In recent history, Activision--publisher of the Guitar Hero series--and Warner Music--a massive record label with songs included in the music-rhythm games--have publicly played out a drama resembling an abusive relationship.

Famed gaming analyst Michael Pachter at Wedbush Morgan has now chimed in on the troubled couple, bluntly telling Gamasutra that "Activision doesn't 'need' Warner Music at all."

Warner started the fire by publicly complaining that video game studios, whether selling Guitar Hero or EA's rival series Rock band, don't pay record labels enough money for the rights to use those songs in the games. Activision countered by saying that Warner lacked respect for Guitar Hero.

Pachter's reasoning is straightforward: "There are over one million songs out there--probably two million--and Activision is going to turn fewer than a thousand of them into Guitar Hero songs every year." Furthermore, "they don't need to deal with a label that represents less than 20 percent of artists."

At center of the controversy is Warner's claim that players buy rhythm games, and their downloadable songs, for the music. Pachter disagrees. "You buy Guitar Hero for the game, and the song creates the challenge. It's quite different from an iTunes download, where the only purpose is to listen to the music."

The Shacknews staff, meanwhile, humbly believes that appearance in a music game is good for sales.

Will Wright, the Interactive Arts & Sciences Hall of Fame designer responsible for Spore and The Sims, dubbed the E3 trade show "the walking dead."

Talking to GamesIndustry, Wright added to a rising chorus in the games industry claiming the E3 Media & Business Summit has outlived its usefulness since evolving from the over-the-top Electronic Entertainment Expo to a low-key industry meet. This year's E3 came under heavy fire for having a weak collection of products on show.

"I think they [the organizers of E3] were looking for a way to sign the arms treaty and de-escalate the whole thing," Wright reasoned. "I understand why they really pulled the plug on the big E3. Looking at the amount of money a company like EA would spend on it, it was ridiculous amounts of money just to be present and competitive with everyone else."

Still, much of the industry has scrambled for something to fill the void left by the ghost of E3. Many studios are putting their stock in the Penny Arcade Expo, which begins tomorrow.

Hidden Path Entertainment, developer of the Xbox Live Arcade trivia game Wits & Wagers, is bringing the tower defense genre back to the PC with Defense Grid: The Awakening.

Tower defense started as a popular modification to Blizzard's Warcraft III. The gameplay--building and upgrading various towers that shoot at ever-stronger lines of enemies marching toward the player's base--proved addictive enough to pave way for the PlayStation 3 release of Q-Games's PixelJunk Monsters and an expansion pack earlier this year.

With Defense Grid, Hidden Path is bringing the tower-defending phenomenon back to its PC roots with 20 levels. The game will be released this November.

Jens Uwe Intat has declared the sale of used games "a very critical situation."

Speaking to GamesIndustry, the Electronic Arts Europe VP denied that the current cottage industry for used games can be compared to the highly developed industries for second-hand cars or books.

"We are actually giving away the rights to play," said Intat, "and if you just pass it on, pass it on, pass it on, that is not comparable to second-hand sales in the normal physical goods area where you have physical wear-out."

On solutions, Intat was vague but optimistic. "We're not going to be overly confrontational [with retailers], we're going to solve it with better, more interesting and online offerings going forward."

Intat echoes other industry leaders in his concern that used game sales are potentially dangerous to publishers and developers, as sales of new games at retail generally make up the sole revenue stream for games. Meanwhile, game retailers like GameStop make significant portions of their earnings from the sale of used games.

Tucked away within the season finale of Jace Hall's studio-hopping web show was the first video of Gearbox's sci-fi shooter Aliens: Colonial Marines, which was penned by Battlestar Galactica writers and hits PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 next year.

The footage continues Hall's tradition of providing the first video of anticipated titles in brief off-screen snippets, as seen by the Duke Nukem Forever footage in the premiere.

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Last week, Japanese publication Famitsu provided the first comparison images highlighting the "wider color gamut and anti-reflection technology" of the new PSP-3000.

GameSpot has now provided a few more pictures, better illustrating the difference between the current PSP-2000 and the PSP-3000 redesign, due out in October.

Chris Taylor, designer of classic PC real-time strategy game Total Annihilation and president of Gas Powered Games, thinks that the PC isn't dead, but rather is repositioning itself as a different kind of gaming platform.

"We've pushed the limits of high system requirements, and I think the rate at which people are buying crazy new hardware has slowed," he commented to Gamasutra. "I think we've come out of that turbulent ten years," referring to the ten years since the advent of graphics acceleration hardware in games and its rapid progress since.

Demigod, Gas Powered Games' upcoming RPG

The next Gas Powered Game, Demigod, aims to respect the idea that most game-capable PCs are not high-end. ... Read more

Rush Hour and X-Men: The Last Stand director Brett Ratner hopes that, one day, he can make a film based on Guitar Hero.

"I would love to do a Guitar Hero movie, if [owner] Activision would ever let me," the director told MTV. I'm trying to convince them, but why would you have a movie screw up such a huge franchise?"

"Not that I would make a bad movie," he added. "It could be about a kid from a small town who dreams of being a rock star and he wins the Guitar Hero competition. One of these dreams-[come-true] kind of concepts."

Currenly slated to direct the film adaptation of Sony's God of War series, Ratner is no stranger to video games, especially Guitar Hero. His consultancy firm was responsible for Guitar Hero product placement in several music videos, and he claims to have come up with the name for Guitar Hero World Tour, the next entry in the music game series.

"They said, 'come up with a name,'" he boasted. "I didit became Guitar Hero World Tour."

Continuing its weekly tradition, Sony has updated the PlayStation 3's online store with new games, demos, downloadable content, trailers and more.

As relayed by the PlayStation.Blog, today's update brings:

Downloadable Games

The Last Guy ($9.99)
You are the chosen one, a zombie hero from the Himalayan mountains, and it is up to you to rescue the last survivors on Earth by leading them to safety through zombie-infested streets. Make your way through 15 detailed real-world... Read more

More footage of Tomb Raider: Underworld has arrived from publisher Eidos, showcasing more of the Thailand environment found in the action adventure game.

Developed by Crystal Dynamics, Tomb Raider: Underworld hits PC, PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, Wii and Nintendo DS on November 18.

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Sony is being taken to court over technology purportedly covered in a patent owned by Orinda Intellectual Properties USA, Edge has uncovered.

Orinda claims that patent 5,438,560 has been infringed, covers recording and reproducing optical discs such as CDs, DVDs, and Blu-ray Discs. The company has filed for an injunction stopping the production and sale of all Blu-ray players including PlayStation 3 systems. Orinda is also asking for "a reasonable royalty" from those Blu-ray players it wants to remove from sale.

Major console manufacturers are sued by supposed patent holders with some frequency, and Sony is no exception. In 2007, for example, Sony settled with force-feedback maker Immersion but had a lawsuit over the Blu-ray Disc format dismissed.

A Gearbox representative has confirmed with Shacknews that staff member Corrinne Yu has indeed taken a position at Microsoft, and clarified that has she served as Gearbox's director of platform technology, not technology director, for the past six months.

Word of Yu's impending departure from Brothers in Arms creator Gearbox recently emerged in unconfirmed reports, with the programmer said to have taken the role of principle engine architect on Microsoft's Halo franchise team.

"I accepted the offer to lead the team to build the engines and games for future Halo's on Xbox'es and PC's at Microsoft," read an e-mail purportedly sent by Yu that was later acquired by the press. "I assure you I will continue to help Gearbox."

Her husband, id art director Kenneth Scott, appears to have accepted a position at Microsoft at well, though his exact role is unknown.

In its communication with Shacknews, Gearbox stressed that Sean Reardon has served as its technology director for many years and oversaw Yu's platform technology work. The confusion between the two titles in recent media reports is said to have created challenges for both Yu and Reardon.

The Gearbox representative added that Yu is "an intelligent, passionate and inventive programmer" and that they are "excited about her new role at Microsoft," but did not address recent rumors that Gearbox is developing Halo 4.

With the Rock Band release of Rush's "Moving Pictures" album delayed for some time, New York-based rockers Locksley have stepped in to fill the dead space.

Listings have appeared for the following three downloadable tracks from Locksley, each priced at 80 Microsoft Points ($1):

• All Over Again
• She Does
• Don't Make Me Wait

While not yet up for download, the tracks are expected to become available to PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 owners later today.

While some argue that piracy can increase game sales by letting players take a "try before you buy" approach, Crytek business manager Harald Seeley isn't one of them.

Based on downloads of the last Crysis patch, he argues, there were "a lot more active [Crysis] players than there were unit sales."

And since those pirates are still playing the game months after release, Seeley reasons that "then they were a sale that didn't happen but probably would have had it not been possible to obtain the game illegally."

Crytek, the studio that created the hardware intensive Far Cry and Crysis games exclusively for PC, has repeatedly stated that the upcoming Crysis Warhead will be its last PC-only game due to the abundant piracy of PC games.

But just because Crytek is no longer developing PC exclusives, that doesn't mean the company will abandon the platform. "We want to continue to provide our... Read more

With Pandemic's explosion-filled open-world shooter Mercenaries 2: World in Flames due on PC, Xbox 360, PS2, PS3 next week, publisher EA issued a launch trailer that it affectionately refers to as "Money."

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Sony CEO Howard Stringer, pictured at left, confessed that the Wii "may be a superior business model" in a recent interview.

"The major difference lies in the fact that Nintendo makes money with the hardware alone," he explained to German newspaper Die Welt.

As for when Sony will recover the $3 billion it spent on the PlayStation 3, Stringer responded with a laugh, "Not for as long as I live."

He then turned serious. "It will certainly take some time. ... We are currently at the stage in which we need to get a grip on the production costs. That takes time," he said. The CEO stressed that the company is now making more money on PlayStation 3 games than it is losing on hardware sales.

Stringer also cast doubt on recent claims that the PlayStation 3 would see price cuts this year. "I think not," he stated when asked if the system would see a price cut before this Christmas.

Following up on yesterday's revelation that Q's block-matching rocket-launching DS puzzler Meteos is heading to Xbox 360, the studio has announced that Meteos Wars will hit North America in October carrying the price of 800 Microsoft Points ($10). The first screenshots of the downloadable Xbox Live Arcade game were released as well, showcasing the title's head-to-head multiplayer and character customization.

Despite Microsoft's past efforts to prevent Xbox Live account hijacking, the theft of Halo 3 multiplayer producer Joe Tung's account has pulled the issue back to the forefront.

The hijacking was not the result of sophisticated computer wizardry, but rather "social engineering," the act of creatively lying to customer service representatives to gain unauthorized access to sensitive information. Xbox Live stores credit card information, and while hackers are unable to steal that information for their own use, they can make unauthorized purchases from a stolen account

Tung is far from alone, as account hijackings are not uncommon among players of Bungie's online behemoth Halo 3. He is not even the only Bungie employee to be a victim of such thieves. But his position makes his case the highest profile to date.

Microsoft claims it previously retrained customer service employees ... Read more

The PC editions of Oddworld Inhabitant's beloved and bizarre action-adventure titles Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee and Oddworld: Abe's Exoddus are now available for purchase from Valve's PC digital distribution client Steam.

Originally released on PlayStation in the late 90's, both side scrolling games were quickly ported to the PC by Digital Dialect.

Each game sells for $9.99, with a two-game combo pack going for $14.99. Per Steam tradition, both games be discounted by 10% during their first week of availability.

The Entertainment Software Association--the industry organization assisting game makers in legal and governmental matters and organizes the annual E3 event-- today applauded the recent jail sentences of two American game pirates in a press release.

Kevin Fuchs of West Amherst, NY, and Kifah Maswadi of Oakland, FL, were sentenced to eight and 15 months in prison, respectively, this summer. Fuchs will follow that up with eight months of house arrest and another 16 months of court supervised release. Maswadi also received three years of court supervision, 50 hours of community service, and an order to pay $415,900 in restitution.

"These decisions illustrate, once again, that game piracy will not be tolerated and the extent at which these criminals will be prosecuted. The ESA and its members will continue to support law enforcement's efforts to protect the intellectual property of our industry," said Michael Gallagher, CEO of the ESA. The sentencing follows a recent United Kingdom ruling which established a legal precedent in their courts.

The news comes at a time when piracy has had increasing influence... Read more