PAX is upon us again, so the site will be on hiatus until we’re back next week. To make up for the lull, we’ll bring back daily PAX10 interviews and whatever news and previews we can find. See you next week!

Microsoft will be hitting you where it hurts starting November 1, because Gold Xbox Live membership prices are getting hiked. Monthly subscribers can expect to pay $2 more ($24 annually), tri-monthly will rise by $5 ($20 annually) , and yearly subscribers will get a $10 price hike. As you might expect, there’s been no small [...]

Hot on the heels of incendiary remarks from THQ and Penny Arcade, Best Buy has decided to break into the used games business. The retail chain will exchange $20 gift cards for games on a rotating list starting August 29, just in time for the release of Metroid: Other M. Best Buy plans to pilot [...]

Apparently Portal just made the Syllabus at Wabash College. Michael Abbott over at The Brainy Gamer is a professor at the sesquicentennial college. He managed to convince a multidisciplinary committee of faculty to play the game long enough to see it as a storytelling medium. His idea: This tension between backstage machination and onstage performance [...]

The lightening bolt symbolizes being awesome. That’s not to say that RSPoD alters media, but rather that it has entered a new medium. Developer Hothead Games recently dropped the Penny Arcade Adventures game to refocus on DeathSpank. It looked for a while like we’d never see closure for the Startling Developments Detective Agency. However, Penny [...]

Hey all, Adam’s still coming out of the anesthesia, so your feature piece will have to wait until he’s doing a bit better. Don’t worry: it was a routine procedure and went fine.

Irrational Games (formerly 2K Boston) just announced their latest project: The Bioshock developer made much ado about the project’s secrecy when it was named Icarus. So if anything comes as a surprise, it’s the obvious sequel. However, it’s worth remembering that Bioshock 2 actually came from developer 2K Marin, which makes three years since Irrational [...]

Now in video form, just in case you don’t feel like reading the whole thing: I, for one, remain intrigued. Goodness knows that MMORPGS could use a kick in the pants.

Robot pirates also make a bitchin’ desktop wallpaper. Machinarium developer Amanita Studios is offering amnesty to pirates everywhere for the low price of $5. From the press release: Everybody who downloaded our game illegally (for free) has now a chance to redeem himself and get the latest version of the game (Win+Mac+Linux) and its fantastic [...]

You may recall Runic Games, developer of the Diablo-esque action RPG Torchlight. If not, don’t worry: they’ve announced a sequel to help jog your memory. The big reveal for Torchlight II is peer-to-peer multiplayer, supported by matchmaking. From the press release: Torchlight II answers the overwhelming call of our community with an expansive co-op multiplayer [...]