Yaaargh! Today be International Talk Like a Pirate Day…so is any day that I drink rum, eat at Long John Silver's, or channel-surf past Pirates of the Caribbean on the USA Network. Scurvy!

News Blips:

Netflix changes the name of its DVD-by-mail service to Qwikster and will soon begin shipping games. Back when I was writing for another website (which is now completely dead) Netflix’s VP of Corporate Communication Steve Swasey told me that his company would never rent games. “[Renting games] is a whole different model,” Swasey said in 2010. “A great movie from 1972 is still a great movie, but nobody wants to play Madden NFL 95.” Today we found out that Netflix will never rent games, but Qwikster will. In a letter to customers, CEO Reed Hastings explained that the streaming service and the DVD-by-mail product will separate with only the former retaining the Netflix name. This has been interpreted by many as a PR move to justify the recently introduced pricing structure which increased some users' monthly bill by up to 60 percent. Still, some competition for GameFly can only be a good thing for those of us who are of the video-game-renting persuasion. Man, I’m gonna go add Madden 95 to my queue right now!

Activision begins inviting PlayStation 3 users to the Call of Duty Elite beta. While a select group of Xbox 360 gamers have had their hands all over Elite for a few weeks now, PS3 owners haven’t been as lucky. Fans of the popular first-person-shooter franchise who prefer to play the game on Sony’s console have likely become accustomed to waiting an extra 30 days or so before receiving the same benefits as their Xbox 360 counterparts. Microsoft’s machine regularly receives Call of Duty DLC before either PC or PS3 thanks to a timed-exclusivity agreement. I tried to have a time-exclusivity agreement with my girlfriend before, and she punched me in the throat. That concept doesn't really translate to the real world. To register for a beta invite head to Callofduty.com/elite.

Capcom will have Android users fighting in the streets when they release Street Fighter 4 for Google’s mobile operating system. Unfortunately, the brawler will be available exclusively on LG’s upcoming LU6200 HD smartphone for the immediate future. When publishers make these kinds of deals, they are usually weighing the potential sales for a particular game against whatever the hardware manufacturer is willing to pay them. It may be telling that Capcom is betting LG will pay them more money than they can earn on the Android Market. [ShackNews]

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