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Gaming guide creator Prima Games is shutting down
Prima Games, the company that's been creating physical video game strategy guides for the past 28 years, is shutting down according to Publisher's Lunch. Prima's publisher DK's CEO Ian Hudson sent out an internal memo saying it was an "extremely difficult decision" and one that was made due to a "significant decline" in the video game guide sector per reports by Publishers Weekly. No more guides will be coming out of Prima Games, and its doors will officially close this coming spring.
Dead Island iOS app tells you what you're doing in Dead Island on a smaller screen
The official Dead Island map app turns your iOS device into a veritable Wii U, offering details about every mile of Banoi Island, including the locations of more than 150 items and an objective checkbox. The app will launch September 6 for $2.99 on iTunes. The app doesn't appear to connect with individual Dead Island games, meaning objectives and items will have to be checked off manually. We can't help but assume that Dead Island will keep track of our objectives and items for us, though perhaps not in such a neat-and-tidy handheld manner. The app also emits Dead Island music to immerse users "in the mysterious and dangerous atmosphere of the game," which could be a bit redundant if used while playing the actual game. Personally, we can't wait to take our Dead Island map apps on the go, pumpin' out zombie music and staring at our objectives in the office, on the bus and at funerals everywhere, just to get our money's worth.
SteelSeries and Blizzard team up for a dual anniversary celebration
Blizzard's been celebrating its 20th anniversary, and now SteelSeries is joining in on the fun! SteelSeries and Blizzard have teamed up for a massive giveaway in celebration of Blizzard's 20th year and SteelSeries' 10th. The best part? The prize packages are customized by you when you enter the drawing! Two grand prize winners will also take home an MSI GX780 notebook, as well as a choice of World of Warcraft or Diablo 3 gaming peripherals. Blizzard Entertainment It's a big year for anniversaries as SteelSeries celebrates ten and Blizzard Entertainment blows out the candles on twenty years of gaming. What better way for both companies to show their appreciation than with a giveaway of epic proportions? From August 30 to September 7, SteelSeries will host a Dual Anniversary Celebration where gamers can enter to win a fully customized prize pack of SteelSeries peripherals and Blizzard licensed products from J!NX, Cryptozoic Entertainment, and BradyGames. Best of all, two Grand Prize winners will each take home an MSI GX780 notebook with their choice of Diablo III or World of Warcraft gaming peripherals! Be sure to visit the official SteelSeries website for more goodies throughout the ten-day celebration. Start the party now. source Be sure to put together your entry on the official contest site!
SteelSeries and friends want to send you to BlizzCon
They've done it before, and they want to do it again. SteelSeries, J!NX, BradyGames and Cryptozoic Entertainment are looking to send lucky contest winners to this year's BlizzCon. In addition to the grand prize, there will be 20 winners of other prize packages including murloc plush toys, J!nx gift certificates and more listed here. Head over to the BlizzCon Sweepstakes page and see if you're eligible, then enter by Oct. 2. It's so simple even I could do it. And please don't forget the official WoW Magazine's contest, ending this Thursday, Sept. 30. Might as well try them both, right?
Call of Duty: Black Ops guide to include 'Nazi Zombie Coverage'
The thing about a Nazi zombie is that it tends not to re-die until it's been utterly obliterated. So, it's totally plausible that the Nazi Zombie scourge continued to pester ill-fortified strongholds long after World War II. Considering Treyarch's commitment to historical entertainment, the developer could definitely get away with reintroducing the evilest undead into the Cold War setting of Call of Duty: Black Ops -- and BradyGames' strategy guide could devote a chapter to surviving the persistent threat. In fact, product descriptions for the guide on GameStop and Play-Asia highlight "Nazi Zombie Coverage" (in addition to the typical tactical advice; e.g., "Did you know? Aiming down the sights will increase the accuracy of your shot"). Presumably, the Nazi Zombie coverage will detail the "Nazi Zombies" mode in Black Ops, which has yet to be announced by Treyarch. Nazi Zombies was first hinted at for Black Ops last month by a retail listing. The popular minigame was introduced in World at War and later became a standalone iPhone game. "Zombies in World at War was a huge success and we were blown away by how well the fans received it," Treyarch producer Dan Bunting told us in a May interview. Update: According to statements made by Treyarch studio head Mark Lamia in the new issue of Edge (via CVG), the developer "continued to evolve [Nazi Zombies] after World At War. There was a dialogue going on with some of our hardcore community, and we were able to interact with the community and evolve -- we did that with our zombie lore." Should we be on the lookout for Soviet Zombies now? Treyarch still isn't saying for sure; though community manager Josh Olin recently tweeted: "If Zombies have anything to do with our top-secret Co-Op mode, then it's a safe bet there will be a trailer for it eventually ..."
Halo: Reach strategy guide gets six covers for six Spartans
If you're planning to pick up Halo: Reach next week, you may also be preparing for the inevitable question, "Would you like the strategy guide with that?" If so, you'd better be prepared to say "no" up to six times. BradyGames has revealed six different covers -- one for each of the Spartans in Noble Team -- for its $35 hardcover limited edition Halo: Reach strategy guide. For those of you who were planning to purchase the guide, prepare to be surprised. The covers will be hidden behind the guide's dust jacket, so you won't know which Spartan you got until you unwrap the book. We've been thinking about it for a while, and we're really hoping we get Donnie. Er, Kat. We meant Kat. %Gallery-101799%
BlizzCon Sweepstakes ticking down to deadline
Just in case you aren't satisfied with one chance at winning tickets to BlizzCon, those guys from SteelSeries have teamed up with J!NX, BradyGames, Upper Deck, and Swag Dog to bring you the BlizzCon Sweepstakes. That's like an all-star crew of geek and gamer gear companies forming some sort of super team just for you. That's right, these guys want you to go to BlizzCon, too, and all you have to do is hop on over to their sweepstakes site, fill up a form, and you're in. It's that easy. First prize is a flight for two to Anaheim, 2 nights at a hotel, 2 passes to BlizzCon, and yes, even $300 in pocket money (so you can buy more of swag, I'd imagine).Here's where the all-star crew comes in -- if you don't get to win the Grand Prize, five lucky chaps will go away with a SteelSeries World of Warcraft mouse, a $50 J!NX Gift Certificate, and the World of Warcraft Atlas from BradyGames. The rest of the lucky guys will get $25 Swag Dog Gift Certificates, Fields of Honor booster packs, World of Warcraft-themed mousepads, and a bunch of other cool stuff. Not a bad deal at all for just filling out a form. Of course, as usual, it's only open to residents of the United States and Canada (excluding Alaska, Hawaii, and Quebec). The contest runs until July 31, so feel free to dilly-dally around WoW.com before you submit your entry.Don't like that you can't enter the contest because of where you live? We don't like it either! Unfortunately there is nothing we can do about it right now. But you can! In the US contact your Congressperson, in Quebec contact the Quebec government, and in the UK contact your member of Parliament. Tell them you want things changed so contests can be open for everyone.
BlizzCon: Arena Junkies ticket giveaway, Tokyopop booth preview
Along with most of the Blizzard fansites, Arena Junkies is also conducting a BlizzCon ticket giveaway, and they want you to design your own Arena. Basically, you come up with an idea, supplement it with whatever drawings or pictures you'd like, and then submit it in their forum thread by June 5th. After that, they'll have the community choose the top three, and each of those winners will be on their way to Anaheim to visit Blizzard's big event. We bet there'll be some awesome ideas coming out of the contest by the end -- Arena players are nothing if not creative.And in other BlizzCon news, Tokyopop has announced that they'll have a booth at the convention (not a huge surprise -- we'll expect to see most of Blizzard's licensing partners in attendance), and they've got a lot of fun stuff planned: artist Fernando Heinz Furukawa of Warcraft Legends and Starcraft: Ghost Academy will be there and drawing pictures for attendees, and there'll be various art on display and new books to be sold. Plus, they'll have a Blood Elf standup for pictures, and they even leak a little something about fellow exhibitor BradyGames: this year they'll be hosting a convention-wide "fishing quest." Sounds like fun.If you don't have tickets yet, you have one more chance: they go on sale this Sunday, May 31st. Seriously, don't show up until then. (Ed: Schramm, stop trying to keep people out of your ticket line! The second round of ticket sales is this Saturday, May 30th. Good luck to everyone except Schramm.)
Okami guide also IGN'd?
Apparently IGN is the place to go for high-resolution Okami artwork. BradyGames' Okami strategy guide is also marred by IGN branding -- but a different logo, and in a different place. At first, we thought this was a windup from a tricky Kotaku commenter -- then we looked at the cover on the Brady Games website. Not only does the little D-pad-esque IGN logo appear next to Amaterasu's mouth, this watermark also features "IGN," and you can just see the ".COM" at the end there. Okay, so the Kotaku commenter is absolved -- now we kind of think this must be a joke on the part of the person who made the preview image for Brady's website. If not, we can look forward to some decorative slipcovers.[Via Kotaku]
Gears of War COG tag videos are the new horse armor
We are not amused. We are not amused, at all! Horse armor was ridiculous, Need for Speed irked us further, but these have clearly been replaced with the five videos on the Xbox Live marketplace, available for 100 MS points each ($1.25 USD), showing the locations of all the COG tags in Gears of War. With free resources like GameFAQS and YouTube already doling out this information to the masses, this is nothing but an unadulterated grab for cash, and because P.T. Barnum was right about suckers, there will be plenty of people who pay for these videos.Although Mark Rein of Epic Games previously told us that it's Microsoft's store and they can do what they want, in all seriousness, this is insulting to gamers, legitimizes the belief that marketplace is continuing to test the limits of micro-softly-raping-payments and hurts the reputation of Epic. Although these videos are produced by Brady Games, the average consumer is just going to blame Epic and Microsoft. This is exactly what the marketplace should never be used for.
Buying Gears of War achievements isn't cheap
Yesterday, five new Gears of War COG tag location strategy videos were uploaded to the XBLM for your viewing pleasure. But before you make your way to download the videos you should know they'll cost you money. Yes, Brady Games is happy to help you find those COG tags, but is charging 100 Microsoft points per GoW act. Running that through our fanboy calculator, that works out to be exactly 500 Microsoft points ($6.25 US) for five videos.True, it can be frustrating trying to find the last few tags, but please be strong and do not resort to purchasing these videos. There are plenty of free resources on the internet if you are having trouble locating those darn COG tags. Heck, all the COG tag location information you'll ever need is located here. So, go here, don't buy this, and earn these. Friends helping friends, that's what it's all about.
Countdown to Burning Crusade: Day 11
Welcome to day 11 of the Countdown to Burning Crusade -- only a few short days until we get to line up with a bunch of other geeks around the world to pick up our copies of the expansion. We're continuing our screenshot theme this week with today's contest: we want your best PVP screenshot. It doesn't have to be taken specifically for this contest (although of course it can be) -- if you have a great PVP shot in your screencap library, send it on in to us at countdowntobc AT wowinsider DOT com. You've got 48 hours for this -- your submissions with "best PVP screenshot" in the title must be to us by 3pm EST Saturday January 13 to score a copy of the freshly updated Burning Crusade Official Strategy Guide from Bradygames. Get on it! Don't forget the deadlines for our three grand prize contests are quickly approaching. You've got until midnight on Friday January 12 to get your WoW-themed song lyrics in, midnight on Saturday January 13 to get your fan art in, and noon on Sunday, January 14 to get your machinima contest entry to us. All entries are going to countdowntobc AT wowinsider DOT com -- remember you're not just sending us a video file! Read the official rules for submitting your video to YouTube and to us. Good luck to everyone!
Official Dungeon Strategy Guide Now on Sale
Now that Brian Kopp's Unauthorized WoW Guide is back in the news, you might also be interested to know that an official guidebook for WoW has just been published. Brady Games has released the World of Warcraft Dungeon Companion, a 400-page guidebook covering all instanced dungeons currently in the game. The book's features include: • Every Dungeon: Low-level instances and the toughest raid dungeons are all covered in this monstrous compendium. Light is shed on everything from Ragefire Chasm to the brand new Ahn' Qiraj. • Outdoor World Boss Encounters: Learn exactly what you need to take the Azuregos, Lord Kazzak and the Emerald Dragons. • Much more: monster information, question guidance, rewards and secret rooms.So, if you haven't givent this game enough of your money yet this month, you can order the guide over at BlizzPlanet in the merchandise section. Let me know if it's any good...
Gamer/pianist makes sweet music at BradyGames
And blindfolded, no less! Apparently they were short on blindfolds though, considering that they had to use a T-shirt. Either way, this brave musician tapped out tunes to Super Mario and many others in front of an audience.
