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A video recording of J Allard's GDC 2005 keynote, in which the XNA chief spoke of Xbox 2's "High Def" future and identified key elements of Microsoft's next-generation strategy, is now available from Eurofiles.

Eidos says the extra development time allotted to Crystal Dynamics' first stab at the Tomb Raider series will allow for additional versions to appear on PlayStation Portable and Xbox 2.

Higher game prices for the next gen consoles you say? This is so predictable.

As the Xbox shortage continues to cause problems for UK shop owners, trade publication MCV has revealed that Microsoft will supply Europe with one million Xbox 2s by Christmas.

Several of the biggest Xbox franchises are already planned for Xbox 2, according to Microsoft Game Studios boss Shane Kim, who has confirmed that Fable, Halo and Project Gotham Racing are all en route to the next-gen console.

The future of Doom developer id Software could lie with next-gen consoles rather than PC, according to a report on GameSpot.

Former Capcom exec Yoshiki Okamoto, whose new studio Game Republic signed up to develop titles for Xbox 2 last month, has hinted that the company is lining up a number of other major Japanese developers to support the platform.

The PlayStation 3 looks set to be the first of the next-generation consoles to take a bow in front of the world's media - albeit only by a matter of hours, with Sony announcing that its pre-E3 conference will take place just ahead of Microsoft's.

The ourcolony saga continues with the release of a new teaser image on the site.

British sources have confirmed that the next generation Xbox is indeed called Xbox 360, that the logo is a simple, round nexus, and that the console itself has a concave design. And it's white. Maybe.

Ex-Sega producer Tetsuya Mizuguchi has confirmed that his Xbox 360 title will not be music-based, according to an article on the official Japanese Xbox site partially translated by Gamespot.

Microsoft's is still planning to ship two different versions of its Xbox 360 console at launch, according to sources close to the company - while reports suggest that the high-end version may feature the firm's WebTV system.

Two more major Japanese publishers have announced support for Microsoft's next-generation console, with software development for the platform already underway at both Sega and From Software, according to a Famitsu report.

It's been nearly a year since Team Ninja's Tomonobu Itagaki confirmed that a Ninja Gaiden sequel was in the works. Since then nothing, until now - courtesy of US online retailer EBGames.

With just a few weeks to go until Xbox 360 is unveiled, a new teaser trailer for the MTV special has been released.

A new image purporting to be the Xbox 360 console has been "leaked" onto the Internet, and is being widely reported as the final design for the hardware, which is due to be revealed in an MTV special in under three weeks time.

An interesting new piece of info has emerged which suggests Xbox 360 will indeed play original Xbox games after all. And what's more, Xbox Live will allow owners of either console to play together.

Gizmondo Europe has revealed some of the games it plans to put on show at E3, confirming that more announcements are on the way - and refusing to deny rumours that Halo is coming to the console.

The developer behind hit strategy games Axis & Allies and Kohan is getting trigger happy with a new FPS entitled Section 8 for PC and next-gen consoles.

Although the DS has been around for a few months now (to the import gamers among you at least), it's perhaps telling that the games that have been occupying our time the most with Nintendo's new handheld have actually been GBA titles. Not that the DS games aren't good (although the best is definitely yet to come), but the quality of some of the GBA titles coming through from Japan has been outstanding. The force of Nintendo hype may well be focussed on telling us how much that touch screen and dual screen gaming are the future of handhelds, yet simultaneously the company has quietly been releasing some of the most imaginative and addictive handheld titles on the relatively humble GBA.

Possibly the most ill-advised game title of all time was Firebird's audacious 'Don't Buy This' on the ZX Spectrum in the mid '80s. We did what they asked. A close second has to be Rare's latest in-joke handheld excursion It's Mr Pants, a game title that prompts such snorts of derision and disbelief every time it's mentioned you'd swear they did it as a bet or something. It most definitely is real, but don't hold it against them; they may have $375 million of Microsoft's dollars burning a hole in their, ahem, pants, but the Rare chaps still evidently know how to make a mean handheld title.

You've got to hand it to Nintendo. Just when everyone's attention has become firmly fixed on the impending release of the DS, it seems to want to throw new and original GBA software at us that's every bit as interesting and worth having as anything that's out on its new system; yet minus any hype whatsoever. DK: King Of Swing crept out into the European market last Friday ahead of anywhere else in the world, so we won't blame you for knowing nothing about it. Its almost invisible entry onto our nation's shelves is hardly a surprise though, seeing as Nintendo itself doesn't seem to be altogether convinced whether this ape swinging romp is actually any good or not. They needn't have worried; it's another charming work of simple game design genius from a company that seems to be operating on a different plane to almost anyone else.

2005 appears to be the year the puzzle genre finally awoke from its depressingly prolonged coma and thrust itself back into frontline Top 40 action. You'd swear you can smell frazzling synapses when you enter the Eurogamer HQ these days. In one corner you've got Tom busy clocking up multi-million Time Attack scores on Zoo Keeper and muttering about getting Meteos on import, while I put my worn-out copy of the stupidly under-appreciated It's Mr Pants to one side to try out the latest challenger, Nintendo's Polarium. At this rate we'll be submitting our Mensa applications and buying bigger hats to disguise the fact that our brains are bursting out of our skulls. We're nothing if not modest.

So word of mouth does work then? Sometimes it feels like we're talking to ourselves here when we dish out 9/10s to games that go on to sell, ooh, 13,500 units. Case in point the wonderful WarioWare, Inc. on the GBA, which suffered the ignomy of being last year's 169th best-selling handheld title despite probably being one of the best games available for the system. And yet WarioWare Touched has gone in with a bullet at No.6 in the All Formats chart over in the UK, second only to Super Mario 64 as the most sought after DS game. We nearly fell off our chairs.

Reviewing launch titles on a new console is a difficult process. There are lots of reasons for this, but one of the main problems is moving goal posts and working out what it's actually reasonable to expect. Half the time with a new console we're struggling to work out what the sport is, let alone where the goal posts have scampered off to - the only basis for comparison being games on other consoles. [Note to reader: see how Tom flagrantly ignores the convention of Golf games not having goal posts, and then gives them legs. A good start. -Ed]

Hmm. As much as we've enjoyed Rayman's intermittent appearances on handheld formats over the years, there was always a good reason for that. Take Rayman Advance. Ubisoft hit the ground running with a brilliantly realised port that still stands out as one of the finest platformers for the GBA, not only pushing the technical capabilities but managing to hold our attention with dozens of fiendishly designed levels. And however formulaic Rayman 3 on GBA was, the design nous in some of the more challenging levels had us coming back for more almost despite ourselves - plus had the added novelty value of being one of the very first GameCube link titles.

Archer Maclean's Mercury has already captured the imagination of a lot of gamers. One of only two really new puzzle games on the PlayStation Portable, it's drawn comparisons to the likes of Super Monkey Ball and Marble Madness, but really belongs in a niche of its own. Having reviewed the game yesterday, today we chat to Archer Maclean himself about the game's influences, designing levels with so many hidden depths, the game's esoteric charm, and how the PSP is helping developers sidestep the "graphical arms war".

Football games [odd start -Ed] ... Fine. Tennis games [happier] need the players. In fact, there aren't many ball games that don't. It's all very well having splendidly realistic ball physics and a wonderfully detailed playing surface that scuffs, reflects, ripples, rustles, screeches, whatever. But you need the players too. And they have to look like they're playing the game. Snooker is different. Every snooker (or pool) game that I've ever played has lived or died based on what happens on the cloth within that immaculately polished wooden frame. Believability in snooker games comes down to realistic shot options, ball behaviour, clacking noises and the developer's ability to convincingly move spotless and reflective round objects around without them looking like sprite-based trees in a Build Engine forest turning to face you with every step. So, without the obscure reference: to convincingly move spotless and reflective round objects around and actually make it look like they're rolling.

The battle of the next-generation handhelds finally kicks into high gear in the States this evening with the launch, at midnight, of PlayStation Portable - Sony's not-quite-direct competitor to Nintendo DS, which is now available worldwide.

Grr. I've been tossing and turning all night. And not in that good way where you're running through a labyrinth being chased by pornography. I've had another sleepless one for no apparent reason. Fortunately for me, I soon realised (well, "soon" is a stretch; let's go for "I realised at 5am that...") my PSP was in thrashing distance. WipEout proved a bit beyond me (in gaming terms, my brain was suffering from packet loss) but then I remembered something else I'd done recently. Found out how to do all that video malarkey.