Hasta La Gadget!

For every tearful accountant at Saints Row HQ, there must be a gleeful marketing person punching the air, playing mini golf and doing whatever else marketing people do when they’re full of glee. Conflicted emotions aside, however, game publisher Deep Silver can now claim the notorious distinction of having its latest title, Saints Row IV, rejected outright by the Australian Classification Board (ACB). It’s the first such refusal since the ACB implemented a new R18+ rating, which is meant to allow for adult themes within games but which evidently couldn’t cope with Saints Row’s peculiar depictions of sexual violence (which were “not justified by context”) or its drug-themed reward system (which is “prohibited by the computer games guidelines”). According to The Guardian, this effectively means Saints Row IV is banned from sale in retail stores in Australia, but Joystiq has received word from Deep Silver saying it intends to create a “reworked” version of its open-world game specifically for that country. Meanwhile, the regular version has been given PEGI 18 and ESRB M ratings elsewhere, and it looks to be on track for an August release date.

Filed under: Gaming

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Source: Joystiq, The Guardian

The ability to drop bombs on targets a continent away can be a huge tactical advantage (even if it is just saber-rattling). Doing so at supersonic speeds, nearly automatically, is even better. That’s why the UK has spent the better part of a decade developing the Taranis, one of the biggest and fastest UAV in existence. Now it just needs to prove it can actually fly.

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The Australian Federal Police have confirmed that they have arrested the alleged leader of notorious hacking group Lulzsec in Sydney. More »

Don’t want to trek it to Provo, Utah — or Austin or Kansas City — to get 1Gbps internet courtesy of Google Fiber? By the end of this year, you can venture Down Under to get comparable speeds courtesy of Australia’s National Broadband Network (NBN). The wholesale price for the network’s 1Gbps service will be AU$150 (about $155) per month, with an additional fee to be tacked on by ISPs. NBN will also roll out 250Mbps and 500Mbps services by December, naturally for a lower monthly cost. Sure, 1Gbps speeds may not be necessary for the average household, but leave it to Japan to make those numbers look positively puny with its recently launched service offering 2 Gbps down. Planning that next vacation around internet speeds might just be the way to go.

Filed under: Internet

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Via: The Age

Amazon has big plans for its incredibly successful (we guess?) Appstore on Android, which include expansion to “nearly 200 countries,” — after rolling out in Europe and Japan — but it’s asking for developers to get on board first. So that its store shelves aren’t empty when they open up in places like Brazil, Canada and Papua New Guinea, it’s securing app submissions and making sure devs opt-in to international distribution. Peter Sleeman, Director of P2 Games, is quoted in the press release claiming his company saw 4-5x sales of a recent app on Kindle Fire compared to Google Play. That feat is echoed by several others quoted, citing Amazon’s in-app purchasing system and features like GameCircle. There’s no word whether this global rollout will be followed by wider distribution of its other media services and branded hardware, but given the predictable path it’s followed so far that seems like a safe bet.

Filed under: Mobile, Amazon

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Source: Amazon