14 DAY TRIAL // As pre-registration swells to 40 percent over last year's attendance at the Penny Arcade Expo (PAX) gaming culture festival, Penny Arcade today announced the grand prize for the Omegathon III, the annual three-day gaming tournament in which contestants must prove their mettle in a range of games undisclosed before the event. This year, the winner will drive off in a brand new 2006 Scion xB in Black Sand Pearl, featuring a game geek's dream package of a flipdown 15" widescreen monitor, Xbox 360 Premium System, 6-speaker sound system with CD/MP3 player, custom taillights and wheels with low-profile tires.
Set to invade Washington State this August 25th-27th, PAX will feature a heavy-hitting lineup of top sponsors including Microsoft, Nintendo, Nvidia, ArenaNet, America's Army, Turbine, NCSoft, Atari, Ubisoft, Mythic, Sabertooth Games, Foundation 9, Rockstar, Flying Lab Software, Wizards of the Coast, Creative Labs, The Behemoth, Intel, ATI, Garage Games, AMD, and Red Octane among others. In addition to booths filled with pre-release games galore on its show floor, PAX offers attendees a host of game-related conference sessions, parties, concerts and contests, including the grand-daddy of game challenges, the Omegathon. In addition to a horde of game players from around the world, both enthusiast press and consumer press have registered to attend in force. Industry luminary Alex St. John is slated to deliver the show's keynote entitled "The Prehistory of Xbox."
"The first year, the Omegathon champion received every PlayStation 2 game ever made. The next year it was every NES game ever made," said Robert Khoo of Penny Arcade. "This year, in accordance with the massive growth of PAX, we decided it was time to up the ante."