Hosting its inaugural player draft far from the storied sanctum of The Garden, with a paltry $5 million league-wide payroll, (an amount routinely squandered on a single signing bonus for a young athlete in another professional league,) the Championship Gaming Series continues to take baby steps toward becoming a marquee "sports entertainment" business. Still, come June 12, 60 prospects will split the riches, as they're contracted to join one of six city-based squads that will compete in a small variety of games leading up to the CGS Grand Slam and World Championships this October. Not a bad gig, eh?

But what of this Playboy Mansion draft locale? If CGS is to be taken seriously, it's gotta avoid these WWEsque publicity stunts ... right? Maybe not. A lil' scantly-clad drama might be just the lure needed to hook viewers who might not otherwise tune into a glorified LAN party.

Hey, it's an easy mistake to make. Both Gran Turismo: HD and Project Gotham Racing 3 feature fierce and fancy cars hurtling about lavishly rendered tracks -- for all intents and purposes, the two games are identical. Of course, our amazingly trained eyes immediately noticed the bizarre appearance of a PGR3 render on the Sony PSP Connect website, innocently advertising a new downloadable GT:HD trailer.

"That's not true HD!" we exclaimed, index fingers twirling in the air. "Anyone with barely functioning eyes can see that's an image from a graphically inferior competitor!" We ended off with a resounding "HMPH!" before navigating to the next amusing, albeit inconsequential piece of news.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in.]

If you're a gamer living in South Africa, chances are that your visual periphery was dominated this past weekend by Microsoft's Xbox 360 launch and its accompanying marketing campaign. Nearly a year after the system's first-worldwide launch, the Xbox 360 became officially available to eager shoppers at the stroke of midnight on Friday, 29 September. Playable in-store kiosks, radio advertisements, campus tournaments and vaguely sinister cardboard stands announced not only the arrival of "the next generation of gaming," but the expansion of choice.

Unless you wanted to import the original Xbox or stick your hand into the awkward and tangled mess of Gamecube distribution lines, the PlayStation 2 was the only console the average gamer could reliably and affordably find in game stores. The merits of Sony's system have long since been established and it's easy to argue that South Africa got the best console out of the bunch, though "best" loses much of its meaning when it becomes interchangeable with "only." Consider for a moment how your gaming habits might be affected if two out of three consoles weren't readily available to you.

For comparison's sake (and because we didn't have much else to do) we attended one of the midnight launches at BT Games (Northgate) in Johannesburg, taking care to snap pictures and generally harass people who simply wanted to pick up their pre-orders in peace. Several midnight events took place all over the country, coinciding with the beginning of rAge -- a gaming expo we'll tell you about later.

Console bundles are often reviled during a system's launch period, as they make it practically impossible to leave the store solely with the item you wanted to purchase in the first place. A less bungled bundle, like the £299.99 Xbox 360 package launching in the UK tomorrow, comes several months after launch and doesn't deluge you with a bunch of games, accessories and HD televisions that you weren't quite ready to spend money on yet. Eurogamer reports that the deal in question includes 2 wireless controllers, a copy of Project Gotham Racing 3 and, quite generously, a Premium Xbox 360 as well.

How efficient can a bundle be at swaying your interest? Does the higher price tag or the lack of choice make it less appealing to those in the know?

See also:

• TGS: Blue Dragon hits Japan this holiday (along with a matching bundle)
• Microsoft to launch Xbox 360 Core in Japan

In a moment that's sure to elicit a grin or an unstoppable urge to fling your retinas into the back of your head, a game that was released in 1981 has somehow managed to be delayed for a week in the year 2006. Konami's side-scrolling shooter, Scramble, was all set for release this Wednesday when Microsoft's elite and possibly overworked team of testers concluded that the game simply wasn't ready to hit Xbox Live Arcade. The official word reveals that "during the final testing and certification of the title, we discovered some minor issues that should be addressed. Therefore, we are going to take an extra week and fix these items to ensure a high quality game experience for all when the title does launch on its new date of Wednesday, September 13."

This isn't the first time the weekly XBLA release schedule has had to make due without a new game -- this week's replacement is a Project Gotham Racing 3 UNO deck priced at 100 points ($1.25 in non-funny money). As exciting as theme decks and picture packs may be, the consistency of game releases has been somewhat shaky so far. Let's hope future XBLA Wednesdays don't have more games taking XBLA sick days. Har.

[Thanks Matt!]

According to the lads at the UK's Official Xbox Magazine, Bizarre Creations is revving up 12 new absurdly beautiful cars for another Project Gotham Racing 3 download (pictured car sadly not included). The Style Pack is likely to release for the princely sum of 400 Microsoft Points ($5), with individual car downloads looking to set you back 60 (75c) points each. The marvelous machines included in the pack are:

•     365 GTB4 ("Daytona")
•     BMW M3 CSL
•     BMW M6
•     BMW MINI COOPER S
•     BMW Z8
•     Chrysler Firepower Concept
•     Ferrari 430 Challenge
•     Gumpert Apollo Coupe 4.2 V8
•     Mercedes CLK DTM AMG
•     Pagani Zonda F
•     RUF R.K. Spyder
•     Vanwall GPR V12

As with the previous Speed Pack, one car -- the RUF R.K. Spyder -- will be available for free, no doubts as a means to lure you into shelling out your easily purchased points for the full roster. Not a terrible thing to be tricked into, we admit, but we'd rather be given the opportunity to download some more garages. As any playboy millionaire will be quick to remind you, there's not much point in owning a sports car if you're not able to show it off to your equally rich fake friends.

[Update: Now with real currency!]

[Via CVG, thanks smellslikepie! Mmm...pie.]

Cadillac and Microsoft have reached an advertising deal that will bring virtual recreations of the CTS-V, STS-V and XLR-V high-performance models to Xbox Live, specifically to be used in Project Gotham Racing 3. The cars will be free to download.

This latest revelation, part of the growing in-game advertising movement, highlights the differences between traditional advertising and in-game advertising. With the Cadillac deal, gamers actually interact with a product that is incorporated into PGR3, and more importantly, can choose to avoid it altogether. Microsoft's Kevin Browne has said that an additional 10 to 20 likeminded deals will be announced during the coming year, though it's unclear if any of these ads will be as "user-friendly" as the Cadillac one.

While the Cadillac deal was orchestrated by Play, a division of Denuo, Microsoft recently acquired Massive, a company specializing in in-game advertising, which is set to spearhead this leap into Xbox Live's unlimited ad space.