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You gotta hand it to this kid's parents, who managed to turn up their boring old Christmas lights to 11 and into quite the Guitar Hero homage. It's not the first time we've seen Activision's franchise mix it up with some Christmas lights, but it's certainly the most unique and inspired. We've embedded the video past the break so put on your favorite Rudolph sweater (the good one with the blinking nose you keep in the back of the closet), pour yourself a hot cup of cocoa and give it a watch.

Now that the exploding men and unrelenting rain of crates have been taken care of, it would seem a new issue has arisen in Modern Warfare 2. Specifically, a bug in the Xbox Live matchmaking assignments is reportedly dumping playlist searchers into private matches. (Nothing's worse than being teamed with the lowest ranking players, after all.)

Penny Arcade's Gabe tweeted (warning: foul language through link) that he had encountered the issue several times. Meanwhile, Infinity Ward's man in the trenches, Robert "fourzerotwo" Bowling, confirmed the issue is known and that a fix is currently in the works.

[Via Gaming Union]

Source - cwgabriel [Twitter] (NSFW)
Source - Robert "fourzerotwo" Bowling [Twitter]

Update: We've closed the comments and will contact a winner this week. Check the email tied to your commenter name, folks!

For this week's not-quite-the-holidays-yet giveaway, we've got a Band Hero prize pack for the Nintendo Wii and DS lined up for one lucky winner. That's right! Not just Band Hero for your silly old home console, but also for your handheld (that is, unless you have a Nintendo DSi or XXL -- sorry!). Prepare to be embraced by friends and relatives as a genuine American (or Canadian, excluding Quebec) hero while playing along to your favorite Taylor Swift song.

In honor of last night's Video Game Awards (and the subsequent flood of news and trailers), we're asking you to tell us what your favorite trailer or news was from the World Premiere-stravaganza. We'll pick one winner at random this week, so as always, be sure to keep an eye on the inbox!

• Leave a comment telling us what your favorite trailer or news was from last night's World Premiere-stravaganza (the VGAs).
• You must be 18 years or older and a resident of the US or Canada (excluding Quebec -- likely because of The Kids in the Hall).
• Limit 1 entry per person per day
• This entry period ends at 7:31PM ET on Monday, December 13
  
• At that time, we'll randomly select one winner to receive one copy of Band Hero for Nintendo DS ($50 ARV) and one copy of Band Hero for Nintendo Wii ($50 ARV).
• For a list of complete rules, click here

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What is Joyswag? Since we don't keep the games and merchandise we receive for review or promotional purposes, it becomes "Joyswag," which is passed along to our readers. For more info on our policy, click here.

The second world premiere of the VGAs was the full version of the teaser we saw a couple weeks ago -- you know, the one we initially presumed was for another installment in the True Crime series? Yeah, well, it was totally for another installment in the True Crime series, which is being developed by ModNation Racers creators United Front. Guess there's no more mystery as to what Activision's upcoming Hong Kong-set action title is, huh?

It'll be a little while before we can get the high definition version of the trailer up, but until then, check out a screengrabbed version of the trailer after the jump, and feel confident in the fact that we're very good guessers.

Update: We've added a hi-res version of the trailer above.

It's been a bumpy road to release for Brütal Legend. Tim Schafer's had to change publishers, deal with a pesky lawsuit, soldier through PR missteps and even handle some post-release DLC. This is all common knowledge, but in a lengthy postmortem at Gamasutra, Caroline Esmurdoc, executive producer at Double Fine, goes in depth on the development strategy for the title and talks about what went right and what went wrong in the creation of this rock gaming opus.

Double Fine adopted the Scrum method of agile software development for Brütal Legend, which allowed the company to create a renderer, terrain and a playable Eddie Riggs for Tim in a mere month. Content creation was fairly steady, Esmurdoc admitted, but around January of this year, the game's content jumped from the 2.5GB generated over three years to a massive 9GB, thanks to multiple teams unloading assets for the game simultaneously.

Esmurdoc also touched on the lawsuit, though she couldn't go into specifics beyond mentioning that the transition between publishers caused "internal unrest and morale dips among the team", and that Double Fine learned Activision would not be publishing Brutal Legend when the game was suspiciously absent from a list of the publisher's upcoming games. Double Fine then pursued a new publishing partner.

The latest Transformers game, War for Cybertron, takes place before the Autobots and Decepticons arrived on Earth. As such, they have no concept of our Earth "trucks" and "awesome jets," and can only transform into ... things that look pretty much like trucks and awesome jets, but alien.

The teaser after the break introduces the setting for the new High Moon-developed title, and Game Informer promises more info on its constantly updating War for Cybertron hub page. If the new locale and exotic transformations don't grab you, think about this: all humans are millions of miles away from Cybertron, so unlike the movies, you'll actually get to see the Transformers in this game.

Huzzah! No more of your intense Headquarters Pro matches will be interrupted by gargantuan, killer shockwaves expelled by morally dubious combatants. That is to say, Modern Warfare 2's Javelin glitch, which enabled a dirty, cheating player to instantly detonate upon death, was fixed earlier this morning by a patch for the Xbox 360 version of the game. According to a recent tweet from Infinity Ward's Robert Bowling, the PS3 version of the game has already received the patch.

In addition to removing the Javelin's unadvertised self-immolation feature, the patch also fixes the equally insidious "unlimited care packages" glitch, and fixes a few areas where players could exploit gaps in the game's geography. In a perfect world, Infinity Ward would have also sent parcels to the houses of anyone who leveraged these exploits -- parcels full of bees. The bad kind. The kind you see on the Discovery Channel. The ones that can kill a full-grown elephant with a surprisingly small swarm.

It looks like Activision's hopes for Tony Hawk: Ride are falling even faster than the average Tony Hawk: Ride player. IndustryGamers reports that this month's NPD numbers place the game at 114,000 copies sold across three platforms. Not that Activision is even paying attention to its own failure right now, distracted by the ridiculous success of its own Modern Warfare 2. This is the second disappointing month in a row for a big-box Activision game.

While we don't have a per-platform breakdown of the disappointing sales, a forecast released before today's NPD results estimated that just 13,000 copies sold on Xbox 360. All of this just confirms what we intuitively knew: skateboards without wheels just don't work.

Opening its rationalization with the arguable statement that Infinity Ward's Modern Warfare 2 has "something intelligent to say about contemporary military conflicts," Time Magazine's "Top 10 Games" of 2009 list recently declared the title its "Game of the Year." MW2 was closely followed by Batman: Arkham Asylum and DJ Hero, while the recent Uncharted 2 and Assassin's Creed 2 landed on the bottom of the list.

The seemingly annual Flash/iPhone game choice this year turned out to be Geo Defense Swarm, while Link's latest adventure sat out the ubiquitous DS spot -- a spot filled by Scribblenauts, it would seem. As always, Joystiq will have our own Game of the Year awards going live just after the new year, so be sure to keep it locked!

Last month, the extremely certain pop-rock outfit No Doubt sued Activision for allowing their likenesses to be used in Band Hero, where players could perform the game's entire catalog of songs as the Stefani-fronted group. According to the complaint, this feature turned the band's appearance in the game into a "virtual karaoke circus act." Earlier this week, The Hollywood Reporter dug up a countersuit filed against the band by Activision, who claimed No Doubt was in breach of a contract between the two parties, and had reaped unjust enrichment as a result.

Activision's main response to No Doubt's claim is that that the band requested their likenesses be limited to perform the band's own songs in-game -- however, it made this request "only after the Band Hero programming was finalized." Activision seeks an unspecified amount of damages and interest from the band, as well as court and attorney fees, and a return of all payments dispersed to the band for their initial involvement. Jeez, Activision. Might as well go ahead and ask for the kitchen sink while you're at it.

[Via GamePolitics]

Using GamerDNA results as a guideline, DFC Intelligence charted the popularity of 360 games last month, and there are some interesting revelations. For one: Every person alive or dead, including the author of this post, is playing Modern Warfare 2 as we speak. Okay, so that's a slight exaggeration but it was very popular, with somewhere between 22 and 17 percent of GamerDNA's Xbox 360-playing subjects playing the game throughout all of November.

Also somewhat surprising is just how well Borderlands – which, let's be honest, didn't have the biggest marketing push – did, handily holding on to second place until the release of Left 4 Dead 2 and Assassin's Creed 2. Admittedly this list doesn't reflect the time spent by those who aren't online, but do you seriously care about those commoners anyway?

Speculation surrounding a new Star Wars game, which is set to be uncloaked at this weekend's Spike Video Game Awards, has now grown to include a database entry from Australia's Office of Film and Literature Classification. "Star Wars Legends" seems to have slipped by undetected when it was classified back in June of this year, though it's unclear if the listing was withheld from public view until more recently. According to the online entry, Legends is being produced by LucasArts and published by Activision Blizzard.

Star Wars Legends was first spotted in a trademark filing in July 2008, when LucasArts claimed the title for use as "computer game software" and "entertainment service provided online."

Also: Many tired Star Wars references died to bring you this information etc.

[Via Kotaku.com]

In one day, the NPD Group will release its game sales report for the month of November, which should reveal the (near) exact number of units Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 has sold in the US thus far. In the meantime, Gamespot reported on two analysts who have predicted the portion of November software sales that were made up of Warfare purchases. Industry analyst superstar Michael Pachter says the game accounts for 23 percent of total game sales. However, Pacific Crest analyst Evan Wilson has it pegged at 25 percent of total November sales.

Wilson added that this feat is made especially impressive due to his firm's prediction that "this November's sales will match the month's highest historical total on record." In related news, news stories dealing with Modern Warfare 2 composed 67.2 percent of all news stories over the past month. Oh, wait -- now it's 67.5 percent!

If you've been desperately wanting to live the luxurious life of a virtual DJ, but lack the finances required to do so, fret no longer -- GuitarHeroStore has temporarily knocked the price of the Wii, PS3 and 360 versions of DJ Hero down to $79, and the PS2 version of the game to $64. That even includes free shipping, which is good, since plastic turntables probably cost more than your average parcel to transport cross-country.

Make sure you enter in the coupon code "DJHPP1" while checking out in order to access the offer. Otherwise, you'll end up paying full price for the game, losing out on $20 you could've spend on other disc jockey accessories. Like oversized headphones! Or LED-infused robot helmets.

[Via SlickDeals]

There's not really much more to say, is there? Publisher Activision notes that the 8 million folks dabbled in Modern Warfare 2 during its first week of release, which outnumbers basically every major organized army on the planet, Activision gloats. Obviously, the publisher forgot to factor in Antarctica's Grand Army of the Penguins' Republic, currently numbering in the tens of millions but, in the interest of celebration, we're willing to overlook this oversight.

On a side note, this is good news for Electronic Arts, because there's obviously a market for these newfangled war games.