An editorial at Eurogamer delves into what Sony and Microsoft hope to achieve with their upcoming console motion control systems, despite entering the market several years after Nintendo set the standard. "The cards Sony has placed on the table this week suggest one answer to that question. It sees PlayStation Move as being an upgrade path for Wii owners — an invitation to the tens of millions of consumers who have invested in Nintendo's platform to swim upstream to the more powerful, HD-enabled system. Yet even Sony's most optimistic view of the market will be tempered by a dose of realism here. ... What's more likely — and what Sony are probably quietly hoping to achieve a significant proportion of the Move's success through — is that the technology will expand the appeal of the PS3 in the family setting." The Digital Foundry blog has an in-depth look at the PlayStation Move from Sony's event at the Game Developers Conference, saying, "... if there was one positive you could take away from the event, it was that Move is clearly a far more precise implementation than the Wiimote. Some of the games felt clearly more 'tactile' than the Wii equivalents."

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WolverineOfLove writes "I'm recreating a 1980s abandonware game with copyrights that have been seemingly unused for the past 18 years. The situation is detailed further in a Slashdot journal entry I just wrote, but in short: Is it worth dealing with all the copyrights and paying money if I want to recreate an abandonware title as an open source game? I know there are legal implications to certain decisions I might make, but there is a real possibility that this game's copyright holder will do nothing with the rights, and I'd much prefer preserving it for others than letting it fade away."

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krou writes "The Christian Science Monitor has an interesting story about how the University of Wyoming's English Department is helping fund a collective called the Learning Games Initiative to study video games. Jason Thompson, an assistant professor at UW who is part of the group, explains that 'it's a group of people [who] do research on games, do development on games, and keep an archive of games printed matter such as manuals, ... systems, all of it. We really look at games as cultural artifacts; things that reveal theology, things that reveal power. Things that should be studied in the academy.' The English Department has been very open-minded with the project, because they understand that gaming can educate people, and that 'we can expand our notion of what text and study is; the idea that it might be fun doesn't necessarily preclude its study.' Thompson believes that it's important for academia to study gaming, because games could be used in the future as a type of textbook: 'if games can teach, then as teachers shouldn't we understand what kind of teaching's going on?'"

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itwbennett writes "Sony on Tuesday 'rolled out the ability to buy HD movies from the PlayStation Network,' writes blogger Peter Smith. Sony claims they're the first service to offer HD titles to own from all six major movie studios. Smith runs the numbers on 'standard' pricing for titles ($19.99 for new releases; $17.99 for older movies), file sizes (ranging from 4 GB for Zombieland to 7.5 GB for 2012), and resolution (720P as far as he can tell)."

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itwbennett writes "In a 45-minute press conference at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, Sony announced its motion controller, officially named the Playstation Move. The Move consists of the Eye Toy (a camera pointed at the player) and a wand-like controller with a lighted ball at the end and a range of buttons on the shaft, writes blogger Peter Smith. 'Alternatively games can use two of the wands, or one wand and one "sub-controller" that has an analog stick (the camera is always required),' says Smith. 'If this is sounding very much like the Wii's Remote and Nunchuk well, you aren't far off (though at least there's no cable between the two parts to smack you in the face when things get heated).' Here are Smith's thoughts on the demo: 'All in all, the demos seemed OK, but I, at least, wasn't really blown away by any of them. That said, it's always hard to tell how well these systems work without actually trying them for yourself. You need to feel the connection (or lack thereof) between what your hands are doing and what's going on on-screen in order to be sure. For example, in the boxing demo the player did a quick spin move that led to a roundhouse punch. It's hard to say if his motion triggered a pre-set action (a 'combo') or if the system was able to track the controller that accurately, and was able to 'connect the dots' from when his body briefly occluded the wand to when it reappeared.'"

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Paul Taylor noted a story that I would have thought to be an April Fool's Day joke a few weeks from now, which makes it only seem more tragic. A 3-year-old shot herself with a gun after mistaking it for a Wii controller.

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c0mpliant writes "IGN and Gamespot have each released a preview of the recently announced and eagerly awaited Civilization V. Apart from the obvious new hexagon shape of tiles and improved graphics, the articles go on to outline some of the major changes in the game, such as updated AI, new 'flavors' to world leaders, and a potentially game-changing, one-unit-per-tile system. No more will the stack of doom come to your city's doorsteps. Some features which will not be returning are religion and espionage. The removal of these two have sparked a frenzy of discussion on fan-related forums."

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suraj.sun writes "Microsoft has shown off XNA games running on Windows Phone; full 3D is a go. From Engadget: 'Microsoft just showed us a pair of 3D games running on its ASUS Windows Phone prototype and built with its brand new XNA Game Studio 4.0 9. The two titles are The Harvest, a good looking touch-controlled dungeon crawler with destructible environments, being developed by Luma Arcade; and Battle Punks. Microsoft spoke to the ease of its Direct3D development platform, which was built by the same folks responsible for the first-gen Xbox. What we saw of The Harvest was built in "two or three weeks," mostly from scratch, and folks who've already built games for XNA in VisualStudio shouldn't have much trouble with a port from the sound of things: "very, very easy," said Microsoft. Right now developers can do their testing in Windows, but there should be a Windows Phone 7 Series emulator out for devs eventually.'"

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adeelarshad82 writes "After eight years of development, remote gaming service OnLive is scheduled to roll out on June 17 for Windows and Mac. The company also announced its service pricing: users will need to pay $14.95 per month, which will allow them access to the service. However, the company did not disclose the price to rent or purchase games. 'It is partnering in this launch with publishers including Electronic Arts, Ubisoft, 2K Games, THQ and Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment. The games will also include new releases like Mass Effect 2, Borderlands, Assassin’s Creed II, as well as a bunch of other titles. Perlman anticipates anywhere from a dozen to 25 titles to be available at launch time, and more after that, depending on how negotiations with other publishers proceed.'"

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An anonymous reader writes "Philippe Dauman, Viacom CEO and President, announced today that Harmonix is currently working on the next Rock Band game, Rock Band 3, due for release Holiday 2010. 'The company is pursuing the game in spite of an industry-weakening decline in the once-booming genre of peripheral-equipped music games. Although the franchise has generated over $1 billion to date, the category in general saw sales contract by as much as half throughout 2009. MTV Games parent Viacom also saw Rock Band declines drag on its balance sheet in its last fiscal quarter, and expressed a need to refocus away from pricey peripherals in favor of software. It also said that due to royalties it would need to be more "selective" about track listings, and that it needs more support from the music industry in that department.'"

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eldavojohn writes "A new report from Games Industry indicates that MMO gamers in the United States paid $3.8 billion to play last year, with an analysis of five European countries bringing the total close to $4.5 billion USD. In America, the report estimated that payments for boxed content and client downloads amounted to a measly $400 million, while the subscriptions came to $2.38 billion. Hopefully that will fund some developer budgets for bigger and better MMOs yet to come. The study also found that roughly a quarter of the US population plays some form of MMO. Surely MMOs are shaping up to be a juicy industry, and a market that can satisfy people of all walks of life."

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An anonymous reader writes with this excerpt from Gamasutra: "Valve will release a version of its Steam digital distribution service for Mac next month, along with Mac-native versions of its own games, the company confirmed today after days of hints — and owners of Valve games will have access to both platform versions. The Source engine, which Valve uses to develop all its internal titles and also licenses to third-party developers, will incorporate OpenGL in addition to DirectX, to allow Mac support for all Source developers. ... 'We are treating the Mac as a tier-1 platform, so all of our future games will release simultaneously on Windows, Mac, and the Xbox 360,' said Cook. 'Updates for the Mac will be available simultaneously with the Windows updates.'"

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arcticstoat writes "AMD has just aimed a shot at Nvidia's PhysX technology, saying that most game developers only implement GPU-accelerated PhysX for the money. AMD's Richard Huddy explained that 'Nvidia creates a marketing deal with a title, and then as part of that marketing deal, they have the right to go in and implement PhysX in the game.' However, he adds that 'the problem with that is obviously that the game developer doesn't actually want it. They're not doing it because they want it; they're doing it because they're paid to do it. So we have a rather artificial situation at the moment where you see PhysX in games, but it isn't because the game developer wants it in there.' AMD is pushing open standards such as OpenCL and DirectCompute as alternatives to PhysX, as these APIs can run on both AMD and Nvidia GPUs. AMD also announced today that it will be giving away free versions of Pixelux's DMM2 physics engine, which now includes Bullet Physics, to some game developers."

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ZuchinniOne writes "With Ubisoft's fantastically awful new DRM you must be online and logged in to their servers to play the games you buy. Not only was this DRM broken the very first day it was released, but now their authentication servers have failed so absolutely that no-one who legally bought their games can play them. 'At around 8am GMT, people began to complain in the Assassin's Creed 2 forum that they couldn't access the Ubisoft servers and were unable to play their games.' One can only hope that this utter failure will help to stem the tide of bad DRM."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

suraj.sun writes with this excerpt from Engadget: "Microsoft's Eric Rudder, speaking at TechEd Middle East, showed off a game developed in Visual Studio as a singular project (with 90% shared code) that plays on Windows with a keyboard, a Windows Phone 7 Series prototype device with accelerometer and touch controls, and the Xbox 360 with the Xbox gamepad. Interestingly, not only is the development cross-platform friendly, but the game itself (a simple Indiana Jones platformer was demoed) saves its place and lets you resume from that spot on whichever platform you happen to pick up."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Huge week at retail also sees launches of Command & Conquer 4, Metro 2033, Dragon Age expansion, new Pokemon for DS, and Resonance of Fate.

We went hands-on with this Wii rock climbing title, which is also coming to Xbox 360 Natal, and PlayStation 3 Move.

GDC 2010: Sim City, The Sims and Spore creator offers thoughts on the rise of social media in games, the allure of Advance Wars, and how games fit into the overall entertainment picture.

GDC 2010: Sequel designer discusses core gameplay pillars, mission repetitiveness, using play tests as a mirror.

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Ok, you must be wondering why your favorite girl gaming website has had a paucity of new content recently. It's not because we don't love gaming or gamers or anything like that -- it's mostly because GameGal's creative team are...

We return from our extended hiatus with a story that could have been written any time in the past five or so years. Whenever the growth of the games industry comes up, not far behind is the discussion of the...

It's time to pay another visit to the ever-popular GameGal E3 Hall of Shame. Established way back in 2002, we've been chronicling the giddy excesses of the Electronic Entertainment Exposition for five years now. Earlier in 2006, it was widely...

Yep, we're once again stalking the floors of the Electronic Entertainment Exposition, seeking out the biggest and best new games. It's the sixth E3 for both Dan and Libe, and we're both busy covering the show for our day jobs...

Ok, it's been a while since we posted any new reviews. But don't worry, we've got two next-gen games ready for the hopper right now. Check out our reviews of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion and Perfect Dark Zero. We're...

Stripped-down gameplay built around a unique battle system can't save this monotonous, linear affair. In the end, striking visuals and an excellent score aren't enough to paper over the game's gutted role-playing frame.

Nintendo reinvents its revered sci-fi videogame franchise for the Wii. In this thought-provoking sequel, you'll be switching between first- and third-person action as Samus battles badass extraterrestrials.

Exciting new levels and clever new gameplay mechanisms turn this sequel into a wild ride for everybody's favorite platforming plumber.

By lowering the barriers to entry, Blizzard makes the highly anticipated sequel accessible to those who never dug into the original.

By pushing the possibilities of what a videogame can be, this sprawling story about a serial killer points the way toward the deeply immersive future of interactive gaming.

The social network's annual developer get-together as part of the South by Southwest Interactive Festival focused on how it can bring its Facebook Connect technology to gamers on disparate platforms.

Hugo Chavez says "the Internet cannot be something open where anything is said and done" and demands crackdown on a critical news site.

A new ad for former HP CEO Carly Fiorina's campaign for the Senate takes the extremes of her "Demon Sheep" ad to even more exalted levels.

There is a way that Chatroulette could become a lot more than a place for people to show off their private parts

We don't want to share goods, but we want to share information, the NYU professor says at a SXSWi talk, and Napster transformed music into information.

Digg CEO Jay Adelson surprises the audience by announcing a revamped version of the service with a big slate of new features.

Word begins spreading on Twitter like wildfire that Conan O'Brien was joining Internet TV network Revision3. But it was actually a hoax that hundreds participated in.

roundup This week's Game Developers Conference brings together designers, programmers, publishers, and others for the latest from the world of video play.

As the Web generation descends on the South by Southwest Interactive show in Austin, several location-based start-ups try to put themselves on the map.

A deep and detailed survey by Focus.com concludes that the best job in the United States is a tech job: systems engineer. No. 2: physician assistant. No. 3: college professor.

Recent PR debacles surrounding Google Buzz and Facebook's privacy settings have put the spotlight on basic misunderstandings by tech companies about how people use social media.

A view of the expo floor from on top of the Sony booth at the Game Developers Conference in the South Hall of Moscone Center in San Francisco.

When Facebook changed its privacy settings, Zuckerberg took pictures off his Facebook pages. Google's Schimdt is reportedly trying to take down his ex-lover's blog. No one cares about privacy? Really?

Chevy is hoping to tap into the same sentiments that spark gadget fandom with its new Volt electric car. But is the crowd at the South by Southwest Interactive Festival the right audience?

After last year's network meltdown at the hands of thousands of iPhone-toting geeks at the interactive confab in Austin, Texas, AT&T promised it would do better. People were skeptical, but they've been won over.

Now "99.9 percent" certain that it will close its Chinese search engine amid conflict over censorship, Google has detailed plans to do so, according to a Financial Times source.

Eager to court fans of cutting-edge tech at the South by Southwest Interactive Festival, General Motors sends the e-car. And CNET's Caroline McCarthy gets a chance to drive it.

A ComScore-Offerpal Media survey shows that social gamers are willing to be marketed to in order to get free virtual currency. Avoiding scams will be key to making this trend last.

Sources say Dan Dobberpuhl, PA Semi's founder and pre-acquisition chief executive, has jumped ship to work at chip-related start-up Agnilux.

Here are a few of CNET Reviews' favorite items from the past week, including the 2010 Mini Cooper S, Falcon Northwest Mach V, and the Panasonic Lumix DMC-ZS7.

Popular Arcade-Style Golf Franchise Tees Off a New Sequel on the PlayStation®Network and Xbox LIVE® Arcade. El Segundo, Calif. - Mar. 11, 2010 - Konami Digital Entertainment, Inc. today announced that 3D Ultra MiniGolf Adventures 2 will be available for download on the PlayStation®Network and Xbox LIVE® Arcade for the Xbox 360® video game and entertainment [...]

Newest Extension of the Best-Selling Mama Brand is Due Out This Fall. EDISON, N.J, March 11, 2010 - The extent of Mama’s talents are limitless! She can hold her own in the kitchen and garden next to the world’s best, but now Mama is poised to dominate arts & crafts too as Majesco Entertainment [...]

Dante’s Inferno is loosely based on the epic poem of the same name. The same general concept is there except instead of a poet jumping into Hell to rescue his beloved it is a Crusader. I can understand the need to make this change for this kind of title. Does Dante’s Inferno reach epic heights [...]

BioShock franchise reaches major milestone with more than seven million units sold globally. March 5, 2010 - 2K Games announced today that the Sinclair Solutions Tester Pack, the first in a series of single and multiplayer downloadable content for BioShock®2, will be available on March 11, 2010 from both the Xbox®LIVE Marketplace for the Xbox [...]

Tutorials and other goodies for best-selling games launch new YouTube™ channel. RedLynx has launched a new YouTube channel, RedLynx TV to showcase and support fan passion about its award-winning games. The new channel highlights player-demanded content, such as tutorials, tournaments, and other video valuable info about great RedLynx games such as Trials HD for Xbox Live Arcade. “Trials [...]

New content to complement the vast world of Vana’diel in hugely popular MMO game. Square Enix, Inc., the publisher of Square Enix® interactive entertainment products in North America, in conjunction with VanaFest 2010, a fan event for players of the hugely popular MMO (Massively Multiplayer Online) game FINAL FANTASY® XI, announced today the development of three [...]

Two-Week Distribution Gives Pokémon Fans a Special Opportunity To Receive This Rare Pokémon Jirachi. Calling all Pokémon video game fans! The Wish Pokémon, Jirachi™, will be available for distribution to Pokémon fans at more than 4,300 GameStop stores located throughout the U.S. and Puerto Rico. Beginning Saturday, February 27 through Saturday, March 13, The Pokémon Company [...]

I’ve been watching the 2010 Winter Olympics for the past couple of weeks and I have also been able to participate in some of the events via Vancover 2010 for PlayStation 3. Vancover 2010 from SEGA really brings the Winter Olympics into your family room with its design, style, colors, and presentation that matches everything [...]

I believe when most people think of Final Fantasy games they have fond memories of the epic stories told through beautiful cinematic cut scenes, and of leveling up characters in unique ways and equipping them with new and unique gear. So when I received Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: The Crystal Bearers for review I was [...]

Follow Up to the Popular Ninety-Nine Nights Series Contains All New Content, Characters and Elaborate Story Blend Together in Epic Combat Game. Konami Digital Entertainment Inc., announced it will publish N3II: Ninety-Nine Nights for Xbox 360® video game and entertainment system from Microsoft. This sequel, based on the all-action combat game Ninety-Nine Nights, will pick up [...]

Thanks to PerfectWorld we have 10000 closed beta keys of Heroes of Three Kingdom for you. Heroes of ...

From the alpha beta of Tales of Fantasy, we show you three gameplay movies in 1080p HD featuring c...

Gala Networks Europe has announced the next expansion of the free to play MMORPG Flyff. Act V...

Outspark has openned the teasersite a month ago Erebus: Travia Reborn and has up...

Gamigo announced its latest free-to-play MMORPG: Soul Master, a unique mixture of online action ro...

Company Adds New CMO and Partners with Marketing, Public Relations and Search Engine Marketing Firms (PRWeb Mar 14, 2010)

Read the full story at http://www.prweb.com/releases/online-auction/shopping/prweb3722604.htm

America’s largest mobile content community FunMobility announces today the launch of FunTweet, a web service which turns any Twitter stream into visual messages that are related to the text. FunTweet allows users to post their tweets, but also makes the most basic tweets inspring, hilarious and fun when the text turns into a matching image. (PRWeb Mar 13, 2010)

Read the full story at http://www.prweb.com/releases/2010/03/prweb3720554.htm

Ballistic Publishing has partnered with Sony Computer Entertainment America Inc. and Naughty Dog, Inc. to produce The Art of UNCHARTED 2: Among Thieves. Ballistic Publishing's biggest art book to date features some of the hundreds of drawings, paintings and sculpts that began the process of making Nathan Drake's world real, and helped make UNCHARTED 2: Among Thieves the Game of the Year. (PRWeb Mar 13, 2010)

Read the full story at http://www.prweb.com/releases/Uncharted2/Game/prweb3720824.htm

Quest Online today announced that its board of directors has appointed Derek Smart to lead the company as President upon the departure of Dave Allen. (PRWeb Mar 13, 2010)

Read the full story at http://www.prweb.com/releases/2010/03/prweb3717874.htm

The Build A BragBook Story™ series allows the users to build a customized story with their own information, pictures, and audio using our professionally illustrated pages! Once the story is built, users can share it with others using their device and/or publishing it their Facebook or Twitter account. The Baby Story Audio edition allows someone to fully customize their stories, add personal photos to every page, and to record personalized audio with every page. The new version enhances a users ability to brag to their friends and family about their baby. No more waiting for months to get a printed book to share the joy with others. (PRWeb Mar 13, 2010)

Read the full story at http://www.prweb.com/releases/2010/03/prweb3719864.htm

The Grand National is one of the UK's biggest sporting events and is the most famous horse race in the world. It is anticipated that, in 2010, it will be watched by over 8 million viewers in the UK alone and that figure will rise to close to a billion worldwide, primarily due to its broadcasting in China. www.grand-national.me.uk has developed a suite of free content that webmasters can use to tap into this massive audience online. (PRWeb Mar 12, 2010)

Read the full story at http://www.prweb.com/releases/grand/national/prweb3710344.htm

Silver Screen and Sound will host their first-annual “High Performance AV Event” on March 12 and 13 in Towson, Maryland. Audio visual aficionados are invited to explore precision entertainment for the home, as well as experience the most immersive 3D projector available to the home cinema channel today. (PRWeb Mar 11, 2010)

Read the full story at http://www.prweb.com/releases/3Dentertainment/3/prweb3712364.htm

Ocean AdVenue, LLC, an interactive advertising agency specializing in performance-based marketing, today announced its official debut as an up and coming key player in the cost-per-acquisition and performance marketing space. (PRWeb Mar 11, 2010)

Read the full story at http://www.prweb.com/releases/2010/OceanAdVenue/prweb3706354.htm

Zeevex Business Model to Expand Sales of Prepaid Digital Content and Speed Consumer Adoption of Open Virtual Currency (PRWeb Mar 11, 2010)

Read the full story at http://www.prweb.com/releases/InComm/Zeevex/prweb3710144.htm

Spawn Labs, the developer of the first peer-to-peer real-time video processing cloud, today announced that it is previewing its new remote PC gaming products at booth #3012 at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco March 11-13. With the latest updates to its software, Spawn Labs also has reduced the end-to-end latency of remote gaming sessions to just 60 milliseconds. (PRWeb Mar 11, 2010)

Read the full story at http://www.prweb.com/releases/2010/03/prweb3716094.htm