13w ago - Devolver Digital Chief Financial Officer Fork Parker has posted up a video today announcing that Hotline Miami will be assaulting PS3 and PS Vita consoles this Spring.

Below are the details, to quote: The teams at Dennaton Games and Devolver Digital are thrilled to announce that the pixilated brutality and neon hyper-violence of Hotline Miami will be testing the will of gamers on PlayStation 3 and PS Vita this spring.

Through unknown black magic and dark arts, our friends at Abstraction Games are crafting an absolutely perfect version of Hotline Miami for both PlayStation 3 and PS Vita and are taking great care to take advantage of both systems nifty features.

For those unfamiliar with Hotline Miami, it's the debut commercial effort of prolific indie developer Jonatan Soderstrom and artist/designer Dennis Wedin. Hotline Miami almost immediately garnered praise from both gamers and press for its distinct visual presentation, driving soundtrack, breakneck action, and schizophrenic narrative that leaves players with more questions than answers.

Since then the game has won awards from IGN, Destructoid, Machinima, and Indiecade culminating with a nomination for the Independent Games Festival's Grand Prize.

198w ago - According to CBS11tv.com (linked above), a southern California college student has been arrested on allegations of bypassing the DMCA by installing modchips into consoles.

The federal charges stated that he illegally modified video game consoles to enable the machines to play pirated video games, to quote:

The U.S. Attorney's Office says 27-year-old Matthew Crippen was released Monday night after posting $5,000 bond.

The California State University, Fullerton student who lives in Anaheim is accused of modifying Xbox, PlayStation and Wii consoles in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents got a tip from the Entertainment Software Association and searched Crippen's home in May. He was indicted on two counts by a federal grand jury. Crippen faces 10 years in prison if convicted and is scheduled for arraignment on Aug. 10.

260w ago - Analyst Opinion - Floating Point Operations Per Second - FLOPS - one of the more obscure processor performance indicators, and one of the oldest ones.

Over time, it has been modified with prefixes such as M (mega), G (giga), T (tera) and will soon get a P (peta). "Tera" describes a million millions - one trillion (1012) - which is a whole lot of anything whether it is cycles (Hertz), bytes, dollars, or FLOPS.

Recently I was asked how many TFLOPS are in all the game consoles shipped to date. There are two answers to that question. You can look at it from the perspective of all the game consoles built and you can look at this question with specific consoles in mind.

Let's look at the combined TFLOPS rating of all game consoles, which actually provides two answers as well. If you count central processor FLOPS then you have one answer and if you count the FLOPS potential of the GPU and add it to the CPU's FLOPS, then you have the second answer.

This second version is controversial since the FLOPS of the GPU aren't used in computations and some therefore claim that the GPU should not be counted as it simply represents a theoretical number. Others argue that GPUs are used in computation - the computation of shader operations. Both sides, however, agree that there isn't...

289w ago - Are you a Canadian who was looking to purchase a new 40 GB PS3, but are little tight in the wallet from days spent on beer or women? Well look no further, because Dell is offering the console for $399.99. You must be reading this thinking "Where's the deal, isn't that the original price?"

Dell is offering it at that price, but it also includes Spider-Man 3 on Blu-Ray, Ratchet and Clank Future: Tools of Destruction (check out our review) and a Startech 6 ft. HDMI cable. Original price, yes, but it does come with the free game, movie, and cable- and you can't beat that.

Link: Dell PS3 Bundle

Forming the perfect Rock Band can be very difficult to say the least, but Electronic Arts is doing their part to make it easier on your wallet by offering the guitar, drums, and microphone bundle at $169.99. While that deal is nice, we have something even better.

Newegg.com will save you ten dollars more, as they have the Xbox 360 and PS3 bundles for just $159.99. Be aware that Rock Band doesn't come out for another couple weeks, but you can preorder it, and so far this is the best price we have seen for the bundle.

Link: Newegg Rockband

291w ago - Gamasutra's weekly column, "Saling The World", covers the top five sellers for every available platform in the United States, Japan, and Europe, providing an important update of sales patterns worldwide.

This week's charts, with data taken from October 25th, 2007, show Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools of Destruction leading in PS3 software popularity in North America, while Pro Evolution Soccer 2008 dominates multiple platforms in the UK. Data for "Saling The World" comes courtesy of the public sales information on Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk, and Amazon.co.jp, with sales split out for each platform and territory, and pre-orders disregarded.

This results in a true sense of what games are selling worldwide on the real-time updated service, as follows:

Nintendo Wii
North America: 1. Wii Play (Nintendo), 2. Carnival Games (Global Star), 3. Dance Dance Revolution: Hottest Party (Konami), 4. Zack & Wiki: Quest for Barbaros' Treasure (Capcom), 5. Mario Party 8 (Nintendo).

Japan: 1. Ghost Squad (Sega), 2. Gintama: Banji Oku Chuubu (Bandai), 3. Dance Dance Revolution Hottest Party (Konami), 4. Takarajima Z: Barbaros no Hihou (Capcom), 5. Dragon Quest Swords: Kamen no Joou to Kagami no Tou (Square Enix).

UK: 1. Carnival Funfair Games (2K Games), 2. Metroid Prime 3: Corruption...