Latest News And Features

Were you hoping to import an Xbox One from the US so you can get your sports and tv show watching on as soon as possible? Well guess what, it's freaking region locked. Of course. Speaking to Digital Trends, Microsoft confirmed that the console will feature region locking, meaning you can only use your console with games from the region it was bought in. This should be no surprise, given the Xbox 360 was region locked, but sometimes it is nice to dream that a company will try to please its customers, instead of its retail and publishing partners.




Of course, Microsoft aren't the only company who region lock their consoles - while the DS was blissfully free of corporate idiocy, Nintendo's home systems and the 3DS all feature similar 'regulatory guidelines'. Sony are the only company to have a different stance - the PlayStation 3, PSP and PlayStation Vita are capable of being region locked at the publisher's discretion, although to date very few companies have tried it (Atlus being the most famous example, with their region locking of P4 Arena.) Unfortunately it is not yet known whether the PlayStation 4 will follow the same course, in an interview with Giant Bomb Sony's Shuhei Yoshida offered no comment.

Yes, Peter Molyneux and 22 Cans' experiment Godus is finally over, an impressively tidy 180 days after it began back on November 6th last year. And the winner is young Bryan Henderson - an 18 year old boy from Edinburgh, Scotland, who, as he noted to Wired, tapped the last cube just one hour after he first signed up to start playing.

So what did Bryan win? Molyneux has been firm from the beginning that the person who tapped away the last cube would have their life changed, and it certainly seems to be true. In a video uploaded to Youtube by 22Cans after Bryan agreed to share his success, Molyneux explained that the prize was tied to 22Cans' next project, the Kickstarter-funded Godus. Bryan will be the god of the gods - his ideals and morals will shape what those playing Godus can do. More importantly, Bryan will also get a percentage of the money spent on Godus - the details are as of yet not known, but anytime people spend money on the god game - whether purchasing it or on some sort of awful DLC - Bryan will get a piece.

You can watch the winner's video for Godus embedded below - it is a Youtube video however, so it is metered content. I don't know what to expect from all this, but Joaby made an excellent suggestion on Twitter - starting a Kickstarter to get Bryan to be the worst god possible. He could alter a lot more lives that way. Did you ever play Curiosity and are you looking forward to seeing how things go with Godus? Let us know in the comments below.

Junglist is back for another episode of the 5 Inch Floppy! This week Junglist is checking Dust 514 - the free to play MMO 'FPS' from CCP Games, designed to tie into their grand Space MMO EVE Online. Junglist puts his expertise to work assessing the game from both a MMO and an FPS standpoint, and though I'm not going to give it all away on you, let's just say he isn't impressed. Why? Watch the episode and find out!

You can watch the 5 Inch Floppy embedded below or in our videos library - going full screen for HD of course. And as always, you can get more of your Junglist fix by checking out the 5 Inch Floppy on Facebook and the 5 Inch Floppy Blog and following TheJunglist on Twitter!

It's Friday! And Andy Wells is back with another excellent episode of The Weekly Update! This week Andy kicks off with the recently announced Gran Turismo 6, and the new season of GT Academy, kicking off in July. Andy then chats with Trickstar Games' Director - Mike Fegan - about Trickstar's upcoming Ashes Cricket 2013, about the way Trickstar are setting themselves apart from their Cricket competitors at Big Ant Games. He also talks with Peter Siddle - the Vice Captain of the Australian Cricket Team - about the lure of video games for sports stars.

Andy wraps up this week with a look at the biggest story this week - The Xbox One, chatting with Xbox Australia's Adam Pollington about the new console and how it affects the Xbox 360. You can watch The Weekly Update embedded below or in our videos library - and don't forget to go full screen for HD!

Rockstar today announced the Special and Collector's Editions available for Grand Theft Auto V, if you'd like to get some extra goodies when the game comes out on September 17th. Both come with a fancy steelbook case and a neat looking blueprint-style map covering the Los Santos and Blaine County areas - keeping in theme with GTA V's focus on heists, as Joaby explained in his excellent First Look.

The Special Edition, currently available at EB Games for $119, also comes with a boost for Michael, Trevor and Franklin's unique special abilites, a score of additional outfits and tattoos, stunt plane trials and access to the .50 pistol, the Bullpup shotgun and the hammer - a hammer.




The Collector's Edition has yet to be announced at retail in Australia, but it is expected to be available for pre-order soon. It comes with all of the content in the Special Edition and throws in additional physical content like a cap, a money bag. Sadly though, it's a realistic style security deposit bag with a fancy key, not a big round beige bag with a $ on it. The Collector's Edition also has additional digital content in the form of unique cars, and classic GTA characters for use in Grand Theft Auto Online's character creation.

I know some people don't like pre-ordering and I feel the same way usually - the idea of missing out on actual in-game content because I didn't throw money down beforehand is pretty rude. Nevertheless, I am pretty god damned tempted to get the Collector's Edition here. How about you? Let us know in the comments below!

Relic's Company of Heroes 2 launches in just over a month, and it looks freaking outstanding - particularly in this latest trailer. A grim, sombre affair, it gives us a look into the story that will play out through the new RTS, which follows the Soviet efforts to win World War 2. CoH2's main protagonist, Lev Abramovich Isakovich, sits in a prison cell with his war diary, and recounts his severe experiences on the Eastern Front to a prison officer.

Watch the trailer embedded below or in our videos library and you'll see what I mean by sombre. As we learned in Joaby's excellent First Look at Company of Heroes 2, Relic plan on giving us a much less heroic affair than we saw in the first game - and it looks like that will shine rather brightly through the story. Are you looking forward to Company of Heroes 2? And what do you think of the graphics - I think they've done a remarkable job with the cut-scenes given the type of engine they are using. Let us know what you think in the comments below!

We didn't learn a lot at the Xbox One launch the other night. We learned that Microsoft really likes tv, and that they especially like sports, and that they are really focused on the US. Also tv. Since then though, a whole heap of new information has come out across the net, giving us a little more insight into what we will be looking at with Microsoft's next console. And now I've gathered it all, sorted the facts from the rumour, and put it all in one easy to read place. So read on!

The games console has always been a proponent of convenience and safety at the cost of freedom, so it makes sense that the Xbox One would bring us to the analogous Big Brother moment we should have known was an inevitability.

Gamers eschewed the complexities of the PC platform - one where the player needs to maintain hardware, update drivers and try not to surf shady porn sites lest malware cost them precious frames - in favour of popping a cartridge/cd in a drive and playing immediately.

Developers avoided the exposed PC platform - where consumers stole games with abandon, modded them into games of their own design and could dig through backwards engineered code to find all of their secrets - in favour of the safety of a protected system (or at least the illusion of it).

Every year Activision unveils a new Call of Duty, and every year a vocal portion of the games community cries out against it, contemptuously deriding its familiarity, its questionable morality and its self-seriousness all at once.

I'm not a member of this group of detractors. Where they see icky choices I see a mirror held up to society. Where they see grimness I see self-respect. And where they see the same game over and over I see innovations that either lead the industry in new directions or at least hone ideas to a sharp edge.

Yes, I stayed up so you wouldn't have to and the next generation console from Microsoft - the Xbox One - has been revealed. In an event lasting 2 hours, Microsoft showed off the new console, its new features and a bunch of the new games coming to the device when it launches later this year. Read on for all the highlights from the event!


The new Xbox One. Microsoft were certain to actually show the console.