New York Times reports from an interview with Daniel A. DeMatteo, the COO of GameStop, that they’ll be re-organizing their stores this fall to accomodate the massive influx of DS players, Wii Warriors, and Guitar Heroes.

In particular, he describes a whole rack just for music and rhythm games and more shelf space dedicated to family friendly games like Mario Kart, Nintendogs, LEGO Star Wars, and more. Frankly, I’d expect this from a larger retailer. I’m surprised a Target or Walmart hasn’t already done it. As a described “core” gamer by those who are catering to these “Casuals” I have to wonder how this will cut into shelf space for more refined titles like Bioshock and Assassin’s Creed, and even well known games like Mario Galaxy. I mean, there are now tons of old people playing Wii Sports and training their brains, but doesn’t GameStop owe it to themselves to turn these casuals into core gamers too? Putting up a shelf with nothing but music and rhythm games will mean for sure coverage with Rock Band and Guitar Hero, but will they also pull out older and lesser known titles like Elite Beat Agents?

Can the casuals and cores live together? Leave a comment.

Image from nataliedee.com

The Police getting back together? Whatever.
Def Leppard reunion? Meh.
Kiss doing another farewell tour? Double-meh.
But… Zeppelin?
Led Zeppelin?
I’ve got at least one used-but-not-abused (well, slightly abused) kidney ready to sell for tickets if anyone is interested.
It looks like the late John Bonham’s son Jason will be joining the three remaining members of the band; Robert Plant, Jimmy Page, and John Paul Jones on stage for a one-time concert at London’s O2 arena. This will be the first time the three have played together in almost 20 years. Lord willing, it’ll spark off a full-fledged tour with at least a few shows in the states. BBC News has the full story here.
Now, about that kidney…

Building upon this post from a few months ago, it would appear that the traveling orchestral videogame concert known as Video Games Live has seen fit to release a full album of their greatest performances from various past shows. “Video Games Live: Greatest Hits – Volume One” will feature various medleys of well-known tunes from gaming series such as Zelda, Sonic, Mario, Halo and many others, all done in their usual orchestral setting. The album was created by tour head Tommy Tallarico, along with Jack Wall and features the talents of Slovak National Orchestra as well as the Crouch End Chorus and the Martin “The Video Game Pianist” Leung.

Seeing as how this is “Volume One”, it’s only fair to assume that other volumes with additional music will be included in the future. They certainly have enough material to work with. The album will see a release date of October 15th and will more than likely be available on the VGL website.

Today is the birthday of Declan Patrick MacManus, better known to the world as Elvis Costello.

In celebration, Powet presents some of his finest moments as captured on YouTube. I named my cat Veronica, so you know I’m serious.

The legendary performance that got him banned from Saturday Night Live and NBC.

And his triumphant return with the Beastie Boys.
[Read the rest of this entry…]

I know on the boards theres somes New Pornographers fans, so I’ll take the risk that anyone just reading the news site here likes them too. Here’s the performance of “My Rights Versus Yours” from Letterman last night.
The new album Challengers was just released to stores and download services today.
I’ve still yet to soak in the new record, but if its like the last 3, I’ll be playing it a lot.

I wanted to give you some first impressions a while ago when the demo hit Xbox Live, but it was too short to fully try out the game’s features. Also, I wasn’t too sure about the new direction EA decided to take with the series, so I decided to wait until I could find it used. For those of you who don’t already know, for reasons known only to themselves, EA decided to hand the Def Jam brand off to EA Chicago, the creators of the Fight Night series. Many players agree that it was just fine with developer AKI, but Kudo Tsunoda had his own ideas for the series, mainly integrating the music into the game engine, and making use of the analog sticks in a manner similar to Fight Night. It’s clearly not gonna be for everyone, and there are a few areas that could use some work, but for the most part, it’s a bold new direction for the series.
[Read the rest of this entry…]

This is an official ad for the November release of Geometry Wars Galaxies, but it looks more like a fan vid, right down the amateur cover of a They Might Be Giants classic. Game looks sweet still.

Xbox360Fanboy cornered Harmonix at E3 and found out some of the best news I’ve ever heard for any music game in the history of forever.

Harmonix CEO Alex Rigopulos announced that Rock Band has some serious plans for delivering content to players. First off, Harmonix plans to release new music tracks every week. They can be released in singles, multi track bundles, or more deliciously, full albums. As an example Alex announced that The Who’s Who’s Next would be available for download following the game’s release.

I was already thinking I’d want to get Rock Band for the drums. Knowing I can play as Keith Moon on my favorite album by own of my favorite bands is personally very exciting. I cannot expect you, dear reader, to understand. Maybe you can get excited at the idea of your favorite album to get added to the list. But right now the only one they’ve announced is my favorite album.

I call that a bargain… the best I ever had.

thanks to RJK for the news!