GameFly's first open casting call for its next commercial will take place next Tuesday in LA. The event will be held at Hollywood and Highland Center, 6801 Hollywood Blvd, Hollywood between 12-6PM. Those trying out should be in full cosplay mode.

For those who can't attend the LA, Chicago (Sept. 16) or NYC (Sept 23) events, there's always the option of submitting a 45 second video on GameFly's site. Best of luck to those who attend and try out!

With the NFL regular season just barely underway, there's plenty of time for the Madden Curse to sink its hooks into Mr. Favre's vulnerable ankle, but for now, EA is busy squashing a host of bugs that have crawled out of the bowels of latest edition of Madden. The major pest is a freezing issue that can crop up during play calling and highlight screens, reports IGN. Senior designer Ian Cummings has documented most, if not all known bugs on the game's Producer Blog, recommending various workarounds while the team puts together a patch. EA is targeting "less than a 3 week turnaround" from last Tuesday for the update to be released. So put a big checkmark next to the 16th and cross your fingers.

Look, we honestly don't care what you think about the Disgaea franchise and its peculiar, thoroughly unhinged take on role playing. All we know is that if the description of its upcoming spin-off -- a side-scrolling platformer starring a tenacious, twirling penguin who, by the way, occasionally pilots an enormous tank -- doesn't do anything for you, then we'd like to ask you to leave. Leave the internet.

The internet is also where you'll find the game's official website, along with word that Prinny: Is It Okay If I Am The Main Character? is due to arrive on Japanese PSPs on November 20th. If you have a "friend" with a Japanese PlayStation Store account, you'll also want to check out the demo as of September 29th.

It's no secret: You love Geometry Wars 2, we love Geometry Wars 2, everybody loves it. We recently talked with Bizarre Creation's Stephen Cakebread, Senior Coder, and Craig Howard, Games Manager, to find out how they crafted the game that won our hearts.

It would seem to the layman that, with as popular as Geometry Wars was, a sequel would be pretty easy to crap out. Why wait so long?

Howard: Because the first one was so well received, it would have cheapened the game if we just knocked something out and not given it a lot of thought. We wanted something to make sure it was something we'd be really proud of.

Cakebread: Our inital plan was to get it our a year later and then the plan was to ship it when Gotham 4 shipped and that didn't work out either. It really was a case that we weren't going to ship it until we were ready to ship it. It might seem silly, but it took us quite a while to figure out a graphical style that still looked like the original. One of our big things was when people came to our stations we wanted them to say "Oh, is that a sequel to Geometry Wars?" rather than "Is that Geometry Wars?" It took us quite a while to come up with something that really worked. We tried some mad stuff.

Like what?:

Howard: What didn't we do? [laughs]

Since CNBC analyst Jane Wells granted us poor peons a glimpse into "the ultimate proof Sony is winning" two months ago, we at Joystiq have been eagerly awaiting another chance to hear from her son, the twelve-year-old oracle who sealed Microsoft's fate by trading his Xbox 360 for a PS3. And lo, today the all-knowing king of business analysis didst speak once more, granting his youthful wisdom to us poor, unwashed masses.

"Hear me!" came the oracle's booming, high-pitched voice from on high as he surveyed his subjects from his beanbag chair throne. "Though mine PS3 still brings me pleasure, the pleasure of Xbox Live friends may be one that I have treated too lightly. My patience waiting for an offering of new games from Sony has forced me once more to explore the shores of Azeroth. Lo, though times are tough, do not be tempted by the spawn of Nintendo, for I would not be caught dead with that thing."

With that, the doors of knowledge closed with a shattering thud, once again leaving us confused and in the dark. Still, we thank our benevolent information masters for this new glimpse into the heart of the game industry, however brief.

Three tracks from metal band All That Remains will be next week's Rock Band DLC offering. The songs "Two Weeks" and "Chiron" are off the band's latest album, Overcome, which will release Sept. 16. The tracks are offered at a special price for now and will cost double in one month.

All That Remains Pack (240 / $3)

• "This Calling" (80 / $1)
• "Chiron" (80 / $1)
• "Two Weeks" (80 / $1)

Videos for the tracks can be found after the break. The songs will be available for download next Tuesday and Thursday for Xbox 360 and PS3, respectively.

Look guys, the cute little cartoon characters thing? Yeah, that ain't workin' so much these days. Folks are upset, and rightly so. Castle Crashers is broken. We know, we know, you told us a patch was coming. But why isn't it here yet!

... Er, what's that you say? You just had a "great talk" with Microsoft about it? Well, by golly, gosh, that's great news! But, you say. But what? But you don't have a "specific time frame"? Oh, don't worry about it. Those 1200 are just water under the bridge ... Aw, would you look at that: Those knights with their big blocky heads and stumpy wumpy hands -- how precious.

[Via The Escapist]

Don't be surprised if this Sunday's edition of ESPN's Sunday NFL Countdown looks a bit more like a game of Madden. According to a New York Times report, the Disney-owned sports network will use the "EA Sports Virtual Playbook" and a special studio and camera setup to allow "both real and virtual people move around the ESPN set to demonstrate plays and possible situations." It sure sounds a lot simpler than getting real NFL players to crash around the set, but we'll reserve judgment until we see it in action this weekend.

Imagine Square Enix's proposed takeover of Tecmo as a high school "romance." In it, Square is the suave campus hunk who professes his burning desire for Tecmo, the hottie who could have any guy (or girl) she wanted. But Tecmo not only shoots down the advance, she decides to "go out" with the scrawny, less attractive Koei instead.

She won't say why or even return Square's calls.

Square turns around and says, "Under such circumstances, the Company is unable to make appropriate modifications to major terms of the Proposal including the TOB price, and determines that it is extremely difficult to continue the discussions with Tecmo based on the Proposal. The Company, therefore, has decided to withdraw from the Proposal."

Blank stares.

"What I'm trying to say is I'm withdrawing my proposal to take you over," Square tells Tecmo, working his idea of emo for all its worth. Tecmo just smiles and says, "Hee! You're funny! Bye-eee!"

The End?

OK, fanboys, before you hit that spittle-flecked "post comment" button after just reading that inflammatory headline question, hear us out. We're not just idly speculating here -- we're basing our query on an unusually frank quote from Microsoft Senior Vice President of Interactive Entertainment Business Don Mattrick. In an interview with BusinessWeek, Mattrick said that he's "not at a point where I can say we're going to beat Nintendo." Coming from a guy whose job it is to promote Microsoft's position in the market, that's a pretty big admission of doubt. It's not just Mattrick that's doubtful-- analyst Billy Pidgeon told the magazine, "I expect the 360 to remain in second place this generation. But it's going to be close."

The question, then, becomes how much this sales position really matters. Microsoft's sales might fall just shy of Nintendo's, but that doesn't seem to be hurting the company's ability to attract big-name games or roll out new features for the system. In fact, with Nintendo's decidedly less powerful system catering to a decidedly different audience, Microsoft's position relative to Nintendo might not matter nearly as much as their position relative to Sony. And on that score Mattrick has no doubt: "We will sell more consoles this generation than Sony," he told BusinessWeek.

Good news, Tecmo employees! No no, please don't get up. That bed under your desk really looks quite comfortable and snuggly. Now, if you'll just minimize that window filled with Ninja Gaiden II: Burnt Sienna code ... there, that's it. You'll be pleased to note that Tecmo has reached a settlement with Hiroaki Ozawa and Tatsuki Tsunoda of Team Ninja, who recently filed a lawsuit against the Dead or Alive publisher in response to an alleged overtime pay dispute.

According to Gamasutra, the pair claimed that employees (like you!) were not paid according to documented overtime hours, going as far as to say that the company created false documents to cover up the salary shenanigans. With this lawsuit wrapped up, it still leaves one to go with departed Team Ninja boss, Tomonobu Itagaki.

Alright, back to work! And go brush your teeth, seriously.

In this week's Allspark-powered show, we say hello to Boston PAX and 360 price cuts, goodbye to Jeff Green and "we'll probably never, ever see you" to the Buffy MMO. Also, somebody's going to win a copy of Castle Crashers, and if you don't listen, you'll never know that it's not you.

Thanks to Danny Lujan of the JPAG for crunchy, reduced sodium photochopping greatness. (As an aside, we're running low on photochops, so join the group and fill the reserves!)

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Joining Hendrix, Ozzy and others, Sting will be walking around the virtual concert halls of Guitar Hero World Tour. According to the press release, you can play as Sting during the vocal career "or play alongside him" in the Police track, "Demolition Man." Additionally, three songs from Tool (who are not bringing their likenesses to the game) have been confirmed: Parabola, Schism, Vicarious.

We now know about 65 tracks of the reported "over 85" tracks. With about seven weeks to go before its October 26 North American launch, when do we get to learn the rest of the tracklist? More importantly, where's our virtual likeness of Lars Ulrich?

Ubisoft sent out a press release this morning confirming that Far Cry 2 will hit European retail shelves on October 24th. The company also announced a collector's edition, which comes in a wooden box. The fine wooden case, sure to be made from only the finest trees (not really), will deliver the game, t-shirt, art book, collector's map and "making-of" DVD.

We're still waiting to hear back officially from Ubisoft if North America should plan on getting the game on October 21st, which is what many retailers are currently showing as the release date. Update: GameSpot confirms the date is the 21st.

Intel is rumored to be heavily courting Microsoft for inclusion of its high-performance GPU Larrabee in the next-generation Xbox, according to The Inquirer. Its source states that Intel is willing to make a lot of major concessions, the logic being that inclusion in the console would compel game makers to develop for the chipset, thus increasing interest in the consumer PC market and making a dent in the GPU market dominated by ATI and Nvidia. It's certainly not a far-fetched scheme; we'd be surprised if Intel didn't at least make a pitch to Microsoft, regardless of the actual terms.

The Xbox 360 currently uses a PowerPC-based CPU from IBM and a GPU designed by ATI. Should this rumor prove true, our first reaction is "cool" and our second is to wonder about backwards compatibility, which became an issue given that the original Xbox's GPU was based on a different, Nvidia-based architecture in comparison to its successor.

[Via Tweaktown; Thanks, Tigerj]