SONY COMPUTER ENTERTAINMENT HONG KONG LIMITED ANNOUNCES 3D ONLINE-USER COMMUNITY SERVICE FOR PLAYSTATION®3– 「PLAYSTATION®HOME」 COMING TO HONG KONG, SINGAPORE AND TAIWAN IN FALL 2008

CLOSED BETA TESTING FOR 「PLAYSTATION®HOME」WILL START FROM MID-SEPTEMBER 2008

Sony Computer Entertainment Hong Kong Limited (SCEH) today announced that the unveiling of a first-of-its-kind 3D online community service for the PLAYSTATION®3 (PS3™) computer entertainment system would be available for Hong Kong , Singapore and Taiwan region PLAYSTATION®Network users.

PlayStation®Home is the online community service on PLAYSTATION®Network. It is an evolving online social gaming service built for PS3™ users to meet and share gaming experiences. With an avatar uniquely customized according to each user’s preference, users can explore the 3D community which includes custom spaces dedicated to specific games, press releases on kotaku, event spaces or personal apartments. Each user is assigned an apartment in PlayStation®Home where they can invite others to join them as they show off their own style in an area they can personalize themselves with furniture and other items. Very rich interactive communication with others is achieved through built in text, audio chat, along with sophisticated emotional animations for each character.

PlayStation®Home official website for Asia is now available at The Closed Beta testing for PlayStation®Home will be starting from Mid-September 2008. SCEH would like to invite Hong Kong and Singapore users to participate in the Closed Beta testing. The details will be available on the official website from August 29, 2008.

SCEH will continue to further expand PS3 users’ gaming experience and create a new world of computer entertainment by offering the high quality of the world of PlayStation®Home towards the Open Beta Service in this fall along with more and more attractive PS3 software titles which will be available le in the market

Hong Kong (PRWEB) June 4, 2008 — Renchi.com, a leading import video games, consoles and game gear retailer, is driving a campaign to help China's earthquake victims.

On May 12, 2008, an earthquake measuring 7.8 on the Richter scale struck the province of Sichuan, China. As of today, over 68,000 dead, 20,000 still missing, over 350,000 injured and widespread destruction is reported. More than 5,000,000 people have become homeless.

This Father's Day, you can help these children rebuild their schools and help families rebuild their homes by simply placing an order from our site. From now until June 20th, 2008, 10% of your order amount will be donated (*excluding shipping) to the Hong Kong World Vision Sichuan Earthquake Relief (Hong Kong World Vision). The World Vision is chosen because they have pledged to allocate 100% of donations for the relief work.

Please use coupon code KSCSVNBB when you check out, and 10% of your purchase amount will be donate to the Hong Kong World Vision.

Act now. Get something for your loved ones and help these children and families at the same time. See how your purchase can help these families now.

Every order helps. Your order counts! Place your order at Renchi.com now!

I don't frequent McDonalds, but I have noticed groups of PSP owners huddled into a booth when I stopped in once for a late night snack. I wasn't aware that this was common in Hong Kong.

GigaMedia Signs Top EA MMORPG Warhammer® Online: Age of Reckoning™

Adds to Company's leading portfolio and massive pan-Asian platform

HONG KONG, January 31, 2008 - GigaMedia (NASDAQ: GIGM) announced today it has secured an exclusive license from Electronic Arts to offer and operate the highly anticipated game Warhammer® Online: Age of Reckoning™ in Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau.

Warhammer Online is a ground-breaking new massively multiplayer online role-playing game ("MMORPG") set in a fantasy world of war and constant combat. Based on Games Workshop's 25-year tabletop fantasy war game series Warhammer, Warhammer Online creates a rich and immersive virtual world for hundreds of thousands of players to experience the epic nature of war and the glory of battle.

Created by the acclaimed studio EA Mythic, developers of the hit title Dark Age of Camelot™, Warhammer Online is one of the most highly anticipated games of 2008 according to numerous industry publications. Over 500,000 gamers have registered for its closed beta test, one of the most successful closed betas for any MMORPG ever.

"We are very excited to work with EA to bring such a blockbuster title to Asia," stated GigaMedia President Thomas Hui. "We expect Warhammer Online's Realm vs Realm™ combat and Public Quests™ to be enormously popular with hard-core gamers."

"We are thrilled to bring Warhammer Online to Asia and further strengthen our collaboration with GigaMedia as a strategic partner - bringing the hottest digital entertainment to millions," stated EA Asia President Jon Niermann. "We are confident that, together with GigaMedia, Warhammer Online will be a tremendous success."

Warhammer Online thrusts players into a grim world of perpetual conflict to fight for the Realms of Order (Dwarfs, High Elves, and Empire) or Destruction (Greenskins, Dark Elves, and Chaos). Next-generation Realm vs. Realm game play ensures that players are never fighting alone. With an army of allies at their back, players will defend their homeland, invade enemy realms, and ultimately lead the siege of their enemy's capital city. Every aspect of the game - every player, every quest, every encounter, and every battle - can turn the tide of the ongoing war and mean victory for a player's realm!

In Warhammer Online, for the first time ever, players can engage in Public Quests - multi-stage, communal quests to be completed by allied players fighting together against overwhelming odds. They can also embark on an epic quest to complete the Tome of Knowledge and unlock Warhammer lore, detailed monster information, new abilities, rewards, and major story plotlines. Drawing from a quarter century of highly detailed source material, Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning will bring Games Workshop's fantasy world to life in a way that will allow players to create characters destined for great deeds on the field of battle.

To learn more about the game, please visit www.warhammeronline.com.

Warhammer Online is expected to launch in the second half of 2008.

[He] left the girl alone in the street for an hour after staff told him children were not allowed inside the arcade, the South China Morning Post reported.

He then sat her in a restaurant with a drink for three more hours while he continued playing games before staff called police to track down the father.

When he was arrested, Chan told police: "I have to play video games," Kowloon City Court was told Friday.

Chan plead guilty to child abuse and was summarily sentenced to 120 hours of community service; one hopes that next time he decides that he just has to get his gaming fix in, he leaves his daughter at home with a babysitter. I suppose it could have been worse, considering the marathon session some Chinese gamers have gotten in the news for (usually culminating in death by exhaustion or heart attack).

Game addict Hong Kong dad abandons daughter, 7, outside arcade [Earth Times]

Since there's no mention of a Wii or DS (plus I don't see Cooking Mama's "eggserlent" face anywhere on it), I can only assume it actually has nothing to do with Nintendo, but I definitely like the vibe of it. Kim Phu

Limited edition Cooking Mama lunchbox found in Hong Kong [Siliconera]

Seriously. Microsoft pulls out the annoying with its WHATS WRONG WITH U campaign aimed at Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Korea. A click on the English language Korean version pulls up the following question:

Xbox has got it all!
What more are you looking for?

Select from these choices:

• GREAT JAPANESE GAMES
• ABILITY TO PLAY WITH FRIENDS
• SIMPLE ONLINE GAMEPLAY
• BLOCKBUSTER TITLES
• AWESOME GAMING EXPERIENCE
• LOOKS COOL

*space*

• NONE OF THE ABOVE

Entering one of them pulls up a market research study. There are downloadable Xbox 360 icons, wallpaper and emoticons. A giant Xbox 360 with ribbon and a pricetag also pops up. Wow, talk about a hard sell. It's like they've hired the marketing people that Sony fired. I mean Microsoft, what's wrong with you? Brian Ashcraft

New Marketing Campaign For Asia [Official Site, Thanks PeSa!]

For all Rockstar's faults, it does understand how to give something "a look." A memorable, distinctive one at that. Take the Grand Theft Auto box art, for example. Kotakuite Derek writes in:

Attached is a picture I took (sorry about the average quality, I was using my phone) of a magazine I was reading while waiting to get my haircut. Its from the 28/9/2006 edition of Next Magazine in Hong Kong, a magazine that reports on the weird and wonderful lives of Hong Kong celebs, as well as containing in depth articles on current affairs.

When I turned to the page in the photo, I found the picture in the middle very familiar. The article is about the the lives of undercover police officers in Hong Kong. As you'll see, the picture is very similar to the covers of the Grand Theft Auto games. Nothing in the article is game/GTA related which really makes me wonder why the illustrator would directly copy the art sylte from GTA...

Not only do we love it when readers send us tips, but when they send tips while they are getting haircuts. A Kotaku first! Brian Ashcraft

Japan got over 80,000 PS3 consoles. America is allegedly getting 400,000. And Hong Kong? It got 200 machines. What. Is. The. Point. Double question marks. Reader Martin Froejd sends word that the release wasn't hyped, and that the local news only gave it a few notices. His account of the event after the j-u-m-p.

I was more than willing to try and get my hands on a PS3, and that even before the US would get its thanks to the time difference. The release event was simple enough - queue up for some tickets that will be released 7.30 AM on the 17th, and then go pick up your PS3 60GB, 3 games, 2 controllers and some Playstation branded clothes for 5245 HKD - roughly 670 US dollars, but the basic unit with one controller went for only 490 USD. The queuing itself was supposed to be done in the Gateway Shopping Mall, in the famous shopping district of Tsim Sha Tsui and right next to the five star luxury hotel Marco Polo. Well - the queuing was hidden behind some panels, right at the exit ventilation of the nearby parking garage. In other words - noisy, dirty and with the occasional scent of gas. I got to the scene at 8 PM. I was quite surprised. More than 50% of the people were elderly women - with no apparent interest in PS3. "Street hawkers", as one fellow queuer preferred to call them. These were only here to get a profit in reselling - probably not by selling the units themselves but just queuing up for someone.

We talked to the official looking Sony guys that walked around. They confirmed what still is unbelievable - only 200 units, in addition to a small batch of pre-orders that were already sold. They guessed more units would arrive within "one to two weeks". Nobody knew if and when they would show up outside the official Sony store. We also got an idea of the organization behind it all. My first impression was quite decent. They had made sure the queue was roped and sealed with panels. The whole thing was under a roof (it is Hong Kong after all). There were at least two security guards patrolling, and a number of Sony employees, or "event staff". They would go regularly through the crowd and write up ID-card numbers, to check that people weren't cheating. If you would miss one count, you'd risk loosing your place in the queue completely. But it could have been much better - the queue looked more like a "shelter for homeless" than anything else, as one guy told me. The staff was quite frank with the fact that maybe 90% of the people there only were going to resell their units - and they kind of recommended us normal, decent gamers to try the next batch.

As for me, the event was a failure. I thought I had arrived in good time, but then I realized all the others had already stood in the same spot for hours (the first had arrived at 10 AM this morning). With a place of 40-something on the waiting list (that is, the list of people in excess of the first 200), I didn't feel it was worth gambling a good night's sleep. I just have to hope that Sony can release something more than 200 - a mere sample - of its much-wanted product in the coming weeks, so that normal people can expect to get their hands on it. And when they are so aware that the first batches only go for resale, why not find a better way of delivering their products to "retailers"?

That's it. I didn't get one.

Sony knows that Japan likes it rough. Dig those stilettos into its back, drawing blood and the country cries out for more. Welts aren't an indication of pain, but love. Don't believe me? Here's proof: Even though The Land of the Rising Sun will get 20,000 fewer consoles, Sony recently announced that the PS3 will launch in Hong Kong and Taiwan on November 17th, and the 60GB will cost HK$ 3,780 and NT$17,980 (US $486 and $544). That's probably cheaper than Sony's slightly scary "open price" for the domestic market. And does Japan care? Like I said, the country likes it rough. Brian Ashcraft

Japan Is Sony's Bitch [MacWorld]

Filling the Void [Modojo, Thanks John!]

The Hong Kong government auctioned off 105 vanity license plates for charity. Car owners submitted requests, the most popular ones were selected and then put up on the auction block. The most expensive plate was a no brainer ("1 LOVE U" going for US $180,000). The kicker: There was a "GUNDAM" plate that went for US $14,100. Wonder how much "FROGGER" would fetch? Brian Ashcraft

More Here [AnimeNewsNetwork]

Pardon me, weary internet traveller. Can I have seven minutes and thirty six seconds of your time? Cool. I'd like for you to watch this brief behind-the-scenes doc on the making of the instant classic 2003 spot for Nintendo, "School's Out", directed (and tipped to us?!) by Anthony Atanasio. You've definitely seen it. Everyone has. But you may not be aware that over 500 extras were cast for this ad in the "Who Are You?" campaign and that the stunt coordinator from Mortal Kombat: Annihilation was on hand to keep all nimble, childlike stuntmen in check. It's a fascinating look at a beautiful commercial that keeps wide-eyed, corn-fed hillbillys like myself in amazement at all the technological gee-whizery.

Thanks for the heads up, Anthony! Michael McWhertor

The 2586th Pikaash sent us a secret missive via this newfangled "electronic mail" to report that a large shipment of DS Lites in bodacious black has vanished, probably into the Hong Kong black market. Says handheld-hugging blog Play Gadgets:

Looks like the black Nintendo DS Lite is hotter than ever. A container (those large metal structures that carry cargo) full of black Nintendo DS Lite and DS games had gone missing in Hong Kong when it was making its way from China (where the DS Lites are made) to Europe (where the black Lites are launching). The reported loss was $18 million Hong Kong dollars (US$2.32 million).

The Hong Kong police suspected that the black DS Lite units sold in Hong Kong recently were part of some loot and was willing to offer HKD$1 million ($128, 831) to anyone with a tip off or two.

Tensions are high here at the office; we all have our reasons for needing that reward. My saltwater farming dreams can't just fund themselves, and every time I see the tiny can of squids-in-soy I keep on my desk, right next to my wooden thumb, an extra-salty tear oozes out from under my eyepatch. Elizarrrr Gauger

Missing DS Lites [Play Gadgets]

Hong Kong game blog Genie the FlammableWheel Alpha (you cannot make up such goodness) sends word of a special Ninety-Nine Nights pre-order present for the Chinese market, I assume. Nothing quite says next-gen Xbox 360 RPG gaming like a NN3 snow-globe. Nothing quite says anything like a snow-globe now does it? Save for Genie the FlammableWheel Alpha. Brian Ashcraft

More Here [GTFWA]