While the rest of America is resting on and celebrating the 4^th of July weekend, Steam is hard at work, putting up insane deals of plenty of both old and new games. This is the last day of the site’s Summer Sale, so get cracking if you want some quality games in your play list.

Major notables from today’s sale includes Left 4 Dead 2 for $10.19, Grand Theft Auto IV for $4.99 (whoa!), Red Faction Guerilla for $5, and Borderlands for $10.19.

Remember: this sale is valid for today only. Enjoy.

What’s with all the crazy trailers recently? Upcoming downloadable title Ilomilo now has a cute little trailer out that shows off a bit of the game.

More interesting is the fact that developer Southend Interactive is giving away tracks from the game’s soundtrack on its website. Grab them while they are hot.

2K Games wants you to think of hockey this summer, as the company is sending an NHL 2K11 recreational vehicle on the road around United States and Canada for fans to get a sneak peek at the game.

The tour started at E3 a few weeks ago in LA and will slowly make its way to Chicago and New York, among other notable destinations.

More details can be found on 2K’s website. The full schedule can be found below.

Continue Reading

Warm up your skateboards, gentlemen, for more Skate 3 DLC is upon us! The “Hawaiian Dream” will soon be making its way to your console, offering one new skater (Danny Way) in a new locale (Hawaii, as if the title didn’t give it away) and 24 new challenges.

The DLC will be available on PS3 and Xbox 360 on Tuesday. Check out the trailer below.

The last five years has seen a ton of Idolmaster games unleashed on the masses, but it looks like the franchise has finally built up the courage to head to second base – Idolmaster 2 is making its way to Xbox 360 next year.

This time around, players will be charged with the task of turning three idols into national hits. Characters from past games will make their appearances. Not much else is known at the moment, but if you can digest bubblegum J-pop, then by all means head on over to the game’s official website for the first trailer.

3D: the hot buzzword right now in Hollywood and, quite unsurprisingly, in videogame studios. In an interview with IGN at a South Korean media event, production director Chris Sagaty let slip that StarCraft II will be getting post-launch 3D support via a patch for “NVIDIA cards and screens that support it.”

In a related bit of news, NVIDIA is working on “optimizing [3D tech] for all systems”, so that the in-your-face support would work on as many computers as possible.

The most recent highlight of 3D was Metro 2033 which shipped with native support for the system.

An awesome new inFamous 2 gameplay trailer is now available for watching. Simply awesome.

Announcing his departure via Twitter and a blog post, Dan Teasdale, senior designer at Harmonix and lead designer on Rock Band 3, has left the studio and taken a position at Twisted Pixel Games, which is known for Splosion Man, The Maw and the upcoming Comic Jumper.

Teasdale notes that while Rock Band 3 has not been released yet, it is “design complete and on the final path to 0 bugs, GM and distribution.”

"I want to be able to help drive the vision and direction of a game," writes Teasdale. "But at the same time be hands on and physically implement and iterate on the low level of making games in a more substantial way than time affords me when working as a lead on multi-hundred person titles."

He adds that this is nothing that can be done easily on a AAA title with more than 200 people working on it. Teasdale will now work on a “ridiculously cool new project” which will have a “close knit superteam”.

Rock Band 3 is set for release this holiday for PS3, Xbox 360, Wii and DS.

Gloom and doom for the industry continues, this time directed at the Wii. Wedbush analyst Michael Pachter noted that the Wii’s declining software sales is a bad sign for the system and its publisher support.

"Wii software sales were down 19% year-over-year and DS software sales were down 13%, while PS3 software sales were up 58% and Xbox 360 software sales were up 29%. We think this is remarkable, given growth in the Wii hardware installed base of 44% and growth in the DS installed base of 33% over the last 12 months.

In contrast, the PS3 installed base is up 60% and the Xbox 360 installed base is up 32% over the same period. Software sales growth mirrored hardware unit growth for both the PS3 and Xbox 360, but sorely lagged hardware unit growth for the Wii and DS.

In our view, this indicates that Nintendo’s customers either are not finding enough software to satisfy their needs, or need less software than the typical Sony or Microsoft customer."

Pachter added that publishers seem to be “reluctant to support the console as broadly as the other two.”

Valve was never content with just releasing Team Fortress 2. Since the game has launched, the studio has released tons of updates and content for the game, building on its lore. Take, for example, this Engineer comic, which hints at two major updates to the Engineer class coming soon to the game.

A metal called Australium is the first addition. It has some special properties and a golden hue. The second addition will be a life-extender machine, which, as you can guess by now, extends life.

The above has been confirmed through this video, which shows the use of the Australium wrench. This teaser video also shows some other possible goodies due for the update as well.

The HD remake mania continues as fans want to see a Ratchet & Clank HD collection, an idea to which Insomniac is favorable. However, there’s one stipulation: they won’t be the ones developing it.

In a Twitter message, the studio stated: “We won’t make it, but we’d support Sony if they decided to do it.”

Sony is currently working on a HD collection of Sly Cooper which is being developed at Sanzaru Games rather than the original team at Sucker Punch. The God of War HD collection was also developed by an outside studio.

Check out these awesome screenshots!

[View with PicLens]

PC gamers rejoice: BioWare’s Daniel Erickson has said Star Wars: The Old Republic is not coming to consoles, noting that the interface for PC is “made for games” and that the possibility had not been discussed.

“I have no idea if it’s possible,” Erickson said of a console version. “I’d have to ask our tech director.

“I can tell you that it’s not anything that we’ve even discussed. There is nobody anywhere in Bioware laying the groundwork for that because we have a very large complicated game to ship first.”

Finally, he notes that PC is the “natural place to be” and that any game at BioWare uses the PC as the lead platform.

Star Wars: The Old Republic is due for release next spring.

This new Fable 3 video shows a fight against a pack of wolves who are looking to rip the throat off a little girl. The hero changes swiftly between sword, gun and magic combat – the same as in the previous game. This results in some sweet, sweet massacre.

Fable 3 is due out on PC and Xbox 360 on October 26.

Red Dead Redemption may have been a veritable blockbuster hit, but other big hitters failed to make an impact at retail. Wedbush analyst Michael Pachter has noted that several high-profile games all failed to hit 200,000 in unit sales.

These titles include Alan Wake, Blur, Prince of Persia, Lost Planet 2, Skate and movie-game adaptations Shrek and Iron Man 2. Additionally, UFC 2010 saw sales down 60% compared to its predecessor; even Super Mario Galaxy 2 performed “well below” the first game.

This is scary in the fact that these games have cost millions of dollars to make and that they won’t be making almost any profit. Pachter notes that these results “reinforce the notion that the video game industry is in a state of persistent secular decline.”