Unfortunately we saw some significant down time these last couple of days. Long story short, poorly coded software driving the website caused it to go over our resource quota and our host was disabling the site to prevent the server from crashing.

Over the past 4 months traffic to the site has grown significantly and the crappy code broke the camels back. To resolve the issue software has been upgraded, additional caching functions installed and unfortunately the comment system removed.

I plan to locate an alternative commenting system soon. In the mean time please use the discussion forum if you need to discuss front page news. With all the caching systems operating now I would imagine the site loads much faster than it did, so its not all bad news.

We're looking for new blood! Economical Gamer will be boosting the speed and frequency in which we report news in 2010 and to make sure this happens we are expanding our team of dedicated staff. If you're interested please read on:

We're looking for individuals who:

• Come to the site several times a day
• Confirm specials themselves by thoroughly checking the source or picking up the phone

Positions we are hoping to fill:

• News and bargain editors (edit and approve user submissions, easy)
• Reviewers (must have a talent for writing and example reviews)

The major way in which staff members and I communicate is via Windows Messenger, so it is a must for any candidate. Anyone interested in volunteering their time towards helping the site please contact Anthony either via the contact page or by sending a private message which includes your Live account.

So, after a few weeks on hiatus (apologies!), the Console Price Lists have been given a complete overhaul and refresh.

All the most recent advertised hardware prices have been listed there in an easy-to-read format. Just cast your eye down the right hand side, and choose your console.

Enjoy!

Klevster on the forums has put together a list of trade bait for JB Hi-Fi trade ins for those of you who are interested in taking a look.

Click here read the forum thread

I am very sorry about the outage we had today. We were having excessive CPU usage problems and our host disabled the website until the problem was solved. Unfortunately it appered to be the shoutbox and thus it has been taken down. As it is such a popular feature I'll investigate more permanent solutions to keep it, but for the time being it'll remain off.

Please use the community forums and comment system to communicate in the meantime.

I just wanted to let people know I did some small maintenance on the site recently:

• New Nintendo DS price list has been added to the site!
• New Fishpond affiliate account. Please click on it before buying from them to support us
• To help fight spam on the forums the registration page has been swapped from the site to the forum. This will only affect new members, members who forget their username/password or change their username. Please report any issues if you come across any.

Just wanted to let everybody know that the core software driving Economical Gamer has been upgraded. If you notice any irregularities with signing in, registering or when using the forum in general please contact us.

The upgrade was simply a security/bug update, so no new features I'm sorry to say.

Having just come out this week I anticipate there would be quite a lot of interest in playing ODST this weekend? Playing online though can be quite a hassle as both co-op and firefight lack crucial matchmaking facilities. So here we are, offering a means to trade gamertags and play with like-minded bargain hunters.

There is no official start time. Just organise with some other members on the forum when to meet and then once the night starts, the Xbox Live Party system is probably the best way to let others know you're waiting to join the next match.

Are you in the market for a new console? Perhaps you've found a fantastic deal, and want to share it with the rest of the Economical Gamer community?

Allow me to draw your attention to our Console Price Lists section. It's in the red column, on the right, between the Poll and the Trade In Lists.

Here you can find and discuss the latest and greatest console deals, as published on the site and discovered by EG members. The lists get updated each time an article is published on the main site, so don't worry about having missed the best deal - it's all there in an easy-to-read format!

For the moment we cover Wii, 360, PS3 and PSP - don't worry DS lovers, your list is coming soon!

There has been some interest in an Xbox 360 community night and seems as though everyone has Call of Duty 4. As a result we'll hold our first ever Economical Gamer community game night this Friday night.

At this stage we should have enough for one party, so add me as a friend: klevster. We'll get cracking at say 8:30PM, as this is when I can get to my Xbox ;)

I'm hoping some other community users will organise a TF2 night for our PC users and something else for our PS3 users!

I'd like to introduce two new features of the website: Console Price Lists and an Economical Gamer Twitter feed. Both of these items can be found within the thin red column going down the page.

The Twitter feed has been a long requested feature I am happy to announce. Thank you CHWong for being so persistent and proactive in setting it up. You may also notice a few additional Twitter feeds that do not belong to us but still may be of interest.

Due to the popularity of our PS3 Slim price round-up clawster has decided to continuously maintain and expand the idea. At the moment we only have ones for PS3 and PSP, but you can expect to see all major consoles in there some point in the near future.

I would like to extend my thanks to both clawster and CHWong for making these things happen and for their contributions towards daily article operations. Along with the community submissions we receive Economical Gamer is able to continue flourishing with content that cannot be found anywhere else.

Check out our Twitter feed
Read the PS3 Price List
Read the PSP Price List

Just informing everyone that three new stores: Cheap Games Australia, MyMemory and blahdvd have been added to our database of online stores. If you have had any experience dealing with these websites we would appreciate your feedback on them.

Click here to view Store Feedback