While there was never an official release date, we expected the game to land in 2011, which never happened. Then we heard the game would launch this month, and now we learn again that the game is delayed yet again. Activision announced during its financial report that there are no games to be delivered in Q1 of 2012. It looks like the soonest we will see Diablo III will be Q2 2012 – sometime between April and June. While you wait, sit back and enjoy opening cinematic from the game – which you won’t be playing any time soon:

Diablo III is still expected to launch this year, but the reality is that even that Q2 2012 launch date is unconfirmed at this point. Activision did state that two games are expected to launch from Blizzard this year. Diablo III is one of them, but the other title we aren’t sure of. It is expected to be Starcraft II, but there are other projects in the works at Blizzard as well.

[via Gamespot]

This life-size replica of the official Aperture Science Handheld Portal gun comes from Japanese replica manufacturer Neca. The official price in Japan is ¥16,000 and you can pre-order it right now for shipment this April. If you convert the price to US dollars, your very own replica of the Portal gun would cost you just a bit more than $200 – plus shipping and any extra costs for importing it.

Being a replica, it won’t open a portal for you to hop through, but it will change colors between blue or orange depending on the portal you want to pretend to open.

I don’t know if they will ship one of these to the US, so you might want to start being extra nice to any friends you have that might live in Japan, or get in touch with White Rabbit Express to see if they can order one for you. I want one of these really bad, any of you Japanese folks want to volunteer to ship me one?

[via RegHardware]

It certainly doesn’t seem like players are getting bored with the game. The stats published this week show that since launch gamers have spent over 239 million hours in the game. That works out over 332,000 months and over 27,000 years of in game time. So far, over 20 billion non-player characters have been killed.

Everything in games cost credits, according to the stats, 148 billion credits have been squandered in the game. BioWare says that it has over 1.7 million active subscribers and so far, the game servers have been available more than 99.5% of the time outside of scheduled maintenance. Another game update with more content and features is set to be released this Spring, so that should bring players back for even more.

You see, every time you shoot an alien, you lose. That’s because each alien represents a randomly selected file on your computer’s hard drive. And each successful shot deletes the chosen file. Now what sort of fun is that? Except maybe on someone else’s computer, right?

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

Zach Gage, the creator of Lose/Lose, explains the seemingly meaningless gameplay as follows: “By way of exploring what it means to kill in a video-game, Lose/Lose broaches bigger questions. As technology grows, our understanding of it diminishes, yet, at the same time, it becomes increasingly important in our lives. At what point does our virtual data become as important to us as physical possessions? If we have reached that point already, what real objects do we value less than our data? What implications does trusting something so important to something we understand so poorly have?”

So I guess the point is that you’re not supposed to kill the aliens at all. So if  you manage to ram yourself into an alien and your man dies, you’re rewarded with the best part of the game – the game deletes its own executable. Whee.

Download Lose/Lose at your own risk.

Me, I’m sticking to Uncharted 2.

[via Sensible Erection via TIGSource]

What you’re looking at here is the Conny Q3 Sports, a video game console out of China that’s designed to play like the Nintendo Wii, but for a whole lot less money. While the Wii will set you back $250 smackers, the Q3 Sports sells for just $99 (USD), including 5 games.

While the Conny Q3 does include a wireless 3D motion-sensing controller, it’s definitely not a full-fledged Wii competitor. That’s because it plays ONLY those 5 games, and that’s it. If you don’t like dancing (aka “Hot Dance”), fishing, bowling, golf or tennies you’re S.O.L. Yep, that’s right it plays, tennies. Apparently they couldn’t afford to include tennis, so they had to settle for that instead. At least it’s got Cutie Sports!

The compact orb-shaped console comes in either pink or blue, and claims to run on a 32-bit CPU that’s capable of running on just 3 AA-batteries, so the console is actually portable. Still, if you really can’t afford to buy a Wii, I say save your money until you can. I managed to dig up a video clip of the Q3 in action in case you still need any convincing. Be warned, the video is playing from a Chinese video site, so may be a little slow to load…

If you couldn’t get the video to play, you’re not missing much. I suppose if you’re really desperate, head on over to DealExtreme and plunk down your $99 bucks. Just don’t come crying to me when you’ve mastered dancing, and all you’ve got left is a match of tennies.

The CVGI-E28 projector is a low-cost LED based projector that’s got all sorts of stuff built in. Sure, you can hook up your standard video sources via VGA, HDMI, S-Video or composite inputs, but that would be boring. Under the hood of this projector is a complete multimedia system, including a built-in DVD player, and digital media player and video game system. It’s even got stereo speakers built in.

Of course, anything that’s this much of a jack-of-all-trades is bound to be a master of none. The projector cranks out an anemic 640×480 resolution, and the video game console only plays cheap knock-off version of Wii Sports called AllSports. It even comes with a pair of RF motion-sensing controller that looks like a Wii-mote that’s missing a chromosome. Given the likely DNA of the gaming system, there’s an outside shot that it’ll emulate games from classic 8-bit/16-bit systems too, but I wouldn’t bet on it.

In addition to DVDs and video games, the projector has a USB and an SD/MMC slot which let you play your digital audio, video files and view photos on screen. The region-free DVD player can also be used to play back AVI, MPEG, XVID, MP3, WMA and JPEG files too. There’s even a (very soon to be obsolete) analog TV tuner if you manage to get this thing in your hands before June 12th when those stations go dark in the U.S. Now that’s what I call “planned obsolecence”.

The all-in-one CVGI-E28 multimedia projector is available over at Chinavasion for about $350 (USD).

8-Bit FM is a new Internet radio station that plays everything from classic video game soundtracks to modern day electronic music played on old gaming hardware. The format includes everything from Earthworm Jim to Zelda and everything in between. But it’s the newly created chiptunes that really lead to discovery of new musical artists.

(Once they work out the kinks), the station (will be) online 24 x 7 x 365 with a web-based Flash player, Windows Media, WinAMP, and iTunes streams too. There’s also a live request system so I can once again listen to that damned Casino Night Zone music from Sonic the Hedgehog 2 that I couldn’t get out of my head for about 2 years of  my life. Yeah, I know the Genesis was a 16-bit system, but I think the guys at 8-Bit FM aren’t quite that literal with what they play.

Since 8-Bit FM got slammed with a ton of press this weekend, their site is struggling a bit to keep up with all of the traffic so you might have to check back if you don’t get through. Hopefully they’ll work out all the kinks so you can get your 8-, 16- or 32-bit groove on real soon. In the mean time, I guess I’ll have to settle for this:

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

[8-Bit FM via Destructoid]

The model’s head could be a tad bigger in my opinion, but overall crzisme did a great job. Want one – or four – papercraft Castle Crashers of your own?

You’re in luck, because crzisme was generous enough to post the ready-to-print templates – along with assembly instructions – that he made on his deviantart page. Because that’s what the internet is about: sharing. And Nigerian Scams.

[via FXConsole]

Created by flickr member Pixel Fantasy, this work-in-progress table offers layout diagrams for many classic joysticks, paddles, and other console input devices. As an added bonus, the chart includes many handheld gaming systems, as well as the names of the systems’ creators and their CPU information in many cases.

Click Here to check out the full resolution version of the chart to see it in waaaaaaay more detail.

Matt is not one of them. The Medic, Heavy and Spy can’t even dance badly; they just gesture and jump. But whereas Matt danced badly in more than a dozen countries, the three cartoony warriors gestured and jumped in different (game) worlds.

I’m including Matt’s video for comparison’s sake. And because it never gets old.

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

Here’s the Team Fortress 2 version courtesy of the guys over at WeGame.com:

I’m thinking of making my own version, where I travel to different parts of our house.

[via Boing Boing]