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After the veritable bounty of big name releases at the end of last week, it's perhaps no surprise that things are eerily quiet today by comparison. Indeed, with most of this week's "new" releases being budget reissues, you can almost sense the tumbleweed blowing past the doors of your local games emporium as they stack the meagre pickings on their shelves. This year's F1 world championship might be over already (Ron Dennis' sour grapes notwithstanding), but Sony aren't going to let that stop them from releasing another FIA licensed game. This one's a little different though - not only is it a PlayStation One game (now there's something you don't see very often these days), but F1 Arcade is (as the title suggests) less about simulation and more about high speed racing and outrageous power-ups. Sadly this is pretty much the highlight of the week as far as new releases go. The only new arrivals on the PlayStation 2 are Scooby Doo: Night Of 100 Frights and Tetris Worlds. Be still my beating heart. Xbox owners have two brand new games to pick from, but neither Antz Extreme Racing or Le Tour De France is likely to be a must-have title, and the GameBoy Advance is stuck with (yes, you guessed it) Antz Extreme Racing and Droopy Tennis Open, featuring quite possibly the most miserable looking mutt in cartoon history and some of his friends. Meanwhile PC owners will have to make do with a collection of left-overs. Naturally there's a version of Antz Extreme Racing for the beige box as well, but apart from that it's slim pickings. MechWarrior fans can apparently look forward to the arrival of not one but two new budget-priced "mech paks", each featuring four new mechs, a new weapon, a new piece of equipment and a new multiplayer map. Or at least, they could if anyone was actually stocking it. There's also a game called Autocracy, but frankly we've never even heard of it before, and the publisher's website is all flash animations and no content, so your guess is as good as ours. Otherwise it's a catalogue of budget re-releases and bundles, with highlights including the Tropico Gold Pack, Call To Power II and Tony Hawks Pro Skater 2. New Releases - Cube No new releases GBA Antz Extreme Racing Droopy Tennis OpenPC Antz Extreme Racing Autocracy Call To Power II (budget) Heavy Gear (budget) Interstate '76 (budget) Lock 'n' Load Twin Pack - Soldier of Fortune / Kingpin (bundle) MechWarrior 4: The Clan add-on MechWarrior 4: The InnerSphere add-on Star Trek Armada (budget) Star Trek Voyager: Elite Force (budget) Tony Hawks Pro Skater 2 (budget) Tropico Gold Pack (bundle) Zork Nemesis (budget) PSXF1 ArcadePS2 Midnight Club (budget) Scooby Doo: Night Of 100 Frights Smuggler's Run (budget) Tetris Worlds Xbox Antz Extreme Racing Le Tour De France Related Feature - UK Release Date List

When we interviewed the Collyer brothers last June, we asked them if they might one day try something other than football management sims for a change, as they've been working on the same game (the multi-million selling Championship Manager series) for over a decade now. Their reply was that "if another developer came to us and said 'we've written this really cool' .. I dunno, 'baseball game' and it had been written with the same dedication and enthusiasm as we write Championship Manager, then we might try and help them". Well, it seems that this is exactly what happened, because today Sports Interactive have announced that they are teaming up with a Finnish shareware developer to produce Eastside Hockey Manager: Franchise Edition. Described as "the sport's most comprehensive management simulation to date", previous versions of the ice hockey game have apparently already attracted rave reviews in Scandinavia. The two teams are now hoping that their combined talents will help the latest version reach wider success when it's released next year. And given that ice hockey is one of the most popular sports in Canada, the USA and parts of Europe, it could prove to be a break-out title for SI as well. "Whilst the subject matter may raise a few eyebrows in the UK games industry, there is a massive potential audience out there which has remained largely ignored", according to managing director Miles Jacobson. "This is the start of a new franchise for Sports Interactive. We will be working with the sport as closely as we currently do with football and will be announcing some partners soon. It's a huge title for us." Meanwhile awe-struck lead designer Risto Remes described working with SI as "a dream come true", saying that "they were the inspiration for our game". Aw, bless. Related Feature - Collyer brothers interview (June 2001)

Infogrames' decision to subtitle Unreal Tournament's sequel 2003 may yet prove to have been a prescient move, with another delay in the game's release pushing its arrival back towards the autumn. The last date that we received from Infogrames was August 2nd, but that was already looking increasingly unlikely given the lack of a demo or any kind of announcement on the game's completion. The bad news is that the latest information is that it's unlikely to appear in Europe until October now, while most of the big US retailers are already listing it for the tail end of September on their side of the pond. To ease the blow though, Infogrames have released a fresh batch of screenshots taken from the game, varying from another outdoors scene to some techno-gothic architecture which could have escaped from Quake 3. Related Feature - UT 2003 screenshots

The Xbox today looks set to lose the moral high ground of being able to proudly proclaim itself the only platform not to have an Army Men game, with the announcement that 3DO has become the console's latest third party publisher. Just over a year ago CEO Trip Hawkins declared that the company had no intention of making Xbox games because of the high costs associated with developing across multiple platforms (yeah, you can really see the care and attention lavished on most 3DO games), but apparently he's had a change of heart since then. Ominously, Trip promised that 3DO would be "bringing some of our most popular brands, as well as new original titles, to this powerful system", which opens the way for a flood of dull Army Men games and ugly Might & Magic spin-offs. Meanwhile Microsoft's Ed Fries proved himself to be the industry's ultimate straight man by managing to utter the sentence "our quest to bring unparalleled gaming experiences to the player means partnering with top development talent" whilst talking about the 3DO deal, and all without so much as a twitch of a smile breaking forth from his stony visage. This man is truly a master of comedy. Related Feature - 3DO to announce Cube plans

Codemasters is to release its PS2 footy management sim, LMA Manager, on Xbox in the guise of an updated 2003 edition this October. In a press release which describes the game as "leagues ahead of any PC conversion", which is a pretty far-fetched claim given the quality of the Xbox conversion of Championship Manager, LMA Manager 2003 is introduced as a fresh set of legs, with a fundamentally new design, tweaked controls and the ability to shout stuff at players from the dugout. Of course there will be lots of statistics to pore over, with 720 European clubs from 28 countries with a total of 17,000 players in the game, and the ability to run more simultaneous leagues than its main competitor, although not quite to the same level of detail. Codemasters will be hoping that analysis and comment from Gary Lineker and Alan Hansen will also contribute to the game's success when it arrives this October, and thanks to the Xbox's handy hard disk, the game should be a lot smoother and more detailed than its predecessor on PlayStation 2. Related Feature - Championship Manager Season 01/02 review (Xbox)

In a world packed to bursting point with derivative online role-playing games, it's amazing that there aren't more persistent world strategy titles around. Primitive looking text-based web browser games like the fiendishly addictive Planetarion fill the gap, but to date there have been only a handful of "real" games in the genre.

Capcom has combined an old 16-bit title from the Mega Man franchise with GBA, to produce what might arguably be viewed as one of the least surprising game announcements in recent history! However, fans of the Mega Man series will no doubt be pleased to hear that it's Rockman & Forte being ported and not another of the endless X series of games. (Rockman of course being Mega Man's Japanese pseudonym, and Forte being a black-suited fellow of a similar background.) Rockman & Forte is due out in Japan this August 10th according to XenGamers, and it charts the exploration of a number of familiar levels and a climactic encounter with the evil Dr. Willy. However, the game was famous for including some of the best levels in the series, so assuming it appears in the West, it should prove slightly more enjoyable than another by-the-numbers 16-bit port. Still, if you don't like Mega Man, this is unlikely to change that.

As it was with the news about Final Fantasy I and II on PSone, Famitsu is reporting that in next week's edition of the Japanese gaming bible, the team behind ICO will announce their next project. SCEI has no doubt ordered them to make it innovative, beautiful and delicate, once again, although genuinely creative minds often stray from cliché and repetition, so frankly, we haven't a clue what to expect from them. However, PlayStation 2 owners would do well to pay attention to next week's headlines. Related Feature - ICO review

Swedish developers Grin are following up their debut game, the mind blowingly fast sci-fi racer Ballistics, with another dose of vehicular mayhem this autumn. This time you'll be driving rather more conventional wheeled cars in a kind of Mad Maxish orgy of destruction as buggies, tanks and cars from rival factions battle it out across 22 missions with a variety of futuristic weapons. As you would expect from Grin the graphics are rather tasty, with undulating desert landscapes to fight your way through and highly detailed vehicles to admire .. and then blow into smithereens. Titled Bandits - Phoenix Rising, the new game will be released on the PC in October courtesy of PAN Vision. An official website will be launching on August 6th, but in the meantime we have a trio of screenshots from the game, and a little more information can be found on the game's newly opened placeholder site. Related Feature - Bandits screenshots

Electronic Arts will be supporting progressive scan video output with its '2003' range of sports titles (so that's Madden, NCAA and NHL) as well as the forthcoming Bond adventure Nightfire, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets and Shox... which of course confirms, as one might have suspected, that young Mr. Shox is going to be appearing on GameCube as well as PlayStation 2, stretching yet further the industry standard definition of the word "exclusive". So, you might rightly ask, just what is progressive scan? It's an advanced display mode, of course, which the humble GameCube supports, but beyond that? Progressive scan is also known as 'non-interlaced' or 'sequential scanning' (after all, why give something one name when you can give it three?), and it's a way of drawing the image scan lines on a display, but instead of splitting the video frame into two fields - of odd and even scan lines - the frame is scanned from top to bottom in one pass. The tricky part is that, somewhat unhelpfully, people often misuse the term to describe any video system which is not interlaced, which is why it's used in connection with plasma screens, LCDs and those sorts of things. If you're wondering why you aren't using this progressive scan doobrie, then the answer is simple - you simply don't have the technology. Those expensive HDTV cables sold in the US and Japan can be used for progressive scan, but this is somewhat reliant on the Cube owner also possessing an HDTV, and they haven't exactly taken off over here. And the benefits? Less artefacts, edge distortion, aliasing, field flicker and line crawl. The good news is that given a 60Hz game - which most Cube releases now are - and an RGB cable, you'll be hard pressed to find too much fault with the output. So, don't go throwing away your TV just yet. Admittedly this is a somewhat simplified explanation - for a better and more technical overview, we recommend heading to this site. Related Feature - EA Shox world with another rally game

Gran Turismo Concept 2002 Tokyo-Geneva is a bit of a turn-up for us PAL gamers. Originally, GT developers Polyphony Digital had planned to release a special version of their inimitable racing series in Japan only, featuring stunning concept cars from the Tokyo Motor Show 2001, rather like the branded demo versions it produces for a handful of car manufacturers in the far east.

Medal Of Honor: Allied Assault might not have had quite the same impact on us as its excellent PlayStation 2 sibling, Frontline, but it was still an above average first person shooter by PC standards, and was boosted by some great online support. Now an expansion pack is on the way, promising to build on that solid foundation with more of the same. Due for release this autumn, the as-yet untitled add-on will give players the chance to take part in the Battle Of The Bulge and the advance on Berlin, as well as parachuting behind enemy lines to prepare the way for the D-Day invasion. On the multiplayer side, a dozen new maps will give fans the chance to battle their way across the bridge at Arnhem (as seen in Frontline) and through the streets of Berlin, with a wider range of teamplay options, the chance to play as British or Soviet troops, and new weapons such as the British Enfield rifle, Sten submachineguns and smoke grenades also included. Will this be the game's finest hour, or a mission pack too far? The early screenshots certainly look promising, and the inclusion of the Battle of the Bulge and D-Day parachute operations suggest that the add-on could stray even further into Band Of Brothers territory than the original game, which can't be a bad thing. No doubt all will become clear soon... Related Feature - Medal Of Honor expansion screenshots

My current home town of Leicester isn't exactly the most obvious setting for a computer game, but thanks to Desperados developers Spellbound it will soon be making its debut appearance on the PC, thanks to its proximity to a certain Sherwood Forest. Yes, Robin Hood is about to grace our beige boxes with his presence once again, this time in Robin Hood: Legend Of Sherwood.

Despite arguments about who is second best in the American market (don't ask), Activision does have some good news to peddle this week, in that it has signed skating legend Tony Hawk up for a further... 13 years. Tony's contract with Activision O2 will now last until the year 2015, and judging by his excited comments in the firm's press release, they spent a fair amount of the half-a-billion-dollars the series has amassed since its inception on keeping him happy. The news puts an end to this writer's bid to replace the Hawkman at the head of Activision's extreme sports line-up [you don't even own a skateboard -Ed]. Unfortunately, I could not be reached for comment at the time of writing, because I was blubbing in the corner. Related Feature - Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 review (Xbox)

Eidos is to bring Blood Omen 2, the most recent addition to the Legacy of Kain series, to the GameCube this autumn. Although it is not yet clear whether or how the Cube version will differ from its PS2 and Xbox counterparts, the odds are on it being a pretty straight port of the PS2 version. For those of you unfamiliar with it, Blood Omen 2 was designed by Crystal Dynamics, and starts off with a weakened Kain fighting to reclaim rule of Nosgoth, by slicing, dicing and generally being unpleasant to its citizens. Oddly, the game sits somewhere in the middle of the Legacy of Kain pack, but we've lost all track of what's going on with that franchise these days. Nevertheless, those interested in story-driven action games with lots of puzzling and vicious slaughter would do well to keep an eye on it! Related Feature - Blood Omen II screenshots (Cube)

Austrian publisher JoWooD has released the first screenshots of submarine sequel AquaNox: Revelation, showing off the new improved graphics engine that powers it. The original game was already famous for featuring an excess of eye candy, taking advantage of the latest hardware available at the time to bump map and environment map every last stray polygon. It appears that the sequel will feature an even more detailed sea floor though, alongside the gorgeous rays of light piercing the ocean surface far above which made AquaNox so eye catching in the first place. Curvaceous terrain mingles with artificial outcroppings and long abandoned ruined settlements in the Revelation screenshots, with a nice murky look to the whole thing. Time for another upgrade already? Related Feature - AquaNox: Revelation screenshots

Hideo Kojima has revealed in an interview with the Official Xbox Magazine here in the UK that the Xbox version of the game will look better than the PS2 version, with more bump mapping and some other slight improvements. Kojima-san also explained that Substance will read the time from the console's internal clock, so that lighting and weather conditions will suit the appropriate period in VR stages and perhaps elsewhere. Further revelations include the news that players will be able to take on each of the original game's boss characters as they like, in Boss Survival mode, and that all of the character model-swapping hijinx of the game's E3 footage will be controlled from a Casting Theatre mode. Kojima-san's example being that you could replace soldiers with old ladies, which should please the censors. Kojima-san also once again tipped his hat towards Splinter Cell, remarking that "it would be great if we could turn that game into Metal Gear Solid X." The full interview with Hideo Kojima appears in the August issue of the Official Xbox Magazine here in the UK. Related Feature - Kojima offers information of Substance

Although Rainbow Six wasn't the first 3D tactical action game, it was arguably the first game in the genre to really get the formula right. Since then developers Red Storm have built on its success with mission packs, spin-offs and a sequel, all based around tweaked versions of the same increasingly dated graphics engine.

Konami's Yu-Gi-Oh series will be appearing on the GameCube as a new 3D RPG, the developer has reportedly confirmed. Those of you in the UK may have witnessed the original Yu-Gi-Oh cartoon series on Sky One. The videogames, cards and other television series are expected to land in the UK in time to mop up this Christmas, so there seems a good chance that this Yu-Gi-Oh RPG will join them, albeit perhaps at a later date.

Bonjour. Fans of Pikmin located in France will be pleased to learn that Nintendo has released a special edition of the Pikmin soundtrack CD throughout that noble land. We're not quite sure why, but it all sounds jolly good, and if any of you spot it propping up the racks of Vanessa Paradis albums, we'd love to hear from you. It should cost around £13, or €20, according to reports. Related Feature - Pikmin review

Sega's Phantasy Star Online may have been grabbing headlines for its exploits on the GameCube of late, with the game's release date swinging around like a demented pendulum, but lest we forget that a PC version of the game is also underway. With this in mind, Sega has today released a new demo of the game to the Japanese market, but this being the Internet, a bit of creative thinking will quickly uncover its whereabouts. Shove a Babelfish in your ear and head over to this page (or, via the miracle of my bothering to connect the two, you could go direct). From there, it's up to you. Veterans of the Dreamcast version shouldn't have too much difficulty finding their way around the interface and early levels, but virgins or casual fans might want to give it a miss - it's quite text-heavy in places. Update - cripes, a file mirror. Useful if you can't seem to coax the demo setup file out of Sega's official page. Related Feature - Phantasy Star Online Episodes I & II preview (Cube)

Tecmo's Project Zero (nee Fatal Frame) will be released on Xbox as well as PlayStation 2, various sources are reporting this week. For those of you unfamiliar, Project Zero plunges you into the role of a young lass named Miyu, whose job it is to rescue her brother from a haunted mansion. Unlike its contemporaries, Project Zero is famed for its almost Pokémon Snap-esque approach to spectres, with Miyu subduing otherworldly types with a trusty camera. There are virtually no details of the Xbox game doing the rounds other than its existence, but it seems likely that, as with the PS2 version, Wanadoo will be taking up the publishing honours. The PS2 version - already out in the US and Japan - will be debuting this September in Europe priced £29.99. Related Feature - Project Zero preview (PS2)

Although Microsoft mistakenly announced Ghost Recon as an "Xbox exclusive" way back at their European pre-launch party X01, the game was (as expected) released on PC first. Console versions are at long last on the way though, and the good news is that they will include the eight levels from the excellent Desert Siege add-on pack as well as the 15 levels from the original game. Newcomers to the genre can also enjoy the benefits of "assistance" mode, with optional auto-aim, auto-reload and an enemy indicator to help you make it to the end in one piece while you learn the ropes. Ghost Recon is due out on PS2 and Xbox some time in mid-October, but in the meantime we have some fresh shots from the PS2 version, which look somewhat more impressive than the first batch released at E3. Related Feature - Ghost Recon screenshots (PS2)

In a bizarre move, Take 2 last night announced that they will no longer be releasing any games under their Take 2 monicker. Henceforth, all new releases will be branded as coming from Rockstar Games, Gathering Of Developers or Gotham Games, the latter being a new label which will "specifically focus on publishing outstanding content accessible to consumers of all ages at a variety of price points". In other words, all the left-overs that didn't fit in on one of the other labels. As a result, Gotham's initial line-up includes everything from Austin Powers Pinball on the PSOne to the forthcoming Xbox version of Serious Sam. Normally we would have expected Sam to appear on the GOD label, but apparently that's only for PC games, so no no no, off to Gotham you go. The same problem afflicts SCI's Conflict : Desert Storm, which Take 2 are publishing in the USA. Because it's being released on console as well as PC, it now looks set to appear on the Gotham label alongside Celebrity Deathmatch and a plethora of PlayStation budget releases. Whatever the logic (or lack thereof) behind this "new global branding strategy", Take 2 CEO Kelly Sumner seems to be pretty enthusiastic about it all, spouting a stream of gibberish about intellectual properties, the mass market, household penetration rates, and how the company has "a solid pipeline of diversified products". If you want to try and work it out for yourselves, read the press release.

Cambridge based aviation specialists Just Flight have been quietly churning out flight simulators and add-on packs for the last five years, and August marks the release of their latest such effort. Co-created with Blue Arrow, The Dam Busters is a fairly self-explanatory expansion pack for Microsoft's Combat Flight Simulator 2 which will allow players to recreate the legendary attack on the Moehne Dam using bouncing bombs. As well as the eponymous reservoir demolition duty, the pack also includes 19 other historical raids carried out by 617 squadron during the Second World War, with Lancaster, Wellington and Mosquito aircraft on offer. The whole thing will set you back about £25, and should be on sale some time in August.

With the Tour De France currently underway, what better time to announce a new game all about the noble art of cycling up and down mountains for weeks on end? Step forward the imaginatively titled Cycling Manager 2, which does exactly what it says on the box, giving you the chance to control one of sixty professional cycling teams as they race on 180 stages over a grand total of 27,000 km of road. The game will apparently let players control their team's line-up, hiring and firing riders and scouting for upcoming talent, as well as deciding team strategies and giving orders to your individual riders during the race. Then there are sponsors to attract, injuries to deal with, training to supervise, equipment to purchase, diets to confirm... If this sounds like your idea of fun, you can look forward to battling over gaudy jumpers in August, courtesy of Singularity Software. Related Feature - Cycling Manager 2 screenshots

Eidos have announced that they will be publishing the latest spin-off of real-time strategy game Earth 2150. Developed in Poland by In-Images and produced by Germany's Zuxxez, the game was originally titled World War II : Panzer Claws, but for reasons unknown will now be renamed Frontline Attack : War Over Europe. Except in the USA. Whatever it's called though, the game is built around the Earth 3 engine from Reality Pump, which looks suspiciously similar to the previous version, which powered Earth 2150, The Moon Project and World War III : Black Gold to varying degrees of success. As the original title suggests, Frontline Attack is set during World War II and gives you the chance to control German, Soviet or Allied troops in single player campaigns that take you from 1941 to 1944. Obviously most of the action will be on the Eastern Front, but battles in France and Italy are also included, leading up to the German's last ditch offensive in the Ardennes at the end of 1944. Frontline Attack should be all over Europe this September. Related Feature - Frontline Attack screenshots

The new Gulf War tactical action game Conflict : Desert Storm isn't even out yet, but SCi are apparently so confident of its success that they have already signed up Pivotal Games to develop two more games in the series. First up will be Conflict : Desert Sabre, a direct sequel to the first game featuring SAS and Delta Force teams fighting deep inside Iraq during Operation Desert Shield. The game will apparently be loosely based on a book called Sabre Squadron, and is due out next autumn. Following in the autumn of 2004 will be the catchily titled Conflict : Missing Presumed Dead, which shares little but its title with the previous two games. This one will be set during the Vietnam war in 1968, following four US soldiers caught behind rapidly expanding enemy lines during the notorious Tet Offensive. SCi are promising "an epic journey reminiscent of Apocalypse Now", which is certainly setting their goals high. In the meantime gamers can still look forward to the arrival of Conflict : Desert Storm on PC, PlayStation 2 and Xbox this September, with a GameCube version following later in the year. In the first game in this burgeoning series you will take control of a squad of elite British SAS or American Delta Force troops, going behind enemy lines in the early stages of the Gulf War to disrupt communications and supply routes and take out Scud missile launchers. We should know soon whether the announcement of the sequels in a press release euphemistically titled "new products in the highly successful Conflict series" is an act of extreme optimism or justified high expectations... Related Features - Conflict : Desert Storm screenshots (Xbox)

A report in technology journal Red Herring by author Dean Takahashi has revealed that Microsoft attempted to buy out Sega and Square once again earlier this year, in a deal which would have cost the company over $1.8 billion. Negotiations between the companies collapsed just before E3, however, leaving Microsoft once again without the Japanese giants which have been on its acquisitions radar for several years. Microsoft previously attempted to purchase Sega in late 1999, but its advances were rejected as Sega wished to continue promoting its Dreamcast console. Square was also approached in 1999, but was firmly snubbed by then-CEO Hisashi Suzuki, who demanded $2.5 billion for a 40 per cent stake in the company - a sum higher than the entire market capitalisation of Square at the time. Last year, Sony acquired a 19 per cent stake in Square for $125 million. The latest negotiations were aimed at securing a deal which would have seen Microsoft buying a controlling stake in Sega, costing the company over $1.8 billion given the market value of Sega. This money would then have been used by Sega to purchase a controlling interest in rival software publisher/developer Square, in a knock-on effect which would have seen Microsoft take over two of the largest and most respected developers in Japan in a single move. It would certainly have been a crowning achievement for Microsoft to be able to announce such a deal at E3. However, it was not to be; Sega's interests do not align with Microsoft's at the moment, and although the company is still recovering from the debt built up during the Dreamcast era, it is now on a firmer financial footing than it has been for some years. In fact, Sega is now on the acquisition trail itself, with senior executives at the company confirming in recent weeks that it is seeking to purchase publishers and developers in the USA and Europe. Both Infogrames and THQ have been mentioned as possible targets following this statement. Dean Takahashi, who wrote the report in Red Herring, is the author of "Opening the Xbox", an in-depth history of the Xbox project at Microsoft. The Xbox has hit all of its sales targets comfortably, according to the latest financials to be released by Microsoft. The figures, which show the Redmond-based software company's profits soaring in the three months to June, show the Xbox selling 3.9 million units, which easily meets the targets set by the company. However, those targets are significantly revised; Microsoft had originally expected to sell 6 million consoles in the period.

Japanese gamers always seem to get a better deal than us, and this is one of those stories. In a special promotion, from early August Capcom will be issuing Resident Evil 0 demo discs to Japanese gamers who pre-order the title, and to those who purchase the original Cube release of Resident Evil. Unfortunately, Capcom Eurosoft told us this morning that the same deal would not be arranged for Europe, although they couldn't speak for the US.