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Give thanks for outrageous action this week with Serious Sam 3: BFE...

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Look, over the next few days, Joystiq is going to be comprised almost entirely of deal posts and articles written by a bunch of sleepy, turkeyed-up staffers. This is one of the former. Determined as ever to get some of your Black Friday cash ahead of actual Black Friday, Amazon is serving up some delectable discounts.

First up, a bundle that includes a Kinect sensor, Kinect Adventures and download codes for both The Gunstringer and Fruit Ninja Kinect, all for $125. If you'd prefer something a little more tactile, you can also snag deals on games featuring "epic adventures and quests." Specifically, Red Dead Redemption or El Shaddai for $30, LA Noire for $20 or BioShock 2 for $10, among others.

If you prefer portable games, Amazon's got you there too, offering a buy one, get one 40 percent off deal on several DS and 3DS titles, including Super Mario 3D Land, Cave Story 3D, Super Scribblenauts and more. Now, if you'll excuse us, we have to research stuffing recipes.

Microsoft and TechStars, a company that provides mentors and funding to potential startups, will support 10 entrepreneurs in their Kinect-based ventures with a three-month innovation incubation contest dubbed The Kinect Accelerator.

The program is for commercial applications of Kinect technology, and after a "competitive screening process," each of the 10 startups will receive $20,000, office space, an Xbox dev kit, the Windows Kinect SDK and all the resources of Microsoft BizSpark. After three months, each team will present at an Investor Demo Day to potentially garner more funding and media attention. You can apply for The Kinect Accelerator right here through Jan. 25.

TechStars is helping Microsoft with the Accelerator and will get a 6 percent stake in the startups. Microsoft has really run with this Kinect-hacking boom, which is good; perhaps it realized that Kinect is truly a sweeping media application that can also do gaming, as opposed to a gaming system that also supports other media. As much fun as we have with Dance Central 2, the idea of yelling at our entertainment systems to play music, watch TV and surf the net is still much more appealing than any fly-step-out combos.

Sears has a number of video game deals going down for Black Friday and Cyber Monday next week, headlined by a black Wii system including New Super Mario Bros. and a soundtrack CD for just $134.99. The store will also have an Xbox 360 4GB system with a Kinect included for just $209.99, and the PlayStation 3 will get bundled with Ratchet and Clank: All for One and LittleBigPlanet 2 for $199.99.

In the software section, they've got Gears of War 3, Forza Motorsport 4, Killzone 3, Battlefield 3, and the latest versions of FIFA, Madden, and NCAA Football for $39.99, while both seasons of Kinect Sports, Dance Central and its sequel, Rage and Gran Turismo 5 are all listed at $29.99. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 will be there for $19.99, and other games may show up for various deals.

Finally, Sears is also offering the Kinect sensor on its own for $99.99, or a PS3 DualShock3 Wireless controller for $34.99. And if all of that deal hunting gets you tired out, you can always relax in front of this Warm Oak Fireplace made out of real oak (only $89.99!).

Target offers yet another choice if you're looking to stand in line on Black Friday for a $199 160 PS3 with LBP2 and Ratchet & Clank All 4 One, or a $99 Kinect with Kinect Adventures and The Gunstringer (with a bonus Wipeout 2, if that matters). Those console deals headline Target's Black Friday offers, along with a $179 3DS/Super Mario 3D Land bundle.

Target will also sell Battlefield 3, Gears 3, Resistance 3, Need for Speed 3: The Run, and Madden 12 for $37 each; and Forza 4, Kinect Sports 2, Dance Central 2, and more for $27 each. You also get a $10 gift card with the purchase of Rayman Origins, Ocarina of Time 3D, Skyrim, or two others.

That's all great, but the best deal is Babysitting Mama for $5. That's a game that you control with a doll!

It's nearly the moment you've been preparing for all year, savvy shopper. And right here? Here is the page from which you finalize your Black Friday master plan. You'll show those retailers, alright ... or is it the other way around?
Here we go again, y'all -- one week 'til Black Friday 2011. In that vein, we've once more compiled our annual testament to post-Turkey retail madness, replete with savings from vendors large and small, brick-and-mortar as well as online.

Up above, you can head directly into any of "The Big Six" sections by clicking the individual logos. Down below, some highlights to help guide that process:

• Best Buy: Consoles on the cheap and the special edition Zelda 3DS [more details]
• GameStop: Like Best Buy, but you can totally trade in stuff [more details]
• Kmart: Discounted HD remakes, HD newmakes, and non-HD wagglers [more details]
• Sears: Mario for the holidays (at home and on-the-go) [more details]
• Target: Cheapest Mario 3DS bundle, discounted Kinect, in-store Pizza Hut [more details]
• Walmart: Blue Wiis, the Bats, and so, so many bullets [more details]

#xbox Happy birthday, Xbox! You turn 10 today. Microsoft is celebrating your birthday by selling people a much prettier version of Halo: Combat Evolved. More »

Did you know that Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary has more than just fancy schmancy high resmolution graphics? Well, it also has some nifty (ish) Kinect features. See them yourself in this Joystiq video tour.

Strike fast week with Assassin's Creed: Revelations...

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Don't binge on too much tryptophan this Thanksgiving, because you'll need to wake up early to take advantage of Kmart's Black Friday deals. Most of the store's best deals are doorbusters, being offered only from 5am to 11am November 25. Highlights include Driver: San Francisco for $20, Battlefield 3 or Metal Gear Solid HD Collection for $35, and this year's EA Sports titles (i.e. Madden, FIFA and NCAA Football) for $40 each.

The other gaming deals, available all day November 25 and 26, aren't quite as good, though there are some good buys to be had. You can snag an Xbox 360 4GB console for $149 or a Kinect sensor for $99. As for games, for $40 you can pick up Gears of War 3 or Forza Motorsport 4, $30 will get you RAGE, Ico and Shadow of the Colossus Collection, Kinect Sports Season Two or Dance Central 2.

Finally, if you ... erm, your "nephew" has been dying to try out Skylanders, you can grab the starter pack for $50.

We're of the firm opinion that your time is too precious, too valuable to be spent reading a full review for a game that was already reviewed many, many years ago. What's the point of applying a score to a game that's old enough to be enrolled in the sixth grade? That's why we invented Deja Review: A quick look at the new features and relative agelessness of remade, revived and re-released games. You never forget your first. Way back in 2001, halfway through my first year of college, my parents unexpectedly bought me an Xbox for Christmas. My first game was Dead or Alive 3, but the one I'll always remember was something called Halo: Combat Evolved. I'd never heard of it before, but the editors of my gaming magazine of choice -- EGM, as I recall -- gave it not one or two or three, but four 10 out of 10s.

I picked up a copy and the rest, as they say, is history. I played through the campaign alone, and again with friends, and again with my brother, and again with my then future in-laws. I played multiplayer at the only LAN party I've ever attended and I got slaughtered, falling countless times to the effortless pistol precision of friends-of-friends who were actually geekier than I was. But it didn't matter, because Halo was a blast.

Ten years later, it still is.

Black Friday is already looking pretty crazy this year, and Gamestop won't be doing anything to reduce the amount of consumerist insanity permeating the American consciousness. If anything, the fact that its sales flier proudly boasts that limited edition Zelda 3DS on its front cover indicates a clear and unmistakable aim to misbehave, in a metaphorical, capitalist sense.

We'll save you the headache of an unwieldy bulleted list by telling you that the long and short of the sale is widely similar to other retail offerings: Discounted 360s and PS3s ($149 and $199 respectively), recent titles discounted by $10 to $30, etc. Check out the 12 page flier for complete details, and when you're tempted by these impressive discounts, remember how small and innavigable the average Gamestop is on a normal day, let alone on the busiest shopping day of the year.

German tech company Evoluce loves messing around with Microsoft's toys and sales plans, playing with the Kinect to create user-friendly, gesture-based interfaces for the home and office. Now, Evoluce's Kinect SDK is available for download, rivaling Microsoft's own SDK to be released in early 2012, and offering devs a bit of old-fashioned market competition. Evoluce plans to release a commercial version of its dev kit "at a later date."

We're all for innovating existing hardware, but to truly create the future we think it helps to look even further into the realms of almost-science-fiction and M. Night Shyamalan movies.

'Tis the season to be stampede trampled jolly, apparently, despite the fact that we're still cleaning the toilet paper out of our trees and we haven't even begun trying to decide between potatoes and stuffing. As department stores across the nation begin decking their halls with boughs of various things, they also begin preparing their tired, broken staff for the onslaught of panicked, sleep-deprived consumer mayhem awaiting them on November 25.

Toys R' Us, purveyor of battery/adult-assembly-requiring novelties since 1957, will be celebrating the fact that you've managed to survive another family gathering by offering buy-one-get-one-free deals on select DS and Wii titles, and buy-one-get-one-for-five-bucks deals on select console titles. They're also discounting the Kinect 360 bundle to $199, the Kinect itself to $99, and the PS3 to $199. Take a squint at the leaked flier here (and here) for specifics, and remember that great savings can be had as long as you're willing to sacrifice your humanity some shut-eye.

Microsoft had a good October. With 393,000 Xbox consoles sold in the US, last month saw 21% growth over the same month last year. Of course, Kinect was released last November so, when given a chance to talk with Microsoft product manager David Dennis about sales numbers, I asked if he thought monthly sales numbers would exceed last November and December's.

"The rule of thumb you can look at," Dennis explained, "is you take October and you double it and that's your November and you double your November and that's your December." With that rule of thumb in mind, our napkin math puts this November's Xbox 360 sales at 786K, far short of last November's staggering 1.37 million Xbox consoles. But Dennis said that there's "an incredible amount of momentum behind the platform right now," and Microsoft is hopeful that Kinect can strike holiday gold a second year in a row.

Hey listen Halo, we like you and all -- you've always been there for us over the years. But when you come out with a $40 anniversary edition, it's like, that game was fun the first five times we played it. We've got nothing against you, per se, but with Modern Warfare 3 and Skyrim out now, it's just; we can't really commit that much money, you know? It's not you, it's us!

Wait, what's that? You're also releasing the Anniversary Edition maps as DLC for Halo Reach? Oh! For 1200 points (about $15), we'll get six multiplayer maps that are revamps of levels from previous Halo games with new features and areas, and a Firefight map called "Installation 04"? That's much more our speed, Halo!

The maps (and playlists for them) will be live on November 14, so we'll see you there, Halo. And no hard feelings, right? We love you, you know. Just not all the way.

#halo There is no mention of Kinect support on the box of next week's HD 10th-anniversary remake of Halo: Combat Evolved. That doesn't mean the features were cut. They weren't. More »

This year, you say, you're not going to watch retailer websites all Thanksgiving weekend for deals; you're not going to give in and drive to a store at midnight for cheap games. Walmart is the first to try to convince you otherwise, posting its Black Friday circular with discounts and exclusive offers it hopes will bring you back on the most dangerous shopping day of the year.

For $199, you have a choice of console bundles: an Xbox 360 4GB with Gears 3, 3 months of Live, and a $50 gift card; an Xbox 360 4GB with Kinect, Kinect Adventures, and a $50 gift card; or a 160GB PS3 with Ratchet & Clank All 4 One, LittleBigPlanet 2, and 3 months of Plus membership.

The blue Wii, announced in Europe as a Mario & Sonic bundle, will be released in America exclusively to Walmart ... at the crazy low price of $100.

If you're already set for systems, Walmart is also offering limited-time deals on games. From Thanksgiving night at 10pm through Friday, you can get recent releases like Batman: Arkham City, Battlefield 3, Gears of War 3, Infamous 2, and Call of Duty: Black Ops for $28. Dance Central 2, Kinect Sports Season Two, and Epic Mickey (among others) are $15. You can also get Yakuza 4 for ten damn dollars -- plus the cost of having to fight for your life at Walmart.

[Thanks, Justin.]

#kinect What's this, a new, more angular version of Microsoft's Kinect? Not quite. It's just a wireless receiver for a PC that looks like a Kinect, down to the Microsoft-inspired packaging. More »

Microsoft has posted that the Xbox.com website is getting an update "in the coming days" that will remove the "My Xbox" frontpage currently there now, and replace it with a "Social" section to make use of the "Beacons" feature eventually making its way to the console. Beacons are a way to mark which games you're currently playing or want to play, and are supposed to encourage you and your friends to set up times to play together on Xbox Live. Players will be able to set up three Beacons at a time, and add an additional comment as well, like "between 7-9pm PST" or "Horde mode only."

The website update will also make use of the "Metro" setup coming to the console's dashboard, and of course allow for access to the usual Xbox.com actions like redeeming codes, messaging friends and checking out their profiles, or browsing for and purchasing Xbox Live titles.

Officially, the console's Dashboard Update is still scheduled for a "Holiday 2011" release, though previous reports have placed it sometime right around Thanksgiving. With this update coming to the website as soon as next week, however, it's a good bet the console update is also close at hand.

[Thanks, Liam!]

#bulletstorm I've yet to see convincing evidence that a first-person shooter (or indeed, any kind of non puppet-based shooter) could work on the Xbox 360's Kinect motion controller. That said, if I had to pick an FPS that would work well with the hardware, it would probably be People Can Fly's highly physical Bulletstorm. More »

The War on Terror gets an all new explosive chapter this week with Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3...

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Microsoft has announced that Kinect is officially on its way to Windows. In a blog post on the Microsoft Developer Network site, Microsoft's Craig Eisler confirmed that the Kinect for Windows commercial program will launch next year. "This year, we're showing the world how to re-imagine entertai...

“Kinect. KIN-ECT! Write this down… no, don’t open the DVD drive. Close it. C-L-O-S-E it! Don’t make me come over there: you’ve seen what I do to a mouse during games of Team Fortress 2. Yeah, I thought that would scare you. I knew you things talked to each other. Right, so I’m speaking these words into my Kinect. It’s hooked up to my PC, thanks to Microsoft releasing it for the PC. Also, I’m from the future.”(more…)

The Kinect peripheral celebrates its first birthday this week, and Microsoft has been hard at work to offer Kinect for Windows as a commercial product. An update on the Microsoft blog says to expect it sometime in early 2012.

Microsoft has also made available an updated version of the beta SDK. If you're the type of person who can actually mess around with that thing, you can snag it from the newly-launched Kinect for Windows site. You know, if you want -- we don't care either way. We're too winded from this afternoon's Dance Central 2 session and need to lay down for a bit.

#kinect The sinister phase two of Microsoft's Kinect plan picks up steam as the company makes Kinect for Windows impeding arrival official. Are you ready to do everything six to eight feet from a computer screen? More »

Did you get too worked up over that Grand Theft Auto 5 trailer? Let us help you calm down from your frothing state into a "flow state." THQ put up a demo for Leela, Deepak Chopra's meditation tool, on the Xbox 360 Marketplace.

There's no word on how many of your seven chakras can be opened in the demo -- no doubt you'll have to purchase the Kinect game in full in order to get all the way balanced. But maybe this will help you get a quick mini-meditation over lunch.

When you're sufficiently calm, you can then move onto a Raving Rabbids: Alive & Kicking demo and get right back into that frenzy.

#portal Who needs a hostile little mobile phone when you can drop Portal's malevolent artificial intelligence onto a PC and have her watch you via Kinect? More »

#xbox For Halloween, Microsoft released an internal gag video that used Kinect as an instrument in a cheesy horror movie. The cheesy parts are a little too cheesy, but the Kinect stuff is interesting. More »

Jump into the action this week with Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception...

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