The best things in life ARE free.

For those who skipped out on the Hidden Fronts map pack for Gears of War when it was released earlier this year, your stubbornness has paid off. This Monday morning you'll be able to download the pack at the ever more attractive price point of Zero Microsoft Points. In addition to four new maps, Hidden Fronts also adds an extra 250 points worth of new achievements.

With nearly 500,000 downloads at $10 a pop, it's pretty clear why free content is becoming less and less common. I'll be more interested to see how many downloads they get following the elimination of cost.

Now Epic, stop making excuses and get the new single player content ported over to 360 too. I'll even pay for it and not wait for it to become free six months later. I promise.

[via xbox.com]

Beta sign-ups, take two, starting shortly.

If you tried to sign up for the Call of Duty 4 Multiplayer Beta this afternoon you were likely unsuccessful in securing a token. You're not alone. CharlieOscarDelta.com crashed before the registration even got underway leaving fans repeatedly hitting their F5 keys (or savvy Firefox users enabling their ReloadEvery extension) for over an hour.

If you were lucky enough to actually get through, you would've seen a screen declaring that all tokens had been distributed, better luck next time, have a nice day.

While it's not clear at the moment if any tokens were actually distributed, InfinityWard blogger fourzerotwo has announced that they will now be distributing the tokens lottery style. You'll have 24 hours to register once CharlieOscarDelta is back up and running, so everyone will have an equal chance of receiving a token.

The beta will be expanded to accommodate more and more players as time goes on, so if you're still left out in the cold after this round, you'll still have more opportunities to be disappointed.

[via fourzerotwo] 

Filling XBLA's need for cel-shaded zany strategy.

Hothead Games has just announced On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness will make its debut on Xbox Live Arcade in early 2008, making it the first episodic game series to hit Microsoft's downloadable game marketplace.  Those without XBLA, can still enjoy this colorfully bizarre game series in XP, Vista, Mac OS X, and even Linux.

"We're very excited to be bringing our game series to Xbox LIVE Arcade," said Vlad Ceraldi, Hothead's President. "We love Xbox LIVE Arcade's ability to deliver great content directly to gamers. Digital distribution lets indie game developers innovate and experiment with new gameplay concepts."

This comes hot on the heels of the launch of www.rainslick.com, the official site for the game, launched in conjunction with the Penny Arcade Expo. With game trailers and the online press kit, the new site is the best place for the latest info on Penny Arcade Adventures right up until launch.

We can just let the ruined beauty speak for itself.

Fall 2008 is so far away. 

No real changes from last month.

NPD submitted its figures for July, and it makes for an engaging read.  As those with sharp memories might recall, many analysts predicted that the PlayStation 3 price drop/fire sale would result in a sales surge.  The reality is a mixture of good news and bad news.

The good news is that the PS3 dominated the Xbox 360 in Canada.  They placed second and third, respectively, to Nintendo's Wii.

The bad news is that Sony's combination game console and Blu-ray player didn't pull off such a comeback in the United States.  It did, however, outsell the Game Boy Advance by nearly a 2-to-1 ratio.

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