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If Netflix, YouTube, Hulu Plus and the Zune marketplace haven't been enough to satiate your unquenchable thirst for all things cinematic, perhaps two more apps will help quell the raging torrent in your soul. Crackle, a free service, has a somewhat limited and eccentric selection of movies and television shows to choose from, although they do have a rather impressive selection of classic anime like Ah! My Goddess and Galaxy Express 999.

Best Buy's CinemaNow ecosystem has more new releases to choose from, but its services require cash money. It's unclear whether all of the content on these two services will be available through the respective apps, or if some content will be restricted, like the YouTube and Hulu Plus apps. If our calculations are correct, Xbox Live only needs 2 more movie apps and 4 more internet radio apps before it becomes self aware.

#streetfighter A Taiwanese gaming site has posted cards detailing the movesets for characters Street Fighter X Tekken, due for release in March. The big news here is that the movesets confirm M. Bison, Xiaoyu, Akuma, Jin and Ogre for the game's lineup. More »

#stickjockey In past years I've used the Saturday before the Super Bowl to handicap the field for the next cover of Madden NFL. Since the last time I did that, EA Sports put the honors up to a fan-voted, 32-player tournament in 2011, and on Thursday announced it was doubling that field to 64 for 2012. More »

In an attempt to unify all independent Sony-centric networks, such as the PlayStation Network, the service previously known as Qriocity, and more, Sony has revealed that PlayStation Network accounts will be rebranded as SEN -- or Sony Entertainment Network -- accounts in order to bring more unity between services...

Brand caught our eye all the way back in August of last year, and we've just gotten word that the game is available now on Xbox Live Indie Games, yours for the low price of just 240 Microsoft points ($3). You can see a release trailer above, and all of those swords you see in there are custom-made, because the game allows you to create your own.

We're also told that you can play as your own Xbox Live avatar, and that there's about five hours of nonlinear exploration gameplay across three big areas. Looks good -- if you give it a download, let us know what you think.

The wily gentlemen at NeoGAF have spotted a copyright registration by Insomniac Games for something called Outernauts, supposedly a new game the developer is working on. If you thought the company was already working on "O-something," you're also right: Overstrike was announced at last year's E3. But Outernauts is new, and Insomniac has also registered "outernauts-game.com," and "outernauts-game.net," so the game, as they say, is afoot.

There's more, too: A Google search for the recently unburied title revealed a wiki page that was apparently meant for EA Partners marketing planning, and revealed both Overstrike and Outernauts, along with "Respawn" (probably the new project from the studio of the same name), The Secret World (which EA is publishing with Funcom) and "Populous," which might be a new version of that old strategy series. And as if all of that isn't enough, the wiki page was created by one "pmarineau," which matches up to Phil Marineau, who happens to be EA's director of marketing.

Whew! Did we mention that the NeoGAF folks were wily? We've contacted Insomniac for comment on this one, but it's unlikely they'll confirm at this point. We'll probably just have to wait for the official Outernauts announcement to know what it's all about.

Taken with 3DS camera becuase thats all I had at the moment

Street Fighter X Tekken's character roster has had more leaks than a Civil War-era submarine; this time, the unannounced character details come courtesy of a move list card deck included in a Taiwanese collector's edition of the game, which happens to include cards for five unannounced characters: M. Bison, Xiaoyu, Akuma, Jin and Ogre.

M. Bison and Xiaoyu were leaked once already, but this is the first we've heard of Akume, Jin or Ogre's inclusion in the game. This collector's edition also includes a 46 track soundtrack and a Yoshinori Ono bobble-head figurine (!!), so we're desperately hoping that the US will get a similar package.

#toys Whoa. More »

If you grew up on the LucasArts side of the adventure game turf wars, you missed out on some really wonderful Sierra stuff -- specifically, the Space Quest series; a consistently funny, wonderfully designed set of sci-fi adventure games.

GOG just happens to have them on sale this weekend for 50% off, so you can get the entire series for ten bucks. Other Sierra adventure game packs are marked down too, including King's Quest and Police Quest. Those are fine, but they lack a certain something. There are no pet facehuggers, for example.

#crime Protip: Aluminum foil is only useful for protecting you from the mind-controlling radio signals sent out by the CIA. If you're using it to shoplift games, all it does is attract the attention of the store manager. More »

- patent credits Masahiro Sakurai
- patent details a feature for an unspecified shooting game
- patent involves transmission between two systems
- includes a process for fusing pairs of in-game weapons together
- each piece of data in the exchange represents a weapon
- when two systems meet, this weapon data can be fused into a new weapon
- fusion costs coins
- weapons set to transmit cannot be equipped by your character
- a gun and stick can fuse to create "a weapon capable of firing and using magic."
- weapon stats are determined randomly from a pre-specified range
- these include attack power, elemental ability, stamina, shooting range
- fusion is not limited to StreetPassed weapons
- fusion can include two weapons found in treasure chests in single-player play

This is no doubt related to Kid Icarus: Uprising. It's just funny to see a patent directly related to this fusion system!

- on sale in Japan this April
- small doll (11W x 22H x 11D cm) costs 1,400 yen ($18)
- medium doll (15W x 30H x 15D cm) costs 2,600 yen ($34)

A portion of a GameXplain review...

Even though it may not be a AAA+ blockbuster title, Rhythm Heaven Fever is an experience well worth having. It offers a refreshing form of gameplay that’s both exceedingly punishing, but also immensely rewarding.

Full review here

- 86% review score
- ”This is a big comeback which has breathed new life into a flatlining series”

New info

- No 50 turn games
- No coins
- Bowser spaces appear more frequently near the end of the stages.
- 78 minigames
- Story Mode will have you playing the boards with “Bowser’s minions”.
- Step Up (Mario Party DS) returns
- Garden Battle (mode) – winner plants plants to place in their garden with the ultimate goal to completely filling yours first.
- Perspective Mode lets you play minigames in third person viewpoint.
- Unlockable vehicles and boards
- Time Trail Mode
- No Classic Mode
- No Online

More mini-games revealed

- Launch Break (Rocket Launching)
- Pizza me, Mario (Pizza Making)
- Speeding Bullets (Bullet Bill Racing)
- Growing Up (Press buttons to grow your beanstalk)
- Mecha Choice (Escape from Mecha-Koopas)
- Polar Extremes (Platforming)
- Skyjinks (Platforming)

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#psa North American subscribers to Battle.net, check your inboxes—and your spam box, in case its settings are too strict. Blizzard sent out another 100,000 invitations to the Diablo III beta overnight. More »

You don't have to play a downloadable game to get down low, but Ryan and Dave figure it can't hurt.

This is almost like the time they made a Facebook game out of a popular TV show. Except it isn't. Family Guy Online isn't your standard social grind. It's not even a Facebook game. It's a graphically convincing free-to-play browser-based RPG with plenty of character, TV-showness and gameplay challenges...

You gotta hand it to THQ, despite posting a $56 million loss last quarter, the publisher is still willing to take a risk on bringing a fresh-faced developer into the fold. Of course, when you take into account that said developer is staffed by a who's who list of classic game designers, the proposition sounds less risky.

Innovative Leisure, the brand-new developer in question, touts Seamus Blackley, Ed Logg, Ed Rotberg, Rich Adam and others among its ranks. If those names sound slightly familiar, it's for a good reason: Blackley co-wrote the original Xbox proposal and helped shepherd the product into existence. Meanwhile, Logg was responsible for Asteroids, Centipede and Gauntlet, while Rotberg and Adam were responsible for Battlezone and Missile Command, respectively.

The studio will focus on creating titles for mobile, downloadable and social platforms; THQ is applying Innovative Leisure's extensive collective experience in design-driven experiences to produce accessible titles that work well in small doses. Here's hoping for a Saints Row-themed Missile Command clone for iOS and Android.

#psn In an email to PlayStation Network subscribers, Sony told subscribers that their PlayStation Network accounts will now be known as "Sony Entertainment Network" accounts. Not that this does away with PlayStation Network as a name. Sony says PSN "will be aligned with Sony Entertainment Network." More »

While I normally count myself as a member the family of rigorous implacable impartiality that makes up the ranks of the International Games Press Corps, I will definitely be on the side of fans in the upcoming battle Air Buccaneers Fan vs Dev conflict, which is taking place in the new alpha build of Air Buccaneers HD. Ludocraft report that: “The battle will start at 18:00 o’clock GMT+2 time on next Thursday, February 9th. We will be playing on the Official LudoCraft Server and we’ll be using the latest Pre-Alpha version of the game.”

I’ll bring the hot air. You can carry the cannonballs.

XBLA Fans has done an exhaustive analysis of Xbox Live Arcade sales, Metacritic scores, and trends over the past few years in a four-part writeup. The most interesting finding in the article, in our estimation, is how the perception of rising prices squares with reality. Yes, there are more 1200 point ($15) games being released on the service as compared to previous years, but there are more 800 point ($10) games coming out as well, and there are more of those than $15 games. The average is rising overall, but it hasn't yet reached the 1200 point mark, even if that price is being assigned to some of the more high profile (and high quality) games on the service.

The quality of the Summer of Arcade, on the other hand, is dropping overall, according to the average price and Metacritic score. In 2008, the first year the promotion existed, the games had an average Metacritic score of 84.8, with an average price of 960 points. This past year, however, the Metacritic score dropped to 78.8 (which still isn't too bad), but the average price was at 1120. This is purely mathematical, remember: The games are probably more complex these days, which allows Microsoft to set a higher price, and reviews on any site are subjective.

Finally, XBLA Fans found 73% of titles on XBLA have gone on sale within their first year, though many of the games on XBLA were only on sale for a day or so. That means that patient XBLA buyers can save a lot of money, if they pay attention and move quickly. There are a few other interesting conclusions in the analysis as a whole, and lots of insight on how Microsoft's Arcade has developed over the past few years.

#themoneysaver The action RPG Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning releases on Tuesday, bringing with it damn near 200 hours worth of gameplay. You don't have to get it full price, either, there are savings on the console and PC versions of the game, plus more than 58 other values, inside this weekend's Moneysaver! More »