Kotaku

In a fitting (almost) ending to my six day cross county road trip to move myself from Atlanta to San Francisco, I landed in glamorous Las Vegas last night just in time for the Spike TV Video Game awards. I wasn't quite sure what to expect having never attended a "major" awards show before, but I sat down fueled by five days on the road and a few drinks with my pad and paper to bring you all the big announcements.

One of the things I found amazingly odd was that the awards themselves really seemed to take a back seat to the musical performances, commercials, myriad non video game related guest stars, and occasional World Premier Trailers for games like Little Big Planet, Rainbow 6 Vegas 2, Borderlands, TNA Wrestling, Prototype and Gran Turismo 5. It was almost like the awards were an afterthought, tacked on to an evening of oohing and ahhing over the next big name to take the stage. But, they did eventually get around to the awards and while there were no huge surprises, in general the winners seemed pretty in line with most people's guesses.

*Caution: Spoilers ahead. If you don't want to know any of the winners until the show airs tonight, read no further!*

Joystiq is reporting that Canada may have to wait until 28 December for Rock Band - past Christmas and Boxing Day. Best Buy Canada and Future Shop both have the 28 December release date. Kotakuite Josh K. also pointed us to the Rock Band forums where cranky Canadians are sounded off over the potential wait and extra cost. Now, online retailers have been and will continue to be wrong about this sort of stuff before, so I guess our Canadian friends will just have to wait and see whether they're actually getting shafted on a release date or not.

Rumor: Rock Band Canadian release pushed back past Christmas, Boxing Day [Joystiq]

Just a reminder that Funde Razor, the annual Child's Play rock-off in Brooklyn and now Denver, kicks off this coming Wednesday night. I should, by then, be totally over my jet-lag.

Door prizes for the Denver event will include tons of gaming schwag (things like the Manhunt 2 straitjacket, the Ninja Gaiden DS stylus and a Zelda hourglass), a copy of Rock Band for the 360 and a life-sized Companion Cube plushie.

The party kicks off here in Denver at The Walnut Room at 6 p.m. and runs through 10 p.m. I'm told a lot of the local development crowd will be there, which is very cool of them. We will, if I have figured out the technical aspects correctly, be playing Rock Band on the stage. If I haven't, we will be trying to get Rock Band to work for most of the evening.

In Brooklyn the event kicks off at 8 p.m. at Barcade and runs through midnight. It sounds like Joel will have Rock Band and might also have Guitar Hero III on hand at his event.

Are any readers planning on coming to the Denver event or hitting up the event in Brooklyn?

Funde Razor

The gang at UK pub Gamer picked up on a job listing from Call of Duty 3 developer Treyarch that might point to the series returning to its World War II roots. The posting at Activision's career opportunities page is looking for a level builder to work on an "industry leading First-Person Shooter action war franchise" with serious experience. Later in the job description, Treyarch writes "if you're a fan of World War 2 shooters, then even better!"

Quite the leap, no? While we're positive that Call of Duty 5 is coming, we aren't sure whether Infinity Ward or Treyarch or another developer altogether will be holding the reins.

Level Builder - Call of Duty [Treyarch via Gamer]

It looks like Ash may have been right. Stuff magazine is running a rumor item on the possibility of an upcoming Aibo, the robotic dog, working with the Playstation Portable and Playstation 3. The rumor goes that the Sony Aibo PS, as they call it, is being resuscitated by Sony's Playstation division in an attempt to "bolster the PS3's arsenal."

The Aibo PS will appear with its own avatar within Home and react in the real world as he does in the PS3's upcoming interactive environment, according to the article. The rumor article goes on to say that you will be able to download new personalities for the dog from the Playstation Network and that the dog will be fully controllable using a PSP via WiFi. The dog's head camera will send a real world vid feed to the PSP's screen as well. The Dpad will control walking movement and the four main buttons will deal with head movement, which seems odd.

The Stuff folks rate this rumor as having a 53 percent probability. Seems like a cool concept, but I wonder if there's the market for it to hit the real world. Who am I kidding? A remote control dog that can send live video from its head, sign me up for a baker's dozen.

Matt Smith's Facebook [via Gamespot UK, thanks Matthew]

Sure, Half-Life 2 statistics are like a party on a web page, but Team Fortress 2 stats? The statistical equivalent of a post-Studio 54 after party, but instead of loose models, we have bar charts, instead of quaaludes, death maps. The data, collected via Steam, gives us plenty of insight into the playing habits of TF2 players—data that just might help some modify their personal strategies. It might also give some handy excuses to blurt out in the face of defeat. Perhaps you'll find "Scout is cheap!" useful.

What is interesting, though, is the advantage team Blu seems to have on maps that are mirror images of each other. Also, why so few Medics, people? It's fun!

Team Fortress 2 Stats [Steam]

Exclusives are driven by gameplay functionality and cost. If you get your gameplay functionality and costs right, exclusivity can work.