list not Sony, Microsoft, or Nintendo wins the top spot, as it is now owned by an expansion of the epic online game: World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade.

The list clearly shows that the perennial PS2 is still going strong down under, with about 5 entries in the charts, including Final Fantasy XII. Sony snagged the half of the top ten slots, and for a country which gets the PS3 at a very expensive price (estimated to be about US$ 900), two games still managed to snag the 6th and 7th slots: Resistance Fall of Man and MotorStorm, respectively.

Nintendo, however, is the overall winner in dominating the entire chart with about 8 games making it into the Top 20. It's cute doggie simulation, Nintendogs: Dachshund and Friends, also found a place in Aussie's hearts and was able to hang on the 20th spot in the list.

As for Microsoft, it only had one entry in the whole chart: Gears of War, which landed on the 14th spot.

The winning Burning Crusade expansion also propelled sales of World of Warcraft, with the original game landing in a very comfortable 5th place.
Check out the numbers:

1. World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade, PC
2. Final Fantasy XII, PS2
3. Pokemon Diamond, Nintendo DS
4. God of War 2, PS2
5. World of Warcraft, PC
6. Resistance: Fall of Man, PS3
7. MotorStorm, PS3
8. Nintendogs: Dalmatian and Friends, Nintendo DS
9. Cricket 07, PS2
10. The Sims 2: Seasons, PC
11. Guitar Hero 2 bundle, PS2
12. The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, Nintendo Wii
13. Dr Kawashima's Brain Training, Nintendo DS
14. Gears of War, Xbox 360
15. Pokemon Pearl, Nintendo DS
16. SingStar Rocks! bundle, PS2
17. The Sims 2: Pets, PC
18. Nintendogs: Labrador and Friends, Nintendo DS
19. New Super Mario Bros., Nintendo DS
20. Nintendogs: Dachshund and Friends, Nintendo DS

Big titles like Gears of War which sold a lot for its mother console are bound to get awards from all places. A good example is Entertainment Merchants Association's (EMA) Video Game Home Entertainment Awards 2007, in which Gears of War racked up four awards.

GoW bagged "Xbox 360 Game of the Year", "Shooter/Military Game of the Year", "Best Game Graphics of the Year", and the ultimate "Game of the Year" awards. All games released between April 1, 2006 and March 31, 2007 were eligible, but GoW took the cake.

For handhelds, Lego Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy and Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories grabbed "DS Game of the Year" and "PSP Game of the Year" awards respectively. Lego Star Wars II' PS2 edition also took the win in its own category.

Resistance: Fall of Man dominated the PS3, while launch title Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess was branded the best game on Wii. WoW: The Burning Crusade took both "PC Game of the Year" and "RPG/Strategy Game of the Year" awards.

Here's the rest of the list:

• Most Innovative Game of the Year - Guitar Hero II
• Casual Game of the Year: Guitar Hero II
• Fighting Game of the Year - WWE Smackdown! vs RAW 2007
• Racing Game of the Year - Need for Speed
• Sports Game of the Year - Madden NFL 07

Retailers and distributors from EMA's roster nominated and selected the winners. Their criteria on choosing, we would love to know. When Lego Star Wars II and WWE Smackdown! vs RAW 2007 are up there as creams of the crop, you know something special is going on.

Australia's game charts are turning out to be mighty predictable this month.

What's new? Aside from the fact that Spider-Man 3 is top Xbox 360 game down under, nothing much. There still isn't much motion in the Wii charts. The PlayStation 3 charts still has Resistance: Fall of Man on top, and World of Warcraft is still wowing people, so to speak. Perhaps the most noteworthy game this week is Guitar Hero II, whose large fan-base pushed big sales on the Xbox 360.

As for the all format charts, God of War 2 for the PS2 is still king, but you probably expected that.

The GfK Australian Game Sales charts follow below. If you want to take a look at them in closer detail, just click on the pics to magnify.

    
   

 

RPG fans, gather round. We're going to nitpick a topic to death. (And you know nitpicking is one of RPG fans' favorite hobbies.)

Paradox #1: monsters that don't drop loot. This article was spawned by an article over at WOW Insider that asked why is it when you have a mission to collect ogre brains, few ogres actually drop brains. The world of Blizzard's World of Warcraft is full of liverless boars, brainless ogres, and bloodless orcs.

Paradox #2: monsters drop nonsense loot. Remember how dragons in the first Neverwinter Nights dropped their blood in handy little bottles (complete with decorative covers)?

(Warrior: And with this last arrow I kill you. Dragon: Hang on a sec. Let me bottle up my blood first. You got a needle and tube handy?)

RPG fans have gotten used to the fact that every creature (from blind cave fish to rabid rodents to sea turtles lazing on a beach) carry gold in little bags and elixirs in standard-sized bottle. Some animals even drop swords!

And we spend so much energy to defend our favorite RPG and explain why this is the case, when we could be spending that energy writing feedback to our favorite developer to tell them to put more thought and design into their next RPG.

Is loot-dropping realism too much to ask? "It's a game; it's not supposed to be realistic!" exclaim the echoes. Really? Then what's with the effort to make good scenery, characters that look alive, and amazing storylines that pull you into the story so you'll forget that "it's just a game"? By the way, if you follow those backlinks, you'll see that many new RPG games have evolved to take advantage of new technology, so maybe it's time to universally change the way item drops are done in other "traditional" RPGs?

We have a few ideas to deal with the drop rate paradoxes. [This is just the short version of this article. Click on the "Full Article" below to Jump to the "Full Article."]

Solution #1: bring in hunter skills. We propose incorporating automatic hunter skill parameters in RPGs. [More about this solution in the Full Article.]

Solution #2: bring in battle finesse. Your character is a better fighter at higher levels, right? So you aim and attack better. So there should be less battle damage done to loot. Therefore, the higher the level of your character, the higher the chances of getting dropped loot. Besides, you need more loot at higher levels because weapons and armor is more expensive, right?

And that's all for now. We could keep nitpicking more things and throwing out more ideas - and there are a lot more RPGs we could mention for their good points and bad points (Dungeon Siege Throne of Agony, Lost Odyssey, Final Fantasy XI...), but you get the main points. What do you guys think? Anybody care to share their ideas about loot-drop paradoxes?

December 11 will go down the history of Amazon.com as its best day ever in terms of sales. The company was able to sell more than 4 million different items, a good number of which had a lot to with video games. And who's the king of this particular videogame hill, you ask? Nintendo's handheld, of course.

The company didn't furnish exact figures for the DS Lite but mentioned that it was indeed the top seller on that day. They also highlighted the record-breaking 1,000 units sold in 29 seconds for Microsoft's Xbox 360 in their Amazon Customers Vote promotion. Mentioned too was the PlayStation 3's predecessor, the PS2, as a big seller.

In software sales, Amazon revealed that their top selling games for a single platform were New Super Mario Bros. and Brain Age, both for the DS. Sports title Madden Football ruled the multiplatform division. The MMO expansion title The Burning Crusade was the major top seller for all pre-orders. The Sims 2: Pets and art package Adobe Photoshop Elements 5 were both given recognition as well.

Amazon.com founder and CEO Jeff Bezoz couldn't help but show his appreciation to customers because of this success. "Video games were a customer favorite again this year. We are truly grateful to our customers. Happy holidays and happy new year to all from Amazon.com employees around the globe."