Savior of stingy spenders and bane of box art, the budget lineup, is set to incorporate several PlayStation 3 titles in Japan next month. IGN reports that the official "PlayStation 3 the Best" branding will highlight familiar titles at friendlier prices, with Resistance: Fall of Man, FolksSoul (aka Folklore), Ninja Gaiden Sigma, Gundam: Target in Sight, and Ridge Racer 7 pinching the first pennies -- or, uh, yanking the first yen. The "Best" games will sell for ¥3,800 ($36), which represents a saving of roughly ¥2,200 ($21) for Sony-published games and ¥3,200 ($30) for third-party titles.

On the other side of the ocean, Sony told GamesIndustry.biz that a similar "Platinum" range of budget games would likely arrive in Europe. "We have introduced a Platinum range of best-selling titles for all of our platforms to date, and it is likely that we will do so in the future for PS3," said a spokesman, noting that the timing and lineup had yet to be finalized.

We'll let you know what Sony America has to say about a budget lineup as soon as they accept our collect call.

Read -- "PlayStation 3 the Best" for Japan
Read -- "Platinum" for Europe

Atari today dribbled out screenshots along with a press release confirming the existence of a Jenga game for the Wii and DS to be released in November. The game doesn't appear to be much more than a stylized table-top Jenga with exotic backgrounds and textures, but according to Atari it features a "wealth of exciting new enhancements, power-ups and twists that are possible only in the videogame world". Bombs? Gravity-defying bricks? We'll have to wait and see. Jenga could be a lot more exciting with the right power-ups.

Data Design Interactive and U.S. Developer Conspiracy have announced a distribution agreement that will bring nine new Wii-exclusive titles to the U.S. this year. Most of the games seem to be knock-offs of more popular titles such as Mario Kart or the Harry Potter series, but this Ninjabread Man game has our attention. No release date or prices have been set, but the games have been marketed at budget prices in the UK, so we can likely expect the same in the States.

• Mini Desktop Racing - A "minature racer"
• Monster Trux Offroad - a "rugged racer"
• Ninjabread Man - 3D platformer
• Action Girlz Racing - "fairy-tale racer"
• Anubis II - 3D platformer
• Billy Wizard - a "magic/action game" banking on the popularity of Harry Potter
• Myth Makers - SuperKart GP - a racing game, of course
• Rock N Roll Adventures - musical action/platformer
• Earache - Extreme Metal Racing - yet another offroad racer

Think $20 is a good price for a greatest hit. How's a couple of bucks suit you?

Ubisoft is redefining the term "budget software" with the recent British release of three classic (read: old) PC games for just £1 (about $2 US). Thanks to the super-low price, Rayman 2: The Great Escape, Brothers In Arms: Road To Hill 30 and Prince Of Persia: Sands Of Time all made the ChartTrack top 10 for the week despite their age. In an interview with MCV, a ChartTrack analyst predicted similarly-priced re-releases would follow suit from a variety of publishers.

It makes you wonder -- if a couple of bucks is enough to cover manufacturing, packaging, shipping and retail space for these reissues, why do downloadable console and arcade classics that have none of these costs routinely go for more than twice as much?

The interview with Microsoft's Robbie Bach is all over the grid today. While most of the hubbub on the net concerns price cuts for the 360, there's another little gem in this interview. Bach replies to a question about the lagging progress of the Halo movie by saying, "There are a couple of things you have to recognize. Does it make sense for Microsoft to be in the movie business? It's not what we do, nor would I anticipate us ever doing it."

Bach is saying this to the people who ask why Microsoft doesn't just fund the reportedly $200 million dollar budget film themselves. It's also why Microsoft got into trouble with the film to begin with. Both Fox and Universal pulled out of the deal because MS wanted them to pony up $5 million upfront and then 10% of all the film's profits later. The three companies couldn't come to terms on the deal when the studios tried to change things, and the picture fell apart.

The guys over at destructoid.com weren't too impressed with Dell's $10,000 pricetag for the company's flagship Renegade system so they decided to take the matter into their own hands by collating the key components of a custom built Quad SLI gaming rig. Breaking their imaginary system down, they found that the main areas essential for building a machine comparable in performance to the Renegade were:

1. Duh, the Quad SLI graphics cards. A budget of around $2800 should set you up with a 4 card bundle.
   
2. A Gigabyte Quad SLI motherboard to stick those four cards in, $240.
3. Pentium 3.73GHz Extreme, $1300.
4. 10,000 RPM Hard Drive and 2GB of branded RAM, $450.
5. Battlefield 2 at 1600x1200 with graphics on full, priceless.

Chuck in a case, cooling, sound card, DVD drive and peripherals (keyboard, mouse and 2.1 speaker system) and you're looking at a budget of $6,000 for a well equipped Quad SLI system. That's around $2,000 less than the Renegade PC (sans the $2,199 30" widescreen monitor that Dell includes with their system) so you're not quite saving the $4,000 that the destructoid guys claim you will.

The obvious downsides to building your own Quad SLI rig include: the hassle of constructing the system and installing Windows yourself (although we're sure most people could do a better job than Dell) and the lack of a warranty, but before you think about these problems ask yourself the question: is that red flame color scheme worth two grand?

[Thanks, Franco]

If you're feeling the post-Christmas pinch and want to enjoy some quality games on the cheap, you don't need to look very far. There are many freeware games out there, in a wide range of genres--we've even covered a couple in the past.

This roundup nominates the five best freeware games of the past year as: Mono, Gunz: The Duel, War Rock, Zak McKracken 2 and Advanced Strategic Command -- all games that are worth a close look if you want some extremely low-budget gaming.

 [via digg]