PSP World

Gamers How Can you Help the Japan Quake Relief?

Unless you've been living under a rock for last few days, then you'll be fully aware of the devastating and unprecedented triple tragedy in North Eastern Japan. A disastrous combination of earthquake, tsunami and the hazardous nuclear incident, have wreaked havoc upon the Japanese region. Totally wiping out infrastructure, lives and whole communities.

Now Japan has long given us endless hours of pleasure with wonderful hardware technology such as the PlayStation 3, and Nintendo Wii, and exhilarating games software titles like Final Fantasy and Street Fighter. The least we in the games community can do in return to help out, is to continue to support our favourite Japanese titles and buy Japanese. However, some in the games industry are providing fun and ingenious ways to pitch in.

You can view a round-up of various relief efforts throughout the games industry below the break.

Brian Crecente from our friends Kotaku will be hosting a Japan Earthquake Relief Fundraiser in Denver USA, with 100 percent of the proceeds going to the Japanese Red Cross Society, which is working directly in Japan to help those impacted by the Sendai earthquake and tsunami last week.

The fundraiser will include Rock Band, DJ Hero and perhaps Dance Central up on stage as well as a free console arcade when it kicks off on March 24 in the historic Cervantes Masterpiece Ballroom in Denver.

Last week Game developer Square-Enix temporarily shut down its servers for its PlayOnline service and two Final Fantasy MMOs to conserve power. There is also a list of tech disaster relief services from the source link here. [Source: PC Mag via Wired.com]

Capcom is distributing worldwide the iPhone version of "Street Fighter IV" at a price of 0.99 USD (115 yen in Japan) for one week starting on March 15, 2011 (Tuesday). All of their sales from this title during this period will be donated to support earthquake relief activities. [Source: God is a Geek]

List of Games industry donations and support relief efforts. More Japanese eathquake donation lists here and here. [Source: Computer Video Games]