Starcraft II, the much-sought-after sequel to the 90s real-time strategy hit, sold more than 1.5 million copies in the first 48 hours, placing it as one of the biggest PC games this year, though it is still some way off the all-time big hitters in video games sales.

It’s no surprise for anybody who went down to last weekend’s Licence2Play that Starcraft 2 was the biggest thing there.

Blizzard and IAHGames had a big booth showcasing Starcraft 2: Wings of Liberty at the gaming fair, which was held this year from 28th to 30th May at the Singapore Expo. Besides this, not much else has changed compared to last year’s event, except that it is not held at Suntec anymore.

There were some events being run by the Singapore Cybersports and Online Gaming Association (SCOGA), but this paled in comparison to the big draw: A chance to play Starcraft 2 beta and pre-order the game.

I was tempted to get it, but the S$109 pre-order price for the game and beta key was a little steep. The dog-tag souvenir was not enticing enough for me to pay upwards of S$100+, so without more shiny stuff, I passed. Hopefully, when the game comes out on July 27th, it will be more reasonably priced.

It used to be such a pain to be living in Singapore as a gamer.

I remember wanting to play Meridien 59 – the first MMO game – but it would have cost me my life savings connecting to a US server over 14.4kbps dial-up.

When World of Warcraft launched in November 2004, I was among the first to buy a copy from Tec-drome at Sim Lim. Even though I was reviewing games for The New Paper, in those days the distributors didnt bring in MMOGs. Guild Wars, Star Wars Galaxies, Jump To Light Speed – all bought with my own money. But the bigger problem – World of Warcraft was only launched in the US, Aust and NZ. Even though Vivendi was HQed in Singapore for the APAC region, they bloody ignored us, amazingly on the grounds that they chose countries with stable Internet infrastructure. Hogwash, because there is no way we were worse off than ANZ in those days.

The simple reason is that we are too small a market. Thankfully, all that was required was an Australian or US address and our good old local Singapore credit card was accepted.

BUT THINGS ARE DIFFERENT NOW!

I’ve been wanting to swap out my old Razer Tarantula keyboard for a while now, seeing how the lettering is all gone, and I sometimes have to second-guess where the right keys are. I finally did that yesterday with a Logitech K350 wireless keyboard.

Now, you may think I’m downgrading from a performance gaming keyboard to just another boring wireless typepad. But for me, it’s more like switching to something that suits what I do now, which is, sadly, 95 per cent typing e-mail and articles and 5 per cent games.

Does Singapore really need yet another consumer electronics show, besides the quarterly four — IT Show (March at Suntec), PC Show (June at Suntec), Comex (September at Suntec) and Sitex (November at Expo) — that we already have here?

Apparently yes, especially if there’s money to be made off tech-crazy Singaporeans.

It’s not a gaming-themed show like last year’s Licence2Play, but the Singapore Great Electronics Sale 2010 this weekend at Suntec city (9th to 11th April) was supposed to be about 3D-TVs. Even though it is not, it drew in 30,000 people on the first day.

The event, which took up one convention hall on the 6th floor at Suntec, turned out to be a pretty meh experience for me.

Besides a few tech vendors like Samsung, LG, Panasonic and AudioHouse, the event was full of non-tech booths. DBS credit cards, crystal fengshui stuff and spa massages were some of the booths I spotted in my quick tour around the hall. It was an eclectic mess.

Sony is reportedly dropping support for other operating systems on the PlayStation 3 (PS3) through a firmware update that will be rolled out to users on April 1.

In a blog post, Patrick Seybold, Sony’s senior director for corporate communications and social media, said version 3.21 of the PS3 firmware “will disable the ‘Install Other OS’ feature that was available on the PS3 systems prior to the current slimmer models, launched in September 2009.

When you are slaying monsters in World of Warcraft that require the coordination of 20 or more people to keep to their tasks specifically, you don’t want your voice commands to break up mid-battle. You want everyone to be able to talk clearly to get clear instructions.

Well, that’s exactly what Creative has in mind, with its World of Warcraft Wireless Headset. Said to come with uncompressed wireless audio, it also comes with THX-branded TruStudio PC audio technologies, which Creative claims offers better audio over similar gaming headsets.

The headphones, unveiled earlier this year, is going on sale now for S$249.

Now you can play all your favourite Pop Cap Games for free, but only if you are in Singapore, Malaysia and possibly some other South-east Asian countries. PopCap – the guys behind casual game hits like Plants vs Zombies, Bejewelled, Feeding Frenzy, Zuma, Peggle and more – have launched a special beta just for this region.

Just go to www.popcap.com and the website automatically identifies your location based on your IP address and a pop-up window will appear to ask you to join the beta. When you are in the beta, you will be asked to download and install the PopCap World beta client and from there you can play the games.

I have no idea what is the business model but it looks like some social networking and games plan. But so far, everything has been going for free for me!

The inaugural Youth Olympic Games, or YOG for short, is running in Singapore this year from 14th to 26th August.

As part of the worldwide promotion to create buzz around the event, the Singapore Youth Olympic Games Organising Committee (SYOGOC), together with the Infocomm Development Authority (IDA), is creating a virtual world called Singapore 2010 Odyssey.

Said RADM(NS) Ronnie Tay, Chief Executive Officer of IDA at the official launch on Saturday 6th March: “The Singapore 2010 Odyssey is a unique virtual world platform offering many possibilities for learning, social networking and entertainment, as it reaches out to the youths from all over the world in a fun and interactive way. The development of the 3D virtual world is testimony to Singapore’s infocomm capabilities in innovatively harnessing digital media technologies to support major events like the Singapore 2010 Youth Olympic Games.”

Of course, what’s more important is the content of this virtual world. I had a preview of the world last Wednesday at a media/blogger session (the news was embargoed till today) but to see how it really was working out, I decided to give it a real life test.

Singapore will get the much-awaited Sony Playstation 3 “slim” game console here next month at a price of S$512, said Sony yesterday on the sidelines of the Games Convention Asia (GCA).

The slimmer version of the PS3 was first announced last month. As you’d see from the pictures, it is a much prettier version than its fatter sibling that first went on sale in 2006.

Unfortunately, it’s not that cheap. I think the price-cut original PS3 is now an even more attractive proposition.

Meanwhile, for gamers on the go, Sony says the PSP Go will also go on sale here in Singapore on October 1 for S$412.