The Infinite Ammo

courtesy ilex.org.uk

Time for another wonderful edition of the Catch Up News! Been really busy this week. Here’s some things you probably know, and hopefully some you don’t:

Some sad news first. Dungeons and Dragons co-creator Dave Arneson died today at the age of 61. I hope he and Gary Gygax (who passed away over a year ago) are getting ready for the best campaign ever in Heaven. Wait for me, guys! I’ll bring the Cheetos and Mountain Dew. Just give me like 100 years or so.

Amazon is now selling Xbox 360 Live Arcade games and MS Points in the form of download codes. For the life of me, i can’t figure out how Amazon is making money from this. They’re selling the games for the same price as Microsoft, but without the added benefit of forcing customers to pay for extra points. I expected at least a 50 cent increase or something. Ah well. If it means I don’t have to buy MS Points, I’m all for it.

The 2009 Pokemon National Championships are being held in St. Louis this year! That means I’ll be covering the event. Expect a full report–including pokemans (and people showing them to you) petulant manchildren and mudkips, cause I herd you liek them.

CheapAssGamer rolled out their new price tracking system, which should prove very handy for getting the latest deals–and you can set it so that you’ll get e-mailed whenever a chosen game drops to the price you’re looking for. Nice. Not all that much to say about it. Check it out by logging in to your CAG account (it’s free, why don’t you have one?). Also, check out the video walkthrough by CheapyD here.

Stardock rolled out Phase 3 of their Impulse digital distribution service, further solidifying themselves as a major competitor to Steam. Stardock’s “GOO’, or Game Object Obfuscation, is a new type of external DRM that, quite frankly, I’m wondering why no one else has thought to implement before. Quick overview from Gamasutra by way of Evilavatar.com:

GOO aims to provide a simple, portable way to manage a game’s license. It ties the game’s serial code directly to a user’s email address, rather than to a specific computer or distribution service account — meaning it can be packed into games sold not just through Impulse but through retail or other services.

More unusually, it can also allow gamers to legally relinquish their ownership of a game license and transfer it to another user, thus creating the potential for sanctioned used PC game sales with publishers getting a cut, an avenue not served by major retailers.”

And that’s all the best news this week! I’ll try to be better on posting daily next week, promise.

-IA