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Here's an interesting idea: a game played on a telly within an Oculus Rift game.

GTA5's upcoming multiplayer mode Grand Theft Auto Online will include the option to buy dollops of in-game cash for real-world money.

The Elder Scrolls Online is an interesting one - an ambitious and gargantuan new MMO, it has perhaps underwhelmed a little when shown before, a victim of the grandiose expectations that fans of the Elder Scrolls series have off the back of a run of outstanding games over the last ten years. Zenimax Online's epic has looked competent, good, even, but it's lacked the spark that people expect from Bethesda's universe.

Usually it's the annual release of Call of Duty that prompts a nation's navel gazing and the question of whether violent video games make people more violent. But this year it's that comfy old slipper Grand Theft Auto (and then probably COD and then probably Assassin's Creed).

Microsoft has explained the microtransactions system in Xbox One launch title Ryse and moved to calm fear that it is a "pay to win" mechanic.

Crytek's Xbox One launch title Ryse: Son of Rome will include micro-transactions within the game's multiplayer mode.

Has there ever been a flatter, more generic game title than Alien Rage? At least Warface has the dignity to be a bit mental, whereas CI Game's multiplatform shoot-me-do manages to send me to sleep in two short words.

UPDATE #2: Microsoft has now announced UK pricing for its new Surface range (thanks, CNET), which varies from £359 up to £1439 for a 512GB Surface Pro 2.

If you've played any of the original games of Hidetaka "Swery" Suehiro and his Access studio before, you'll know they can have a tendency to be a little odd. That much was clear as far back as Spy Fiction, and it's a strangeness that's snowballed all the way up to Deadly Premonition, the deliciously bizarre facsimile of Twin Peaks that earned itself a much deserved cult following in the years following its release. D4, an Xbox One exclusive that's to be released episodically over an as yet undecided number of instalments, is something else though. It's a surreal, hilarious and often imaginative adventure game that takes the bizarre humour of Deadly Premonition to an extreme, and it's really all the better for it.

Two months away from the release of the next generation consoles, many have already made up their minds about which machine offers more gaming power before a single game has been released. Compare basic graphics and memory bandwidth specs side-by-side and it looks like a wash - PlayStation 4 comprehensively bests Xbox One to such a degree that sensible discussion of the respective merits of both consoles seems impossible. They're using the same core AMD technologies, only Sony has faster memory and a much larger graphics chip. But is it really that simple?

Be advised! In case you hadn't guessed already, visitors to this year's Eurogamer Expo will be able to play Call of Duty: Ghosts multiplayer on the show floor, sampling things like dynamic map events, the Marksman Rifle weapon class and new killstreaks and modes.

Capcom's PS4 exclusive Deep Down will be a free-to-play game, it emerged over the weekend, with an open beta due around the time of the release of Sony's new console in Japan in February next year.

PES 2014 is a strong new entry in the series but playing it online this weekend passed - its launch weekend - was far easier said than done.

When it came to hosting legends of the industry, this year's Tokyo Game Show couldn't really have been much better. Hideo Kojima's stage shows on Sony's booth, full of camp theatrics that strike a little discord with the more sombre tone the series is presented with in the west, saw Metal Gear Solid 5 come into brilliant focus, while elsewhere Yasumi Matsuno stepped out of the wilderness to announce his new project, Unsung Story: Tale of the Guardians.

For a growing number of people, myself included, EA Sports' goal of forcing FIFA into every gap in our lives has already been achieved. When I wake up I set player auctions on my phone. When I get to work I use the web app to check their progress. At lunchtime I play 2v2 with the guys from sales. When I get home I play a few online tournament games. On slow weekends I throw down some micro-transactions and build a new team. When I'm not doing that, I'm watching YouTubers. (I'm a particular fan of Itani's Five Pack Challenge.)

Apple has pipped its own colossal sales records with the launch of the iPhone 5C and 5S, which together shifted more than nine million units in only three days.

Are updated kits and team sheets enough to tempt you out of £40 (eShop) for FIFA 14 on 3DS?

We've seen Snake sneaking at night, and now - as another beefy Metal Gear Solid 5 video tumbles out of Japan - we can see Snake sneaking during the day.

You can dress Final Fantasy 13 star Lightning up as Aeris/Aerith Gainsborough, the healer from Final Fantasy 7, in Lightning Returns.

The best bit of Ultima Online? Working your way to owning a castle and filling it with riches for the world to see. Actually, no, it was figuring a way to sneak into someone else's estate and then stripping it bare.

Sci-fi colony building game Maia launches on Steam early access on 3rd December 2013, developer Simon Roth has announced.

As veteran games journalist Steve Hill put it recently, "There are two types of Candy Crush player; people who are addicted to Candy Crush, and people who haven't played Candy Crush yet."

With depressing predictability, I thought I might as well bookend last week's pre-GTA5 Letter from America with a post-GTA5 piece. Because let's face it, how could I not talk about the most-talked about game this week? And indeed the most shouted about, complained about, controversed about etc etc etc.

Earlier today Oculus announced the winners of its VR Game Jam, in which the VR headset manufacturer tasked indies to create Oculus titles - or at least prototypes - to show off at this year's IndieCade Selection. Entrants were split into two categories: Open Call and Selected Developers. The former was open to anyone, while the latter was reserved for previous IndieCade developers.

"To vanquish without peril is to triumph without glory." Had 17th-century French playwright Pierre Corneille not suffered the misfortune of being born 400 or so years before Vanquish was released, I'm fairly sure he would have admired Shinji Mikami's excellent third-person shooter. Indeed, there's an echo of Corneille's words in the Mikami-directed remake of Resident Evil on GameCube: the more challenging difficulty setting, Mountain Climbing, points out that "beyond the hardships lies accomplishment". It's a maxim that has served one of the medium's best game designers well over his storied career, and particularly so here.

Sony's booth at Tokyo Games Show is probably not the best place to play Deep Down. TGS has a deafeningly loud show floor, where rival companies hope to win your attention with ridiculously-dressed show staff and ever-increasing volumes designed to drown out the stand opposite.

PlayStation 4 lead architect Mark Cerny carried out the same role in the development of PlayStation Vita, Digital Foundry can reveal. Cerny's involvement in the creation of Sony's handheld hasn't been discussed publicly by the platform holder, but his key involvement in the project is now a matter of record.

You can't move for dark first-person narrative adventure games from indie studios at the minute. Something to do with the viral success of Slender and the critical plaudits heaped on Dear Esther, perhaps - as well as the fact that you can put a story-based game together without having to draw your lead character. Bonus!

PlayStation 4 hardware will make a loss at launch, but Sony expects to immediately recoup the costs when a typical user also buys a PlayStation Plus subscription and games.

Last month we saw the inspired week-long game jam, 7DFPS, which tasked developers with creating a first-person shooter in seven days. With this tiny timeline, developers had to get creative to produce something that felt like more than a mere Doom clone. Chris Donlan wrote about some of its highlights, while I covered Notch's contribution to the project, but now one of its best entries, Superhot, has made waves with its upcoming spruced up commercial release getting accepted on Steam Greenlight in record time.