It’s coming next week, in fact. Running from Aug. 21 through the 24th in Leipzig, Germany (with the developers conference running the 18th through the 20th), this years Games Convention will hopefully have something more to offer than what E3 did a few weeks ago.

But don’t expect to see a whole lot from the Big Three. Nintendo is opting out entirely, and Microsoft isn’t bothering with a press conference. That doesn’t mean that the show isn’t going to have anything to show, though… it’s going to be all about the third parties. Which given the boredom we encountered at E3 with the first parties may not be a bad thing at all.

Especially with more than 400 exhibitors.

I’m looking forward to seeing more of such games a Mirror’s Edge, Heavy Rain, Little Big Planet (which is rumored to be playable), and, with any luck, another look at Beyond Good & Evil 2 (pretty please, Ubisoft?). I may even have a PS3 by the time these games are released.

Mmm… tasty, tasty new Fatal Frame IV: The Mask of the Lunar Eclipse videos have surfaced, and they include not just the standard cutscene fare, but actual gameplay. The Wii-exclusive was released in Japan just a week ago, so it’s not really surprising to see videos popping up… but seeing as Tecmo and Nintendo still haven’t announced a North American release date for the title, they’re nice to see.

There are three new videos to take a look at:

The Hallway

Finding the Camera Obscura

All Alone

And if you’ve missed the previously released trailers and videos, check them out here.

I’m not a huge survival horror fanatic… I like it alright, but my thing (and most of my game library) is more in the RPG realm. Fatal Frame, however, is the one survival horror series I absolutely love. I’m also very pleased to see that the camera control looks much improved from the previous games… as in you can now control the camera. It’s definitely one I’ll be preordering… if Nintendo ever lets me know when it’s going to be available, that is.

Scans of some interesting pages from the latest issue of Japanese gaming mag Famitsu have surfaced around the net, and what they show should make some Wii owners very happy. It looks like Capcom is bringing some good old zombie-bashing fun to Nintendo’s console with a port of 2006’s XBOX 360 title, Dead Rising.

It looks to be a direct port, al la Okami and Resident Evil 4, and will be played with the Wii-mote and nunchuck. No word yet on whether or not Dead Rising’s rumor-shrouded sequel is in for the Wii treatment as well.

I love Dead Rising. It was the first game I bought when I got my 360, and there are few thing more satisfying that fending off zombies with whatever you happen to find lying around. Whether or not it will work on Wii remains to be seen… it doesn’t strike me as a game that lends itself well to the Wii-remote… then again, RE4 wasn’t half bad on the Wii, so I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.

Sony’s E3 press conference ended not so long ago, and I am very disappointed with them. Their big announcement (courtesy of Venturebeat) is something I’ve been wanting to hear for a while now… Sony has decided to drop the price of the 80GB PS3 to $399.99 (a $100 drop!) starting in September. They’re also dumping the 40GB version.

But unfortunately, it comes at, in my opinion, a very steep cost. When the price drops, the 80GB will lose all backward compatibility with PS2 games. In a way, I understand. They’re still manufacturing (and doing pretty well selling) the PS2… but if this is a sign of their future attitude toward backwards compatibility, I have to say I’m a little pissed off.

The PS2 has arguably the best library of any system on the market, and Sony seems to think no one cares. They won’t be manufacturing the PS2 forever. They’re keeping PS1 compatibility (for the time being, anyway)… why not PS2? It’s bad enough they cut hardware emulation out of the original 80GB model and lost compatibility with a number of PS2 games in doing so… now we get nothing?

Personally, I’d sooner have less storage space than see backward compatibility tossed to the curb. Bring back the 60GB PS3, dammit! Or just sell us the PS3 without an HDD and let us add one on our own. Unlike Microsoft, Sony decided to make theirs non-proprietary.

Surprising absolutely nobody, seeing as the news has been floating around all over the net for weeks now, Microsoft did indeed annouce today that the XBOX 360 Pro (20GB) is getting a $50 price cut, dropping from $349.99 to $299.99.

While suppiles last, that is. Like the 20GB model of the PS3, the 20GB XBOX 360 is being phased out. The sku will be replaced sometime in August with a new 60GB model for the Pro’s old price point of $349.99.

Prices for the Arcade and Elite models will remain firmly at $279.99 and $449.99, respectively.

To be perfectly honest, I’m not a big fan of multiple skus for the same console… especially since the primary difference is just storage space. But if you’ve been holding off on buying a 360 because the Pro was too expensive, and the Arcade’s lack of a hard drive didn’t appeal to you, now’s the time to break out the credit cards. Head over to Kotaku for Microsoft’s full press release.

Also, today’s Target ad (page 7) shows that the store is offering a $25 gift card with the purchase of the reduced-price XBOX 360 Pro. Circuit City’s ad (page 21) offers a $30 gift card with the purchase of the console and NCAA Football 09. And Best Buy’s ad (page 32) is offering the console essentially for free when you buy the advertised Samsung 40″ 1080p LCD HDTV for $1399.97.

As often as it’s in the news anymore, I’m seriously starting to wonder whether or not that’s anything left that hasn’t been patented. Sony’s been sued over patent issues with their controllers, and with their Blu-Ray technology, Microsoft got slapped with a suit over XBOX Live, and Nintendo’s had their share as well.

Well Nintendo’s got one more to deal with now, courtesy of Rockford, Illinois resident John R. Martin. GamePolitics is reporting that the complaint filed by Mr. Martin is suspected to be related to the Nintendo DS’s touchscreen technology, though no product is mentioned by name, and the patent in question was filed in August 2005… nearly a year after the release of the Nintendo DS.

Hit up GamePolitics for the official complaint and patent filing.

Don’t you just love patent trolls?

We see it all the time. A game is released, or appears somewhere on the internet, that pushes the limits of good taste, and suddenly everyone from Fox News to CNN is up in arms about how is corrupting our youth. Critics tell us all how awful it is, some gamers defend the game, some agree, some couldn’t care less, parents panic, lawsuits are launched, etc., etc., etc.

What’s ironic here is that the public outcry just makes the game that much more popular. People who have never even heard of the game, or who have heard of it but just weren’t all that interested in trying it out, now flock to it, raising traffic and/or sales figures (just look at what the Hot Coffee scandal did for sales of GTA San Andreas…).

Today’s video game controversy is brought to us by Newgrounds and Kongregate, and is called “The Torture Game 2″. It’s a free flash game (well, really more of a ragdoll physics engine). It started with a parental alert from the Parents Television Council, then MSNBC picked up the story, and then it popped up on FOX News.

Don’t get me wrong… the game is one of those tasteless little creations that are kind of fun for a while because they’re so very wrong, and then people get sick of it. And a lot of the people commenting on the game even acknowledge this. Most of these titles enjoy a brief stint as a novelty and then fade away into the archives.

It’s when mainstream news gets ahold of the story that they become something more. Is there really anyone out there who can say that they never once wanted to do something even more after their parents told them no? Had it not been for the overzealous critics and the warnings about how “dangerous” it is, the game would have made the rounds online and then quietly the attention would die off.

But thanks to outlets like MSNBC and FOX News, even more traffic is being driven to the game, gaming blogs like Game Politics are posting about the mainstream attention on the game, and traffic to game itself is up.

It’s a perfect example of the old axiom “there’s no such thing as bad publicity”.

Square Enix released a new trailer today for their Final Fantasy mash-up fighting title, Dissidia: Final Fantasy (coming eventually to a PSP near you). In addition to some new character reveals, the trailer also show 2008 as the release window for the game… at least in Japan. It’s anyone’s guess when it will make it stateside. Check out the trailer at GameTrailers.com

Does anyone actually remember “Hot Coffee” from back in 2004? You know… the “sex” mini-game (that had no nudity) in GTA San Andreas that you could only access it if you had the PC version of the game or an Action Replay for Xbox or PS2 and applied the mod? The one that had the media up in arms and resulted in a lawsuit? We all know that they settled, now the numbers are out for the settlement.

It was settled for $1.3 million in legal fees and a whole $30,000 to resolve all 2676 claims brought by people who purchased the game and were offended by the Hot Coffee content. Just to put that in persepctive, the game has sold 21.5 million units (that’s as of March 2008) making it one of the best selling games of all time.

All I can say is this:

Best. Advertising. Campaign. Ever.

Ever want to build your own MMORPG? If the time I’ve spent hanging out in the various gaming sections on Yahoo!Answers is any indication (no, I really don’t have any life at all…) quite a few people do. Well, that, and they want to know how to pirate games, but since I disagree on moral grounds with the latter, we’ll concentrate on the former.

Personally, I’ve never really had the desire to go nuts making my own game. I did it once, for a competition, and that was enough. I prefer to play them, and for my daily dose of geekiness, I’ll stick to PHP, thank you very much. But I know a lot of budding game developers out there are just dying to make their own game, so here’s something that might help them along.

MMORPG Tycoon. It’s a free download, and it’s unique in that it’s a game where the object is to… um… create a game. Think Railroad Tycoon, but even more nerdy. The player must make a popular online game (and turn a profit) by balancing in-game elements, business expenses, and technical details like servers ‘n such.

Just to be clear, now… you’re not actually creating a game per se… you’re playing a game about creating a game that people in the game play (how’s that for recursive gaming?).

If you’re interested, you can read more about it (and download a copy… it’s free!) here. You may also want to hit up the official site.