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The success of games such as Ultima Online and EverQuest has helped to spawn a whole new genre of massively multiplayer role-playing games (or MMORPGs for short), but sadly some of these second and third generation online worlds have little to distinguish them from their competitors.

Electronic Arts joins the queue of publishers announcing improved results this year as PlayStation 2 sales start to pick up the slack, with revenues for the three months to March 31st slightly up on the same period last year at $307m. Despite this the company posted a loss of almost $18m compared to a $3m profit this time last year, with the absorption of pogo.com and mounting losses from web gaming portal EA.com largely to blame. The troubled site continues to haemorrhage money and is now at least three months behind EA's original schedule for making it break even, with a subscription sports service six months late "due to quality considerations" according to president John Riccitiello. Although it apparently brought in over $12m in revenues in the first three months of the year, EA.com still posted a net loss of over $30m.

Out of touch hardware manufacturer ASUS has gone ahead with plans to release "see-through" drivers for its line of graphics cards based on NVIDIA chipsets. Cards including the popular ASUS V7700 amongst others will soon start to ship with drivers that enable players to see through objects and walls whenever they like. These advantages are of course completely unfair in a multiplayer gaming environment, but apparently there's no telling ASUS that. Last year, The Online Gamer's Association polled its members about the see-through drivers and an overwhelming majority agreed that they should not be released. Despite an open letter to ASUS, nothing came of the protests, and the drivers are now available. Ignorant press relations officers at ASUS issued this release last July. "There are three special weapons for ASUS VGA cards' users -- Transparent View, Wireframe View, and Extra Light. If you do not have an ASUS VGA card -- be careful! Never compete in the 3D games with anyone who has an ASUS VGA card. Because the only result is to loose (sic)." There is no doubt that the severity of the impact on online gaming will be great. Already this writer has witnessed at least one ASUS upgrader peering through walls to spot enemies in Counter-Strike, on one of the many servers that don't forcibly protect against such modern exploits. The impact has been most felt by gamers, but the development community too is also in uproar. The Register reported today that Epic Games programmer Tim Sweeney, who created the Unreal and Unreal Tournament engines and is now working on development for Microsoft's Xbox console, had a few choice words for ASUS. "What a bunch of lamers," he commented. "hardware maker who releases drivers that encourage cheating in multiplayer games is out of touch with the spirit of gaming." We tried to contact ASUS about the drivers through our usual channels but they didn't respond. Online gaming has always been a target for hackers and spoilsports who focus on exploits in the server/client relationship to give themselves an unfair advantage. Just recently the online gaming world was thrown into disarray by the devastating "speed cheat," [OGA comment - Ed] which differed from classic exploits in that it messed with an actual Windows function to give its users an advantage. There are still very few remedies for it. If ever professionally-backed online gaming competition is to take off, the first step needs to be the eradication of exploits, and if one of the biggest hardware manufacturers in the world is working against it, how can it ever succeed?

Cube8, the mini-internet incubator, has bought the Freeloader online games business from Pure Entertainment for £600K in new shares. Pure Entertainment, now a cash shell, shut down the Freeloader games download site, following the collapse of the games advertising online earlier this year. In a statement Tim Dean-Smith, executive chairman of Cube8, said: "I think that the online gaming market has enormous potential, and we look forward to taking the Freeloader business forward, and will seek to add value through the skills and network of the Cube8 team". But in March Cube8 said it was holding off investing in Net ventures for six to 12 months, after announcing an operating loss of £4.9 million on revenue of £1.6 million in 2000. It obviously couldn't stop itself.

THQ is set to launch one of its most impressive E3 lineups ever at the show next week, featuring blockbuster material targeting a million and one different demographics. For example, its top-end first person shoot 'em up Red Faction will be on display for PlayStation 2 and PC, along with New Legends and an impressive TV-licensed kids lineup with SpongeBob SquarePants, Scooby-Doo and Power Rangers. The company's games span every platform we could think of, with Xbox , Nintendo Game Boy Advance, PC/Mac, PlayStation and Nintendo Game Boy Color displays planned. In addition, the company is demonstrating several new games designed for mobile devices, through its new division, THQ Wireless. Here is the lineup in full:-

Europe's biggest video games maker, Infogrames Entertainment SA, has announced impressive third quarter fiscal results that demonstrate a 12% rise in sales. Sales in the three months to March 31 rose to 139.5 million euros ($123 million), from 124.3 million in same period a year before, said the company speaking to the Les Echos newspaper. According to a report at Bloomberg, the improvement is down to Final Fantasy IX and the latest V-Rally title.

Although it seems almost pointless, I suppose one ought to kick off a Worms World Party review with a brief description of Worms in general. I can't that there are people in our audience who have not played it, or who have not at least heard of it, but lets be gentle. Worms is a two-dimensional turn-based action game. At the start of any given level the game produces two to four teams of invertebrates on a randomly formed battlefield, and each team receives a whole shedload of weaponry to use in the elimination of the others. It's a turn-based action title where (by default) players have a set amount of time to manoeuvre one worm per turn into position and fire off a weapon. Some weapons allow only one blast per turn (e.g. bazooka), while smaller weapons (handguns, shotguns etc) allow for two or even three smaller pot shots. Also inventoried are a number of scaling implements, including the legendary ninja and bungee ropes. Things like pneumatic drills, girders and the like can be deployed, and the entire landscape after a number of turns on each side is often literally a hollow crater of its former self. So those are the basics. More experienced players will tell you about your Worms' ability to swing Tarzan-like across a roofed-level using the ninja rope, or drop sticks of dynamite off the edge of a cliff directly onto an enemy. Or the legendary Sheep weapons, joined by a mole weapon in the last adventure. Sheep can be let off the leash to bound along bleating and then remotely detonated if they reach their target. Moles on the other hand tunnel all over the shop and then explode. It's a bizarre mix of the fantastic and the almost real.

Electronic Arts stiffed Sega's Dreamcast, refusing to develop for it, preferring instead to focus on the PlayStation 2, PC and Xbox. In retrospect, it looks as though the company chose wisely. Thankfully, it doesn't intend to make the same decision regarding Nintendo's GameCube, despite a poor showing with the N64. There may be politics at work anyway, after all, Nintendo = GameCube = GameBoy Advance, and that's a gravy train everyone wants to be a part of. EA intends to show off a number of GameCube titles at E3 next week in Los Angeles according to a press release out this morning. The developer/publisher has plans for 10 titles on GameCube in total, including SSX snowboarding, and NBA Street basketball from EA SPORTS BIG amongst others. Madden and FIFA 2002 have also been namedropped. Nintendo's GameCube may be the last of the gaming consoles in the traditional sense, so it's nice to see EA supporting it with a lot of top-rate software. The question is, will we get a Black & White conversion! We'll have more on these titles after E3.

According to Computer Trade Weekly, Sony Computer Entertainment Europe intends to put on its own ECTS replacement show in a similar vein to the previously announced Nintendo show. The idea being to give journalists the best possible atmosphere to soak up its new products. [We'll go where the booze takes us, natch, but please lads, lets not have too many different events at once, eh? -Ed] According to head of PR David Wilson, ""This decision is not a budgetary one. We felt that this approach would be better one; E3 is our major trade showing anyway, and a consumer show offers better value for retail and media as well." With no console to promote, Sega will probably slope off into some corner of ECTS, leaving a huge void where the usual Sony and Nintendo arrangements won't be. Related Feature - E3 Coverage 2000

AMD is set to launch the first of its Palomino Athlon processors next week, and according to an anonymous source quoted by Ace's Hardware, the real name of the processor will actually be Athlon 4. Ace has a theory on the name change, too. Back in the day, K6-2 was positioned against Pentium II, and its successor, the K6-III was aimed at Pentium III. The name Athlon 4 is, in the interests of maintaining some level of marketing condescendence, a way of demonstrating that Palomino is to compete directly with Pentium 4.

Sony has asked owners of its PlayStation 2 to send the company their consoles for refurbishment if they're experiencing problems, at a cost of $75 USD. The request, which appears to have been echoed under similar circumstances in Japan, has apparently been made due to a number of cases of malfunctioning DVD-Rom lenses within the console, a problem Sony attributes to harmful cleaning solutions and dust buildup. $75 sounded a little harsh to us, but we rang up Sony here in the UK eager to give them the benefit of the doubt, and asked whether they knew of any problems. The chap we spoke to didn't seem to know what we were talking about, but interestingly, when we rang back later posing as a PS2 owner the customer services fellow sounded very matter of fact in his dealing with us, almost as if [sniff! - Ed] something fishy was going on. It's probably nothing, but our little black box still works and makes an attractive bookend, so we're not complaining. Related Feature - The Second Coming

Publisher 3DO, probably best known for their Might & Magic and Army Men games, has announced a slump in revenues for the first three months of 2001. Revenues fell by a staggering 60% to just $19m, producing a net loss of $12.5m compared to an $11.5m profit in the same period last year. Over the full twelve months to March 31st the company's revenues were down 32% to $82.8m, with a net loss of $66.2m compared to a marginal profit the previous year.

Lucasarts have officially confirmed their Xbox debut, "Star Wars Obi-Wan". Featuring the famous Jedi Knight portrayed by Ewan McGregor (and later Alec Guiness), the game looks like an adventure-orientated Dark Forces title. Force abilities return (attack, push, pull, throw, defend and jump) as well as copious amounts of lightsaber wielding in an original storyline that we're promised doesn't feature Jar Jar Binks. [All right we made that up - Ed] The game is clearly set before the events of The Phantom Menace, or possibly as an alternative, since Darth Maul is said to appear, and one supposes Obi-Wan won't get to kill him twice. All the old favourites are back in the Dark corner, with Tusken Raiders, destroyer droids, assassins, bounty hunters and the like. Obi-Wan will be a prize attraction at E3 next week in Los Angeles. Also appearing will be the PlayStation 2 version of "Escape from Monkey Island", a game this writer is very much looking forward to. After the enormous success of the game on the PC using a simple keyboard control system, it should be very easy for Lucasarts to make a big splash on the PS2 with EFMI. The company also has plans for a PS2 sequel to Star Wars Episode 1 Racer, called "Racer Revenge". The idea is that it has been eight years since Sebulba and the young Anakin Skywalker duked it out on Tatooine, and Sebulba is back and even more sinister. Racer Revenge may well be one to watch out for. Related Feature - Escape from Monkey Island Review

Rambus, whose memory is used by the Pentium 4 and PlayStation 2, has been found guilty of fraud under the oddly named Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organisations Act. Originally Rambus had taken European memory manufacturer Infineon to court in the USA to force them to pay royalties on SDRAM and DDR memory, which uses technology apparently covered by patents held by Rambus. In a sensational change of fortunes, the judge threw out all 57 of the claims lodged by Rambus after evidence of foul play emerged, and instead allowed Infineon to go ahead with a counter-claim of fraud.

Proving once again that all that talk of transitional years was baloney, Activision is the latest publisher to announce sales and profits booming last year. Net revenues during the twelve months to March 31st were up 8.4% to $620m, producing a profit of around $21m compared to a loss of $34m the previous year. Even more impressive, the first three months of 2001 have produced a profit of $875,000 from $127m revenue, compared to a loss of $53m from $104m of revenue in the same period last year.

Good news for all of our readers out there in Apple Mac land (all five of you) - Infogrames have announced a deal with Take 2 to bring several of the publisher's high profile titles to the Mac, including the highly enjoyable Caribbean dictator sim Tropico. Other games heading to the Mac will include the long overdue Max Payne, strategy game Myth III, and civilian flight sim Fly! II. According to the press release "Infogrames also obtains the Macintosh rights to several additional titles that will be announced at a later date".

Not content with merely fixing bugs, Dynamix, the creators of our game-of-the-other-week Tribes 2, have taken a hammer and chisel to the rulebook and changed everything from the amount of points per flag capture to the number of grenade available in the default loadout. First and foremost, version 22649, which you can download through Tribes 2's auto updater, introduces a new scoring system in CTF. From now on, the team receives 100 points for a flag capture and one point for touching the enemy flag on its stand. Seems stupid? Well yes, it does. Thankfully Dynamix thought ahead of themselves and touching the flag anywhere else on the battlefield does not result in a point. According to them, "this change will help prevent tie situations and will reward aggressive offensive play." These single points for touching the flag can be had at a rate of one every twenty seconds if you're particularly keen on using up some jetpack fuel. The notion of remote bases with multiple deployed inventory stations is gone too. You have to space them 20 metres apart, making the repair chap's job even more hellish. A number of other gameplay "fixes" have been implemented too, including level-specific ones. You can read about those at Euro TribesPlayers. Of course, one had hoped that Tribes 2 would be sorted out during its extensive worldwide beta test. Stuff like this should not be the subject of scrutiny several weeks after release. Why should players have to download tens of patches just to play? It's still a great game, but flipping heck, chaps...

The Register is reporting that teenagers are following in their elders' footsteps by gambling online and surfing for porn. 1.5 million UK kids supposedly visited a gambling site during March, according to a report from NetValue. We'd be interested in how this data is being collected, because in the last few weeks, whilst innocently looking around for a good source of card game rules, this writer was manhandled into about ten or twelve of the damn things via pop-up and auto-loading webpages. If all they're doing is counting clicks, perhaps they ought to look at the surfing trends. Presumably the same applies for sites that carry pornographic images, the sort of thing Connie's parental controls haven't been hiding well enough. One in five teenagers visited a porn site and stayed for a while Mum was out getting the groceries NetValue claim. NetValue's figures apparently match up with last year's too. Odd that. Apparently they find these things out by using representative panels of Internet users. So, is that really news? You tell us. It's certainly food for thought.

Hot on the heels of the recent announcement that Sierra will be publishing several of Fox Interactive's new games (including sequels to No One Lives Forever and Aliens vs Predator) comes another press release revealing that Electronic Arts will be getting in on the action as well. Games covered by this new deal include first person squad-based shooter Aliens : Colonial Marines on PlayStation 2, third person Xbox horror title Buffy The Vampire Slayer, and the downright bizarre sounding Xbox and PlayStation 2 title Simpsons Road Rage, an "action racing" game based on the ever-popular cartoon series.

As reported a fortnight ago all over the web, Intel have reduced the prices on Pentium 4 processors by as much as 50% in certain circles. Well, according to chip-chasing Inquirer guru Mike Magee, Intel now intend to chop prices on Pentium III and Celeron chips as well. As of the 27th of May, according to the leak, desktop PIIIs including the 1GHz and 933MHz chips, and virtually every Celeron on the market will be reduced. Mobile Pentium IIIs at 1GHz and 900MHz are also set for reduction. This now effectively covers Intel's entire range of products, with the exception of its server properties, which frankly we don't give a monkey's about anyway. Latest roadmaps, the report continues, claim that Tualatins .13 micron processors are closer than we think. It's not really worth guessing where Intel will go on pricing from here. Presumably they will settle to this altered price roster, but given AMD's willingness to compete, who can say for sure? From a gamer's perspective of course, who's arguing? Related Feature - P4 1.7GHz for $352

Worldwide games publisher Capcom have kicked off their summer campaign with three games to warm the joypads of PSOne owners everywhere. The first is the long-awaited Breath of Fire 4, a straight conversion of the game which did so well in America. We recently previewed Breath of Fire on Nintendo's GameBoy Advance - it looks like Capcom are catering to old and new alike with these releases. You can view a number of screenshots of the game right here on EuroGamer. Also set for release in the late June / early July slot are two Mega Man titles - Mega Man X5 and Mega Man Legends 2, both big releases for fans of the decade-spanning action series. In Mega Man X5, the evil Sigma has devised a terrible plan to destroy planet Earth, and who else but our hero and his trusty robot partner Zero have to save the day. It'll be classic Mega Man action, and the team won't have strayed far from the classic formula. The other Mega Man title, Legends 2, is undoubtedly more interesting. A proper 3D adventure, the game features dual analog control with multiple 3D camera perspectives, the highest quality graphics ever seen on the PSOne (giving even Chrono Cross a run for its money), and a game world twice as large as the original. RPG elements are rife, but in effect it's Mega Man in 3D again, and who would be without that? Screenshots of X5 and Legends 2 can be found here and here. It looks as though the recently unveiled Capcom Eurosoft is off to a flyer with its new round of PSOne games. Amusing is it not though, that every title in its latest release is a sequel? Ah well, Capcom is as Capcom does - hopefully the games will do the talking.

Gaming Gods Squaresoft have just announced their ambitious lineup for the Electronics Entertainment Expo. With less than a week to go until the LA extravaganza, Square have given Final Fantasy fans something to think about, and us hacks a lot of typing to do. But we don't mind -- not when the lineup is so impressive. For starters they will be showing off the PSOne bundle pack "Final Fantasy Chronicles", featuring Final Fantasy IV and Chrono Trigger. Granted, Chrono Trigger isn't a Final Fantasy title but nobody in their right mind would argue with such a fabulous release. Rumour has it CT has been given a visual makeover with CGI cutscenes interspersed with the action and that FFIV might as well be another game entirely now, with a two player mode bundled into the action. We can't wait. Also on the show floor bearing the FF name will be Final Fantasy X on PlayStation 2, the tenth game in the popular series and after the success of IX a highly anticipated piece of RPG history-in-the-making. The one thing that will probably dwarf all others though is Square Pictures' first full-length animated motion picture, Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, featuring the vocal talents of Alec Baldwin, Steve Buscemi, Peri Gilpin, Ming-Na, Ving Rhames, Donald Sutherland and James Woods, and directed by Hironobu Sakaguchi. You only have to look at the trailer from the other day to realise how incredible this film will be, and the chance to see even more of it at E3 is one a lot of people won't want to pass up. Actually watching the trailer and looking for traces of the computer generation... Well, considering the incredible visuals that make up most films today, you wouldn't know it was CG unless someone told you. For more details, check out the press release. Related Feature - Final Fantasy about to become reality

The game will debut at the US launch, featuring six full skate parks and hidden levels unique to the GBA version. Visually the third dimension has to go, making it less than a perfect conversion, but the skaters use up to 300 polygons each and the third dimension is faked remarkably. The lack of detail in a 300 polygon model, PC fans might argue, is enough to make Doom 2 look like a 2001 release, but given the size of the GBA screen, things are slightly more promising. Skate parks are viewed from a fixed perspective, which is a departure from the classic (and highly imitable) behind-the-action approach, but thanks to the indistinguishable-from-3D skater models the GBA genuinely realises a proper vision of Tony Hawk's. The six parks are The Hangar, School Yard, Marseilles France, New York, and Skate Street, borrowed from the console versions, as well as the usual hidden bonuses. According to the developer one of the special extras is a re-rendered version of the Warehouse level from THPS the original, which they liked so much they decided to re-do.

If having pasty white skin, greasy hair and a chronic caffeine addiction isn't enough to mark you as a gamer, now you can buy a range of Cyberathlete Professional League branded goods and look even sillier. Products on offer include everything from hats and t-shirts emblazoned with the pro-gaming organisation's funky logo through to CPL lapel pins and dog tags - no doubt handy if you pass out during a LAN party half buried by soggy pizza boxes and the paramedics need to identify you to contact your next of kin. Other goodies expected to follow will include temporary tattoos, player trading cards and gym bags.

A new report from research company DFC Intelligence has forecast that as many as 95 million people could be playing games online by 2005, although we would hazard a guess that many of these people will be playing the likes of Hearts, Bridge and the fiendishly addictive Wordox rather than Counter-Strike, EverQuest and Starcraft. It's also worth pointing out that most online gaming concerns are currently losing money hand over fist, but the success stories are certainly not to be sniffed at - report co-author Jessica Mulligan is reported as saying that "some of the online games currently on the market are going to generate well over $300 million in lifetime revenues", which is a hefty chunk of change by any standards.

French publisher UbiSoft confirmed today that they will be publishing Verant's massively multiplayer first person shooter Planetside here in Europe, as well as in Australia and Japan. Expected to reach these desolate shores some time next spring, the game will see thousands of players taking on the role of corporate mercenaries fighting over bases scattered across an entire planet, with settings ranging from deserts to icy wastelands.

Novalogic have lifted the skirts of Necrocide : The Dead Must Die to reveal a glimpse at its decomposing legs, in the shape of seven new screenshots (two of them exclusive to EuroGamer) and some information about the game's storyline and the various factions and settings which you will encounter. Apparently the game centers on a conflict between two rival groups of vampire, the Khaleed (who want to rule the world) and the Amarande (who want to live peacefully alongside mortal men), who are fighting over a magical stone called the Saxum. This allows vampires to turn essence (the magical force that gives them their power) into blood - obviously a handy tool for any self-respecting creature of the night.

Support for Microsoft's Xbox console continues to spread faster than foot and mouth disease, with Sports Interactive the latest company to announce their undying love for Bill Gates and friends. Soccer fans can now look forward to a new version of the ever popular Championship Manager football management sim for the Xbox, marking the first time that a version of the game has been released on a console.

The court battle between Rambus and Europe's biggest memory manufacturer Infineon took an interesting new turn last night, as a judge ruled that Infineon could proceed with charges of fraud against Rambus. The American company has been trying to force rival memory manufacturers to pay licensing fees for technology used in SDRAM and DDR memory for some time now, and several major companies have caved in after threats of legal action while Infineon, Micron and Hyundai fought Rambus in the courts.

- AMD, memory provided by CrucialPrice - £Variable