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Championship Manager 5 will not be released until the first half of 2005, Eidos said today, confirming its prediction in mid October that the game might not be finished in time for Christmas.

French publisher Infogrames has announced its results for the first half of FY 2005, revealing in the process that the firm has sold off the lucrative Civilisation franchise to an as-yet unknown purchaser.

Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords will be the droids you are looking for from December 6th, LucasArts said this week. And if you didn't get that: the American version's coming out on the Xbox on December 6th.

A new regulatory filing from Florida-based firm Infinium Labs has revealed that the company needs to find fresh funding of around $11.5 million if it is to launch its Phantom game service next year as planned.

Nintendo isn't saying much about any of them, but as well as releasing three new screenshots of the next GameCube-bound instalment of The Legend of Zelda, the platform holder has also released shots for three previously unannounced Cube titles: Mario Baseball, Donkey Konga 3, and an as-yet untitled Kirby game.

Rome may not have been built in a day, but what of Egypt? We contacted the last known Egyptian Pharaoh yesterday, only to be informed the mummified monarch "does not comment on rumour and speculation". (At least, we think we got the right number; we hit "M" for "Mummy" in our phone contacts, and we don't know too many other institutions whose names begin with "M"...)

Final Fantasy XII won't be out before the end of March 2005, according to comments attributed to Square Enix president Yoichi Wada in the Japanese Asahi Shimbun, although it should be out before the end of 2005.

Ah. Many of our Yankee brethren are busy playing fully finished copies of World of Warcraft, which shipped to stores over there earlier this week. And some of you are a bit peeved. Either that or a disproportionate percentage of dissenters just happen to enjoy using our contact form. "Blizzard hates Europe!" they tell us (which is strange, since those Blizzard chaps seemed so nice when we last saw them), "and they never tell us anything."

Valve has suspended indefinitely 20,000 Steam accounts it has linked to fraudulent attempts "to access Half-Life 2 without purchasing it." As you've probably seen from various gaming forums, this has prompted a widespread backlash from "innocent consumers" who feel they have been snared wrongly in the trap - funnily most of whom appear to be illiterate kids refusing to provide any proof of purchase...

Next Monday, just when it looks like we're running out of surprises for 2004, Rockstar is planning to unleash "The Introduction" - a 22-minute in-engine DVD story that dramatises the unspoken events prior to the start of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas - as part of a two-disc soundtrack set for the UK's current No.1-selling game.

Rockstar's Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas has reclaimed the top spot in the UK charts this week, while Need For Speed Underground 2 has outsold Half-Life 2 to take the number two position.

EA has responded to the dearth of World War II games at the moment by thrusting a mod developer's kit upon the bayonet-toting masses, giving you the chance to create and modify content for Medal of Honor: Pacific Assault, which came out in Europe last week. You'll need a .NET framework installation to use it and some other jazz, but we'll leave that for you to worry about. It's 45MB, and you can download it from here.

A PC game produced by Scottish firm Traffic Games has come under fire from the family of former US president John F Kennedy for allowing gamers to play through his assassination as sniper Lee Harvey Oswald.

So there you have it. The first Sims 2 expansion will be "The Sims 2 University", and it will be released in March 2005.

Gamers are notoriously difficult to please. Although Worms 3D's camera came in for some criticism, it was arguably the game's "Worms, but in 3D" approach that eventually dominated the sense of dissatisfaction with the title. It seems that, faced with a direct follow-up that builds only slightly on its predecessor - whilst sticking doggedly to the things that made it so popular in the first place - a lot of gamers will complain that it isn't individual enough, and that they are effectively being asked to pay for the same thing all over again. This is a good thing.

Ask the average gamer to describe Worms and they can. No problem at all. Heck, ask their wives, girlfriends, younger sisters or even their parents, and most of them have played it, or at least seen it. It's rather surreal, the idea of wriggly invertebrates with squeaky voices and bombs shaped like bananas, but after a handful of major revisions across countless platforms from the Amiga right up to the Xbox, the concept is certainly ubiquitous. There's even an N-Gage version (of the four year old Worms World Party, oddly) due out this year.

From gi.biz:: Derbyshire based independent developer Strawdog Studios has announced that it has secured funding from EM-Media to continue prototyping on the company's new console and handheld project, Bugs of War. EM-Media, which has agreed to fund the prototype development to the tune of UKP 250,000, is the East Midlands' regional film and media development body, which is funded in part by the UK Film Council and the European Union. It has supported a number of game projects in the past, including Free Radical Design's hugely successful TimeSplitters, as well as mobile games from Nu Generation Games. Strawdog Studios was founded by industry veterans Paul Smith, Joe Lewis and Simon Morris, who count some 40 published titles between them including work at top British developers Eurocom and Free Radical Design. Bugs of War is the studio's first title.

Losing save game data is one of the worst fates that can befall a PlayStation 2 owner. We felt bad enough when our Burnout 2, Beyond Good & Evil, Prince of Persia and Final Fantasy X saves were nuked by our curiosity in the seemingly cursed wares of Wipeout Fusion; we can only imagine what it's like for people whose gaming lives are reliant on a single slab of rewritable flash and not spread over several like ours. Except, in fact, checking around some US forums over the weekend, we did more than just imagine it; we witnessed the fallout first-hand.

"That's a terrific clearance," he says, as someone scores, or a condor flies into the ball singing the Burmese national anthem, and someone's head explodes, or something. "His touch let him down there."

We can only assume they haven't tried putting them lengthways. Really, if they're not just doing it to fit the words across the front of a bike, we do have to ask why on earth Namco and Sony - presumably at the behest of license-holder Dorna Sports - squash the letters and numbers together as if we're in the grips of a space bar ban. "MotoGP4". Just look at it. It looks like it's crashed already.

Tekken 5. PS2 exclusive. Next summer in Europe. Screenshots. S'about it.

Ubisoft is to publish Treasure's Game Boy Advance title Advance Guardian Heroes in Europe next February, the publisher announced this week.

Electronic Arts has signed an agreement to develop and publish an official game of the UEFA Champions League 2004-2005 competition, and plans to release the results in February next year on PS2, Xbox, GameCube and PC.

X-Men and Usual Suspects film director Bryan Singer has partnered with Vin Diesel's game company Tigon Studios to develop an original videogame franchise centring on the life of a US Secret Service agent assigned to presidential detail, according to the Hollywood Reporter.

Sony has postponed the Japanese release of Gran Turismo 4 until December 28th according to reports from Japan this afternoon. Polyphony Digital's racing opus had been due out in the Far East on December 3rd, but it seems that the developer wants some extra time to fine-tune the title.

Although publisher Vivendi and developers Starbreeze and Tigon have yet to comment on the possibility of a sequel to The Chronicles of Riddick, actor Vin Diesel has told a popular film website that a sequel is in development and spoken of the potential to flesh out the Riddick mythology through videogames.

Tekken 5 is on its way to the PlayStation 2 and should be available in Japan next spring, according to reports emanating from the Japanese Famitsu Weekly magazine, and will feature the original arcade mode, a customisation mode and a new single-player offering.

With Halo 2 doubtless already boosting Xbox Live subscriptions around the globe, Microsoft is going for broke this month with the announcement that for every friend you can encourage to sign up for the Xbox online gaming service between now and January 31st 2005, you'll receive a free game of your choice.

Bungie has patched Halo 2 to solve a few of the outstanding issues that have come to light since the game's release earlier this month. The first "auto-update" for Halo 2 will be automatically downloaded with your permission the next time you log onto Xbox Live.

This isn't a review.