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Microsoft is tooting its horn and throwing confetti because Xbox is the most powerful games console, and the monopolistic platform holder has big plans to try and emphasize this fact over the next couple of months. None of this involves releasing a triple-A videogame, but hey ho.

Nintendo today drew the wraps off its latest European hardware announcement, but it was neither the platform holder's next home console nor news of the anticipated broadband and modem adapters. Instead the firm revealed an entirely new device, called Game Boy Player, a one-inch-high peripheral upon which the Cube rests. The two devices communicate through one of the Cube's previously enigmatic expansion ports, and owners will be able to insert any generation of Game Boy game into a front-loading cartridge bay and play it on the big screen, using either the Cube controller or GBA itself to direct the action.

Metroid Prime has slipped to March 2003, Zelda is due out in Q2 and Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicle is aiming for Q4. These are just some of the highlights on Nintendo's 2003 European schedule, which also includes the likes of 1080 Avalanche (Q2) and Wario World (Q2).

Power hungry gamers must wait until February before they can get their hands on the latest GeForce FX (a.k.a NV30)-based graphics cards, NVIDIA announced today at a packed press conference.

If you're anything like me, the one hope your mobile phone has of looking anything but clunky, old and decrepit lies in the magic of operator logos and custom ring tones. And thanks to the success of Grand Theft Auto, now you can access free mobile phone logos, picture messages and MMS pics, and there's even a GTAIII ring tone based on the good ole theme tune.

Konami has told retailers to withdraw from sale copies of Dancing Stage - Party Edition for the PlayStation one, which was released last Friday. In a statement released earlier today, the developer/publisher explained that although the game works fine on PlayStation 2 hardware, there is an errant crash bug when it comes to some, "possibly all", PSX and PSone consoles.

PC real-time strategy game ANNO 1503 - The New World sold more than 200,000 units in less than two weeks, making it the fastest selling PC game the German market has ever seen, publisher Electronic Arts has today revealed. Following the game's success in Germany, ANNO 1503 is set for a global release on February 28 of next year, localised for five languages.

We've been looking forward to the latest SmackDown game ever since its lauded predecessor first arrived. Although Just Bring It was extremely popular and sold enough to justify a Platinum re-release, we weren't exactly piledriven into loving it, as it suffered from a number of irritating niggles which conspired to spoil the illusion of 'real' wrestling. Nevertheless, we knew Yuke's would return with something bigger and better, and it has. In fact, Shut Your Mouth is arguably a more enjoyable spectacle than the TV series, which continued to shed its regular viewers throughout this year.

Publishing superpower EA has announced the first Battlefield 1942 expansion pack in light of the game's success. Currently under development at Swedish-based Digital Illusions, The Road to Rome will be a multiplayer-focused expansion (obviously) including more maps, more vehicles and more troops. It focuses on the Italian and Sicilian campaigns of World War II, with players fighting it out on six new maps including Operation Husky in Sicily and the battles for Anzio and Monte Cassino. Expect lots of cs_italy style textures and Mediterranean environments. Eight new vehicles include the German BF-110 and the British Mosquito, with various new anti-tank guns and handheld weapons, not to mention bayonets on rifles.

Sega AM2's flight simulator, Aero Dancing 4, is to be localised for release in the US by Sega of America, and launched under the guise of Aero Elite Combat Academy, a very silly sounding name. The game is due out in the US in March, and there are strong hopes of a European release in the near future. The US version consists of everything in AD4 (realistic combat/training missions, more than 60 aircraft including jets, fighters and choppers) and slaps a few extra bits and pieces on top, according to Sega.

GameSpot is reporting that former basketball player Dennis Rodman is providing the voice talent for Zack, the token bloke, in Tecmo's Dead or Alive: Xtreme Beach Volleyball. Zack is responsible for setting up DOAXBV by tricking oodles of gorgeous lasses to come out to his secluded island under the pretence of another DOA tournament. "I am a big fan of the Dead or Alive series and was flattered when Tecmo asked me to play Zack," Rodman reportedly said. "He is one wild character, just like me, and a bit of a prankster, which I can relate to. And Dead or Alive: Xtreme Beach Volleyball is my kind of game, if you know what I mean." We do, Dennis.

Intel has announced (i.e. not launched) its 3.06GHz Pentium 4 processor, making another psychological breakthrough before its main competitor could. But unlike previous "speed bumps", the 3.06GHz chip integrates a new feature called Hyper Threading, which allows the CPU to operate on two program threads simultaneously. Armed with a supported OS (all flavours of XP are mentioned, but not 2000), programs on the host computer written to take advantage can be distributed to two "virtual" processors. Intel reckons this feature offers performance gains of up to 30 per cent.

Midnight Club II is set to appear on PlayStation 2 sometime in the spring, the follow-up to a perhaps underrated city racer which now pales in comparison to the likes of Grand Theft Auto. Still, publisher Rockstar has a lot of faith in developer Angel Studios and has green-lighted Xbox and PC ports of the as-yet unreleased game, expected to hit both platforms shortly after the PS2 version ships.

Even the bloodiest, most ferocious action titles over the years would turn pale when faced with the arsenal found in Gothic II. Publisher JoWooD has today released details of the 150 (that's 150) weapons found in this RPG epic. Each of them will require specific strength and dexterity prerequisites, and they all vary in effect - as you might expect though, they aren't all to be found in a big bundle behind a tree somewhere...

I loved Rollercoaster Tycoon. I find theme parks and the construction of the rides therein really quite fascinating, so for someone to develop a game based on this very premise was a dream come true. Nearly four years ago Chris Sawyer took the formula pioneered by Bullfrog's Theme Park and pushed it forward dramatically to produce an enormously satisfying theme park sim. Can he pull it off again?

Eurogamer got to mix with the great and good of the C list showbiz world last night at the West End 'premier' of Sony's long-awaited The Getaway

Gaming makes a long awaited return to our TV screens next week, with the third series of Violet Berlin's Gamepad set to air on Bravo every weekday for a month long stint.

NVIDIA has announced its GeForce4 4200 Go mobile graphics chip, which is expected to start appearing in actual notebooks sometime in early 2003 (look to Dell amongst others for this). The 4200 ushers in DX8 effects support, which is now commonly used in games applications, and gives NVIDIA-powered notebooks a much needed graphical performance boost to compete with ATI's recently launched Radeon Mobility 9000. The 4200 apparently gives NVIDIA-powered notebooks performance comparable to midrange GeForce4 products using AGP8x, although it's very easy to make claims like this in the absence of actual product, isn't it boys?

Ubi Soft has released the Raven Shield multiplayer demo, and you can download it here from Telewest blueyonder. Although this release of the Unreal-based FPS is limited to multiplayer excursions, by all accounts "limited" is not a word to be used in connection with Raven Shield. Expect to see the demo's two maps played to death before too long.

Ubi Soft looks set to publish Wild Arms 3, Media Vision's three-dimensional cel-shaded RPG set in the Wild West (sans Will Smith), having taken one look at the first Wild Arms' European sales figures (130,000 plus) and quick-drawn its chequebook. Ubi Soft plans to release the game, which was originally expected to be published by Sony, sometime in January of next year.

Although it's difficult to follow up the fastest selling game of all time, it's fair to say that none of this week's major releases will be quickly forgotten. On the PS2 side, there's a trio of excellent games; an RPG, an FPS and a wrestling sim, whilst Cube, PC, GBA and even PSone make an encouraging effort to keep us interested. The only area of neglect here is Xbox - LMA Manager 2003 looks to be the best bet this week, with the unproven Harry Potter and Reign of Fire games alongside Transworld Snowboarding, which isn't a patch on Amped or SSX Tricky.

Cenega has signed up to release Plastic Reality's Korea: Forgotten Conflict on PC and Xbox, with a launch date target of mid-2003. From what we've seen and heard so far, Forgotten Conflict is shaping up to be a bit like Commandos 2, combining elements of real-time strategy and more traditional action-based war games. The environments, weapons, personnel and situations are all said to be extremely realistic, and the first two screenshots of the game demonstrate some highly detailed areas, including a train depot - the final version of the game will be packed to bursting with flashes of buzzword graphical effects like dynamic shadows and lighting, and a comprehensive range of weather effects.

We've been hearing some very good things about Vietcong, Pterodon / Illusion Softworks' forthcoming Vietnam-based first person shooter, and this week publisher Take-Two has revealed several of the vehicles due to show up during the course of the game. Ranging from jeeps and Russian off-road vehicles to US choppers, Chinooks and F-5 supersonic warplanes, each will appear in Vietcong, and many will be pilotable. There's a lot of information (and in-game approximations) of the vehicles on the recently launched Vietcong website, along with information on the game environments and back-story, with more to come in the next few weeks.

Climax has finished work on Rally Fusion: Race of Champions, publisher Activision has announced. Based on the annual Michelin Race of Champions which takes place in the Canary Islands, the game sees you competing as you might expect against top racers in environments which venture from road and desert tracks to mountain and even arctic conditions - 19 cars, 20 different tracks, and two formats. Rally Fusion is due out on PS2 and Xbox.

Phantagram Europe informs us that mech blaster Phantom Crash has gone gold, and will be released in Europe on November 22nd. To celebrate the occasion, Phantagram has released another trailer in a slew of sizes tailored to every connection imaginable. So, if you want a sneak preview of the stompy mechs that will probably be pounding their way around your Xbox later this month, queue up here for the 28.8K modem version, the 56K modem version, the low-end broadband version or the high-end broadband version.

GameSpot is reporting that Microsoft has released the latest version of DirectX in beta form. The release is marked as a release-candidate. Now, here at Eurogamer we haven't exactly enjoyed a pleasant relationship with past DirectX betas, but more fool us for trying them, eh? This latest version is a major revision to Microsoft's graphics standard, which concentrates on simplifying the development of shader effects. Expect tech demos by the truckload to impress this fact upon us.

GameSpot is also reporting that Shiny's Enter The Matrix game is due out on May 15th, 2003 in the US, and that the next Matrix movie should be around sometime around then. The news comes via the new issue of Game Informer magazine, which lso states that the game features voice acting from all the film's major actors and a story crafted by the Wachowski brothers themselves.

From Software's follow-up to partly successful card/RPG 'em up Rune will appear in the US (and Europe) once again thanks to Activision, and will unsurprisingly take the moniker of Lost Kingdoms II. The game is expected to hit the US sometime in spring, setting us up for a summer/winter European release, as with the first game.

Sony Online Entertainment has announced that Emodiv, Inc. are in the final stages of developing EverQuest for the Pocket PC. The new EQ is a single player only, isometric adventure through the lands of Norrath. Players will have to choose from four character classes (Dwarven Warrior, High Elf Magician, Human Wizard, or Wood Elf Druid) and complete 10 major quests across 15 adventure areas to banish an evil undead army and save the public.

Ubi Soft has announced that IL-2 Sturmovik expansion Forgotten Battles is no longer an expansion. The game's status (and presumably price tag) has been upped to full sequel, and the game will no longer require installation of IL-2 to run. What's more, Ubi Soft has pinpointed the game's release date: February 20th, 2003.