Blizzard are taking an interesting route in deciding which model to use for one of the units in StarCraft 2 - letting the community vote on it:

The protoss dark templar has always been one of the StarCraft community's favorite units -- now, the community has a chance to participate directly in the dark templar design process for StarCraft II! Over the course of the next month, players will vote to decide which dark templar model will appear in StarCraft II multiplayer matches.

There are two alternative designs you can vote for, or you can select for them both to be in the game and they'll spawn randomly. Head over to starcraft2.com to vote for your preference!

Microsoft's Keynote presentation at the 2009 CES expo just wrapped up and while gaming news was a little dry this year, they did confirm a couple of things for the upcoming Halo Wars.

Halo Wars, the Xbox 360 exclusive real-time strategy game from Ensemble Studios (Age of Empires) will be released world wide on February 28 2009. A free demo of the game is also due to hit Xbox Live a few weeks earlier on February 5.

As part of our ongoing coverage of the occasional game that you can use to distract your girlfriend so you can get some real gaming done - Ubisoft sent through some information about a new game based on the TV series Grey's Anatomy, coming for PC, Nintendo Wii and DS.

In Grey's Anatomy: The Video Game, fans will have a chance to take on the roles of all of their favourite doctors in an all-new original storyline. As each doctor, players will make important personal and professional decisions, explore the direct relationships with each other, and perform the delicate surgeries the series is known for, all through fun and engaging game play.

Not a lot of other information is available but we've got a few screenshots on our game page.

Nintendo have let us know that they're offering the chance to play Wii Sports Tennis against Novak Djokovic, the Australian Open 2008 defending champion.

Djokovic will be visiting the Wii Tennis Club, one of Nintendo's two dedicated areas at the 2009 Australian Open, and one lucky fan will be invited to come down and take on Djokovic in a match of Wii Sports tennis.

You can enter the competition on the Nintendo Australian Open site (it's a 25-words-or-less dealie).

At MacWorld this week, Apple announces that the iTunes Music Store is going DRM free after reaching an agreement with the major labels that also sees more variation on pricing, ending the US$0.99/track "monopoly" that Apple was forcing on them. The Wired blog has a writeup on the changes and some more detail about them.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation have boldly declared that "DRM is good and fully dead for digital music", but also urges us not to forget that DRM isn't just about music, with a wrap-up of Apple's other DRM systems and how they attempt to provide safeguards to eliminate competition and cripple interoperability.

Activision have announced a new Aussie track pack to be made available on Australia Day (aka Hottest 100 Day):

Featured in the downloadable content is Silverchair’s 1995 hit "Tomorrow", which found early success as one of their first songs when it won a local music competition run by Australian television network SBS. Rounding out the Track Pack is the GRAMMY Award winning Wolfmother with “Dimension” and The Vines with their hit “Outtathaway!”

The Australian Track Pack and will be available on Xbox LIVE® Marketplace for Xbox 360® video game and entertainment system from Microsoft for 440 Microsoft Points (or 160 points per single) on 22nd January. Following that it will be live on 5th February for the PLAYSTATION®Store for the PLAYSTATION®3 computer entertainment system for $9.95 (or $3.45 per single) and Nintendo® Wi-Fi Connection for Wii™ for 160 Wii Points per single.

Technically I'm not back until next week, but couldn't leave this one sitting in my inbox. Capcom have reminded us they'll be serving up some seriously cool gaming options for the first half of 09, beginning in February with the release of Flock through Xbox Live Arcade, the PlayStation Network and on PC.

Street Fighter IV follows with its console releases for the Xbox 360 and PS3 on February 20th, while the Wii-ified Dead Rising update, Chop Till You Drop, is also slated for a Feb drop.

Finally, Resident Evil 5 is scheduled to arrive on Xbox 360, and PS3 this March, fittingly landing on store shelves worldwide on Friday the 13th (oh Capcom, you're oh-so clever).

Also the next-gen update to Bionic Commando will land in gamers' laps in the first half of 09 according to Capcom, though a specific date has yet to be announced.

Hit the title links for their specific AusGamers game page for more media with the exception of Flock, which we'll be updating very shortly.

Many, many years that have passed since the Xbox 360 was unleashed, and Microsoft have just announced that 2008 was the "biggest year ever" for its gaming console:

Despite a tough economy, the gaming industry held strong in 2008 and Microsoft Corp.'s Xbox 360 video game and entertainment system recorded the biggest year in Xbox history, with more consoles, games and online entertainment experiences sold than any previous year. It was a year in which life-to-date unit sales of Xbox 360 systems climbed to 28 million consoles worldwide -- expanding the product's lead over Sony PlayStation 3 to more than 8 million units.
...
Xbox 360 is experiencing record-setting sales around the globe, particularly in Japan and Europe, nearly doubling market share in these key territories. In Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) specifically, Xbox 360 has now sold more than 8 million units, extending its lead over the PS3 by more than 1 million units.

If you picked up a new console over Christmas, what was it?

On the first day of the new year, the Smokin' Guns team released version 1.0 of their total conversion based on the Quake 3 engine. This was formerly the Western Quake modification for Quake 3, but since the open sourcing of the Quake 3 engine it has been made into a standalone game:

Smokin' Guns is intended to be a semi-realistic simulation of the "Old West's" great atmosphere & was developed on Id Software's Quake III Arena Engine.

This total conversion includes completely new weapons created with historically correct information about damage, rate of fire, reload time, etc. It also includes new gametypes and maps inspired mostly by movies. And to increase the feeling of a "gunslingers atmosphere" we also created music tracks and sounds adapted to this time period.

More information and screenshots on our game page, and you can download the client for Windows and Linux locally from AusGamers.

After a nice two weeks off pretending the Internet stops for the Christmas and New Year break, we're back in action! We hope everyone had a good holiday season (hopefully even those unfortunates that still had to work managed to squeeze in a bit of merry-making) and we can move into a new year of gaming for 2009.

There's a bunch of good stuff already on the horizon - next week we'll be having a look at some of the bigger games that might be gracing us with their presence this year (could 2009 be the year of Duke Nukem Forever?!?), so stay tuned.

On behalf of the team at AusGamers, Merry Christmas to everyone! We hope that all your gaming wishes were granted and you scored that sweet new game, console or peripheral your heart desired.

We're taking a bit of a break ourselves so it's a little quiet around here at the moment and we encourage everyone else to do the same. Have a safe and happy holiday!

The announced Fable II: Knothole Island downloadable expansion for Xbox 360 has been delayed according to Xbox.com news update. The site claims "technical difficulties" have caused a delay from its intended Decmeber 22 release till "late January".

Fable II: Knothole Island expansion will not be available until late January 2009. As a result, the Fable II, Knothole Island Download and Win, originally scheduled to take place December 22 – 23, 2008, has been temporarily suspended. Please check back for updates. In addition, you can still register for the Download & Win by downloading the free Fable II: Knothole Island registration gamerpic, or by registering via Xbox.com

This will put the new Fable II content in the same release period as a planned DLC release for Fallout 3.

A public beta of Smashball, a fast-paced sports modification for Half-Life 2, has been released - here's some info:

Smashball is a fast-paced, ultraviolent first-person sports shooter. Two teams use superhuman maneuvers, a real-physics grappling hook, and high-powered weaponry to try to get a single ball into their opponent’s goal.

* INCREDIBLE MOBILITY! Smashball players can use their Turbo Moves to amp up their speed. The Grappling Hook can be used to swing across open areas and wrap around corners. Combining the two allows for supreme feats of acrobatics.

* INTENSE ACTION! Play is focused on The Ball. Every second has to be used to score Runs or Shots on the enemy goal. Players in four different Positions run plays with trick Passing while trying to knock each other out. All weapons have infinite ammo, and players Regenerate Health. A brutal Charging is the best way to knock out or kill a player.

* CHARACTER CUSTOMIZATION! Players get XP for playing, and can buy special Skills when they gain Levels. Skills are used in-game to tailor your character’s capabilities for specific roles. There is an entire dimension of strategy in picking the right combination of skills.

Can't see any screenshots on the official site, but it sounds intriguing on paper at least. You can download the mod locally from AusGamers.

The end of another year spells gift-giving and holidays and also the lead-up to Hollywood's awards season. One particular flick that's generating a lot of buzz around the traps is The Wrestler, directed by Darren Aronofsky and starring Mickey Rourke, Marisa Tomei and Even Rachel Wood. Rourke in particular has already been nominated for a Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild awards and is looking good for some Oscar recognition.

The film is due to land in Aussie cinemas on January 15 2009 and thanks to Hopscotch Films, AusGamers has 15 double passes to give away. All you have to do for a chance to win is creatively answer a simple question in 25 words or less, so head over to the competition page and enter now.

A number of reports floating around the net were suggesting Free Radical (TimeSplitters, Haze) had closed its doors and was not allowing employees entry this week, however, an updated report from Gamasutra has outlined that while the company is definitely in some serious financial trouble, the third-party brought in to help handle the situation is claiming it's all "business as usual".

"We have asked that almost all of the employees apart from a skeleton crew remain at home," said a representative from the resolvent company. "All employees have been paid up until the end of December and we hope to make another announcement before Christmas or very soon thereafter, but we must stress at this stage that it's business as usual."

After the uber-unsuccessful release of Haze (both commercially and critically), and reports they [Free Radical] lost their Star Wars project with LucasArts, it's no wonder things are looking down. We'll keep an eye on the situation though, apart from all the bad, we can't forget these guys are the genius behind TimeSplitters.

It's seriously turning into the war of the music franchises with both Rock Band and Guitar Hero seemingly at each others' throats in a quest to secure the biggest and best bands.

Rock Band managed to nab the likes of AC/DC and also recently announced the acquisition of The Beatles license to create some form of game, and now, "the worst kept secret in rock-n-roll" has finally been officially unveiled, with Guitar Hero being the platform of choice for a full Metallica title.

Guitar Hero Metallica allows you to play as us in either single instrument or band career game modes in your choice of some famous settings (Tushino Airfield anyone?) or new venues with in the round staging. Included are 28 Metallica songs along with a few from some of our buddies like as Alice in Chains, the Foo Fighters, Slayer, Machine Head and Queen. There is also an all new Expert+ difficulty setting featuring two bass drum kick pedals (!!!) along with all the gameplay modes from Guitar Hero World Tour.

Pretty rad they're introducing an Expert+ mode and utilising GHWT's ability to have two kick pedals. It's also pretty cool we'll be seeing more Foo Fighters, Alice and Chains and the like along with older (and better) Metallica tracks. More news will be made soon, according to the release we received, and you can expect the game sometime early 2009.

SEGA have released a new developer diary for Stormise, revealing more information from the upcoming console strategy title in the works at Creative Assembly's Brisbane studio.

The clip runs around 4 minutes and details more on the games 2 factions showing off several different units and weaponry from each side. Of particular note are designer Dan Lehtonen's passionate Steve Irwin-esque descriptions of the game. Check it out right here on AusGamers.

A new batch of screenshots have also been released, you'll find those ones right here. Stormrise is due for a 2009 release on Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.

The Australian promoter for WBIE and Monolith Studio's upcoming F.E.A.R 2: Project Origin have let AusGamers know that the game has now achieved an MA15+ rating from the Australian Classification Board. FEAR 2 had previously been handed a Refused Classification rating.

The interesting part of this is that the game remains unedited and will be same as the international release.

The Classification Review Board has determined, in a unanimous decision, that F.E.A.R 2: Project Origin warrants an MA 15+ (Mature Accompanied) classification with the consumer advice 'Strong violence, blood and gore. Moderate coarse language'.

"After considering extensive submissions and demonstrations of game play across all levels, the Review Board concluded that the level of violence in the computer game, whilst strong, could be accommodated within the MA 15+ classification", acting Classification Review Board Convenor, Trevor Griffin said.

F.E.A.R 2: Project Origin is currently due out on February 12 2009 for PC, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. Check the AusGamers game page for screenshots and a whole pile of trailers.

The guys over at Total Gaming Network were lucky enough to visit the DICE studios and took the opportunity to ask the producers of the Battlefield games what's in store for the future of Battlefield games.

There's some really great news for BF2 and BF2142 fans, with a new map for both games in the works, as well as a bunch of security fixes to alleviate some of the cheating that has been plaguing both games for quite a while now. There's a stack of screenshots of the new map in both games right here.

Head over to their site and have a read about DICE, and what the future holds for Battlefield games, Mirror's Edge as well as their ideas about new games.

Everyone's mind might be on the torrent of holiday season releases already currently available, but there are a few still on the way in the coming weeks. EA's Skate 2, the followup to the critically acclaimed Skateboarding title Skate. lands on Australian shores January 22 for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.

Today EA have released another trailer from the game, the live-action storyline intro movie starring all the pro-skaters featured in the game. Check it out right here on AusGamers.