Proving once again that they are in touch with their fans the leagues with which they have exclusivity agreements, EA Sports has announced that they will have a roster patch ready to go before Madden 09 releases on Tuesday adding Brett Favre as the starting QB for the New York Jets. Although the game will ship with packaging showing Favre in his Packer green and gold, EA will provide a free downloadable alternate cover (limited edition, people!) on their website for the new Favre haters in Wisconsin and the new Favre converts in the NY metropolitan area.

It’s all explained in the MTV Multiplayer Blog, and you can find some nifty new pics on EASports.com of Brett in his new green and white duds.

News is beginning to leak that Microsoft will be the first to do it with the Xbox 360… okay, the Arcade version, but still. It plays 360 games… it’s still “next-gen” even though it doesn’t have a hard drive people. Show a little love.

Anyway, Wired.com’s Game|Life blog found the info through Ars Technica, apparently “Citing the same anonymous tipster who told them that the 20 GB model of the Xbox would be cleared out to make room for the 60 GB system.” Hmm…

The price drop is “allegedly” planned for September, for all of you too lazy to read the entire article, and says that the Arcade will be priced at $199, with the 60GB Pro at $299 and the Elite at $399. No word yet on what any remaining 20GB models will go for (and let me tell you, they just sent out a crapload of those things when the price went down, so a month ain’t exactly a lot of time to clean house). Tell all your friends who were waiting for the Netflix deal or hoping and praying that FFXIII was coming to the 360 that they can soon put their hard-earned cash where it belongs - in MS’s fat ass pockets.

Prepare for havoc, Sony fans - your games are about to start coming with a “made in Bangalore” tag. According to sources Sony is attempting to make India its new hub for game development in an effort to further improve the quality of the games… oh, wait, no, they are just trying to save on development costs. Sorry, mistook this for a move that was actually thinking of the consumer for a change. Don’t know what’s gotten into me.

Anyway, as someone intimately familiar with the concept of outsourcing work to India, I can’t help but shudder at hearing this. Development in India has its uses - web site design, HTML, e-commerce - well-understood, “done this a million times before” kinds of things. But game development is as far from being a repeatable, standard process as it gets - unless, of course, you are trying to make yet another Madden clone. It requires creative thinking, extremely hardcore development skills, and most of all, long-term commitment and dedication - none of them things that Indian development houses are known for. So expect Sony to fumble, stumble, and come back with a bloody nose and a little less cash in the bank.

Well, here we go again. According to Yahoo, the Thai police reports that the youth who stabbed and killed a taxi driven in an attempt to find out whether hijacking a cab was really as easy as GTA IV makes it look “showed no signs of mental problems”. Umm, HELLO? Anyone in there? You arrested someone for killing a man based on what he saw in a video game, and yet you could not detect any signs of MENTAL PROBLEMS? Exactly what kind of signs where you looking for, DETECTIVE? Big red flashing neon ones? Or did you expect him to just come out and say “yes, officer, I have a mental problem” so that the message could make its way through your thick head? Perhaps you should beat his knees with a 2 by 4 until he admits it.

Police idiocy aside, maybe games like GTA IV need to come with copy-protection in the form of an IQ test. Clearly, COMMON SENSE, and a BASIC CONCEPT OF RIGHT AND WRONG are no longer sufficient in this day and age to deter people from committing hideous crimes.

Remember buying Red Steel for the Wii? So many of us did. I even bought mine during the hours I was standing in line waiting for the system to be released (it was among the handful of titles released prior to November 19, which made plenty of sense…), and was quite excited to try it out.

Then came the somewhat shoddy swordplay, the repetitive “go to the bar, talk to someone, find a job, kill some people, go back to the bar” middle section of the story, and the ending. Did anyone see where the ending went? I think it fell off a cliff somewhere between the climax and the resolution. It just stopped! And there wasn’t even any Journey playing to soften the blow!

Well, now there’s word that Ubisoft is looking to make Red Steel 2 a bit more like a good game. As 1up.com reports, the sequel will utilize Nintendo’s latest and greatest weapon of minimal distraction, the Wii MotionPlus controller add-on. The development team is hoping that the 1:1 ratio of sucker gamer swinging Wiimote to on-screen sword slicing will give the mechanics a much-needed overhaul, and the rest of us are looking for more than a generic type shooter with the same three bad guys repeated through every stage of the damn game (and please, for heaven’s sake, think of a better insult than “stupid gaijin!” being yelled over and over and over ad nauseum).

No word yet on when it will be out, but the game’s basically been announced since the first one was released, and Ubisoft kinda loves delaying the shit out of their products (I’m looking at you, Sam Fisher), so who knows when we’ll see this newfangled katana-wielding action on our Wiis.

You gotta love the magic of TV. As it is well known, the camera can add 20 pounds, but apparently it can also make a crappy-ass E3 look like a pretty decent one. Watching evening re-runs of E3 coverage on G4, you’d never know that this year’s show was somehow, well, a piece of crap. Thankfully, we have our own Brad Hilderbrand to report the real truth back to us. Check out his gritty account of what this year’s E3 was REALLY like here.

I hate fishing. The only time I had any luck fishing, I was four. I caught a catfish in a lake in Grand Rapids, MI. I took it back to the hotel and put it in the bathtub and named him Charlie. So, yeah, admittedly, I’m no fisherwoman. Still. I love fishing games. Oh, yes, you might already know that I love Zelda, so Nintendo gets big hugs and kisses from me for Ocarina of Time and Twilight Princess, two awesome Zelda games that also featured some kick ass fishing.

However, Nintendo gets a big kick in the crotch from me for putting Cocoto Fishing Master out on Wii Ware. They knew I’d download it. It has a cute little demon who fishes. How could I resist? Well, I didn’t resist, and I really should have. Cocoto Fishing Master is so unfreakingplayable it should be called Cocoto Throw-the-wii-mote-at-the-wall Master. What in the hell was I thinking? I know I was thinking “hey, this’ll be fun!…even if it kind of sucks, it’ll be kind of fun.” Fuck you, Cocoto Fish you aren’t even good enough to suck! I demand a half-way or even quarter-way playable fishing game with cute demons…or toads…or bumble bees…whatever, I just want it cute and kind of sucky or better.

Analog sticks, that is. What did you think I mean, you sick bastards? Anyway, Texas-based company Anascape Ltd. recently won its ongoing lawsuit with Nintendo, which was based on the rights of the analog stick used on the game company’s GameCube, Wavebird, and Wii Classic controllers. As 1up.com reports, all of those may soon be pulled off the shelves. And yes, that even includes the few dozen GameCubes that are still taking up space in local retail stores because - duh! - the system comes with a controller.

So what does this mean for Nintendo? Well, to be honest, probably not a whole heck of a lot in the immediate future. The Cube is dead, so anyone who wanted it most likely has one by now. A Link to the Past and Super Metroid have come out on the Virtual Console, and Smash Bros. Brawl has already been released on the Wii, meaning most fans have already gotten their hands on a Classic Controller or Wavebird. Still, over the long run, it will obviously put a damper on Nintendo’s attachment sales, and newer players will be forced to use some newfangled, yet-to-be-designed controller in order to avoid being pwned in Mario Kart.

Anascape is hoping to ban the sales of the controllers starting tomorrow, July 23, but that is most likely going to be postponed due to the (obvious) appeal from Nintendo. Strange dealings in the gaming world today, that’s for sure.

Latest Update

Direct info from the reporter who penned the Bloomberg news article about the case, Susan Decker: She says that the rulings for appeals court cases generally take at least 9 months to reach, with many taking upwards of a year to 18 months. That’s good news for Wii fans, as that means the ban will be delayed, but it’s not great news for Nintendo, since they’ll be fighting in court for a long time to come. Of course, the option of a settlement is out there, as Microsoft already did with Anascape, but the way Nintendo has been talking about this issue, I think they’re in it for the long haul.

Nintendo’s Cammie Dunaway - aka the overly cheerful bad snowboarder from the E3 press conference - recently spoke with Wired.com’s Game|Life blog, and more or less held her own against a brutal fanboy whipping from author Chris Kohler. He voiced many of the concerns that have no doubt been clogging up Nintendo message boards all across the net, asking where the hardcore (read: “real”) games were, how the Wii MotionPlus will be used by third parties, and what the deal is with the lack of space for WiiWare and Virtual Console games. Her answers were pretty standard, press-friendly fare, and it will probably still leave you upset at the big N for not bringing Zelda and Mario to LA with them, but at least you can get a little more insight.

Thanks to 1up.com for the pic.

[edit] Seems Wired.com is on a Nintendo-bashing rampage all over their blog. Can you really blame them? Nate Ralph makes some very valid points in his rant about the casual-vs.-core debate. Check it out while you’re over at Wired.

After featuring mostly casual games for everyone at this year’s E3 press conference, Nintendo has released trailers for some of its previously announced titles online. Over at Nintendo’s E3 hub you can check out the videos for Mario Super Sluggers, Wario: Shake It!, and Kirby Superstar Ultra, among others that Nintendo didn’t think people wanted to see during the presentation. Of course, most of this was probably available on the floor at E3, but since we underprivileged folk can’t be there to check it all out, it would’ve been nice if the press conference, which was being broadcast on G4 and all over the place online, featured some stuff that the hardcore gamers actually wanted to see (as much as you can call Sluggers and Wario hardcore, I suppose. At least it’s not another Bratz game).

So head on over to get your fill of the newest Nintendo goodies before they release in the coming months.