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Sony just bumped up the hard drive sizes in the PS3 at gamescom this week, putting the two SKUs at 160GB and 320GB. There’s still plenty of the old 120GB and 250GB units on shelves, so it’s probably a good time to be shopping around for a discount at a retail clearout.

The folks at engadget point us to one clearout at electronics retailer Fry’s. The old 250GB units are marked down to only $299. This makes the not-so-old unit the same price as the new 160GB. I know which one I’d pick.

If you’re out there and see any more discounted PS3s, let us know.

On special occasions, an indie game comes along that truly deserves attention and respect, but very rarely does it sell as much as it deserves. Limbo has shattered expectations, not only be being an art-style game that’s actually good, but also by selling more than three copies. 

The number of copies cold is actually closer to 300,000, which is excellent for a downloadable indie game that’s as weird and demented as Limbo is. The game most definitely deserves it, having earned one of only two 10/10 reviews I’ve ever given in my life. It’s truly a spectacular little title. 

Every now and then, the game buying public gives me a little faith. Now is one of those moments. 

Limbo’s Carlsen On Making Players Your Worst Enemy And Your Best Friend [Gamasutra]

What the hell is InstantJam? The short answer: a Guitar Hero clone on Facebook. Nuff said.

The long answer is a social game with serious new technology driving it: it’s the first music title running on the  InstantAction 3D graphics engine, a system that drives games like the web-based Secret of Monkey Island port and Instant Empire: Legions. Instead of rendering crummy graphics in your browser with Flash it utilizes your PC’s hardware — and it does this without relying on cloud-based techniques like OnLive. You may remember them as IAC-acquired GarageGames, the company behind the Torque engine.  I had a chance to play it and it’s not vaporare — it works! The technical aspect of their presentation was among my favorites at the GDC booth, Crysis 2 included.

We also had an opportunity to speak to game creator Louis Castle about his new role in the company and find out more about the tech and this noisy social game was about. Read on!

First of all, just because it’s a Facebook game don’t assume you can’t play with your beloved plastic guitar. For InstantJam can communicate with any existing guitar peripheral to play it (with the exception of the Wii guitars for licensing reasons). The 360 guitars can be booked up by adding a USB RF-adapter to communicate with it. The PS3 guitars can be hooked up via Bluetooth. USB peripherals just work. If you don’t have a guitar, you can just use the keyboard. While the default keys seemed to be ASDFG, you will be able to remap the keys to pretty much whatever you want.

It’s all about the notecharts

InstantJam works by having a list of ever growing notecharts, which run in the thousands already, that can be used in conjuction with any music file that is recognized. Castle said that they used the Billboard Top 100 songs from the past 20 years as a starting point, so most people will be able to find something they recognize and like. InstantJam can also scan your computer for music files, which are then imported into a playlist. No data will be sent over the web, so you don’t have to worry about your pirated mp3’s as Castle doesn’t want your privacy compromised in any way. Of course I had to ask him if you could just pirate songs and play those, and you can as long as they are the right length. Even if it has a couple of seconds before or after the song that are not officially part of the song, other tech can see through that and still recognize the song.

Users will be able to share the standard Facebook wall-cancers as well as challenge friends to beat their score. A ghost can be recorded to play against, although that is still under development and currently you could only play against your friend’s score on a song. Another ridiculous feature was being able to create embed code so you could just post InstantJam on your blog.

Players can also create their own notecharts. If you have a ton of Frets on Fire notecharts yourself, it shouldn’t be too hard to get the hang of copying those notecharts to the InstantJam format although you can’t just import them for logical reasons. If InstantJam would become a success, that would mean that players can have access to tens of thousands of songs over time.

Micropayments for tunes and threads

While browser-based gaming has changed drastically over the years, some companies still have the model of using a portal for users which then eventually become customers, leading to revenue. Game creator Louis Castle believes that instead of portals (but not instead of thinking with portals) viral is the way to go and that networks of users should access the content directly and then create revenue. If you look at the last two years of social gaming on Facebook, there is little to disagree on that front. His proposed business model is to get users to discover and share, then play free to play content, which then leads to revenue. What better way to explore that model than to put your game on Facebook?  

InstantJam follows this model, which is not exactly the same as Zynga’s, in a number of ways, starting with the way it looks and works on the back end. With the rising popularity of Facebook gaming it makes perfect sense for InstantAction to reinvent themselves with the times. Piggybacking their game on InstantAction gives the game a few technological marvels: By having the processing part done on your computer, and the music files stored on your computer, InstantJam only has to send a minimum of data and note charts to let you play what is basically Guitar Hero with thousands of songs on your computer.

An interesting concept is that you can buy a song from Amazon or iTunes via InstantJam and you will get more credits in return than the song is worth. So if you buy music on Amazon or iTunes, you might as well buy it through InstantJam and get credits in the process. Which then means you are already playing the game or will probably keep playing it for a while, or that you might buy more music through Amazon or iTunes. Castle was anxious to see how the music industry would react to all of this if his game becomes a success.

You can buy skins for your guitar with in-game currency, but you can also buy things like special new guitars, which give you bonuses to fans and in-game currency per song, for credits that cost money to buy. Or buy special buffs that for instance compensate for when you strum too fast. You can trade credits for in-game currency as well and all that jazz; the usual Facebook game currency and payment system.

The man behind the game

Louis Castle worked in roles of programming, art direction, accounting, licensing, to being a compensation specialist and a visionary in development structure. So what would make one of the more interesting but largely unknown Louis Castle move from over 20 years of experience in the game industry and being a creative at EA to a company that makes free to play web games? To understand that, you first have to understand Louis Castle. He firmly believes you have to continuously reinvent yourself as a person and to always seek out those things that challenge you, instead of just being content with reaching a certain level in life and staying at that level.

Castle asked me what kind of music I wanted to play. Unfortunately, I mostly listen to awful euro dance musical art so that really didn’t apply, so I played Riders on the Storm on Expert for a bit. It wasn’t too hard but it was around the difficulty of Hard for a game like Guitar Hero 5. Castle persisted in asking me euro dance artists just to see if he had it in his collection of 1500 songs on his laptop. I asked him if he had Scooter, which he never heard of. He did have Lady Gaga though! And not just that, he had around 20 songs of Lady Gaga. Because he grew up in Vegas, I chose to play Poker Face on fullscreen mode.  Many mah mah mah maos were made. This was good.

InstantJam is currently in beta and is available on Facebook right now.

Bethesda’s Fallout 3 set the bar for post-release support in this console generation with its robust package of five add-ons: “Operation: Anchorage,” “The Pitt,” “Broken Steel,” “Point Lookout,” and “Mothership Zeta.” When I asked Fallout: New Vegas senior producer Jason Bergman if DLC would be coming for that game, too, here was his excited-but-short-on-details reply: “Yes! Yes, we do! That is the answer to that question!”

He wouldn’t go into specifics, except to assure me that Obsidian and Bethesda are “working on getting the game out the door first.” But in case you were wondering, plans are certainly in place to put out New Vegas add-ons ”after the fact.”

We likely won’t have to wait too long after the game’s October 19th release for the first DLC to hit. When I guessed out loud that New Vegas add-ons would be coming “way down the line,” Bergman corrected me: “Not way down the line, but down the line.” So if you’re worried about running out of New Vegas content to explore, don’t be. If anything, if you complete the game quickly, you can try a second play-through on Hardcore Mode to fill the gap.

It’s times like these that make me wish I could somehow cram two header images into one post.

I really struggled between going with the one above, and one in the attached gallery — you can guess which picture, I’m sure. But just in case you can’t, it was the photo that depicts Chuck in a heavily armed wheelchair sitting next to a stuffed bear with a red headband who also happens to be heavily armed.

Props to the person(s) responsible for presumably going through hell to achieve these tremendously goofy shots. Your behind-the-scenes magic is greatly appreciated!

[Update] An EA Sports spokesman sent us the following statement:

“We’re always exploring new platforms to deliver accessible and innovative sports experiences, as FIFA Superstars and Tiger Woods PGA TOUR Online have demonstrated. You can expect us to continue this with our other franchises, but we have no announcements to make at this time regarding a Madden NFL game for Facebook.”

There you have it — for now, Madden NFL Superstars remains unofficial.

[Original story] Back in February, EA Sports president Peter Moore mentioned that a Madden game would soon be making its way to Facebook. We’ve seen neither hide nor hair of the game since then, but in the interim, EA launched FIFA Superstars on Facebook and saw it become a successful product. FIFA Superstars is developed by Playfish, the social gaming creator that EA bought for $275 million last November, and now it appears that EA may be bringing Madden to Facebook as Madden NFL Superstars.

Bitmob’s community manager was trying to play FIFA Superstars this morning when he came across the following error message on Facebook: “Sorry, EA Sports Madden Superstars is currently down for maintenance but will return shortly.” (You can see a screenshot, courtesy of Bitmob, in the gallery below.) Presumably, someone at Playfish messed up, and now we know the name of Facebook’s Madden game.

Say what you want about casual gaming, but it’s smart for EA to get into the business. They likely wanted to test the waters with FIFA Superstars before diving in with Madden, their marquee brand. But it makes sense to bring Madden to Facebook now — FIFA Superstars‘ user base grew significantly during this summer’s World Cup, and the 2010 NFL season kicks off in just three weeks.

We’ve contacted EA for comment and will update this post with any reply.

Madden NFL Superstars Revealed [Bitmob -- thanks, Brett!]

2K Games has discovered social media and wants to make sure you don’t miss the fact that Mafia II is coming out later this month. The publisher has announced not only a Facebook game, “Mafia II Hit List,” but a partnership with online music streaming service, Pandora.

“Hit List” appears to be a very basic Facebook application where you act as a “mob boss” and you put a hit on your friends. The goal? To become the most destructive boss, and get ranked on the “Top 5 Hitmen” and the “Top 5 Most Wanted” hit lists. How it works, I’m not entirely sure, because I refuse to spam my friends with Mafia II stuff, even in the name of science and journalism.

The Pandora stuff is a bit cooler. You’ll be able to load up a “Mafia II Pandora Mix Tape” online, which will stream a number of artists from the game’s soundtrack. Listen for Dean Martin, John Lee Hooker, Rosemary Clooney, Buddy Holly, Duke Ellington and more. From early previews I’ve played, it’s perfect mood music for whacking wiseguys. Or cleaning your house.

There’s a Mafia II demo available on your platform of choice, whether you’ve got a PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, or PC. So go play it. We’ll have a full review up at the end of the month when the game launches.

No Apparent Reason Parties, NARPs for short, are a long standing tradition here at Destructoid. NARPs are parties hosted by Dtoiders for Dtoiders and everyone is welcome to attend a party. It’s about playing games and interacting with other people all in the name of having a good time.

Can you believe the summer is almost over?! August means taking those last minute vacations before the school year starts, and trying to enjoy the summer sun before fall hits. Of course, for Dtoiders, August is just another month to have NARPs!

Follow on after the break to see what NARPs are happening in Australia, Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, Toronto, London, Belgium, Texas, and the Northwest!

Who: Dtoid Europe/Belgium – mistic
What:Worldwide NARP!
When: Aug 13-15th

The grand EuroNARP3 is only TEN DAYS away! The weekend of Aug 13-15, our boys in Belgium will be partying in Teh Lair all weekend, and will be challenging the rest of world to party with them! If you are in the area you should definitely join them, but if not, you can still take part in the fun through the stickam chat room and by playing along with them online!

Be sure to join the DtoidEurope Google group for details of these events and others, as well as check out their Facebook group!

Who: Dtoid San Francisco – Tactix
What: Scott Pilgrim vs the World and Worldwide NARP
When: Aug 13 and 14th

DtoidSF is getting together to watch possibly the greatest August movie (second to Step Up 3D) and planning an epic party for the Worldwide NARP weekend! The party will include TONS of gaming such as Rock Band, SSF4, and classic retro gaming! Not to mention that the Awesomecade will be open for business!

Be sure to follow DtoidSF on Twitter and Facebook as well as check out the Google group for details of these events and others!

Who: Dtoid Austin – Sean Carey
What: Retro Game tournament at Game Over Videogames
When: Aug 21st

Dtoid Austin and Game Over Games will be hosting a retro game tournament involving Goldeneye and Mario Kart 64. And whats a tournament without prizes? Gift cards for Game over games are on the line, so get to practicing those games! Details for the tournament are here, and you must be registered in the google group for the tournament, so make sure to do that!

Be sure to join the DtoidAustin google group to keep involved with all the happenings!

DtoidMidwest is ready to party

Who: Dtoid Midwest – Jon Bloodspray
What: Cedar Point NARP
When: Aug 13-15th

The time for Dtoid Midwest’s Cedar Point NARP is FINALLY HERE! Dtoid Midwest peeps are planning to watch Scott Pilgrim, head to Cedar Point, and party along with the world during the Worldwide NARP. Its definitely going to be loads of fun, so if you havent committed to go, you should definitely do so!

Check out the forum thread for this event, and make sure to join the Google group and Facebook group!

Who: Dtoid United Kingdom – Hollie Bennett
What: Gamescom
When: Aug 19-22

DtoidUK wants to let everyone know that they will be bringing all the latest coverage from Gamescom in Cologne right to the Dtoid front page, so keep your eyes peeled for that! And if you are heading there, let them know in the Google group!

Who: Dtoid Australia – FooLiz
What:Worldwide NARP and Mana Bar
When: Aug 14-15, 17, 21st

As always, DtoidAustralia has great things planned. They will be going to Mana Bar for drinks, and then having a Worldwide NARP party with tournaments such as SSF4 and Mario Kart DS. Did they mention, prizes?

Besides the Worldwide NARP, they will also be having the usual Trivia Night as well as a movie night. So make sure to make it out!

Be sure to follow Dtoid Australia on Twitter and Facebook as well as check out the Google group for details of these events and much more!

Who: Dtoid Los Angeles – Jonathan Ross
What: Kyle’s Birthday Party

Its Kyle’s birthday, and you know what that means…GIANT SLIDE! It also happens to be on the Worldwide NARP weekend, so make sure to attend the party and stickam chat with the rest of the world while there! For details check the c-blog in the next coming days.

You can also follow Dtoid Los Angeles on Facebook as well as check out the Google group for details of these events and other things!

As for the other city groups, there isn’t anything planned as of yet, but make sure to keep following the blogs, cause you never know when something will start up!

Who: Dtoid Orlando – Kryptinite
Who: Dtoid Toronto – Chooly
Who: Dtoid Northwest! – Kai, DJDuffy, King3vbo (Congrats on getting married UncleMilkshake!
Who: Dtoid New York – Powerglove

And remember, even if you arent near a city group this weekend, you can take part in the WORLDWIDE NARP with us! Stay tuned for a special post about that later this week!

You know those Coinstar machines that let you dump change into them for paper cash/gift cards/etc? Now you can dump your change…in the trash! Or, get Facebook credits.

A partnership with online payment service Rixty will let you turn your change-heavy pockets into Facebook Credits so you can buy stupid straw hats for your farmers. There’s even bonus Credits for dumping larger amounts of change. Real Life is turning into a game! I’m in despair!

They’re hoping to kick things off by offering 10 free FB Crecits to any coinstar users who choose cash instead, says Gamepro. This promotion runs from August 9th through September 7th. Right now there’s no end date to dump your change for Credits.

[looks at change bank in the corner]

Naaaaahhhh.