Weekend news roundup 16th -17th May Champions Offline edition

We may have not kept pushing forward with news during the weekend, but it seems the gaming industry stops for no one, and we are now a few steps behind. Well, if you saw fit to not visit any other sites over the past few days, then you are also out of the loop.  This is never good, as you’ll seem like a fool down the pub next week when you have no idea how many copies Assault on Dark Athena sold in April. So, on we go with a quick summary:

– Assault on Dark Athena sold 100,000 in the US in April says NPD numbers published Anita Frazier. The game released on April 7th, so such sales are solid although not spectacular – Joystiq

– Ninja Gaiden will get #3 even though Tomonobu Itagaki is gone.  “What the consumers, the gamers are looking for is going to be the next chapter,” and, “that we’re in a position of being able to make that call, and to provide pure entertainment that’s going to be enjoyed by action gamers and our fans,” says Yosuke Hayashi of Team Ninja. – Kikizo

– Valve opened the public beta for the Left 4 Dead Authoring Tools yesterday. These are somewhat modified versions of the same tools the developers used to make the game, and now regular old us (once you have some knowledge) can do the same – VG247

– Call of Duty: World at War was about half-price on Steam for a day on May 18th. All over now though – Steam
Street Fighter IV should work on your crappy PC once it does not burst into flames. Intel Pentium 4 2.0GHz or higher and NVIDIA GeForce6600 series or higher is all you need – Joystiq

– Hot people are wanted for E3. Adverts on Craigslist say women will get $200 day for 7 hour of work. No payment details for the “tall, muscular” men though. – Kotaku

– You’ll get Second Sight free if you pre-purchase Damnation through Steam. Second Sight was awesome back in the day. Psi-Ops was better though. Sorry Free Radical! – Steam

– Champions Online goes offline for a while, and is now officially delayed until September 1st 2009. “It is critically important for an MMO to be as good as it possibly can be at launch,” says Bill Roper on the game’s official site. – Massively

– Rock Band Unplugged, aka Rock Band on PSP, has a list of official songs. Now you can play Billy Idol on the bus – Joystiq

– Chuck got renewed. Yeah we know this is not gaming related, but Chuck is awesome. Well done NBC!! – EW

– The Crossing, an FPS that mixed Single & Multiplayer modes is now dead. “We ran into an unexpected financial challenge some months ago and we had to put The Crossing on hold”, says Raphael Colantonio, CEO and creative director of Arkane, the games developer. – Kotaku