itunes posts

As promised, Apple has now launched its Mac App Store for owners of Macintosh-based PCs. Much like the App Store works for iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad devices, the Mac App Store allows Mac owners to directly purchase and download software programes to their Mac PCs. Developers can also publisher their programs directly through the new Mac App Store and set their own prices.

The Mac App Store launched with over 1,000 software programs and as expected there are a number of games available to purchase and download via the store. For example the casual game publisher MumboJumbo has a number of its games on the store including its popular Luxor arcade title.

As 2010 draws to a close, we look back and marvel at how far PC gaming has come over the past decade. The start of the new millennium brought technology and trends that will resonate for years to come. So we take this opportunity to examine some of those technology trends and see how they might grow over or fizzle out over the next ten years. Here are our predictions of what PC gaming might look like in 2020.

StarCraft II is known for its great sci-fi RTS gameplay, its deep campaign, its Battle.net multiplayer, and its CGI cut-scenes. But now it's going to be known for irs rock-and-roll cover tunes. This week developer Blizzard announced that Revolution Overdrive, an album of songs featured in StarCraft II, is now available to purchase and download via iTunes.

In addition to original songs such as Zerg, Shotgun, and You and Terran Up the Night the album also featured a cover of Sweet Home Alabama as featured in the game's Hyperion bar jukebox. The full album is now available on iTunes for $9.99.

As we get closer to the release of Fallout: New Vegas in October, publisher Bethesda Softworks is ramping up its marketing for the post-apocalypse RPG. Today folks can check out a free 12 page preview of the upcoming graphic novel All Roads that will be included as an exclusive to the Collector's Edition of the game developed by Obsidian Entertainment.

The preview can be downloaded via iTunes and serves as a teaser to the full version which tells a prequel story set in New Vegas. The full graphic novel also provides some clues for some of the missions in the game itself. As we have reported before All Roads is written by Obsidian's Chris Avellone and drawn by Jean Diaz and Wellinton Alves along with a hyper-detailed cover by Geoff Darrow.

Games from Blizzard Entertainment not only have great gameplay and terrific CGI cut-scenes they also have some of the best music soundtracks in the industry. Earlier this week we reported that a free song from the Diablo III CGI trailer has been made available for free on iTunes and today Blizzard announced that soundtracks from a number of their older games have now been made available via Apple's music download service.

Some of these tracks have only been available until now in collector's editions of Blizzard games or on sale at part Blizzcon events. Six soundtracks are currently available for Starcraft, Diablo II, Warcraft III and three World of Warcraft soundtrack albums. Blizzard's podcast can also be downloaded via iTunes.

It's almost a certainly that we have many, many, many months before the release of Blizzard's fantasy action-RPG sequel Diablo III but at least you can get a free listen to some of the music created for the game ahead of time. Apple's iTunes download service has offered up the "Diablo III Overture" as a free download as part of their Discovery Download program.

The theme, credited to the Russell Brower and the Eminence Symphony Orchestra was used as the music for the cinematic Diablo III trailer that was used to introduce the game last June. Of course you can check out that trailer right here at Big Download which also happens to be free. The wait for playing Diablo III is, of course, priceless.

Just as they have done with iTunes, those in control of The Beatles music have been holding out on video gamers the world over. Until now. According to several sources (Financial Times, GameSpot), MTV Games and Activision are duking it out for the rights to bring The Beatles into the video game revolution.

As everyone knows, Activision publishes the Guitar Hero games, series, which includes Guitar Hero World Tour (the multi-instrument version) due out this autumn, while MTV Games publishes its rival, Rock Band. Obviously both would do just about anything to secure the rights to The Beatles massive back catalog of mega hits.

The Financial Times cites that a deal could be done in just a few weeks; a deal that will in all likely-hood be worth several million dollars. However, final approval would have to come from both EMI (who owns the master recordings) and Apple Corps (who watches over the band's business affaris). With that many levels of red tape, and the fact that Apple Corps has been insanely protective when it comes to releasing their music to digital licensing... let's hope we see it happen in our lifetime.

[via X3F]