Retailer planning to add thousands of jobs in the United States in preparation for upcoming shopping season.

GameStop plans to hire 17,000 people across the United States in preparation for the upcoming holiday shopping season, including the launch of the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 next month. International hiring plans were not mentioned.

The positions include in-store Game Advisors, consumer electronic technicians within its refurbishment operation center in Texas, and warehouse personnel for the company's two distribution centers.

These seasonal employees will work part-time shifts during the week, weeknights, and weekends. They will receive the same 15 percent discount that standard employees get.

"In the weeks leading up to the holidays, GameStop experiences a substantial peak in the number of customers it services online and within its retail stores," the company said in a statement. "As a result, ensuring that there is an adequate number of talented Game Advisor staff to support this increase in store traffic is a priority in order to maintain the high quality of customer service shoppers expect from GameStop."

GameStop said the holiday season is the company's busiest time of the year, accounting for about 40 percent of annual revenue. The company described its hiring plans as "critical" for success during this period.

Recruiting efforts are currently underway. Those interested in applying for positions can visit GameStop's careers section on its website. This year's 17,000 planned new hires is "in line" with the number of new employees GameStop added during the same holiday season last year.

Coming aboard as seasonal help could lead to a full-time position, GameStop said. In 2012, between 25-30 percent of seasonal employees were hired on full-time at the retailer for the next year, the company said.

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$1000 grapefruit-sized portable console launching on Black Friday in the United States.

Xi3's $1000 modular Piston console will be available for purchase beginning on November 29, 2013. That date lines up with the Black Friday holiday shopping event in the United States.

Those who preordered a Piston console during or before the SXSW 2013 Gaming Expo will receive their system on or before November 15, the company said.

"The Piston console is just Xi3's first step in what we believe will be a transformative technology revolution for the living room," Xi3 founder, president, and CEO Jason A. Sullivan said in a statement.

The Piston console is loaded with 8GB of RAM and 128GB of SSD storage, though it can be modified to hold up to two 512GB mSATA SSDs. It features a 3.2 GHz AMD Trinity processor and a Radeon 7000-Series GPU.

The system will come pre-loaded with a number of games, though Xi3 did not name any of these.

The Piston console was first revealed at the Consumer Electronics Show in January, with some reports pegging the device as a "Steam Box" after the company disclosed an unspecified investment from Valve for the project.

Valve's Doug Lombardi said in March that the company began "exploratory" work with Xi3 in 2012, but no longer has any involvement with the Piston console or any device from Xi3.

Last week, Valve announced Steam Machines, described as a "powerful new category of living room hardware." Several boxes from multiple manufacturers will be available to the public in 2014. A hardware beta will begin later this year.

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Two cuts to the European version of Beyond: Two Souls, amounting to 5-10 seconds of footage.

Sony has confirmed that Quantic Dream's upcoming narrative-led title Beyond: Two Souls will be briefly censored in Europe.

Two cuts have been made to the European version in order for the game to be sold with a 16 age rating, Sony's Ross Alexander explained on the EU PlayStation Blog.

"There are only two amends between the EU and US versions of the game," said Alexander, "amounting to about 5-10 seconds of gameplay that’s not been removed, just edited slightly to be in line with a PEGI 16 rating."

Sony has not clarified what, exactly, has been cut from the game. European ratings board PEGI explains the usage of its 18 classification is "applied when the level of violence reaches a stage where it becomes a depiction of gross violence and/or includes elements of specific types of violence."

"Gross violence is the most difficult to define since it can be very subjective in many cases, but in general terms it can be classed as the depictions of violence that would make the viewer feel a sense of revulsion," adds PEGI.

"For Beyond we wanted to make the game available to as many people as possible," continued Alexander, "hence applying for a PEGI 16 rating. The 5-10 seconds I mention above would have upped our rating to a PEGI 18, so it made perfect sense to make these two VERY minimal changes to get our planned 16 rating."

"I can assure you that this does not affect the game’s story at all, and that if you didn’t know these scenes had been amended, you wouldn’t even notice."

Beyond: Two Souls will be released for PlayStation 3 next week, on October 8 in North America and October 11 in Europe.

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UK managing director Fergal Gara says PlayStation maker not rattled by Valve's recent announcements, but will keep an eye on goings-on at Half-Life studio.

Last week, Valve announced SteamOS, Steam Machines, and a Steam Controller. None of these announcements have rattled Sony, but that doesn't mean the PlayStation maker isn't keeping an eye on what the Half-Life studio is up to.

Speaking with Eurogamer, Sony United Kingdom managing director Fergal Gara labelled Valve's announcements as potentially "disruptive technologies." He said it is important for Sony not only to keep tabs on Valve, but also other companies as well.

"In this market you've always got to expect some broadside disruptive technologies to come along, and it seems like a potentially good example of that," Gara said. "I haven't had a chance to study it in much detail. What I would say is, I don't think anything about it is significantly rattling our confidence at this point in time and what we're doing as PlayStation. We have to keep an eye on Valve and many other competitors."

"We can't afford to ignore it. Steam is arguably the pre-eminent digital download service for gaming. So we'll watch it," he added.

Sony is not the only platform holder keeping an eye on Valve's announcements. Microsoft corporate vice president Phil Harrison said last week that the Xbox maker is watching what Valve does "with great interest."

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Amazon product page for Bungie's new shooter reveals beta will be available on Xbox 360, Xbox One, PS3, and PS4 next year for those who preorder.

[UPDATE] Following the publication of this story, Bungie confirmed the Destiny beta. It will be available in early 2014 on Xbox 360, Xbox One, PlayStation 3, and PlayStation 4 for those who preorder the game at participating retailers. A new gameplay trailer is available below.

The beta will include a "diverse sampling of major activities" from the full game, though these were not specified. To gain entry into the Destiny beta, players can visit Bungie.net and follow the instructions. Those who preordered before today are automatically entered into the beta and will receive their code via email.

For more on the Destiny beta, check out GameSpot's interview with Bungie community manager Eric Osborne.

The original story is below.

Bungie will hold a beta for upcoming shared-world shooter Destiny in early 2014 on all announced platforms, according to an Amazon product page spotted today by NeoGAF.

The beta will be offered on Xbox 360, Xbox One, PlayStation 3, and PlayStation 4 for those who preorder the game while supplies last, according to the product page.

No mention was made concerning when the Destiny beta will officially begin. All existing preorders through Amazon will be given beta keys.

Neither Bungie nor Activision has officially announced a beta for Destiny. Bungie is no stranger to betas, as the developer has offered betas for Halo 3 and Halo: Reach.

Destiny--which requires an Internet connection--launches in 2014. It is Bungie's first post-Halo project and the first game as part of the company's ten-year exclusive publishing deal with Activision.

Yesterday, Bungie teased preorder bonuses for Destiny and said a new gameplay trailer will be released sometime today, October 1.

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