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Eric Bana's cinematic portrayal of Marvel Comics' The Incredible Hulk has so far been advertised with a simple, casual trailer of the brutish oaf's emergence and demolition of a poor, defenceless bungalow washbasin. With slightly less onomatopoeic unpredictability, Universal Interactive (a Vivendi studio) chose Monday to announce details of its game of the movie, which will appear alongside the Ang Lee-directed film in June of 2003. In what is becoming a bit of a tradition, for better or worse, movie-based videogames are appearing to coincide with theatrical debuts instead of appearing months or years later, sometimes even alongside a tedious sequel. The other half of this particular trend is simultaneous all formats releases, something of which Electronic Arts is traditionally the master, and UI's Incredible Hulk game is no exception to that rule either. Cube, Xbox, PS2 and GBA versions will all appear in June. Although we know little about the game besides its now-confirmed portrayal of events in the movie, it's probably quite safe to say that big-screen actors Eric Bana (Bruce Banner/Hulky), Nick Nolte (Dad of Hulk) and Jennifer Connelly (bird of Hulk) will have a sum total of nothing to do with the game, except perhaps being imitated badly by semi-reasonable voice actors. Of course, if they did, it would be a tremendous coup for the developer (and a financial drain on the publisher). As would be the involvement of Industrial Light and Magic, who will be providing CG effects for the movie, so it's probably safe to count them out. Hopefully before long we'll know how likely UI is to do Stan Lee and Jack Kirby's Marvel comic book hero justice. And in turn, how you will be able to go about dishing out justice yourself. Stay tuned.

Publisher Infogrames last night announced that Bioware's long awaited role-playing opus Neverwinter Nights has finally gone gold. The game is expected to start appearing on shelves in the USA as early as Monday, and this morning Infogrames PR reps in the UK dragged themselves away from the football long enough to confirm to us that it's still on track for a June 28th release on this side of the pond. Just nice time to polish your shields of spouse avoidance +5 and move that fridge to within easy reach of your PC. With the promise of a vast single player campaign, extensive multiplayer options including the ability to act as the Dungeon Master for your friends, and an easy to use toolset allowing players to design their own adventures and campaign settings, Neverwinter Nights is one of the most eagerly anticipated role-playing games ever to hit the PC. It's been five long years in the making, but if it can live up to its potential it will have been well worth the wait. Keep your fingers crossed. Related Feature - Neverwinter Nights preview

Canadian developers Black Box Games have been bought by Electronic Arts, it was revealed today. The company has worked on a number of sports games since its founding four years ago, including Sega Soccer Slam for the GameCube, extreme ice hockey game NHL Hitz 20-02 and a pair of NASCAR sims for EA Sports. Black Box are currently working on Need For Speed : Hot Pursuit 2 for EA, and today's deal brings them in-house for an undisclosed quantity of cash. "Black Box Games is a studio full of highly-talented and creative people", EA's vice president for Tuesday afternoon coffee breaks Paul Lee asserted. "They have an impressive track record for developing multiple titles across several platforms. This acquisition brings us a powerhouse team to work on future titles for the Sony PlayStation 2 console, Nintendo GameCube and Xbox system from Microsoft." Related Feature - Need For Speed : Hot Pursuit 2 screenshots

Way back in the mists of time, before Lara Croft became a cover girl and movie star, the arrival of a new Tomb Raider game was actually cause for celebration. It may be hard to believe, but once these games were quite groundbreaking. And maybe they could be again, because Eidos have just announced that the original Tomb Raider is being brought to the Pocket PC in what looks set to be one of the first fully 3D games for the handheld format. Due for release some time in July through online publisher Handango, it promises to be a faithful adaptation of the first game in the multi-million selling series, following Lara as she seeks to recover an ancient artifact called the Scion. Cue myriad levels of running, jumping, shooting and swimming. "This represents an exciting opportunity for Eidos to bring one of the most popular games of all time to a whole new audience", Eidos technical director Simon Protheroe is quoted as saying. "The Pocket PC version of Tomb Raider has got to be seen to be believed, it is identical to the original game." If you want to judge for yourself, a free single level demo of the game should already be available from Tomb Raider To Go, although at the time of writing the site appeared to be down. In the meantime you can enjoy some rather nifty little screenshots of the PDA version of the game in action. Related Feature - Tomb Raider screenshots

PDA publisher Infinite Ventures has released its latest creation for the Pocket PC, in the form of Battle Dwarves. The game bears a striking resemblance to the likes of Worms and Scorched Earth, but features bearded people of diminutive stature rather than tanks or spineless creatures. Naturally you still have access to a wide variety of destructive weaponry, including old favourites such as bazookas, grenades and napalm, and there's four way multiplayer support if you need to settle some scores. At $20 it's not exactly cheap, but a free trial version is available at the company's website PortableGames.com to give you a taster.

Way of the Samurai, published in the States by BAM! (always a great name to break up the flow of a sentence), doesn't take the same approach as the Tenchu games. For a start, you're not actually a ninja, you are ronin, a wandering samurai without a master, and the game charts your three days in the area of Rokkotsu Pass, beginning with a chance encounter on a bridge outside town.

Climax's Brighton office has unveiled its latest cross-platform game engine for the PC, PlayStation 2, GameCube and Xbox. Amusingly dubbed "Blimey", the engine also comes with a set of tools including something called Super Ted. The mind boggles, but we guess it has nothing to do with the bizarre 1980's cartoon series of the same name, unless it's the bump-mapping util. Bump-mapping? Spotty? Get it? Oh, never mind. Weird names aside, the engine is intended to speed up development for multiple platforms by "maintaining a complete layer of abstraction between the main game and console dependant code", meaning that once you've got a game running on one platform it should take little effort to get it running on the other three. The early tech demo screenshots we've seen show some quietly impressive Grand Theft Auto-ish scenes of a police car driving around a nicely detailed cityscape, although the abandoned streets make it look like something out of The Omega Man. Still, it's a promising start, and with the company's DYNE vehicle dynamics system built-in the engine should be perfectly suited for this kind of auto-motive mayhem as well as more conventional motor racing games such as Climax's recently released Moto GP. Related Feature - Climax Motor Sports interview

Sega has announced a collection of four arcade classics to be delivered as one GameBoy Advance cartridge, and the firm plans to stake them with the name of Virtua Fighter creator and general genius Yu Suzuki. The Yu Suzuki Collection, as it's being called by hacks everywhere, contains Outrun, After Burner, Space Harrier and Super Hang On, some truly defining games for a lot people who are slightly older than me. As Spong.com points out, Sega is already developing a Sega Smash Pack for the GBA comprising Mega Drive versions of Super Shinobi and Golden Axe amongst others, suggesting perhaps that the above will be direct ports. In related news, The Magic Box reports that Sega is working on Outrun 2 for the arcade, although details on this are being kept understandably quiet.

When we first got our hands on the GeForce4 Ti4600, we were somewhat excited, until we realised that we actually had nothing worth playing on it. But hang on a tick, what's all this? Morrowind, you say? Grand Theft Auto? Jedi Knight II? Doom III? Just as I think I'm shot of this staggeringly unkempt platform I have to find something new to drive it. Fortunately, NVIDIA has leapt to the front of the market again, replacing the soothing images of the budget Radeon 8500LE at the top of the thrifty pile with its own GeForce4 Ti4200. If ever there were a card to go in my own PC, this is it. Memories of the poorly performing GeForce4 MX are quickly forgotten. Here we have a proper hotrod of a 'budget' card, boasting the whole GeForce4 feature set with a 250MHz GPU (compared to 300MHz in the Ti4600), 64Mb of 250MHz DDR SDRAM (compared to 128Mb of 375MHz DDR SDRAM), and, depending on which manufacturer you go with, a price tag of roughly £150 (compared with the asking price of two houses, a yacht, and a golf club membership). Not bad at all. If you need a quick recap of what makes a GeForce 4 tick, it's best you give our previous feature a quick going over, but when it comes to the new kid, you're probably wondering how it copes with some of the most recent PC releases. In a word, economically; it pipped the Radeon 8500LE to the post in virtually every test we threw at it. Jedi Knight II gave us a few more frames at higher resolutions, and with Serious Sam 2 there was virtually no contest. Although the most recent Radeon drivers at the time of writing are an improvement, the current official NVIDIA driver release, version 28.32, gave our 32-bit colour Windows XP system an advantage of nearly 40 frames per second in 800x600, and more than 20 in 1024x768. Return to Castle Wolfenstein was a closer run thing, but there was still only one winner, and it was the card with the sillier name - an equally close run thing. And although we can't benchmark it, Morrowind performance was virtually the same on both cards, as it was with Grand Theft Auto. Both games ran with virtually no slowdown in their default display modes, and cranking up the detail didn't seem to do any harm. Whether or not NVIDIA's GeForce4 Ti4200 will be able to cope with Doom III late next year is difficult to say. But it's a fast card which does everything its bigger and more expensive siblings can do for the (relatively) trifling matter of £150. More expensive alternatives - not yet on the market - will include extras like DVI (digital video interface) output and video out, as our reference board did, adding to the impressive array of features already on offer. If you've been putting off that graphics card upgrade, now might be the time to do it. Various GeForce4 Ti4200 cards are now available in the UK from e-tailers Scan and Dabs amongst others, with prices ranging from £135 on up. Related Feature - GeForce4 Ti4600 review

With the Nintendo WaveBird now on sale in the US, and a handsome pre-order well on its way to being fulfilled if my importer is to be believed, PS2 owners, including myself, might well be wondering whether or not this particular (r)evolution is on its way to their console at any point in the future. Although Sony hasn't said anything, Texas Instruments has announced that they have licensed their Bluetooth wireless tech to peripheral powerhouse Logitech for use in a PlayStation 2 gamepad, which, PlanetPS2 is reporting, will be on display at the Bluetooth Congress in Amsterdam between the 12th and 14th of June. Logitech's Ted Hoff, vice president and general manager of the Interactive Entertainment Business Unit, cited the company's previous success with Bluetooth and game controllers on the PC as the reasoning behind the move. "It was logical to build on our partnership," he was quoted as saying. Nintendo's WaveBird controller uses wireless radio technology to communicate with the GameCube, and Nintendo estimates that 16 of the controllers could be used in close proximity on different radio frequencies without interference. Early reports from pundits lucky enough to walk away with one at this year's E3 in Los Angeles have been resoundingly positive, with the units swapping hands on eBay for exorbitant amounts. Related Feature - WaveBird details emerge

We've yet to hear when Xbox Live will launch here in Europe, but today Japan discovered that it will be following America's lead this autumn, with the release of the Live starter pack for about $54.50. "We bet on online gaming from the beginning, and our guess has been correct", Microsoft Japan's Xbox supremo Hirohisa Ohura declared, perhaps somewhat prematurely given that the service has yet to go .. well, live. "Japan has seen the fastest growth in broadband internet connection services", he added, with Microsoft claiming that half of the Xbox owners in Japan have a broadband connection. Which would be great, except that the Xbox has thus far shifted less than 250,000 units in the land of the rising sun, meaning that if Microsoft's statistics are correct, only about 120,000 people are capable of using Xbox Live in Japan at the moment. By comparison, Final Fantasy XI for the PS2's online service has shifted about 90,000 copies so far, seen as a major flop by Square standards. Maybe Japan just isn't interested in online gaming? Merrill Lynch's Ken Uryu was somewhat less optimistic than Microsoft about Xbox Live's chances, telling Reuters that "I don't see [how] this would make a significant contribution to Microsoft" or Xbox sales. Other analysts are also apparently skeptical about whether enough gamers will pay to play online to make the service a success. As are we. Still, if online gaming is your cup of tea then Microsoft throwing huge sums of cash at the subject can't hurt, in the short term at least. Meanwhile news has emerged of one of the first Japanese developed Xbox Live titles, with Sega revealing that they have Amusement Visions working on an Xbox Live version of an arcade game we've never heard of. The sequel is going by the name of Spike Out X-treme [oh dear], and judging from the arcade original screenshots we've managed to track down, it's some kind of street brawling game where a bunch of guys wander around beating each other up. Oh the excitement. Related Feature - Xbox Live De-Modulated

EuroGamer is proud to announce the launch of its new sister site - GamesIndustry.biz, helmed by CTW veteran Rob "Shinji" Fahey. Dedicated to covering the latest stories from the interactive entertainment industry (that's games to you and me), the trade-oriented site sports a mixture of news and features, with a launch line-up including a look at some of this summer's big PlayStation 2 releases and a profile on Nintendo's new headman, Satoru Iwata. The site also features the latest UK charts and a database of contact details for games-related companies, and over the next few weeks we'll be adding a share watch feature for all you stock market fanatics, as well as a recruitment section for those of you in search of a better job. "Our aim with is to provide people working in the industry with an entertaining and informative daily update on all the news which is relevant to their work", Rob explained. "I hope that people outside the industry - be they investors, mainstream media, research groups or simply interested members of the public - will also find that we're creating a comprehensive and easy to use resource for information on this exciting industry of ours." Excited yet? Head over to GamesIndustry.biz to find out more.

It's a case of "good news, bad news" for those of you awaiting the arrival of Barbarian on the GameBoy Advance. First the bad news - the game has slipped another month, this time to October. Now the good news - the game will include a cheat mode allowing you to slice your opponent's head clean off. Fans of the old 8-bit sword fighting game of the same name will no doubt be pleased, but of course the real question is whether the famous goblin will be putting in a guest appearance to clear away the severed head in his own individual manner when this happens. We can but hope. Related Feature - Barbarian GBA screenshots

Back at the end of last year EA revealed that they were porting their PlayStation 2 hit Agent Under Fire to the GameCube and Xbox, bringing James Bond to the very latest gadgets. Q would be proud. Today the first screenshots of the game in action have revealed that EA's amazing cross-platform technology has delivered once again, with the new versions looking absolutely indistinguishable from the PS2 original. Ok, that's not entirely fair - the GameCube shots are more washed-out and have big ugly borders on all sides, thanks to the way the screens were captured rather than any shortcoming in the porting process at a rough guess. Helpfully EA have even released screenshots taken from identical points in the in-game cutscenes on both consoles. See if you can spot ten differences between the two shots below. Or any at all, for that matter.

Last week, Square and publisher Enterbrain announced a three disc DVD collection for Japan, comprising information and background on every Final Fantasy game to date, with the exception of Final Fantasy Tactics. Before you ask, there are no plans to release this in the States or Europe at the moment, but avid importers, to whom the 13,000 yen (approx. £71 / €110) asking price is not one step beyond, might well enjoy things like an interactive guide to the world of Vana'diel, in which online adventure Final Fantasy XI takes place, and a dramatic overview of the entire series, when the set is released on 25th July in Japan. Speculation is rife about exactly what we'll see in the set other than documentaries, but concept art, research type data and character and monster indexes are at the top of Gameforms' wishlist. It's obviously going to be a bit difficult to comprehend for the most part, but Final Fantasy: The Adventure Bible does sound like a nice gimmick, obviously aimed at recouping a few of Square's losses in an easy-to-produce-and-sell manner, a bit like those Rikku and Yuna FFX spin-offs. Related Feature - Final Fantasy XI preview

While Hideo Kojima monkeys around in Japan adding Tony Hawks style skateboarding into Metal Gear Solid 2 and presumably recording more mind-numbingly boring cutscenes, a Spanish team led by veterans of the Commandos series is working on a game that may just take stealth combat to the next level. Let me introduce you to the world of Duality.

When Electronic Arts nabbed the Buffy license, I must confess to having been somewhat miffed. After all, when I initially heard about a Simpsons videogame from EA, I had envisaged a beautifully realised interactive version of Springfield, like a lost episode of the most recent series, with all of my favourite characters properly voiced by the original actors and a serious plot - like the episode when Homer accidentally commits 'gatorcide and has to flee Florida (America's wang) and make end's meet as a waiter - intertwined with irreverent and completely insane dialogue and sub-plots. And while what we got, Simpsons Road Rage, wasn't a bad game per se, it still felt like a quick-fingered lift of my wallet while I scrimmaged on a bus to boredom. Fortunately, for whatever reason, the same couldn't be farther from the truth with Buffy The Vampire Slayer. Once it was declared Xbox-exclusive, it became rather obvious that things were happening with the project, and the constant slippage (current estimate: 2nd August) betrayed the possibility that people were actually working to complete a game this time, and not working to fulfil a quota. And then it all started coming together. This is meant to be a lost episode of the third series, and it will have all my favourite characters - Buffy, Xander, Willow, Giles, Cordelia, Spike and Angel - allegedly voiced by their small-screen counterparts. Furthermore, with the help of Chris Golden and Tom Sniegoski (of Buffy novels and comic books fame), the plot and dialogue should be as snappy and authentic as any fan could hope for. "In keeping with the context of the show we firmly conformed to the 'happenings' of [the third] series of episodes," a spokesperson for the developer told Computer & VideoGames on Friday, before going on to cite the game's pick-up-and-play accessibility along with its surprising authenticity as its main selling points. Apart from the fact that it actually bothers to live up to our expectations - at least in promise - it also seems as though elements of combat will balance the story-driven experience admirably. Buffy can pull off lightning fast kicks, punches and throws of the kind witnessed on the show, but as far as weapons go, "there are stakes, crossbows, holy water, hellfire, shovels, sledgehammers, a water gun, the reaper blade and others," and not content with that, a degree of improvisation. Not sure what to do? "How about you grab them and throw them at that shard of wood protruding from the wall? Or why not throw them onto that flaming oil barrel?" We're not so naïve as to assume that the final product will automatically turn out to be exactly what we want, but if the above isn't much to go by, the developer's enthusiasm for the game and its subject matter, not to mention all the various affiliations with the show - right down to the involvement of Joss Whedon - certainly are. The 2nd of August, you say? That's about 51 and a half days… Related Feature - Buffy The Vampire Slayer screenshots

Although the 64-bit version of Mario Kart possessed some of the previous game's spirit, the finest aspects of the game came up short. The tracks were often too wide, long, or overly complex, and the attempts at 3D often lacklustre. The fuzzy N64 graphics were a bit off-putting, and worst of all, Battle Mode - the very foundation of the original's longevity - was spoilt by an insistence on three dimensions, and the absence of Mario Kart's signature claustrophobic track design.

The wait is finally over. Morrowind, probably the most eagerly anticipated PC role-playing game this side of Baldur's Gate II, has arrived in Europe. And although it has its flaws, it's still an entertaining, addictive and time consuming game.

While EA are running their own little America-only mapping contest for their hit first person shooter Medal Of Honor : Allied Assault, EA Germany have teamed up with 3D Gaming to run a more open competition. All you have to do is submit your own homebrew Allied Assault map - single player, deathmatch or objective based - by July 14th. Prizes include American copies of Allied Assault, Renegade and Red Alert 2 as well as mousepads, soundtrack CDs, baseball caps and Medal of Honor goodies in the form of posters, t-shirts and zippo lighters. Full details at the Map Assault website. Related Feature - Allied Assault review

Codemasters have confirmed that another new entry in their World Championship Snooker series is being racked up ready for release on PC, PS2 and Xbox. Developers Blade Interactive Studios are promsiing "all the skill, tension and atmosphere of professional snooker matches", with TV style presentation, a new neural network based AI system and improved graphics sporting more detailed player models, smoother animations and facial expressions. The game will also include two variations on pool - nine ball and English eight ball - for when you get bored of potting reds. "World Championship Snooker 2003 is set to continue the series' success and will be another genre-leading title in Codemasters' sports game portfolio", marketing director Mike Hayes confidently predicted. With a winter release on the table, we should know the truth in about six months...

Take 2 last night unveiled its financial results for the three months to April 30th, showing a profit of $9.6m compared to a loss of $11.5m this time last year. Revenues almost doubled, from $88 to $170m, largely thanks to the continuing chart dominating success of Grand Theft Auto 3, which has now shifted over six million units worldwide, making it the biggest PlayStation 2 hit to date. But bizarrely enough, despite these strong results and the promise of more good news to come later in the year, the company's share price dropped over 15% following the announcement, causing the entire games sector to dip in after hours trading. The reason? Stupid analysts apparently. Take 2 raised its earnings guidance (how much money it expects to make in the next three months) to $100m, but wildly optimistic analysts had expected the company to earn even more than that, somewhere in the region of $145m, to be precise. So even though the company is expecting to make more money this summer than it anticipated a few months ago, and beat both its own guidance and analysts' expectations in the last quarter, the share price still dropped sharply. Go figure. "To be fair, it was the analysts' view of how big (our upcoming quarter) should be and not the company's view", CEO Kelly Sumner told Reuters, as the value of his share options took a slide on the NASDAQ.

Way back in the mists of time (the mid 1980s, to be precise) a young lad called John Bye took his first tentative steps into the gaming industry, courtesy of a platform puzzler called Repton. Not only did he get his first taste of videogame journalism, writing a fictionalized walkthrough of the first level of Repton 3 for his school magazine, but he also made his first mods using the groundbreaking level and sprite editors that shipped with the game.

Last week we learned that British developers Masabi were bringing Repton to the latest PDAs and Java compatible mobile phones, and being huge fans of the original BBC Micro games we tracked them down to find out exactly what they had planned. We got more than we bargained for though, as Superior Software boss Richard Hanson revealed that PC and GameBoy Advance versions of Repton are also "in the final stages of development". Details of the company's resurgence are scarce at this stage, but Superior Software will apparently be launching a new website in the near future with more information about the new Repton games, as well as possible conversions of other classic BBC Micro titles that they published back in the 1980s. Exile Advance, maybe? In the meantime though, enjoy our Mobile Repton interview with Richard Hanson and Masabi's Ed Howson, which covers everything from Repton's classic gameplay and level editing facilities to the advantages of networking the game's community and the possibilties of bringing Superior Software to the GameBoy Advance. Related Feature - Repton returns!

Nintendo's decision to distribute GameCube software on non-standard miniature DVDs was at least partly taken as an effort to stop piracy, but today we were shocked to learn that a group calling themselves Team BMM have circumvented this copy protection using a somewhat .. bizarre method. To back up their extreme claims, the hackers have released a 12Mb movie showing them copying Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 and playing the cracked copy in their GameCube. The grainy home video ends abruptly though as an argument breaks out between the ski-masked members of the warez team, leading to a scuffle. Proof at last of ELSPA's contention that videogame piracy supports more violent forms of crime? Watch the video and judge for yourselves.

Sony held its annual PlayStation Awards in Tokyo last night, honouring the achievements of PlayStation developers over the past year. Nominations for the coveted PlayStation Grand Prix included Konami's Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, Koei's Shin Sangoku Musou 2 (Dynasty Warriors 3), Sega's Virtua Fighter 4 and Square's Kingdom Hearts, but the winner was Square's epic Final Fantasy X - recently released in Europe after a long delay - which also received a Double Platinum Prize for over two million units shipped. Platinum Prizes (more than one million units) went to Sony itself for Everybody's Golf 3, Enix for Dragon Quest IV and Onimusha 2 from Capcom, which is scheduled for release in Europe later this year. Gold Prizes (more than half a million units) went to a longer list of games, including all of the nominees for Grand Prix other than FFX, Konami for Winning Elevens 5 and 6, Bandai for a trio of games with stupidly long names and Capcom for Devil May Cry. There were a number of other prizes awarded, and for the full rundown you should head over to The Magic Box.

According to the Japanese press, Nintendo and Square are already bickering over this and that. During Nintendo's analysts meeting on Thursday, it was remarked that Final Fantasy XI did not sell well, and that poor performance was down to its being an online game. Later, Square CEO Youichi Wada shot back that "Final Fantasy XI is opening up to a new market as a challenging pioneer. [We] would hope that Nintendo would even support us on the issue." Defending his product further, Wada-san added: "People who are currently playing Final Fantasy XI are satisfied, but people who haven't played would have misunderstandings [based on Nintendo's comments]." In good news though, the GameCube version of Final Fantasy is said - by former Nintendo Pres' Hiroshi Yamauchi - to be "ground-breaking software". Nintendo and Square parted company at the birth of the original PlayStation because of mutual distaste for the other's plans. Nintendo went on to release the N64, and Square went on to release Final Fantasy VII… You know, it wouldn't hurt Nintendo's outlook to be nice to them, would it? Related Feature - Final Fantasy XI preview

Virgin Interactive has popped up this week with some screenshots of its graphic novel-inspired sci-fi console shooter Falcone: Into the Maelstrom. Originally announced last year, the game runs on the Unreal Warfare graphics engine, and features a plot penned by 2000AD writer Robbie Morrison and characters designed by 2000AD and Batman artist Jim Murray. After showing us the space combat aspect of the game last year, Virgin has finally released a handful of first person adventure shots. The highly polished screenshots are as shiny as you might expect for a game using the Unreal Warfare engine running on current console hardware, and the various shades of grey that make up your average swash-buckling space-pirate caper are complemented more than adequately by colourful mech-style robotic suits and the aforementioned nebula-packed space combat bits. With the 2000AD influence the game's detailed visuals might at least have something behind them, but Falcone still faces strong competition from the likes of TimeSplitters 2 when it arrives on PlayStation 2 and Xbox in November of this year. Whatever the outcome of that particular battle, Falcone is more likely to draw criticism from the Daily Mail brigade with its promises of limb severance and accurate dismemberment models - yeesh! Related Feature - Falcone: Into the Maelstrom screenshots

Online gaming is once again being touted as the next big thing, teetering on the edge of greatness. This time the optimistic prognosis comes in the form of a market report from DFC Intelligence, who claim that 114 million people will be playing games online by 2006, including 23 million console gamers. The one caveat here is "whether individual companies will be able to monetize that usage", according to DFC president David Cole. Most online gamers are notoriously unwilling to pay for anything, whether it's from a practical standpoint (casual gamers) or religious convictions (hardcore gamers). Despite this, top online games are apparently already earning upwards of $100m over their life time. The bad news is that there are far too many online games in development for the size of the market, something we could have told you for nothing. It seems barely a week goes by without some developer you've never heard of before announcing a massively multiplayer number crunching game, or a big name publisher leaping on the EverQuest bandwagon to the promised land, where anti-social geeks throw money at you to spend all day running around in a dress killing orcs. The report obviously goes into a lot more detail than this - four hundred pages worth, to be precise - but as you'll have to pay DFC the best part of $3,000 to get hold of a copy, we think most of you will make do with the free one-page summary... Related Feature - Online gaming overhyped

What is it with beach volleyball? Did games developers just suddenly discover it out of the blue? Sega's Beach Spikers was the first recent example we had heard about, and it does look jolly good, promising to be both bouncy and addictive, Virtua Tennis style. But since then we've had Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball, or at least a virtually pornographic movie of the game from developer Tecmo, and now we have Outlaw Golf developer Hypnotix' Outlaw Volleyball, as reported by The Magic Box. Do the screenshots look good? They're curvy, that's for sure, and we're not just being perverse - the player models seem to boast some stupid polycounts. Either that or we're just looking at cheekily passed off renders. Make your own mind up. Related Feature - Tecmo's Sexbox