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Sony's "had" to apologise to Christians after an advert featuring a smiling man wearing a crown of metal twisted into PlayStation's trademark geometric button shapes apparently caused outrage amongst religious types.

Sony's released a 2.01 firmware upgrade for Japanese PSPs. Its only function, as far as we can work out, is to close the security hole that allows people to downgrade their systems to version 1.5 system software, which can be easily manipulated to run homemade emulators, games and other software applications loaded onto the Memory Stick.

Sierra has released a 16-player multiplayer demo of F.E.A.R. (First Encounter Assault Recon) today, allowing you to get a feel for the online portion of this hugely-anticipated paranormal first person shooter at close quarters.

September and we're already reviewing FIFA? What's that all about? Some things are carved in granite, and FIFA's annual late October outing among the falling leaves and the bracing weather has been as predictable and comforting as a steaming cuppa in the morning.

As noted in passing this morning, Football Manager 2006 will be hitting PCs and Macs ahead of schedule on October 21st – and to help celebrate its completion Sports Interactive's hitched its shirt up over its head, run toward the crowd and flung a spanking new "gold demo" toward the spectators. You can grab it from various mirrors, of which we'll be one just as soon as we've completed the warm up (witlessness aside: when it's finished crawling toward our FTP).

It's comforting to be able to predict things at this time of year. Like the crispness of the air when summer gives way to autumn, the incredulous looks you get by growing a beard, or the number of smug new ways for PES fans to belittle the latest FIFA despite having no intention of playing it for more than 30 seconds. But other things that we have an uncanny knack of being able to foresee we gain absolutely no joy from, such as Norwich's depressing defeat to Reading on Saturday, the lack of sleep from impending parenthood [I'm not convinced that one falls under the royal 'we', boss - Tom] or the September arrival of a Conflict game that doesn't live up to its potential (and then goes in with a bullet at number one).

Released today in the U to the K (and across Europe, but that doesn't rhyme), Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War – Winter Assault is Relic's first expansion pack for, well, you can probably guess what for, and we've got a demo version up on Eurofiles this afternoon.

Honestly. You go off somewhere to do your thing, you tell everyone in advance, you warn them not to do anything drastic while you're away and then all of a sudden you come home, drag your FireFox kicking and screaming out of the chicken coop and discover the new release list resembles a cross between Valhalla, the Elysium fields and that other one with the women who don't even want to talk to you they just coo and want your hotness to roll all over them like some sort of biblical katamari. Where have all these games come from? Well, never mind that, we can't afford to waste words when there's so much joy to articulate. On with the party.

Following the recent acquisition of Eidos, SCi has issued a financial report which reveals some rather interesting news regarding its release schedule.

Ten years to the day after the original PlayStation went on sale in North America, the console has been awarded an Emmy for Outstanding Achievement in Technology and Advanced New Media.

There's no word on when, but Electronic Arts has predictably announced that Ridge Racer 6 on Xbox 360 will be another Namco game is co-publishes in Europe, much as it's done with stuff like We Love Katamari and Dead to Rights.

Microsoft executive Robbie Bach has predicted that half of those who buy an Xbox 360 will sign up for Xbox Live, despite the lack of interest in the online service amongst current Xbox owners.

As those of you who lament my continued employment often note (somewhat perilously given that I have access to the Accounts Management page), we like loud and silly things over here. Imagine our delight this morning, then, when we woke up to be greeted with news of a downloadable Katamari desktop toy from Namco?

News has emerged that a big screen adaptation of Sony Computer Entertainment's Siren - known as Forbidden Siren over here - is set to hit Japanese cinemas next spring.

One of our favourite games at the moment – apart from doing "more like!" jokes in straplines – is Gitaroo Man developer iNiS's Nintendo DS rhythm-action game Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan, featuring a kind of backwards musical Spanish Inquisition who turn up on queue, dance about and right wrongs by shouting. It's probably the most fun we've had with a stylus since we discovered that you can buy anatomically-accurate Tifa dolls on eBay. So what are those iNiS people up to now? Well, judging from a report on IMPRESS Game Watch, they're making an Xbox 360 game based on a very, very shiny game engine called NFactor 2.

Myst series developer Cyan Worlds has fought off the spectre of impending doom (perhaps by locating all the D'ni buttons in the right order) and rehired "almost everybody" according to a giddy-sounding Rand Miller.

Eidos has announced that a new version of Championship Manager is currently in development for the PSP.

Well now this is naughty. Going further even than those cheeky chaps who helped us get SCUMMVM working on our PSPs, the NEO Flash bods have prototyped a bit of hardware that allows the Sony handheld to hook up to MicroDriver and CompactFlash storage – with a 6GB BYTE Hitachi CF MicroDriver apparently 100 per cent compatible according to the official site, which also has a picture.

A Sony Computer Entertainment executive has gone on record to explain why there were no playable PS3 games at this year's Tokyo Game Show - despite Ken Kutaragi's previous promises.

Namco has announced the full title for forthcoming PC RTS game Warhammer: Mark of Chaos.

Total War's been reigning champion of the strategy game for the last five years. And, yes, it's been deposed twice, but only by its sequel. It does something that nothing else does even half as well, and at times seems to be the keeper of the progressive spirit for the whole damn genre. All true. But there's a question that nags me as I start to play this latest add-on.

Being yet another game to shoehorn a DS-related subtitle into its name, Advance Wars: Dual Strike once again sets out to prove that two screens are, indeed, better than one. But is it really the great, er, Advance we're all hoping for, or another dead-eyed attempt by Nintendo to get us to part with our hard-earned cash in an effort to play the same game on another handheld? Could Intelligent Systems really bring more to the game than had previously been achieved on GBA without ruining the essence that made Advance Wars such an essential offering in the first place?

Do you hate people who like to make things difficult for themselves by using the wrong tool for the job? You know the kind of thing they do; picking teeth with a breadknife, changing channels on the TV by throwing something at it, sleeping on beds of nails, washing clothes by hand, that kind of thing.

Friend o' mine used to signal she'd eaten too much by saying, "I've got to go lie on my tummy." Cute. Eidos: go lie on your tummies. Total Overdose has definitely eaten too many games. It's got bits of all sorts. Mainly Grand Theft Auto, which it mimics with amusingly awful results, but also Prince of Persia (Let's rewind time!), Max Payne (Let's slow down time and jump around!), Tony Hawk (Let's get missions from blokes on street corners!), and even Bad Boys II (Look! Another room full of generic gun-toting foreigners! Let's be racist about them!).

Scottish developer Real Time Worlds - the studio founded by Grand Theft Auto and Lemmings co-creator David Jones - has revealed the first details of its new Xbox 360 game.

It's been revealed that Gouichi Suda - director of Capcom's Killer 7 - is currently working on a new RPG for the Nintendo DS, titled Contact.

Sega Europe's Tina Hicks, Caroline Searle and Lynn Daniel are set to embark on a six day trek up Mount Kilimanjaro next month to raise money for children's education charity ESC, and are actively seeking sponsorship for the climb.

Former HAL Labs star designer Masahiro Sakurai, whose credits include the creation of the Kirby and Smash Brothers series as well as, more recently, directing Nintendo DS title Meteos for Q Entertainment, has announced the formation of his own studio.

Michael Dell – the bloke who runs ubiquitous PC manufacturer Dell, obviously enough – reckons the PC gaming market is "still pretty strong and pretty active," particularly in the area of online gaming, and is backing it to remain alive and well – by launching more high-powered XPS gaming PCs and trying to muscle in on Alienware's gamer-hardware patch.

Fresh from claiming that Namco basically coerced him into making a second Katamari Damacy game by threatening to do a rubbish one without him, our current favourite game designer Keita Takahashi has apparently told Hardcore Gamer Magazine that he isn't a big gamer and finds most of them boring.