This is kind of a handy peripheral for those of you who can't stand clutter. The AirG simply slips over your Wiimote and allows you to play the hell out of some air guitar right in the privacy of your own living room. Two of them come with the Wii version of PopStar Guitar, which runs $60 and will be available this November.

Of course, you may think you look kind of stupid strumming a Wiimote, and if so this is not the peripheral for you. Kind of looks a bit like something you might be able to take home with you after a visit to Babeland, yes?

[Via Gizmodo - Thanks, Adam]

Cliff Bleszinski has no intention of farming out Gears of War. In an interview with Develop magazine at a recent press event, the designer spoke against the multi-developer approach to producing a series of games. 

"...sometimes I feel a franchise loses something when it’s shifted off to another shop. You get the primary studio that really understands about the franchise, and sometimes the other studio that takes it over can do well, but there’s something lost in translation, like the game’s soul has gone."

While I'll certainly agree that you run the risk of damaging your property by farming it out to other teams, there's an industry consideration at work here that I don't think can be ignored. I like to complain about the Madden approach of releasing a new game every year that's almost identical to the previous iteration, but that behavior is here to stay because people keep buying them and lots of money can be made from milking a popular franchise.

The approach of leapfrogging development cycles by using two seperate development houses could be helping to find a common ground between the consumer who desired quiality and the company that wants to cash in. It allows for satisfying the investor's bottom line as well as the designer's creative freedom by allowing a group to work a full two years on a title.

To use the Call of Duty example, Treyarch might make a sub-par game for the series in the interim period while Infinity Ward works on their next contribution. That's absolutely possible. On the other hand, if Infinity Ward were expected to pump out a game every year, there's a chance that all games in the series would quickly become derivative and mediocre.

Do you think that games like Call of Duty will suffer in the long-term from the design approach that Activision is taking, or will it help to ensure its longevity?

[Via CVG]

No, the partially naked guy in the background of that photo has absolutely nothing to do with the newly announced Mirror's Edge Remix ALBUM. Well, except that he looks like the type that might buy it and dance to it alone in his tiny apartment. Naked.

Slated to release this November 11th, the album will be released digitally and features multiple remixes of the game's title track, "Still Alive", from popular dance artists such as Benny Benassi, Junkie XL and Paul Van Dyk. The original version as performed by Lisa Miskovsky is also included in the album.

If you preorder the game at any Best Buy location, you will also receive a free music disc with the original version of "Still Alive" on it and an exclusive Benny Benassi remix. Those 2 free songs may be enough for you, but if you're a beats hound and can't get enough of the sweet remixin', you'll want to keep an eye out for the Remix ALBUM.

When watching this trailer for Disaster: Day of Crisis for the first time, my initial thought was that they'd hired some Don LaFontaine sound-alike to do an overly dramatic narration. Then, it becomes obvious that it's actually in-game voiceover and I instantly became unable to take it seriously. And who the hell comes up with the names for these terrorist organizations, anyway?

I'm praying that the laughter that's erupting from my belly is intentional. We still need more titles on the Wii that cater to the core audience and this could be pretty fun to play. But if they intend for this to be a hard drama with nail-biting moments, I sure hope the final product barely resembles what we're seeing here. It's just goofy.

And there's still no release date for this one, but this does suggest that things are still moving forward. What do you think of the trailer?

Seriously ... of course you do. Free stuff is awesome, and free Silent Hill stuff is even awesomer. While the full official soundtrack for the game is not out yet, you can hit up this link to Amazon.com for their bonus tracks, which include the vocal song from the opening portion of the game, Mary Elizabeth McGlynn's “The Sacred Line”, as well as "Witchcraft" and "Cold Blood".

Composer Akira Yamaoka says that the full soundtrack should be available shortly after the release of the game, which came out on September 30th. Having blasted through that (check out our Destructoid review later today) and still hungry for more, I hope to see it pop up on Konamistyle very soon.

[Via OriginalSoundVersion -- Thanks, Jayson]

Here's good news for movie trivia buffs like me who enjoy shamelessly humiliating their friends and loved ones. A second Scene It? title has been announced by Microsoft today. Subtitled, Box Office Smash, the game will feature new puzzle types and content from over 250 movies, including audio, video clips and still images. It will also be the first game released that takes advantage of Avatars, the Microsoft response to Nintendo's lovable Mii characters.

Just as with the first Scene It?, the game will come bundled with four of the "big button" controllers designed to make it accessible to gamers and their non-gaming friends alike. If you've already purchased the previous version (which you can find at many Target locations for a mere $15 on clearance), the standalone disc will be available for $39.

One thing that's interesting to note about this is the release date. Scene It? Box Office Smash is scheduled for release on October 28th. Now, we've been hearing for a while that the New Xbox Experience with updated dashboard and Avatar functionality wouldn't be arriving until sometime in November. So, the question becomes, will Scene It? require a patch after the fall update to enable the function or are we going to be getting the fall update a bit earlier than we'd been told?

Check out the gallery for some screens bearing a little bit of trivia.

[Via 1Up]

I have to admit the whole DSi camera thing doesn't sound that appealing, at least not at first. I do carry my DS a lot, but I'd rather take my camera along in another pocket than take a poopy photo with something comparable to cell phone camera quality. The only game we knew the DSi would be camera-compatible with was downloadable versions of Brain Age, so what else would it be used for?

Thanks to the internet matlocking skills of Spencer over at Siliconera, there may just be another possibility to chew on -- that the camera will be used to scan trading cards. The picture above is from Japan's trademark database, showing Nintendo has trademarked "DSSCAN". From the source article:

DSScan was registered on August 19 not as the name of a game, but under the broad category of game equipment. Lots of things fall under this category including trading cards and board game equipment. Paper Pokemon cards are also grouped into this category.

So .. kind of like what the e-Reader did, but as a part of the internal hardware? It could open up some cool possibilities. I'm still not feeling too positive about the idea of not being able to play new DSi import software, but this could definitely be neat, especially if it was used for more than just Pokemon cards.

[Thanks, Adam]