Today's question:

What game, or series, has done the most harm to gaming in general and why?

Command & Conquer - The Novel.

Nintendo buys Monolith.

Microsoft makes its 360 1337.

How to migrate your 360 info to a new 120GB drive.

Mythic talks about WAR delays.

GamePro's 52 most important games, like.. evar.

StarCraft v1.15 patch coming soon.

Playstation Boss Falls on Sword 04:28 pm - Robert 'Apache' Howarth - Consoles: PS3 (12 comments)
Sony Computer Entertainment CEO and Playstation creator Ken Kutaragi has stepped down from the company after shipping some 200 million consoles in his lifetime (thanks Jarrett).

Kutaragi is one of the most celebrated figures in consumer electronics history, having shipped more than 200 million PlayStation and PlayStation 2 consoles, as well as the PlayStation Portable. Some analysts believe that had the PS3 been perceived as a hit or even a mild hit, there's a good chance he would be sticking around for the full 10-year lifecycle Sony gives its consoles.

But the PS3 is widely seen as a commercial flop, given its third-place position among next-generation video game consoles, trailing Microsoft's second-place Xbox 360 and the surprising leader, Nintendo's genre-busting Wii. The PS3 is even trailing sales of the venerable PlayStation 2 at this point.

The "PlayStation 3 has been a huge disappointment, No. 3 out of three in terms of console sales," said Rob Enderle, principal analyst at the Enderle Group. "It's been a huge embarrassment for the firm, and a huge hole that money has been pouring into."

New NVIDIA Vista Drivers 03:56 pm - Robert 'Apache' Howarth - hardware: General News (6 comments)
Thanks to Steve for the head's up that NVIDIA has released some new Vista drivers (ForceWare Release 158) for various Geforce products. Check out NVIDIA's site to see if your series card made the cut.

Alpha Prime Screenshots 03:46 pm - Robert 'Apache' Howarth - Games: Action (11 comments)
Four rather small screenshots of Alpha Prime, an upcoming FPS from Black Element Software:

(Click to Enlarge!)

Champ. Gaming Series @ Playboy Mansion 03:26 pm - Robert 'Apache' Howarth - Games: General News (0 comments)
The Championship Gaming Series 2007 season kicks off on June 12th at the Playboy Mansion:

The Championship Gaming SeriesTM (CGS), the first global professional gaming league, today announced that worldwide salaries and bonuses for the 2007 season will exceed $5 million, a new benchmark for professional gaming.

CGS has also announced the official games and schedule in its North American region for 2007. Qualifying for North American league play will begin April 28 and the first draft in history will take place on June 12 at the Playboy Mansion in Los Angeles.

"This is the moment the gaming world has been waiting for," said CGS Commissioner Andy Reif. "We will be paying salaries and bonuses to our players in excess of $5 million dollars during the 2007 season. The time has come for a new era of professional gaming as sports entertainment. Your chance to be a part of history starts on April 28."

Valve's Counter-Strike®: Source® and EA's FIFA 2007 will be official PC games for 2007. For the Xbox 360, CGS will feature Tecmo's Dead or Alive® 4 (DOA4) and Project Gotham Racing® 3 (PGR3) from Microsoft Game Studios.

The official CGS 2007 event schedule will feature online and live qualifiers where players will battle to reach the Regional Combine, scheduled to take place at the legendary Fox Studios in Los Angeles from June 8-10.

Players from the Regional Combine will then be drafted onto one of six city-based teams at the 2007 CGS Draft on June 12 at the Playboy Mansion. CGS online qualifiers for the North American region begin on April 28, 2007 with the first live qualifier to be held at The Bridge Cinema de Lux in Los Angeles on May 11-12.

Each CGS team will feature a total of ten athletes per team, each of whom is a specialist in one of the official league games. Five of the ten players will comprise a Counter-Strike: Source squad who will compete in five-on-five matches. The soccer title FIFA 07 will be played one-on-one. Each team will have a mixed-double team of two DOA4 players, one man and one woman, who will play against other teams in one-on-one matches on Xbox 360. The racing game PGR3 will be represented by two players on each team and matches will be played in a two-versus-two format.

Soon-to-be announced dates for the full global slate of 2007 CGS events in the UK, Europe, Asia, Australia, Latin America, and the Middle East will yield regional representatives for the CGS Grand Slam and World Championships, to be held in Los Angeles this October.

Two Worlds Trailer 02:18 pm - Andrew Burnes - Games: Role-Playing (7 comments)
Are you sure it's not a new Oblivion expansion, Rob?

Two Worlds Screenshots 02:16 pm - Robert 'Apache' Howarth - Games: Role-Playing (9 comments)
New screenshots of Two Worlds, a game which has nothing to do with The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion.

(Click to Enlarge!)

Dark Sector Interview 12:33 pm - Robert 'Apache' Howarth - Games: Action (1 comment)
Firing Squad shot up an interview with Ass. Producer Dave Kudirka to learn more about Digital Extremes' Dark Sector.

FiringSquad: First, Dark Sector began development as a space based MMORPG and later as a sci-fi action game. What cause the various changes in genre and why was Dark Sector finally set for a near future action game design?

Dave Kudirka: We've been through quite a few different iterations of the game over the past few years, but the one thing that has remained constant is our protagonist, Hayden Tenno. This game is about him evolving and becoming and Superhero, and that has influenced all of our decisions. The futuristic environments didn't quite provide the contrast we were looking for between Hayden and his surroundings—he seemed less impressive to us as a guy in a space suit fighting other guys in space suits…in space. This line of thinking spawned changes in character design and prompted the creation of Lasria; a coastal city in the not-to-distant future that provides a sandbox for spectacular events, but at the same time grounds the player in the realism of a scarred Eastern European territory. It's familiar enough that someone with a metal arm and bladed throwing-disc ("the Glaive") will stand out, but twisted enough to showcase the many bizarre and fantastic events that occur in Dark Sector. We didn't feel like the ultra sci-fi stuff gave us that same contrast.

Mythos Beta Soon 04:34 am - Robert 'Apache' Howarth - Games: Action / Roleplaying (10 comments)
Flagship's other game, Mythos, has left Alpha and is entering closed beta. Here's the poop:

Ping0, LLC, a joint-venture between Flagship Studios and HanbitSoft, Inc., today announced the successful completion of the alpha test program for the highly anticipated massively multiplayer online role-playing game Mythos™ developed by Flagship Studios Seattle.

"We would like to thank the Flagship community for their assistance and invaluable feedback during the Mythos alpha test," said Phil Shenk, Creative Director of Mythos and founding member of Flagship Studios, "We will now spend some time retuning and expanding the Mythos universe and are looking forward to welcoming back testers to Uld for the closed beta program".

Mythos is an online, action role-playing game that is free to download and free to play. Set in the land of Uld - a fantasy world arising from the ashes of an epoch-long war of darkness - players assume the roles of fantasy heroes as they explore, adventure, and quest through entirely randomized dungeons and environments. With an elegant point-and-click interface and an accessible "isometric" perspective, Mythos is poised to have near-universal appeal. The game allows thousands of players to interact within the same world while using mostly "Instanced" dungeons to create unique gaming experiences suited for both solo and group-minded players.

(Click to Enlarge!)

As players journey into Mythos' ever-expanding universe, they select one of three races (Human, Elves, or Gremlins) and opt to play as a particular character class using a huge variety of skills and items. Through heroic quests players search for gold, gems, armor, and weapons, while unlocking the secrets of Uld. Mythos presents a constantly expanding, continuously updated world where something new lurks around every corner.

Mythos is an online role-playing game developed by Flagship Seattle, a subsidiary of Flagship Studios. Mythos is currently exercising the online technology and services behind the multiplayer component of the highly-anticipated action role-playing game Hellgate: London. Mythos will be digitally distributed in North America and Europe in 2007 by Ping0. HanbitSoft, Flagship Studios' partner in Ping0, will be responsible for distributing Mythos in Asia.

Warhammer Online Delayed 01:30 am - Robert 'Apache' Howarth - Games: MMOG (11 comments)
Sniff, in the latest Warhammer Online newsletter, Mark Jacobs revealed that the upcoming massively multiplayer role-playing game has been delayed.

"It's been an interesting year for us at EA Mythic, a year filled with new challenges, new opportunities and of course, a year filled with WAR! We have watched Warhammer Online become one of the most highly anticipated MMORPGs in the world as it garners praise from the press, earns kudos from the community and receives enthusiastic support from our partners and friends at Games Workshop. I'm happy to say that the task of bringing WAR to life is going well here at EA Mythic. However, we have important news to share and as always, we want you, the WAR community, to be the first to know.

(Click to Enlarge!)

We have made the decision to move our ship date for the US and Europe to the first quarter of 2008. (Release dates for Asia will be announced at a later date.) Since our acquisition by EA, we have been afforded many wonderful development opportunities and we plan to take full advantage of everything that is available. This includes taking several additional months to make the best MMORPG possible.

At this time we have completed most of the work on our first racial pairing - Dwarfs and Greenskins - and the team is now building Empire and Chaos. These new zones really kick butt and the team did a fantastic job of incorporating the feel of war and Warhammer into these areas. This racial pairing is the embodiment of all that I hoped for when we made the decision to partner with GW.

However, when we looked back at our work on the Dwarf and Greenskin pairing, we could not say the same thing. While these areas were good, they were not great and glorious. We have always said that WAR was going to be great and we will not settle for anything less. So the team has gone back to our initial pairing and conducted an intense review of their work. They have implemented new ideas and applied all that they have learned over the past nine months. What has already emerged from this dedicated time of focused polish is nothing short of spectacular. In the Dwarf and Greenskin zones there is now more war, more Warhammer, and more of what makes WAR great.

By extending our development time, we'll be able to do these in-depth reviews several times prior to launch to ensure all areas of WAR benefit from the experience of ongoing development. EA is totally supportive of our decision and are behind us 100%. We all believe WAR will be the next great MMORPG and being part of EA affords us the time we need to make it so. It is EA's ongoing commitment to quality that will allow us, and other EA studios, to deliver great games, now and in the future.

This change to our ship date is probably not the news you were hoping to hear. In the end, we'll be able to reward your patience with a truly next-generation MMORPG that will make GW proud, all of us at EA thrilled and most importantly, you, the players, as happy as a Black Orc in battle. We only get one chance at a successful launch, and we plan to catapult this one over the walls of Altdorf."

Hardware & Tech Nuggets 12:36 am - Robert 'Apache' Howarth - hardware: General News (0 comments)

Boards

• Abit and MSI take on the nForce 650i - Tech Report
• SAPPHIRE Pure Innovation HDMI PI-AM2RS690MHD - Virtual-Hideout

  Cases
  

• Apevia X-QPACK2 SFF Case - 3DGameMan

  Cooling
  

• Cooler Master CoolViva Pro - TechAge
• Noctua NC-U6 - XS Reviews
• Noctua NC-U6 Chipset Cooler - 3DGameMan
• Zalman Reserator 2 Fanless Liquid-Cooling System - Xbit Labs

  CPU
  

• 8-Core Intel Xeon 'V8" Sneak Peek - Dual Quads - Hot Hardware

  Memory
  

• DDR3 Memory Modules from Super Talent - Hardware Secrets
• Kingston KHX9600D2K2/1GB Memory Kit - Hardware Logic
• Super Talent DDR2 1000 (T1000UX2G4) 2GB - Gideontech

  Mice
  

• Cyber Snipa S.W.A.T. Laser Gaming Mouse - Tweaknews
• Logitech MX 610 Left-Hand Laser Cordless Mouse - Overclockers Club

  Pads
  

• SteelPad 5L Professional Gaming Mouse Pad - The Tech Zone
• XTracPads Zoom - TechPowerUp

  Power Supply
  

• Thermaltake Toughpower 1000W Cable Management Power Supply - Tweaknews
• Thermaltake ToughPower 1200W - [H]
• Ultra 850VA UPS - Bjorn3D

  Video
  

• BFG Tech GeForce 8600GTS OC - Tweaktown
• eVGA e-GeForce 8600 GT 256 MB Superclocked - Guru3D

RPG Vault Goodness 12:32 am - Robert 'Apache' Howarth - Games: Role-Playing (0 comments)

Eschalon: Book I Peek #1
Basilisk Games offers an example of the extensive decision process we'll see within the play of its upcoming RPG - Includes an exclusive screenshot

Jonric's Blog
The lengthy wait to enter virtual Middle-earth is over

Game Reviews 12:30 am - Robert 'Apache' Howarth - Games: General News (0 comments)

PC

• Dawn of Magic - PC.IGN - 6.9/10
• Penumbra: Overture - Play.tm - 81%
• The Elder Scrolls IV: Shivering Isles - Strategy Informer - 8.3/10

  PS3
  

• Calling All Cars! - PS3.IGN - 8.5/10
• Formula One Championship Edition - Boomtown - 8/10

  Wii
  

• Bust-A-Move Bash! - Wii.IGN - 5.3/10
• Bust-A-Move Bash! - GameSpot - 4.7/10

In Other News... 12:15 am - Robert 'Apache' Howarth - In-House: In Other News... (49 comments)
Le sigh, how I hate delays.

Today's question:

Of all of the games projected to be released in 2007, which would most upset you if it got delayed?