At the UK Download Festival that took place in Donington Park over the weekend, a new world record for the most simultaneous air guitar performers of all time was broken when 440 people jammed out to Motorhead's "Ace of Spades".

The event took place at Electronic Arts' demo trailer for Brutal Legend, with a Guinness Book of World Records official present to authorize the results, completely shattering last year's record with 318 air guitarists.

"That was one of the raddest jams I've ever been involved with," Stevenson said. "The crowd played their air guitars better than Eddie Van Halen! Then they destroyed 'em good and proper. Who cares, right? They can go to the air guitar shop and get another one. Sick to the infinity of sickness! I want a crowd like that at every gig I'm at. Awesometacular -- air guitar world records rule!"

Let's hope the title inspires this much enthusiasm when it is released later this fall.

At last week's E3, Microsoft unveiled the Xbox Natal, which is supposed to ultimately let you game without a controller. If you haven't seen the press conference trailers demonstrating Natal, Google it and especially Google Peter Moleyneux's ideas for Natal; some of the things this man is thinking about will blow your mind.

Anyway, back to the news. A rumor has been making the rounds that the Xbox Natal will actually be a new console and will launch next Fall. While it will be available as an add-on for those who already have an Xbox 360, it will now come standard in all Xbox 360's. Those Xbox 360's that have the add-on will be upgraded from the 360 version we see now, but what those upgrades are is not that known. Many are saying that it will make previous titles look better while future titles will take advantage of the technology, which seems very feasible. Some developers have complained that they have already maxed out the Xbox 360's potential; if this rumor is true, this will give them room to expand.

Not to fret, as there isn't a new generation of consoles coming up (not in the near future anyway), this is just the next evolution in the Xbox 360 line. We have seen it all before, especially in the handheld market. The DS is repackaged as the DSi, the new PSP will be packaged as the PSP Go, and especially the GBA.

No word yet on the price point of the Xbox Natal, but we will keep you posted. However, since it is not due out until over a year from now (and even then it may be delayed), don't expect an official announcement anytime soon regarding the price. Still, this rumor may indeed be a reality as it has some legs and sounds legitimate.

We will keep you posted on further developments.

As soon as Left 4 Dead 2 was announced on June 1 at E3, several thousand fans apparently became angry. As of this writing, over 20,000 people have signed up to a Left 4 Dead 2 boycott group on Steam.

According to the group, Left 4 Dead 2 will "split the communities and decrease the quality of multiplayer gaming… The announced content of Left 4 Dead 2 does not warrant a standalone, full-priced sequel and should instead become updates (free or otherwise) for Left 4 Dead. Left 4 Dead has not yet received the support and content which Valve has repeatedly stated will be delivered," the group continues. "Therefore, we - the members of this Left 4 Dead 2 Boycott - promise to abstain from the purchase of Left 4 Dead 2 until our requests are addressed."

The group urges Valve to continue to release DLC for L4D and that the sequel launch as either a discounted expansion or as a free download.

In response to the criticism some have had for the upcoming sequel, Valve's Chet Faliszek has asked people to give them a fair chance before they completely blow it off.

"We want to wait and weed through the comments, I'm already getting e-mails, and I'm responding to them," Faliszek told Ars Technica. "Read more about it, find out about it, we've already let people play it [at E3]... After that, if you want to vent, post to the forums. We do read them, we read all the forums."

In response to the boycott group on Steam in general, Faliszek said that the upgrades in the upcoming sequel was too much for just an update.

"We had some meetings about it, and we all talked about our ideas, and everyone was pretty focused and thoughtful… It just became very clear that this was a cohesive, singular statement we wanted to make, not a more slow update thing... too much stuff was tied together with too many other things.”

Faliszek did state that the original Left 4 Dead will continue to thrive and be updated, and noted that the Left 4 Dead SDK would be coming out of beta in the next week or so and that all the maps created using it will work on the sequel.

Today marks the 25th anniversary of the greatest puzzle game to ever grace a console of any kind: of course I'm talking about Tetris.

It was the game that made the original Game Boy so successful, a game that put a gamepad of some type into the hands of countless housewives and businessmen, as well the game that laid the groundwork for all other puzzle games to follow.

Originally designed and programmed by Russian Alexey Pajitnov, it was created on June 6, 1984 while he was working for the Dorodnicyn Computing Centre of the Academy of Science of the USSR in Moscow. Pajitnov came up with the name "Tetris" using the Greek numerical prefix "tetra- (all of the game's pieces, known as Tetrominoes, contain four segments) and the word tennis, which is Pajitnov's favorite sport.

It is available on nearly every kind of electronic device, from computers to graphing calculators. It has even been played on the sides of various buildings, with the record holder for the world's largest fully functional game of Tetris being held by Dutch students in 1995 that lit up all 15 floors of the Electrical Engineering department at Delft University of Technology.

It is probably safe to say that Tetris may very well be the most popular game to ever exist, at least judging by the consoles. The Tetris series has sold millions of copies, making it one of the best selling games of all time. So this weekend, play a little Tetris. Chances are you have a copy lying around somewhere

Earlier this week, it was reported on numerous sites that at E3 there was a group of protesters opposing the EA's upcoming title Dante's Inferno. The protesters were apparently up in arms about glorifying hell in a video game, displaying such signs as "Hell is not a game" and "EA = Electronic Antichrist" (take that as you will).

Yesterday, it was reported that the protests at E3 were nothing more than a publicity stunt set up be EA. A viral marketing agency hired by EA reportedly organized the stunt, and hired about 20 people to pretend to picket the title. Within hours, the protests were picked up by many blogs, and several began to question whether the protest was fake based on an amateurish Web site and anonymous domain registration.

EA spokesperson Holly Rockwood officially stated that the pickets were in fact fake.

A stroke of genius or completely lame? That's for everyone to decide for themselves. However, it will be interesting to see the amount of praise or backlash EA receives in the coming days.