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Following today's surprise acquisition of Criterion by Electronic Arts, our sister site GamesIndustry.biz spoke with Criterion CEO David Lau-Kee and EA worldwide studios VP Bruce McMillan about the future of the industry's most popular middleware platform.

Electronic Arts has announced the purchase of British game development studio and leading middleware provider Criterion, giving the top publisher control of the hugely popular RenderWare platform.

The Japanese developer of games including Resident Evil: Dead Aim and Drakengard is looking for staff to work on a new Xbox title according to a Japanese recruitment website. Cavia, which is a subsidiary of Amuse Capital Group (the same firm that owns Blinx developer Artoon, and Scarab), is seeking programmers with 3D games and C/C++ experience, directors, game designers, CG designers and PS2 programmers. We reckon they are working on a game involving time travelling dragon zombies. Actually, we don't.

Activision has confirmed that Doom III (that old chestnut) will only run on Windows 2000 and Windows XP, validating rumours that anybody still using Windows 98 would be unable to play the game.

LucasArts is gearing up to release Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords this year in the USA, judging by a new trailer posted on the publisher's website this week and a new street date carried by a number of US retailers.

Microsoft Game Studios and Digital Illusions CE have patched - sorry, auto-updated - RalliSport Challenge 2 via Xbox Live. The mandatory download will auto-install whenever you next log on to Microsoft's online gaming service.

Reports indicate that Capcom has registered the domain Viewtifuljoe3.com, sparking rumours that the Japanese games co. is considering a third game in the 2D fighting series.

Download the full video of EA's Medal of Honor: Pacific Assault presentation thanks to our BitTorrent-based files service, Eurofiles, here, and listen to Matt Powers' presentation and see the game in action for yourself...

Activision's movie license Spider-Man 2 has stayed on top of the UK software sales chart for a third week, as a period largely bereft of major new full-price releases saw no movement in the top four titles.

Nintendo has started trailing its line-up for the inaugural public Game Stars Live event taking place at London's ExCeL conference centre this September 1st to 5th, and promises that we can expect more to come including games "never before seen by UK eyes".

Nintendo is planning a summer road trip to show off a number of its forthcoming games "months before they are available to buy in the UK". The Nintendo Konga Beach Road Trip (yes) will visit eighteen locations around the UK (or at least, around England) and consists of a 40-foot articulated lorry decked out like a Hawaiian beach bar, featuring all manner of Nintendo titles.

The inevitable third title in the NBA Street series will go online on both PS2 and Xbox, published Electronic Arts has announced. NBA Street V3 is currently in development at EA Canada and due out under the "BIG" label in early 2005. It's also due out on GameCube in the same timeframe, albeit without online support.

DreamCatcher Games has announced Cold War: Behind the Iron Curtain, a new PC stealth/espionage adventure thingum due out in the UK in Q4 2004 with Mindscape handling distribution. It sounds vaguely interesting. Apparently we get to play a freelance journalist called Matt Carter on the run in the USSR in the 80s. He winds up in a KGB prison barely half a day into the country, for no obvious reason, and it'll take lots of fighting, infiltrating and improvising to get out and prevent the government's overthrow - across 23 non-linear levels that touch on Lenin's Mausoleum, Chernobyl and other familiar places. Get your screenshots here.

id Software programmer Robert Duffy has updated his .plan this week expounding on the differences between the graphics and sound quality levels in Doom III, and which you can expect to work on particular hardware set-ups. And given that "most production levels in Doom III contain more media assets than all of Quake 3: Arena," that's bound to be a concern for most.

Empire Interactive has released a one-track playable demo of Mashed, Supersonic Software's quirky little Micro Machines-style racer, which is already out on PC and consoles, and which we rather like around here.

Having announced some new IP last week, UK developer Warthog has revealed that it's also in the process of returning to the space-based Conquest RTS series, and has the original game's development team hard at work on Conquest 2: The Vyrium Uprising. You can find some screenshots of the game here.

Having had nothing to say on the subject all year, Microsoft has finally broken its silence about the Ninja Gaiden's Master Ninja Tournament for Europe, revealing that it will run from August 2nd to September 2nd, and that ninjas will be fighting to win a trip to Tokyo and katanas signed by Tomonobu Itagaki amongst other things.

Electronic Arts' report on market outlook following its first quarter results last week has indicated that while further price cuts to the Xbox and PS2 are unlikely in North America this year, new prices may be forthcoming in Europe.

It's been a turbulent year for Jak so far. First there were since refuted reports of his demise, then we discovered that his latest adventure sees him expelled from Haven City and left almost for dead in the surrounding wasteland, having failed to guide the city through a resurgence of Metal Head forces. Nevertheless, we're not giving up on him, and we're looking forward very much to the third - and perhaps concluding - chapter in his development. Speaking in a Sony-directed Q&A session prior to E3, Naughty Dog creative director Daniel Arey offers some insight into what we can expect. And of course you can find our thoughts on the game, including comments from Naughty Dog's game directors Evan Wells and Amy Hennig, by heading here.

Despite the demise of the films - if you can call it that - The Lord of the Rings is still very hot property indeed. This year's effort from EA seems to be focussing more on the discerning gamer and less on the fair-weather fan devoted to a quick action fix. The Third Age, a turn-based RPG dripping with all the polish you'd expect from such a high-profile franchise, is quite obvious being made with the intention of "mopping up" the afterbirth of what has been a grotesquely successful exercise in franchise manipulation. For the Shire, and all that.

Electronic Arts may be a lot of things, but 'controversial' isn't often one of them. Even with illegal street racing and World War II multiplayer games on the shelves, the world's biggest games publisher manages to maintain its bankability without having its morals rifled through by bloodthirsty investors and consumers. It shipped "a family product" about killing people in Vietnam, for heaven's sake.

SNK Playmore has apologised to hardcore NeoGeo fans for problems in the home edition of Samurai Shodown V Special, and instigated a recall in order to make up for them. "We deeply apologise that we could not meet up to our customers' expectations on our last game release for the NeoGeo," the company said of SSV Special, which reportedly suffers from bugs in practice mode, abnormal damage rates and hang-ups, amongst other things. Fans are also disappointed at the absence of fatality moves from the arcade version, having not been told about their absence and then forked out around £200 for a cartridge. It seems, however, that the recall will not only fix the bug issues, but also reinstate the fatalities, so there is at least some sort of lining around this particular cloud - despite doubtless incessant flaming within recent days.

Given our love for F-Zero: GP Legend on the Game Boy Advance (read some of our love notes here), we were pleased today to discover that Nintendo appears to be producing another F-Zero title for its ever-popular handheld.

Blabbering about the increasingly protracted development of the Far Cry 1.2 patch has become a staple of our news roundup lately, but for once it's more than worthy of mention in grander surroundings: because publisher Ubisoft has now withdrawn it citing "unexpected behaviour on specific hardware configurations".

Xbox exclusive Dead or Alive Ultimate will ship in Japan on October 7th, priced 9,240 yen (€69 / £46), developer Tecmo has announced. As well as the game, anybody pre-ordering the online-enabled beat-'em-up remake package will also earn themselves a poster and figurine of Kasumi, as well as a PC CD-ROM entitled Digital Venus 2004, featuring voice and visuals from various Dead or Alive characters. You can see what that will look like courtesy of The Magic Box here.

Valve Software is hoping to deliver a Half-Life 2 release candidate to publisher Vivendi this August, MD Gabe Newell and Director of Marketing Doug Lombardi have both confirmed this past week.

Software giant Microsoft has announced strong results for the fourth quarter and full year ended June 30th, but the growth of the company's Xbox business continues to lag behind other divisions despite increasing console shipments.

German developer Crytek has entered into a strategic partnership with publisher Electronic Arts which will see it building a new game franchise for the PC, based on entirely new intellectual property.

Last week, while England basked in its trademark grey skies, Electronic Arts was busy showing off two dozen games on a typically hot Californian sunny day. So hot that the poor, frail, pale UK contingent were forced to seek shade like the indoor dwelling Vampires that we are. But it was just as well that we're so rubbish at going outdoors when there were games like TimeSplitters Future Perfect being demoed indoors by none other than the creators themselves. Accordingly, we waved (literally, we had the shakes from the night before) a camera in the face of Free Radical director Karl Hilton and chatted about how the company's latest creation is shaping up, ahead of its early 2005 release. Read on, or download the interview in its entirety over at Eurofiles.

Quiet times. Despite the suffocating humidity we've been experiencing lately (can you sleep? I can't), and the summer holidays kicking in, there's nothing new on the shelves this week. We were under the impression that Army Men: Sarge's War (the former 3DO title rescued by Take-Two) and Samurai Jack (a kiddy title from Sega) were due this week, but judging by the uniformly confused silence on the other end of the phone when we called around just now, and the Out Of Stock notices on every online store we've checked, both are still to come. But hey, maybe you'll have more luck than we did.