Pictures of what appears to be the Halo 3 special edition have been posted in the NeoGAF forums. While they look like they could be real, even Bungie’s own employees only got the final version of the game five days ago and it officially went gold two days ago, so having the discs printed and shipped on a large scale already seems unlikely. While the pictures are probably just display cases, there is a chance that stores are getting the game already - and if so, people will find ways to get it for themselves.

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To: zizzy
From: backflip
Subject: Collegiate online gaming woes

Ignoring the fact that this posting note format is strangely familiar, I have really had it with my university and online gaming. The way that they do things here all depends on your MAC address — if yours isn’t entered into their database, then say goodbye to your internet capabilities, and more importantly, online gaming capabilities. You see, I was recently accepted into the Xbox 360 Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare beta, and have been dying to get into the action since moving in last Saturday. However, the school’s IT department (which should more appropriately be known as the SH-IT department) seem to be less comfortable with computers than even I am. It took them a good four days to move my Xbox 360’s MAC address to their server, but the 360 still says that the MTU is not connected. Now of course, lawl was nice enough to help me get it online using my laptop as a wireless router, but altogether, I’m pretty outraged. How can a university, that makes literally hundreds upon hundreds of millions of dollars a year, pull this crap? Not to mention, it’s going to take me a full 3 1/2 hours to download the CoD4 beta. Shouldn’t this be an easy, two-minute procedure?

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According to IGN, Lair is already for sale at some stores and should be available at even more tomorrow morning. However, it’s not a mistake by a worthless employee - Sony was the one that told them to let let loose a bit early (5 days to be exact). A post at Evil Avatar reveals that Gamestop, EB Games, Circuit City and Best Buy have all been told to start selling the game.

They’re probably hoping that gamers will pick it up now and won’t get a chance to see the reviews. It isn’t getting great reviews, with IGN even giving it a 4.9 (out of 10) - and the only way Sony is going to make much is if the people buying the game don’t know how bad it is.

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Get ready for an assload of information on Silent Hill 5 to be released in the October issue of EGM. There’s going to be 9 pages of info including stuff on new characters, the PSP game Silent Hill: Orgins, and new gameplay elements that will be introduced into the series.

The game will be about Alex Shepard, a young war veteran that is recovering in the hospital, who gets word that his brother Joshua is in need of some help. When he returns home, he find that his town is covered in a strange fog, and that his family is missing.

I’m pretty excited for this game to come out. Silent Hill 5 will be releasing for the Xbox 360 and PS3. The issue of EGM that will be filled with tons of information will be out on September 4.

[Via 1Up]

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Lead designer of Civilization IV, Soren Johnson, has made a very interesting couple of posts on his blog about 8 great mistakes in game design today. His first post talks about hard-core game conventions, repetitive interface tasks, limited play variety, and…”too much stuff.” His second post talks about hidden code/data, anti-piracy paranoia, black box mechanics, and putting story in the wrong places. This isn’t really news, but it’s a worthy notice. Great read if you have the chance to skim through it.

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Looks like Manhunt 2 won’t be banned all over Europe after all. The game will have an exclusive uncut version of the game, only availble in Holland. The Dutch Ministry couldn’t ban the game at all.

Justice Minister Ernst Hirsch Ballin stated in a letter to the Parliament:

“The current law is based on the principle that every adult is considered capable of deciding for himself which games he wants to play, unless it contains illegal material.”

Anyone that is caught selling this game to a minor will be prosecuted.

[Via Next-Gen]

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Yeah, so you’ll be getting your grubby little hands on this one November 20th. Let the hype commence.

[Via TXB]

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The Wii is selling at a ridiculous rate in America. We know that. But over in the United Kingdom, it’s actually breaking records to become the fastest selling console in the history of the country, selling over 1 million units in the short timespan of 9 months, or 38 weeks. In comparison, the PS2 reached this milestone at 50 weeks, while it took the Xbox 360 60 weeks.

So basically, the Wii still prints money.

Hit the jump for the full press release.

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This is the final, official cover art for Super Mario Galaxy. November 12th can’t come soon enough.

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Marketing for Halo 3 is in full swing, and not just in America. The Korean site for Halo 3, Halo3.co.kr, has some videos showing their marketing techniques. While I can’t understand a word of Korean, and the site makes about as much sense to me as something that doesn’t make sense at all (sort of like that sentence), Youtube user tagbosa has been kind enough to shed some light on what these videos are for. Apparently, since not many people in South Korea know about Halo 3 they’re just part of promoting the game before its release. Found here, and embedded below (thanks once again to tagbosa), there are two videos so far with 4 more coming:

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There are plenty of companies partnering with Microsoft to get their content on Xbox Live Marketplace, and even more content is about to be available now that Fox has signed up to have their content delivered through Xbox Live.

They’re starting with Family Guy, and the first two seasons will be available next week, along with the direct-to-DVD movie “Family Guy Presents Stewie Griffin — The Untold Story.” More seasons will be added later, and new episodes will be available the day after they air. Family Guy just seemed like a logical first choice, but they don’t plan on stopping with that:

“I imagine we will eventually have lots of content on the service,” said Jamie McCabe, exec VP of pay-per-view, video-on-demand and electronic sell-through for 20th Century Fox

There’s no details as to when we’ll be seeing more content from them, but they have a lot of good television shows and films and so I hope we start to see more soon.

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For those of you who have been waiting for this game since it has first been announced, this is pretty great news. Otherwise, people like myself who have no desire to play anything with the words “Lord of the Rings” in it shouldn’t be that excited. Unless MMO’s are your thing. Turbine has announced today that the free trial for Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar is out now, and avaible to download at the official site. Play it for 7 days for free, and choose if you would like to buy it or not in the end. I guess it’s worth a play for MMO fans.

[Via Evil Avatar]

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The Big Daddies in BioShock must get bored and lonely constantly wandering around Rapture with their only company being a Little Sister and the occasional Splicer trying to kill them. However, one has found a way to make the time pass by quickly and have some fun too…

However, this isn’t an overly detailed rendition of the Big Daddy’s life or a perverted programmer’s idea of a joke…it’s one of the weirder of the various glitches found throughout BioShock. Because someone has way too much time on their hands, we get to see this odd “Masturbation Glitch” - some things are best left undiscovered.

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Heavenly Sword probably isn’t a very good game, but that isn’t stopping the developers from adding more fuel to the console war fire in a recent interview with CVG. In the interview, you’ll find such quotes from chief designer Nina Kristensen as:

“We have jam-packed the Blu-Ray disc absolutely full,”

“We used compression all over the place. We had to be really judicious at the end with what was going on the disc and what wasn’t.

“I think it’s one of those things - if you give us the space we’re going to fill it with stuff. It means the audio can be of a higher quality and stuff like that. It all adds to the quality of the package,”

She also mentions that the soundtrack takes up a whopping 10 gigs on the disc. Ridiculous. It really seems like the game would of been much better had they put more effort into the actual gameplay and story, rather than padding up the disc with useless 7.1 surround sound that nobody has.

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Earlier today, EA revealed the release date for their new mini-game packed multiplayer fiasco for the Nintendo Wii and DS, EA Playground. The game will be released on October 23rd here in the States and November 2nd in Europa. This brings the count of purely mini-game Wii games to a stunning … who am I kidding? It’s impossible to count that high. Promising “the ultimate party play experience,” with games like Paper Racers, in which you guide a paper airplane through “challenging Playground courses,” and Tetherball, EA Playground should bring you back to the days of middle school before binge-drinking, coke-snorting and hooker-beating. Wait, where’s the fun in that?

Press release after the jump.
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