AU News Wrap, July 22 - What happened today

The very first edition of the AU News Wrap, and the biggest gaming news to come out of Australia in years, on the same day. Oh happy fortune.

This is a new thing; three daily round ups of everything that happened during the news shift that day. The Australian news desk runs from 8:00 AM to 5:00 PM in Sydney, which means Brits will get a nice overnight wrap up at 8:00 in the morning, London time.

If you need to catch up beyond that, see Johnny and Steph's updates from less blessed time zones. Less blessed because Friday didn't just finish in them. Ha.

Of course, there's also the Bulletcast, where Pat sums up the last 24 hours with his cheerful morning face on. It's a delight.

In the meantime, here's what I've been up to for the past eight hours:

• Friday Shorts – Just Dance 3, Theatrhythm, Bastion bonus, more
  Some neat little nibbles to round off the day.
• Blizzard to publish Diablo lore book
  Blizzard is going to explain everything about the Diablo universe with a tie-in reference book. Finally, the cows will be explained canonically.
• Gears of War 3 dev diary escapes Comic Con
  This dev diary was shown during the panel I wrote up earlier in the day. You can look at Cliffy B's perfectly smooth face.
• Star Wars: The Old Republic pre-orders limited for staggered launch
  Horror! Only limited copies of The Old Republic are available, and none of them are for sale outside the US and Europe! Thank goodnes the game is not region locked, but if you haven't snaffled a copy already, you're out of luck this round.
• New vids go behind scenes of X-Men: Destiny dev
  Voice actress Jamie Chung stars in this peek into the world of Silicon Knights.
• Gnox shown off in new Crimson Alliance trailer
  It's a Crimson Alliance trailer and it's got Gnox in it. Gnox? The Gnox? I have no idea.
• Dragon Age: Redemption series expected this year
  Felicia Day has given a vage release window for her web series based on BioWare's RPG series.
• Driver dev diary details “game-changing” Shift
  The thing Tanner can do in the new Drive makes for great gameplay by the looks of it. Taking the franchise's story mildly sci-fi is kind of weird.
• Former Blizzard chief to head up Marvel at Disney Interactive
  Bill Roper has been put in charge of Marvel properties at Disney. Good to see it in safe hands; he's a dude with some serious experience.
• AU: RAGE comics exclusive to JB Hi-Fi pre-order
  JB Hi-Fi wants Australia's RAGE pre-orders, so it's the only retailer officially carrying the comics.
• Saints Row: The Third trailer asks, “Who doesn’t want to be Johnny Gat?”
  Definitely my favourite trailer of the day, lots of swears and lots of fun.
• National R18+ category to be introduced in Australia
  Megaton. Australia will introduce an R18+ category for games, with states voting to reform and clarify existing categories. This puts an end to a political issue raging for the last decade - if not longer. A massive win for everyone involved.
• Gears of War 3 at Comic Con: Epic talks story and gameplay
  Cliff Bleszinski and Rod Fergusson talked a little about Gears of War 3's four-player co-operative play, creating female combatants, and answering player questions.
• The Penguin cackles madly through Batman: Arkham City trailer
  Listen to that laugh! Adorable. Why is every Batman villain so gosh darned wonderful?
• Harrision: Crunch time so last century, F2P the future
  Now that everything's a platform rather than a product, former Sony chief Phil Harrisson reckons crunch time and hardware cycles are out, and free to play's in. Also, this season's colour is periwinkle.
• Payday: The Heist is replay friendly
  No developer ever says bad things about its new game, but Overkill points out a lot of ways Payday: The Heist can vary from match to match.
• "Darkstalkers are not dead" Ono declares
  Causing serious fraying of our grammar nerves, Yoshinori Ono reveals he's still trying to make a new Darkstalkers happen.
• Freddy Krueger to be Mortal Kombat’s final DLC kombatant
  Well, paint me pink and call me Tinsel, that mysterious Mortal Kombat character tease pointed at none other than horror's most enduring monster: Freddy Kreuger.
• Batman voice actor teases Arkham City DLC
  Kevin Conroy, voice of the Bat, says Arkham City will be "ongoing" for "quite a while" with downloadable "episodes".
• Driver San Francisco's multiplayer is "chaotic", "Matrix"-like
  You know that thing in The Matrix, when ordinary people suddenly turn into Hugo Weaving? Driver: San Francisco is a bit like that. I need some of that in my life. You can never have too much Hugo.
• Warhammer 40K: Space Marine has "old school" multiplayer
  Space Marines are way too macho to go down in one hit. Bullet sponge forever! Watch the full video for a lovely affirmation that you can paint your Space Marine however you like.
• Wilson: Gamers won’t always fork out $60 for FIFA updates
  Shockingly, EA Sports looks set to abandon its annual-update business model, with executive Andrew Wilson saying the gamers of the future are "simply not prepared to pay $60" for an update disc.
• UPDATES
  Those Street Fighter x Tekken videos we embedded were taken down, so I had to snaffle our very own copies - check them out.

That's me out for the week, my lovelies. It's been a pleasure, but I have a leg of lamb in the oven and a pressing engagement with slacking off. Enjoy your Friday - and your weekend!