Labor Day week officially starts off the fall gaming season with some high anticipated releases such as FaceBreaker, Infinite Undiscovery, Mercenaries 2 and, of course, Wiil Wright’s Spore. One of the most surprising, and delightful, releases for me this week is the classic SNES RPG, Super Mario RPG for the Virtual Console.

All I got to say is wow, too much gaming already this past month, and with even more hit titles coming out in the next few weeks and months, it looks like we’re all gonna be broke. Read more…

“Fiscal 2008 can kiss my ass — I’m going home to play Rock Band”

If you had been holding on to hope that Pandemic Studio’s much anticipated Mercenaries 2: World in Flames would be lighting up your television set soon, you can officially forget it. Read more…

For every one that breaks free, two more get sucked in. As Microsoft’s cleaning crews entered the empty offices once held by the employees of Bungie Studios, another industry giant, Electronic Arts, was finalizing a deal to purchase VG Holding Corp, owners of both Bioware Corp (Mass Effect) and Pandemic Studios (Mercenaries 2: World in Flames & Saboteur).

“These are two of the most respected studios in the industry and I’m glad to be working with them again. They’ll make a strong contribution to our strategic growth initiatives on quality, online gaming and developing new intellectual properties,” said John Riccitiello, EA’s Chief Executive Officer. “We also expect this will drive long-term value for our shareholders.”

Price tag for all this? In the ballpark of $785 million — $620 million in cash to the companies stockholders, and an additional $155 million in equity to “certain employees” of the VG Holding Corp. We are going to go out on a limb and say that the janitor and kitchen crew won’t be seeing any of that dough. Have at the press release after the jump. Read more…