Tetsuya Mizuguchi, founder of Q Entertainment and best known for his work on Rez, Space Channel 5 and Lumines took the stage at DICE today to talk about the future of gaming and give attendees a quick history lesson on all things MIzuguchi. His talk, titled "Art vs. Commerce" focused on his career-long struggle to balance the artistic and the fiscally responsible. From the wildly successful Sega Rally—which sold 20,000 full-sized arcade units and 1.5 million on consoles and PCs—to the commercial underperformer Rez—a game for which he declined to offer sales data.

Mizuguchi explained he was inspired by games at a young age, fascinated by Atari's dedicated Pong platform. He says he also discovered the music of The Beatles at the same time, combining the two experiences in a visual and emotional way.

You probably already know that Rez HD is coming to Xbox LIVE this Wednesday (don't forget to read our impressions, btw), so we'll refrain from rehashing what is now a nugget of your wisdom in snarky blogger format. Instead we'll just mention that Ubisoft's Chessmaster LIVE is coming this week as well. With a multitude of boards, online play (surprise) and extra game modes, chess players can decide whether or not it's worth their 800 points.

Because while Chessmaster LIVE looks good and everything, it's no Battle Chess.

A few days ago I headed to downtown San Francisco to meet up with the Tetsuya Mizuguchi and the folks from Q Entertainment as they did their final push for Rez HD before it officially hits XBLA this coming Wednesday. I was ushered into a hotel room and seated on a comfy couch in front of a nice big screen displaying the familiar beats and graphics of Rez. The next thing I knew I was being handed three different controllers: one was placed behind my back, one on the floor under my feet and the third in my hands to control the game. This, I was told, was "the Miz way" to play. As it turned out, the Miz way was the way to go.

If 800 Microsoft Points is "too much" for a hi-def remake of one of the best video games of all time, by all means, go ahead and register to win one of fifty copies of Rez HD. It's no skin off my back if you want to fill out a registration form at the official Rez HD site and skirt the payment, you cheap son of a bitch. However, if you do have the gall to weasel your way into a free code for the Xbox Live Arcade version, do me a favor and don't tick the radio button on the survey that says "I'm a fan of Tetsuya Mizuguchi" because you'll be lying. The man's got kids to feed and you're trying to shortchange him and the rest of the underpaid Q Entertainment staff. People like you make me sick.

Rez HD Official Site

I've had a pet project I've been working on for years, three of them if my memory is right. It started as a simple idea: You can judge a lot from a person's desk. I bet you could judge just as much from their home entertainment system. So I decided it would be fun to try and track down some pictures from the work desks and home gaming set-ups of the people who work in and cover the video game industry. Simple right? Not so much.

Turns out that many of the people are either too busy or too private to want to participate in such a project. To make matters worse, there's always fear that something sitting on someone's desk, that ends up in a photo, could actually be news worthy. Like a secret project or the next big thing. But I didn't give up and about once a year I'd harass a bunch of game developers for photos. Finally, this year, the harassment paid off.

What started as a trickle of photos turned quickly into the collection of galleries you'll find on the jump: More than 40 different photo galleries from 17 studios, seven publications, two industry movers and shakers and a couple of fun surprises.

You'll get to see the desk of such greats as Sid Meier, Peter Molyneux and Tetsuya Mizuguchi along with plenty of others. Remember you can comment both on the next page and on each individual photo if you click on them.

If I find there is interest, I will try to periodically update this gallery of galleries with more developers, journalists and industry movers and shakers. Have fun.

We've known that Lumines is most assuredly coming to PCs for a few weeks now. What we didn't know was how, exactly, it would make its way to the platform. Today, Q Entertainment and its partner announced that it would come to the WildTangent Network, the online game provider famous for Penguins and Polar Bowler. Yeah! Those guys. *crickets*

The PC version comes with the now standard stuff, including Skin Edit, Puzzle and Time Attack modes. Lumines is available to Windows users on a pay per play basis, free with a healthy does of advertising or for download at $19.99. It's also available on just about everything else.

A new rating for Q Entertainment's Lumines has appeared on the Entertainment Software Ratings Board, revealing that a Windows version of the musical puzzle game, originally released for the PSP, is in the works. When we contacted the developer about the listing, it confirmed the title's existence and promised that details will be announced within the next few weeks. Wait, what? Confirmation? That was... easy. Almost too easy.

Please note the picture above is from the Xbox Live Arcade version, Lumines Live.

ESRB Game Ratings

Nothing says Halloween like Lumines. Or Christmas. Or summer vacation. On October 17th, Q Entertainment will be releasing a "Rockin' Holiday Pack" of 20 new Lumines Live! skins for Challenge Mode. Usual Q cohorts like Keiichi Sugiyama (Rez, Area 1) and h ueda (Every Extend Extra Extreme) collaborated for this upcoming pack. Snowflakes and autumn leaves — so festive!