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According to Vivendi Universal, nearly 1.7 million copies of Half Life 2 (the successor to Valve's 1998 first person shooter, Half Life) have been sold in less than two months, pitting Half Life 2 to be one of the biggest success stories of 2005. I guess this means success for Valve, and what would seem, a goal achieved in implementing their controversial Steam software and "Authentication" process that has dogged (and continues to dog) its customers. Locked out of HL2,.. GG Steam! Does Valve Really Care About Its Customers ? Discussion >> Nintendo have announced a European launch date of 11 March for the Nintendo DS: Nintendo said that the DS will launch in Europe the 11th of March at the price of £99 for UK gamers, and 149 €uros for the rest of Europe. Nintendo also announced that the price of DS's games will be £19 - £29
Official website for Nintendo DS BBC News: Nintendo handheld given Euro date Discussion >> .jpg)
We got our hands on a slot for the closed beta of the new version of Risk Your Life, over a week ago. IGNIQ members TheBlacksmith, Dave and MtS_Alien have been busy playing all week, getting a feel for the game and writing down their thoughts. We have an in-depth review courtesy of MtS_Alien posted up here. TheBlacksmith also critiqued the game and gave his first impressions here. Dave is putting the finishing touches to his review and it will be posted over the next couple of days. Thanks to Planetwide Games for letting us into the beta for our review.Discussion >> Take 2 announced today they've acquired "certain rights" to the Civilization franchise, as well as entering a multi-title partnership with Firaxis Games. The press release mentions the fourth installment of Civilization is due for release late this year, and has some more details about the game: The fourth game in the PC strategy series that has sold over five million copies, Sid Meier's Civilization IV is a bold step forward for the franchise, with spectacular new 3D graphics and all-new single and multiplayer content. Civilization IV will also set a new standard for user-modification, allowing gamers to create their own add-ons using the standard Python and XML scripting languages.
Take 2 Interactive Firaxis Games Civilization Fanatics - dedicated fansite Steve Ogden blog - Firaxis lead artist Discussion >>  We linked to Penny Arcade's revocation of their Game of the Year Award for World of Warcraft a few days ago. They had sent off a "terse" set of questions to be answered by Blizzard, who have since replied with some straight answers:Copies of the game were being purchased at a much faster rate than anticipated, so we had to abandon our slower-paced plan and go into rapid deployment to accommodate these additional customers. This meant we also had to advance our timetable for additional server purchases.
Just when you thought you had the one greatest graphics card to rule them all, ATI, in keeping up with it's rival Nvidia will be unveiling its new R520 graphics processors this May. We already said that the R520 taped out and our sources confirm that the chip is in good shape, but then again it's still the first working silicon that it got out of the fab. It takes at least six weeks to get the next revision of silicon. This means that ATI is still on track and will possibly make one more revision before it goes to final production. You can check out a really cool, real-time rendering demo from ATI, showcasing their current X850 card and the latest demo from the people that brought you Far Cry. You will need one kick ass card to be able to play it. Atleast a 9800 Pro or higher i would suggest. :) Check it out here Full R520 article here Discussion >> The BBC have an article speculating on what the next generation of games consoles will be like, Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo all have new products lined up for release in the next 18 months. While no details of the PlayStation 3, XBox 2 and Nintendo's "Revolution" have been finalised, developers have begun work on games for them anyway: Although the details may not be nailed down, Mr Armes said EA was beginning to get a sense of the capabilities of the new machines.
Discussion >>  404 Gaming have posted up more details about their upcoming Hip-Hop based multiplayer online game. Recently recruited for the project was D.J. Pooh, the writer for GTA: San Andreas.
According to 404 the game will include "many features that currently do not exist, our first title will allow subscribers to become integral parts of not just the storyline, but the actual game itself, taking the otherwise stale MMO community and hurtling it forward beyond all competitors." Listed as collaborating artists & staff for the game are some very impressive names, including Public Enemy's Chuck D & Flavor Flav, Ad Rock of the Beastie Boys and D.M.C. of Run D.M.C. among others. Read more on the official site Previous post: Hip-Hop MMOG In The Works, GTA Writer Recruited Discussion >>  A demo has been released for Darwinia, an unusual looking real time strategy:Nearly three years after taking the underground gaming scene by storm with Uplink, Introversion Software is poised to release its follow-up title, Darwinia. Combining fast paced action with strategic battle planning, the game features a novel and intuitive control mechanism, a graphical style ripped from 80's retro classics, and a story concerning a tribe of video game sprites trapped in a modern 3d game world. Download the demo hereVia waxy.org More info: Introversion Software Uplink "High tech computer crime and industrial espionage on the Internet of 2010" Discussion >> 
Digital Daily have posted an in-depth review of Nvidia's mid-range graphics card option, which comes to us in the form of the 6600 GT. Reviews range from the Gigabyte, Gainward, XFX, Leadtek and Asus version of the Nvidia GPU. Tests examine how the cards (which are in pci flavour) favour in synthetic benchmarks, gaming applications and over-clocking capabilites. So for those people thinking of upgrading their current graphics card and replacing them with the new Nvidia gpu, it might be worth taking a look at how the mid-range cards fair out. 6600GT takes a lead over the competitor solution Х700PRO (around 220$ +/- depending on the manufacturer and the sales place) as we have found out through all the synthetic benchmarks that we ran. However, synthetic benchmarking is far not all, many have lost interest to 3DMark and don't take the results as the truth in the last resort. Therefore, gaming applications proved to be the most indicative in terms of real performance comparisons. Check out the full review over at Digital Daily NVIDIA's SLI Shortchanges Gamers? SLI Velocity Raptor Gaming PC Wins Kick Ass Product Award SLI Technology Gainward makes dual SLI water cooled 6800 Ultras Discussion >> The problems besetting World of Warcraft has cost them an influential award - the PennyArcade.com 2004 Game of The Year Award. This comes at the same time as news that Blizzard are now limiting the amount of new copies of World of Warcraft being sold due to server problems.
The sheer success of the title (more than 600,000 sales in the weeks after release, with over 200,000 concurrent players) appears to have been ill-prepared for, and the game servers have been regularly suffering problems: Every week, there is some new calamity that necessitates some huge response on their part, servers are coming down, but if you think that the servers coming back up again will represent an improvement in the basic functionality of the game you're mistaken. They took them down most of the day Thursday (and again for "emergency service" on Sunday), and when they came back up it should have been something supernatural but it was actually utterly imperceptible. It should have been like when the Genesis device hit and a lifeless rock became a fucking paradise. That didn't happen. So, if I say, as I'm about to, that their emergency service amounts to parlor tricks, what evidence can they give to the contrary? Because near as I can tell they've been doing "emergency service" since release, only they used to credit people's accounts for it.
Wired: Dealing with Great Expectations Blizzard denies shelf pull, software slowed. (20 Jan) No More Players for World of Warcraft - For Now (19 Jan) World of Warcraft "oversold", pulled from shelves. (13 Jan) A Blizzard of Unhappy Customers A Comic Strip Takes Video Games Seriously (Almost) (N.Y Times on Penny Arcade) Discussion >>  Slightly in-credible story - according to a news segment on a Chinese Central Television broadcast, the Chinese military is using bootlegged copies of Counter-Strike to train their soldiers.
Boingboing, via kotaku Discussion >> A woman in Japan was arrested for logging into her boyfriends Lineage account and deleting his weapons and other items he had collected: Police reported the woman, of Takaoka, Toyama Prefecture, to the Fukushima District Public Prosecutors Office accusing her of violating a law banning illegal access. She has apparently admitted to the allegations against her.
Discussion >> 
kotaku links to the official Take2 Games page for GTA: San Andreas, the PC & XBox versions are due for June. Also check the recent IGNIQ review of the Playstation 2 version. Discussion >> Archives
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