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Several companies associated with the Xbox, including nVidia and Electronic Arts, watched their stock drop several points yesterday after a report in the London Financial Times claimed the Xbox would be delayed. According to the report, Microsoft is behind schedule in releasing Xbox beta development kits. European and Japanese developers were expecting to receive the kits in March, but have nothing so far. Speaking in a press release yesterday afternoon, Microsoft's director of games marketing John O'Rourke said the Xbox is "right on track" for release in the fall of this year Stateside, then in Spring 2002 in Europe and Japan. Electronic Arts stock alone sank 9% on the back of the Financial Times report, while Microsoft stock fell 2.7% Take 2 suffered as well, as did nVidia, who will provide the graphics systems for the console. Wall Street analysts are apparently unconcerned, however. O'Rourke encouraged traders and developers not to be alarmed by the report, and also made a point of saying that the developer support and release process is steadily progressing as planned. Related Feature - The Master Plan

International publishing machine Ubi Soft have secured a deal with moderngroove entertainment to publish the official Ministry of Sound video game, "moderngroove: Ministry of Sound Edition". The agreement allows Ubi Soft to distribute the PlayStation 2 game in the UK and throughout Europe, priced at £20. It is thought that the game will be sold not just from games retailers but also from music stores. moderngroove, the game, has been described by moderngroove, the company, as the ultimate party game for PlayStation 2, bringing "the sights and sounds of London's Ministry of Sound nightclub into living rooms around the world". There will be over five hours of Techno, UK Garage and Breakbeat music from top DJs, and lots of pretty visuals. You can either drop the disc in and groove along to the music as though it were a simple video, or you can stop and re-mix the various tracks and tunes. Good grief. It isn't really a game, then, but with the price at an acceptable level it should please a lot of fans of this sort of thing. Obviously your enjoyment of it will somewhat rely on the audio setup wired to your TV or PlayStation 2. moderngroove is expected to make further announcements shortly, about a North American and Japanese publisher. In Japan, a lot of nightclubs feature VJs, who perform enormous audio/visual sets very much like those being focused on here, so the market will be a lot more critical of the title than elsewhere, we suspect.

Infogrames plan to release games based on a Mission: Impossible 2 license in the fall of 2002, the company said yesterday. The license, from Viacom Consumer Products, gives the publisher full rights to exploit one of last year's top-grossing summer movies, M:I-2, using its characters and storyline. The deal will see the publishing giant release several games, two of which have been confirmed for PlayStation 2 and Xbox respectively. Infogrames released a series of Mission: Impossible games based on the first movie using various consoles, and it seems those went down well enough for them to be considered the second time around. Pam Newton, VP of Viacom, said that the company "is confident the Mission:Impossible-2 game will match the movie's heart pounding action and international intrigue". Although the film took a bit of a hammering from the critics, it was good, clean fun with the enigmatic Ethan Hunt (played by Tom Cruise) performing all sorts of acrobatic stunts and craziness in a classic "save the world" scenario, directed by John Woo.

Anne McCaffrey's world of Pern has a pedigree stretching back some thirty years now, with sixteen novels and various novellas and short stories adding up to two thousand years and millions of words of back story. It's no doubt a little intimidating for the developers trying to fit their own work into this vast sprawling fantasy epic, but at the same time the series has proven such a success it's something of a surprise that nobody has made a computer game set in Pern before.

NGUK, the company that suggested we stop playing with ourselves, has pulled the plug on its 0800 Internet gaming dialup service because according to statistical research, "the vasty [sic] majority of ... subscribers are not in fact on-line gamers using the NGUK gaming service." NGUK's Managing Director Andy Jones confirmed that the service will be suspended within the next two weeks. Speaking out on the company's website, which features provocative young women holding weapons and touching themselves (steady on -moral decency Ed), Jones said that NGUK "receive little revenue directly related to the 20,000 gamers playing on our network, and are prevented from making long term investment in developing the service as a result." The company has now decided to "provide a low cost pay-per-play option in the next few months". Apparently this will allow them to "directly re-invest revenues from the actual user base back into the service that they want to use, rather than have a gaming service subsidised by our dial-up service that many of our customers, who have ADSL or are not in the UK, cannot use." Rumour has it that NGUK just received a bill from Cable & Wireless, and that it might be partly responsible, but staff at the GSP were unwilling to talk to us about that. Current 0800 customers will not be re-billed at the start of their next pay period, and will only be able to use the service up to that point. You can read what NGUK users think of that in a fruity discussion on their forums. Speaking in that thread are numerous employees as well as a slew of disgruntled users. One person, confirmed as an employee, said that the management asked customers "not take the [mickey] and just leave the connection on 24/7". Continuing, I won't bother to correct the spelling, he told users that NGUK had "about 45% of the users clocking up 20hours or more a day on the dialup". "As a side note, more info about where NGUKs going will appear soon, and yes we are looking into evenings/weekend freecall, however im afriad ... no prommises . And as a point, pay per play (mentioned in the news update -Ed) is NOT based round an 0845 dialup." "This is a NON CORE business for nguk anyhow. We tryed to offer an 0800 dialup for gamers.. and in the current climate its not suceeded .. hence rather than carrying on and lossing millions of pounds.. were stopping the service." Plenty more here.

The official Sammo Hung website has confirmed that the veteran Hong Kong director will be helming the movie version of Soul Calibur, based on Namco's game of the same name. "There isn't much information available yet since the agreement between the producers and Namco was [only] signed on March 29, but the budget will be around $50 million" according to the website. The movie will be filmed this autumn, with the US release currently pencilled in for summer 2002. No definite cast details are available at this point, but apparently they are hoping to involve martial arts star Jackie Chan.

Although there's been no official announcement as yet, movie rumour sites are today reporting that the studio behind the forthcoming Duke Nukem film has offered the leading role to none other than The Rock. With Larry Kasanoff (currently wanted by the UN War Crimes Tribunal for his involvement in the terrible Mortal Kombat movies) currently helming the project, and the original press release announcing the film including more inaccuracies and downright lies than an entire season of the Jerry Springer Show, we were already rather sceptical about this endeavour. If the WWF star with the hyperactive eyebrows really is under consideration for the title role, we can now be considered truly terrified at the possibility of this movie ever reaching the big screen.

Chip gurus Intel have proudly announced another technology milestone - the first yields of silicon using an advanced 300 mm 0.13 micron fabrication process. The factory where the breakthrough occurred, D1C ('D' for development) is the first to produce chips built using the 0.13 micron process on larger 300 mm wafers. Once perfected, this facility will be far more cost-effective than Intel's other plants, which use a 200 mm wafer, and Intel hopes to pass these savings onto the consumer. In the ongoing price war with AMD, such cuts will be welcomed. In actual fact, "Intel expects chips produced on 300 mm wafers to cost 30 percent less than those made using the smaller wafers," according to Tom Garrett, Intel's 300 mm Program manager. The demand for new Intel chips currently exceeds supply, and by producing them on a larger wafer with similar percentage yields, a higher volume of chips will be available to the customer. "By shrinking the circuit lines to 0.13 microns and increasing the wafer size to 300 mm, we are able to quadruple the output of a standard factory operating today." It bears noting that the 300 mm project is entirely separate to the 0.13 micron project, but the two are enjoying a short spell of crossover as Intel strives to impress IT hacks. As it goes though, D1C is still a development facility. Once it's finished, it will become F1C ('F' for fab) and start producing chips along the lines detailed above. However, according to prying eyes at The Inquirer, Intel won't actually be offering these chips to the general public until early next year. In the mean time, it's new "Tualatin" Pentium III chips (capable perhaps of approaching AMD Athlon speeds) will be fabricated on a 0.13 micron 200 mm wafer process, which while more expensive is still a good bet for Intel, especially since it needs the chips out of the door soon.

Kodiak Interactive Software Studios Inc, in a press release this morning, announced the development for Xbox and PlayStation 2 of "Circus Maximus", a game that "combines the danger and excitement of ancient Rome with innovative, high action, gameplay". Due out for Christmas, the game hopes to thrive on the popularity of last year's box office smash hit "Gladiator", which has drummed up interest in this barbaric period of human history. Of course, Kodiak themselves have no affiliation with Universal Studios and Dreamworks LLC, the creators of the film - they just stumbled onto a good thing. All right so they borrowed "Maximus" from Russel Crowe's character, presumably so as to try and imply a connection where there is none. Oh wait sorry, the connection is the Circus Maximus arena in Rome, not Russel Crowe. Silly of us! There is a website, HailRome.com, which opens in full screen mode, and explains in short terms the story. Apparently, you lose all your possessions and titles, face certain death and all you have left is your integrity. There's even a section called Gladiator. Ho-hum. Nonetheless, we're pretty excited about Circus Maximus. After all, who could resist the Ben Hur-like fantasy of steering your team of horses and cracking the whip ceremoniously? Spectacular chariot crashes and weaponry to cause them litter the field - in actual fact the game sounds more like a 2000 year old version of Wacky Races. You get to race all over the world, from the frozen wastelands of Germania all the way to the great Circus Maximus arena in Rome itself, and you get to make use of both your chariot driver and warrior, as in the film the game is unassociated with. Speculation though it is, we fancy Kodiak wanted to receive an official license from Universal. They may still be pitching for one - the website claims the publisher is as-yet unconfirmed. Whoever the publisher turns out to be is irrelevant though - we look forward to Circus Maximus with baited breath. It could well prove a surprise hit when it arrives later this year.

In our April's Marching Motherboards feature earlier in the week, we gave particular attention to IWill's latest offering, the KK266-R. In terms of support for current and future Athlons, as well as user-friendliness, we said, the KK266R is the pick of the bunch. And apparently you share our enthusiasm for it. We have been literally inundated by requests for information on where to buy the 'board, because apparently major retailers like Dabs, Insight and Simply have nothing to show for it. We contacted IWill to try and find out what's going on. At the moment, it seems, although IWill is talking to a number of people in the UK, currently it has no distributor. Which is funny, because that's definitely the shape of a KK266-R lurking next to our monitor. The only UK companies that have any hope of stocking the KK266-R it seems, are Overclockers UK (ESNet), and Computer Connections International. The former seems to be importing them, hence the price premium that we commented on in our feature, and claims that it will have stock some time next week (keep checking this page for details), whereas the latter claims that it is merely in talks with IWill about distribution. If anything is to come of the deal, it will take several weeks. All in all, then, the outlook is a little disappointing. EuroGamer's advice is to stick with our friends at OcUK, who seem to be meating out orders as quickly as they come in after moving to new premises. For the earliest possible information, we suggest you keep a watchful eye on their regularly updated news page. Related Feature - April's Marching Motherboards

The CPL's next big event in Europe is CPL Holland, which is to be held at the Dutch town of Loosdrecht, just east of Amsterdam, on the weekend of May 11th-13th. Quake 3 Arena, Unreal Tournament and Counter-Strike tournaments will all be taking place during the event, with prize money totalling €26,000 up for grabs. Registration for the event kicks off tonight at midnight European time, so if you fancy your chances or just want to mess around in this 800 player LAN party, head over to the CPL Holland website for more information.

Console giant Sega has allowed 12 disgruntled employees at its Tokyo headquarters sit in a windowless room from 9am to 5.45pm every day "waiting" for nothing to happen, in order to avoid a financial slap and tickle with the authorities. According to an intriguing article at Mainichi News, the 12 employees claim the videogame giant is bullying them into quitting. Sega is obliged to abide by the workers' request to be posted at the company's Tokyo headquarters under law, and say nothing can be done to avoid the fact that there is no work for them to do there. The company's labour union, of which all 12 are members, is furious. "Transferring a full employee can only take place with the consent of the worker, but this is simply a unilateral order issued by the company," a union rep told Mainichi. "Anybody who refused to obey the order was shunted off into the separate room. It's outright bullying." Many employees had to be removed from their posts at Sega due to restructuring of the business, with the company struggling to balance its books. Sega has usually lent full employees to subsidiaries, but from yesterday morning, any employees sent to an affiliate company will go as full employees of that company and not Sega Corp. The 12 holdouts are refusing to abide by the new policy, and the union is angry at their treatment. Their job description is now "waiting, because there are no foreseeable duties at the moment, with working hours continuing as they have been." It's a fascinating story, and there's more at Mainichi. Sega were apparently penalised for similar circumstances several years ago as well. Some just don't learn, it seems. Related Feature - Sega Kills off Dreamcast

Microsoft are madly scrabbling around looking for ways to make up their list of 70 Japanese developers, with some new additions just announced. That is of course, as we jokingly pointed out last week, if they didn't make it up in the first place. The latest new face on the board is Namco. There were rumours to the contrary about their interest in the Xbox, which we're guessing came from Sony, but it seems those have been quelled and the Arcade behemoth has locked arms with Microsoft. Once again, Namco are creating "multiple titles" for the Xbox's Japanese launch, with more details to be released at E3. Another firm putting its name on the dotted line at the Tokyo Game Show is Genki. Their "Tokyo Xtreme" series is expected to morph into some sort of launch racer. You may be more familiar with Genki for their part in the Dreamcast conversion of Virtua Fighter 3. Again, E3 is expected to be Microsoft's target for playable code. Finally, Artoon Co. LTD, a new development firm comprised of former (and presumably disgruntled) Sega employees has signed up for service with Microsoft, despite connections with Nintendo. Having just released "Pinobee" on the GameBoy Advance, Artoon are expected to continue developing for both companies. The various team members are credited with games like Sonic the Hedgehog and Panzer Dragoon, so Microsoft's interest is understandable. Interestingly, neither Genki nor Artoon are developing anything for Sony. After recent reports at the TIGA meeting that developers were feeling the pressure from Sony not to develop for the Xbox, and vice versa, one pays more interest to this fact. Especially since both companies are based in Japan and Sony is the market leader there. Rumour has it that Sony was retracting development kits from those unwise enough to wander from the flock. Namco of course are big enough to stand up for themselves. For Sony, allowing them to develop for both Xbox and PlayStation 2 would be a better situation than telling them to surrender their development kits and go and play with the enemy. After all, who's going to code the money-spinning beat 'em up franchises then? SCE? Microsoft still haven't announced 70 Japanese game companies. In fact, the number is (we reckon) less than 10, and certainly less than 20. Until 70 neatly dressed parties representing the firms trot out onto the stage we aren't really going to start believing the claims either. Which means there's a lot of cynicism to come between now and E3. Related Feature - Microsoft land Sega

The United Kingdom finally has its own source of DDR (Double Data Rate) memory, thanks to trend-setters Crucial, who now not only stock the lower spec PC1600, but also the elusive PC2100 as well. Previously the only vendors that actually stocked DDR memory paid a premium for it, a cost that was passed onto the customer. PC2100 was just making its way here from abroad at nearly 75p per megabyte. For those of you that haven't been keeping up, Double Data Rate memory is defined by standards that break from the traditional clock-speed notation. You will have heard of PC100 and PC133, which are so-called because of the maximum bus speed they are rated to operate at - 100MHz and 133MHz respectively. PC1600 and PC2100 are so-called because of their peak data bandwidth. Under perfect conditions, they can shift 1600Mb/s and 2100Mb/s respectively. This is idle speculation, but we are guessing that this naming convention came about due to the widespread confusion surrounding bus speeds and DDR that has been caused by thoughtless marketing tomfoolery. PC1600 is primed to operate at 100MHz front side bus, which is curiously also classed as 200MHz by AMD, thanks to its processors' ability to transport two instructions for every one that rivals can offer over the same bus. PC2100 is 133MHz, which actually means 266MHz. Confused? Now you can understand why they dreamt up the naming convention. Speaking in the company's press release, Crucial boss Mike Bokan commented on the popularity of DDR SDRAM. "Since we first offered PC1600 DDR SDRAM in July of last year, it has been flying off the shelves. Clearly, Crucial's customers want DDR SDRAM, and our factory-direct model allows us to sell this new PC2100 DDR SDRAM at prices that make it accessible to anyone who wants it." Cynics that we are, we had expected Crucial to launch the modules in the States and leave us hanging. Fortunately, their distribution has been lightning quick and simultaneous. In the States you can pick up various modules for as little as $60.29 for 128Mb of PC2100. Over here, the prices are equally pleasing. The same stick of memory is an absolute steal at £42.29. PC1600 prices are even lower. Although we would prefer to avoid causing a stampede, if you think you might need DDR memory soon, now might be the time to get some. With OEMs recovering slightly from the shortage in PC sales over the Christmas period, memory prices do look set to rise over the next month or so. Incidentally, while we're speculating, one of the crazier things we've heard in the last two days is the possibility that AMD is actually subsidizing Crucial's profit margins in order to keep DDR prices low. Unlikely? Maybe, but it would do more for the DDR platform, something which AMD now has the trademarked rights to flaunt as its own, than any number of new motherboard chipsets announced in the last six months...

GameSpy today announced that their latest client is no less than Disney, who are producing a free multiplayer game with the ominous title "Atlantis : The Lost Empire - Search for the Journal". Gameplay is expected to involve wandering around Disney's office poking at delicately balanced piles of paperwork, asking everybody you meet "have you seen my clue, I saw it here a minute ago". Probably.

AMD have finally released their latest budget processor, the long-awaited 900MHz Duron, and it packs quite a punch. Despite AMD's apparent inability to meet demand with its high-end Athlons, it looks like the supplies of its Duron line are acceptable, with the processor already showing on American "PriceWatch" websites. Here in the UK, Dabs.com is pricing it at £96 all in, compared to the £110 of its closest Intel rival, the 800MHz Celeron. The official press release quotes a figure of $129 each per 1000 units for bulk purchasers. Well, either for bulk purchasers or the creators of the most astonishing Beowulf cluster ever entertained. Shame nobody attempted that one yesterday. Quick off the bat with coverage as ever are boffins at AnandTech, whose gaming benchmarks indicate that the 900MHz Duron is nearly 15 frames per second ahead of its closest rival from Intel. In actual fact, the 600MHz Duron (no longer available) outpaces the 800MHz Celeron in Quake III Arena. The story is pretty much the same for the Unreal Tournament tests, too. Of course, overclockers have been enjoying the Duron's amazing headroom for quite some time now, and early reports indicate the Duron core used in these 900MHz processors is capable of numbers stretching toward 1GHz and beyond. With the release of the mobile Duron in the near future, things look bright for AMD. Related Feature - April's Marching Motherboards

VIA's "KT133A" motherboard chipset has really taken off, just as we predicted it would, with every major manufacturer of motherboards from ASUS to IWill now offering an Athlon solution based upon it. With so many gamers looking to cash in on the recent price reductions in 'classic' SDRAM and the Athlon itself, the KT133A has become the most popular option for upgraders. With this in mind, it seemed prudent for us to take a look at a few of the most popular competing KT133A platforms and compare their pros and cons for the average home user. On the lab bench are, in no particular order, the ASUS A7V133, the ABit KT7A-RAID, the IWill KK266R and the MSI K7T Turbo. The best way, it seems, to judge a motherboard is no longer its performance relative to its competitors, but how many options there are in its BIOS, how well it will cope with current and future generations of Athlon, and how user-friendly it is. As such, we'll give each motherboard a score out of ten, made up of 1-3 points in each of these areas, and then a bonus point where we deem appropriate. To get a good grounding on the KT133A chipset itself, we suggest you read our previous appraisal.

A couple of weeks ago we received word that GameLoft UK had been shut down, with the company reportedly seeing "no profit perspective in the exploitation of its Internet portal". Now comes news that the rest of GameLoft's websites around the world are to share its fate, and the closure seems to have effected hosted sites such as Famitsu as well - all pages now take you the company's corporate site at GameLoft.net. Details are still scarce, but an official announcement is expected on April 4th.

After a false start earlier in the month, Rebel Act last week released the level editor and tools for their spectacular third person action game Severance : Blade of Darkness. Now you too can build vast fog-ridden castles, Dwarven settlements, abandoned mines and lost cities. The entire editing package weighs in at a scant 7.4Mb, and you can now download it from the Severance website. If that's a bit too slow for you, you can also find it mirrored over at Blade Universe. And in related news, you can find all the latest mods, maps and editing tips for Severance over at Blade X, along with forums where you can ask for help and share your experience with the tools.

For those of you who couldn't make it to i7 last weekend, FlashLAN sent a reminder that they're holding their own event on a rather more modest scale at Shrivenham near Swindon over the easter weekend (April 13th to 15th). Entry is just £20 for the whole weekend, and includes a pro-quality Dance Dance Revolution setup and "big screen action" as well as the usual all-night Quake 3, Unreal Tournament and Counter-Strike sessions. Other highlights include a mass exodus to a nearby curry house, and there's even a shower to keep the body odour quotient down to survivable levels. Check the FlashLAN website for more information.

Half-Life has proven to be one of the most successful first person shooters of recent years, clocking up massive sales and receiving countless awards from magazines who obviously never got as far as the hideous teleporter lab and alien levels at the end of the game. Preferring to repeatedly flog a gift horse rather than look it in the mouth, Sierra have cashed in on the game's success with a seemingly endless parade of add-ons, re-releases, console ports and spin-offs - Game of the Year Edition, Platinum Edition, Opposing Force, Counter-Strike, Gunman Chronicles...

The first game to use this amazing, expertly researched oceanic kingdom was "Archimedean Dynasty," a critically acclaimed albeit rather complicated strategy title from Massive Development in 1996. The good news is that the sequel, "Aquanox", is almost ready. The bad news? We don't think anybody will be able to touch the deep-sea adventure genre until the world thaws out again - Aquanox looks like it will finally create something worth paddling around in. It's been five years since the conclusion of Archimedean Dynasty. The world is falling apart, with a civil war gripping the capital of the Atlantic Federation, and armed forces conducting dangerous military experiments, causing seaquakes that unlock mythical, god-like creatures from their sleepy holes at the bottom of the ocean. At the centre of the furore is a mercenary called Emerald Flint, hell bent on discovering the secrets of a dangerous gang of pirates, the "Crawlers". With conflict engulfing the world and Flint in serious danger, the game begins. As Flint, you set out with your wingmen on a mission that could be your last. Aquanox is an underwater adventure of the highest calibre. Full of lively computer-controlled characters and a plot as thick as the noxious fumes that envelope the world above, it looks like a real hit. Its scaleable graphics engine can take full advantage of the GeForce 3 GPU's new pixel and vertex shading technologies too, and that's nothing to be trifled with. From what we've seen of the game, the scalability is such that you can model the game on whatever specification you like, cutting down texture memory, anti-aliasing, texture detail and such. The game features a world of options.

Although the Diablo II expansion set adds a whole new act for the solo player to fight his way through, a lot of the massive success of the Diablo series (particularly amongst hardcore gamers) can be put down to its multiplayer support. Unsurprisingly then the company's plans for online play were the main topic of the Q&A session with Blizzard's Bill Roper when he dropped by London as part of his recent European press tour...

Japanese Xbox buyers will receive a slightly smaller controller than their European and American counterparts according to visitors to the Tokyo Game Show. After polling Japanese gamers, Microsoft decided that a slightly more compact design was called for - the actual controller just looks marginally shrunken. The Xbox controller for Japan also comes with a 9.5 foot lead as well. We don't quite get that. Historically Japanese game controllers have had shorter leads, which has always been attributed to the smaller properties in the big urban areas. 9.5 feet is a decent length. A little quick reconnaissance in the lounge just now indicates that the Dreamcast and N64 controller leads are about 6 foot ish in length, and the PlayStation about 6 or 7 foot. The classic Super Nintendo controller seems to be about 8 foot in length. There were musings recently about wireless RF peripherals from MadCatz, which would eliminate any argument about lead length, and instead relegate the controller to remote control status. Applying "where's the sodding remote?" to the Xbox, if you will. Wireless RF is superior to infra-red in that it doesn't require a line of sight. Companies like Sennheiser have been evangelising the technology for a while, with wireless headphones, and Lucent/Harris Semiconductors' IEEE 802.11b relies on RF, and is the standard in wireless networking for PC systems. You can read more about the Xbox controller on Microsoft's Xbox website. Related Feature - The Master Plan

Bill Gates warmly introduced Microsoft's Japanese battle strategy for the Xbox last night, during his keynote address at the Tokyo Game Show. The address was noted for its claims that over 70 Japanese game developers have "declared their support" for Xbox (including Sega, who were given their own special announcement). Gates also offered his vision of broadband gaming. Well, Microsoft's. Noticeably Uncle Bill wasn't in a position to say that Japanese game developers had XDKs yet - in the last week several unnamed game executives have voiced their concerns about Microsoft's Xbox strategy for Japan, or lack thereof, so if developers are on board, they will be pretty fresh additions. Or if we put our cynical hat on for a second, this undisclosed legion of developers could well include plenty of in-house MS firms and various departments and people at Konami. Oh and Sega. And is that developers or development teams? We had a look at Microsoft's Xbox website for details, but it hasn't changed. To be fair on Bill, he did have some very positive things to say about the Xbox's Japanese master plan. His audience at the TGS were already in a forgiving mood after the excellent news of the NTT deal yesterday, and he made a point of extolling the virtues of the Japanese market. After concluding his business on the Sega side of things, he also offered his vision of a broadband future. "Broadband online video gaming is on the verge of becoming as revolutionary as 3-D gaming was just a few years ago," he offered. "The broadband connection in every Xbox is the key that unlocks new worlds of play, where friends and opponents are everywhere." The two important points for Bill are "boundless gaming," and "simple, fast and predictable experiences". We're not quite sure how two of the PC market's staple assets for online gaming form any kind of revolution, but it's Bill's speech. That said, we had hoped for something more evolutionary than "online video gaming will be made easy on Xbox because of the broadband connection". Will it? Blimey, that's a revelation. The final item on Bill's agenda is Microsoft's newly formed Xbox Japan Division, based in Tokyo. Aimed at handling relationships with Japanese developers and providing support for those eager to integrate the ADSL connection, as well as managing Xbox operations, marketing, research and sales, the division also houses the Games Production Group, dedicated to developing and publishing exclusive Xbox games under the Microsoft label. Okay so that's Konami, Sega and Microsoft. Multiply that by the number of development teams, and you probably hit something near 70. To be honest, Bill's speech was somewhat unhelpful. It didn't actually offer anything new, and tried to dazzle us with inexplicable numbers rather than offer cold, hard facts. Capcom are still voicing their concerns over the Xbox and its strategy, Sony are busy chortling behind a TGS event programme, and Nintendo are busy swimming in GameBoy Advance revenues. You can watch Bill's keynotes here - he actually kicks off after about two minutes of Japanese announcements. Related Feature - Microsoft reveal broadband strategy for Japan

Microsoft have used the Tokyo Game Show to introduce 11 new Sega titles to the Xbox's ranks. Familiar-sounding properties like "Jet Grind Radio Future", "Panzer Dragoon", "GUNVALKYRIE" and "Sega GT" will be amongst the console's early titles. Sega hope to utilize the recently-announced ADSL broadband network features of the Xbox, too. Speaking at TGS, Chief Xbox Officer Robbie Bach commented. "The creative artists at Sega not only are going to deliver great Xbox games, they will help us establish the benchmark for great Xbox gaming experiences both on and offline." "We believe that Microsoft will be very successful with Xbox, which is why we have such a close, strategic relationship with them," said Peter Moore, president and COO, Sega of America. "Our world-renowned development studios have been very impressed with the Xbox hardware, and they are excited to bring new gaming experiences to consumers by utilizing the platform's power and network capabilities. We share Microsoft's commitment to broadband online gaming and will work with it to deliver the best content possible to gamers." Related Feature - Microsoft reveal broadband strategy for Japan

Maximum Charisma Studios' online combat title "Fighting Legends" is currently in Alpha and due to launch in November. The company is now asking for some 25,000 beta testers to come forward to thoroughly smite the program with their filthy computers in order to iron out any bugs before its release. Fighting Legends will be incomplete on launch, and added to with each passing month by developers Maximum Charisma. Speaking in a press release, Pres/CEO Sean Kennedy said that "$9.95 a month, you should get $9.95 a month of new game play - not bug fixes". Tell that to Electronic Arts. Fighting Legends will take the form of a role-playing strategy title (yes, a new one on us, too), with action elements. It's modelled in an anime style with 81 potential characters to choose from. Unlike rival massively multiplayer games, you actually pick a squad of 16 players to battle with (there's the strategy element) and must pick and trade characters as the game progresses. Maximum Charisma Studios say community will be a strong focus. Quests will be available to those not taken with simply fighting, ranging from those that can be handled by a lone player and those that require great alliances. Events set up by the developers will also keep people happy, with rewards such as relics, in-game monuments, cash prizes and more. Interested gamers may skip straight to the sign-up page.

Eidos have today announced a licensing deal with Celador International to publish two new games based on the ever-popular Who Wants To Be A Millionaire franchise. The first of these, due out this summer, is a "junior version" of the game, which at a rough guess will be replacing all those awkward questions about Dickens and Kipling with Hear Say and S Club 7. Maybe. Following in the autumn will be a true sequel, set to be released on PC, PlayStation and PS2. Meanwhile the lucky French will be getting a dose of Millionaire fever this summer as the first game is finally released over there, having already hit the top spots in all the computer game charts in the UK and Germany, breaking a number of records in the process. We weep for the future.

Some men are born great, some achieve greatness, and others have greatness thrust upon them. Zak, hero of Evil Islands, very much falls into this third category. Waking up amongst the ancient ruins of a strange island with no memory of who he is or how he got there, he is declared The Chosen by the local villagers and promptly co-opted into carrying out a series of menial tasks for them. When you're not killing goblins or wolves you are recovering stolen goods from brigands and filching magical items from the orcs. It's certainly humble beginnings for a would-be messiah.

Those of our readers with a long memory (or a large number of grey hairs) may well remember Douglas Adams' classic text adventure game The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy, loosely based on the novels, radio drama and TV series of the same name. Now Swedish publisher Pan Interactive have announced that they are teaming up with British developer Digital Village (the brains behind Douglas Adams' Starship Titanic) to create an all-new game of the Guide, which they describe as "an incredibly amusing third person, real-time 3D arcade towel 'em up adventure in the mould of Tomb Raider, Mario 64 and Zelda".