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Valve have been unveiling their new Multicast Spectator technology for Half-Life at this weekend's SPEAKEASY.net CPL event in Dallas, and for those of us who couldn't make it to the Counter-Strike tournament to see the system in action for ourselves, project manager Erik Johnson was kind enough to explain what it is and what it does, as well as giving a hint of what the future may hold in an interview with Stomped.

Nexon have announced that their award-winning massively multiplayer real-time strategy game Shattered Galaxy has been doubled in size today, with the opening up of a second planet for "colonization, exploration and conquest". The game sports a combination of fast-paced tactical battles with support for up to eight players and a long term planet-wide war which everybody takes part in. It also comes highly recommended, having walked away with a total of four gongs (including Best Game) at the recent Independent Games Festival. If you want to give it a try you can take part in the free public beta test, and the latest version is available to download from the Shattered Galaxy website.

Rumours of the hardcore sim genre's demise have evidently been somewhat exaggerated, with a handful of promising flight sims currently in the works and now word of a new submarine sim from Sonalysts and Electronic Arts, building on their work on Fleet Command and 688(I) Hunter / Killer. The new game, currently going by the rather clumsy title of "Sub Command : Seawolf / Akula / 688(I)", allows you to take command of any of the eponymous three submarines as you take on enemy naval and submarine forces, carry out intelligence operations and sneak in and out of hostile waters. And Sonalysts' Kim Castro is eager to make it clear that "hardcore sim players are our prime audience and we will not dumb down the realism for the sake of easier play", instead allowing players to customise the difficulty to match their tastes.

- CDVSystem Requirements -   Pentium 233 or equivalent   32Mb RAM   400Mb hard drive space   DirectX graphics card

When we reviewed Serious Sam a month ago, Take 2 Europe told us that the fast-paced first person shooter would have an RRP (Recommended Retail Price) of £19.99 when it was released on Friday March 30th. As the suggested price in the USA was $19.99 this made a certain amount of sense. But since then the game's release here in Europe has been pushed back by two weeks for reasons unknown, and it will now be appearing on store shelves tomorrow (April 13th).

Microsoft's announcement a while back that they were to allocate $500m (£347m) to Xbox advertising worldwide gave its critics something to chew on. After all, money can buy you friends in this business. At a conference with developers last week, Sony Computer Entertainment announced its plans to splash out £124m on a European marketing campaign for the next 12 months. The move will obviously inspire more publishers and developers to put their collective muscle behind the console - that's certainly one of the reasons Sony chose the development conference to announce it. SCE also wants to strengthen relations with developers/publishers, introducing new incentives like cheaper development kits and the like. Another thing Sony want to do is get more developers and publishers to produce Platinum versions of their titles, lowering the bar for acceptance into the range from 300,000 units shipped to a lower, as-yet undetermined number.

European adventure game fans waiting for the release of Myst III : Exile will have to wait a few months longer, as publisher UbiSoft (who recently acquired the title as part of their buy out of the Learning Company's games division) have decided to hold the game back for another four months. We had been expecting it to be released in the UK on May 11th, and indeed the US will still be getting the game some time next month. But UbiSoft today informed us that they are delaying the game's arrival on this side of the pond until September to allow more time for localisation, with a simultaneous launch across the whole of Europe now planned.

With all the attention surrounding the recent release of Black & White, it's clear that there are many people out there who still have fond memories of the work of Peter Molyneux's old company, Bullfrog.

On the 21st of April, the Lanarena Maidenhead Entertainment Centre will play host to the "AMD Invitational XS Cup", a Quake 3 tournament to end all tournaments. Eight "pro-gamers" from Europe and another eight from the States will represent their respective continents in single-elimination, two man team elimination and four man team games. The teams, confirmed in a Lanarena press release, includes big names such as Blokey, DOOMer and Lakerman on the European side, and Fatality, Wombat and other notables on the American side. Carlton Television is apparently planning to film the tournament for a new series it has in the works called "Surfer's Paradise", following European Team Manager Sujoy Roy. In a prepared statement Lanarena MD Dominic Mulroy commented. "Gaming in the UK is becoming the number one pass time and those that play wish to compete in an environment that is equal, stable, secure from cheating and very fast," which he feels Lanarena represents. "We hope that by attracting some of the most famous Professional Gamers to the UK, this amazing event will help publicise tournament gaming in general, and that more UK gamers will train to become the best at this new sport and help represent our country at the forthcoming Cyber Games in Korea at the end of the year." Those wishing to spectate are encouraged to email Dominic. Full details can be found in the press release.

Although a sweeping architectural change, uptake of the Pentium 4 has been marginalised by restrictive pricing. In order to try and get more chips into the homes of consumers and business users alike, Intel has announced dramatic pricedrops to take place over the next month in the States. The price of a chip sold to wholesale will drop as much as 50% The new pricing will be as follows -

Indrema, the console project which was to combine open-sourced gaming, DVD playback, interactive TV, MP3 and Internet functionality into a sub-$300 set-top box has had the carpet pulled from under it, as the technology sector downturn claims yet another victim. "Although there's a lot of interest in the product, the grim reality is that after six months of looking, we're not able to find funding to continue the operation," president John Gildred told videobusiness.com. According to Gildred some staff were already being made redundant, and the rest will be ousted this week. Since January 2000 when Indrema was first conceived, the company has watched the market slowly turn on its head, and witnessed its plentiful funding grind to a halt. Indrema reignited interest in the bedroom-programming industry of yore, with its developers claiming the toolkit would have been available online open-source for anybody to download and develop with. Games were to have been distributed through retail and online. Indrema would have had a tough time even without the technology sector downturn. Competing in a market that takes no prisoners, Indrema would have gone up against PlayStation 2, Xbox and Game Cube, even if the company was hoping to avoid such parallels. Gildred himself still believes in Indrema. "I will develop a similar product and re-invent it under another umbrella without the videogame options," he said. His new employer is a major Japanese consumer electronics company, unnamed by videobusiness.com's report.

We showered it with praise in our KT133A motherboard roundup last week, but according to reports at the 'board's only registered stockist, IWill don't seem too concerned about getting them into this country. This is despite a representative of the company approaching us about further review materials. "Bad news for all those who have ordered the I-Will KK266-R motherboard or I-Will bundle," the report on Overclockers UK begins. "I-Will did not ship last week as promised but will be shipping tomorrow." No explanation is offered, but OcUK head honcho Mark Proudfoot, with whom we have locked horns in the past, expressed anger at IWill's apparent disinterest in the United Kingdom. "To say I'm angry about this situation is an understatement byt I'm letting you know as soon as possible. Please accept my apologies for any inconvenience caused. If you have ordered one we will be contacting you today to take your instructions." Apology accepted. Related Feature - April's Marching Motherboards

Computer and video games maker Acclaim Entertainment have reported an encouraging 2nd quarter profit, based on a cost-cutting iniative that also resulted in lower revenues. Earnings were at an even $500,000 or 1 cent per diluted share on revenues of $40.4 million. Last year profits for the 2nd quarter were $19 million, but at 34 cents per share on revenues of $65.9 million. The narrow profit goes against losses predicted by analysts. "Operating expenses for the second quarter decreased by 48 percent from the same period one year ago," the company said in a statement. It cited this cost-cutting exercise as an important factor in the results. The company expects to keep up this trend of profits in the third and fourth fiscal quarters.

One of last year's more colourful titles was Rune, a viking themed third person action game based on the Unreal Tournament engine. As a young warrior called Ragnar on a quest for revenge after the death of his father, you found yourself battling your way through the Norse hell and other popular holiday destinations. Since the game's release developers Human Head have announced that they are working on a new multiplayer version of the game called Halls of Valhalla, which will include all the multiplayer content from the original game for newcomers to the title, while adding a large number of new deathmatch maps and online modes for veterans.

ELSA is starting to promote new graphics cards in its "Gladiac" series, with the announcement today of three new cards and a price drop. The "Gladiac 511" uses the recently announced MX 400 GPU, aimed at "home or office multi-media users and PC gamers who will appreciate the performance of the 200MHz processor." The three cards are the Gladiac 511 TV-Out, Gladiac 511 TwinView and Gladiac TwinView PCI. The first costs £119.99 taking the onboard TV-Out port (S-Video) into consideration, whilst the other two retail for £99.99 each. MX has always been aimed at office as well as home users, and the new pricing strategy and broad featureset pretty much confirms that. According to an ELSA spokesperson, the original Gladiac MX is to retail at £89.99 from this day forward. MX cards have steadily dropped in price for a fortnight, with ABit and Chaintech models regularly appearing in bargain bins for less than £70.

One of the more interesting titles amongst the horde of massively multiplayer role-playing games under construction at the moment is Project Entropia from Swedish company Mind Ark. With a reassuringly original futuristic setting, it promises to be a welcome change from the orcs and goblins that dominate the majority of such games. It also features an innovative economic system which will allow players to exchange real life money for items and cash in the world of Calypso without making this necessary to progress in the game.

- AMDPrice - £215

Web-gaming enterprise WildTangent has announced its third term funding led by Sony Pictures Digital Entertainment and Accenture Technology Ventures with ATI, New York-based Millennium Technology Ventures, Washington Mutual and International Data Group (IDG) Ventures also becoming new investors. The funding totals some $34 million. Its first round of funding was a meagre $2m in February 1999, with its second round kicking in at $15m in March 2000. The widespread interest in WildTangent stems from its "Web driver", which allows websites to display the kind of graphics high-end video and computer games deliver on a daily basis. There are plenty of examples of this at the company's website, listed under "Mind Candy". Cute. Delivering the web driver via a certified installer, WildTangent-coded websites take web-based gaming to the next level. Or at least it will - at the moment the games are fairly simplistic, but a promising indication of things to come. With $34 million in investment, the company aims to accelerate the technology's growth, presumably with new additions to the development team. What's surprising about the investment is that it comes in a financial climate that threatens the very existence of online gaming. GSPs like Barry's World and Games Inferno have come very close to dissolution, and similar services have already practically fallen off the face of the earth, when only a few short months ago they were on every gamer's lips. To triumph over this adversity, WildTangent will not only have to perfect its technology but also turn a profit from it. A big'un.

Most gamers are aware of memory bottlenecks on the latest 3D graphics cards, where the only way to unleash the full potential of the chip is to gradually increase memory clock speed, and use increasingly exotic (and more expensive) flavours of memory. What they may not be aware of is that with the latest 1GHz+ processors from AMD and Intel, system RAM has also become a performance variable. Motherboards have started to allow users to tweak RAM latencies, and the very way in which they deal with data. The performance memory market has grown out of this now widespread consumer need for "faster memory", and has been recognised by large hardware developers all over the world. Today, we're going to compare memory produced by two of the world's finest; Crucial, and Mushkin. Both companies now have UK/European distribution deals in place. Crucial supply direct and via resellers (most notably Overclockers UK), whereas Mushkin is only available in the UK via hardware e-tailor The Overclocking Store.

Reaffirming its plans to have PlayStation 2 users in Japan on a broadband network by 2002, Sony have announced a new version of the console to go on sale next week, featuring support for a built-in hard disk and broadband adapter. This will mean that anybody who buys a PS2 from now on will be ready to accept high density storage and a broadband adapter, whenever Sony is ready. This addition isn't as big as Sony would like to make out. Most of the PS2s shipped in Europe and North America feature the expansion slots, but until next week Japanese units will not. Sony didn't have much to offer in terms of detail on the new hard disk and broadband adapter, apart from the (now fairly repetitive claims) that it will be several times the speed of current connections and that the hard disk will allow users to download data and and programs, and allow for more interactive video games. All of this won't be terribly helpful to PlayStation 2 owners who end up with consoles that don't feature the functionality. Sony has announced no plans for their benefit. Sony still wants to ship two million PlayStation 2s a month for the rest of the fiscal year. Related Feature - Sony plans made public

Activision have moved to dismiss rumours that could possibly associate it with the Financial Times report about Xbox last week. In the report, which we commented on here, the London broadsheet suggested that the Xbox would be delayed in Europe until next year, something which regular readers will already knew. The line was misconstrued however by traders, who thought this could signal a worldwide delay, and plunged top-performing stock in nVidia, Electronic Arts, Microsoft and others associated with the project down several points. Speaking in a press release, Robert Kotick, Co-Chairman and CEO of Activision said that "Activision is eagerly anticipating the upcoming launch of Xbox. We received Xbox development kits in the fall and have a number of teams deep in development on several exciting titles for the platform, including Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2x". Tony Hawk's is expected to debut at E3 in Los Angeles this May. Related Feature - Xbox "right on track"

German company Fishtank Games, who published Nival's excellent 3D role-playing game Evil Islands, are hoping for more of the same from Arx Fatalis. Developed by France's Arkane Studios, it's rather enthusiastically described by them as "the game Ultima Underworld fans have been waiting for". Set in a world where the sun has disappeared from view, sending all the inhabitants of the kingdom of Arx burrowing into the ground for sanctuary, the game will offer a first person view as you explore eight levels of catacombs and all the usual trolls and goblins we've come to know and love.

The CPL was busy last week, with a whole flurry of short press releases emerging from the pro-gaming event organisers. First up was the announcement of two new sponsors for the company's SPEAKEASY.net event this weekend, in the form of monitor manufacturer ViewSonic and CPU giant Intel. As well as providing cold hard cash, the companies will also be showing off their wares at the tournament - ViewSonic will supply no less than 50 of their new Perfect Flat 790 monitors for use in the Counter-Strike competition, while Intel will be demonstrating the Pentium 4 in action at this and future CPL events.

- DatelPrice - £29.99

Yesterday saw the long awaited UK release of Peter Molyneux's latest god game, Black & White. Most shops seemed to have a plentiful supply in stock, apart from my local independent computer store which had only ordered one copy - a major miscalculation, one of the salesmen admitted. When I arrived there at 10am one of the staff had already snaffled the lone copy of the game, and was threatening physical violence against anybody who tried to take it from him.

PC-2100 DDR SDRAM is clearly very hot stuff indeed. Micron Technologies' memory selling subsidiary Crucial, which began offering the DIMMs on its Web site on Monday, claims to be selling modules at the rate of one ever five seconds. That may explain why we've been getting messages that the company doesn't actually have any for delivery, despite offering the technology at near PC-133 prices all week. A Crucial spokeswoman tacitly denied the charge, citing the hot cakes-like rate at which the parts are being ordered. Of course, selling a product and shipping it aren't the same thing. However, with Crucial's PC2100 product arriving in volume in the UK now, we'd be surprised it really isn't shipping in the US. But take that figure: one every five seconds. Assuming a full 24-hour sales period, that works out at around 345,600 modules since Monday (counting Monday and Friday as half-days). At $126.89 for a 256MB module, that's $43,884,288 it's made in sales already. So either Crucial's being a tad overenthusiastic, or this memory business is a darn sight more lucrative than we previously thought. Related Feature - UK gets Crucial memory boost

Gameplay has announced that it is undertaking a "strategic review" of the company and its options for the future with the assistance of Commerzbank Securities. The ailing British company has confirmed that it has been in "informal discussions" with a number of other companies since it "restructured" (that's biz speak for sacking 275 staff) at the beginning of February. At the time Gameplay chairman Mark Strachan assured us that "there isn't a For Sale sign on Gameplay", after rumours emerged suggesting that Cisco was about to take a 20% stake in the British company. It's now looking likely that this statement was not entirely true.

Hype. I hate the word, but unfortunately there is no other way to explain the fanfare surrounding the release of Summoner, because good though it is, it can never escape the carniverous attentions of the press. If you were expecting a typical console RPG, think again. Summoner is a major departure, heavy laden with text and a deep, evolving storyline. The game centres on a young lad called Joseph, who has the power to summon ethereal demons to do his bidding. Unfortunately he's denied himself the powers for a long time, because as a child, while inexperienced, he accidentally slaughtered his entire hometown. Which needless to say didn't go down too well. The game is filled with bizarre plot twists surrounding the progress of young Joseph and his three companions. The levels system that controls your troupe's powers is one of the game's strong points. You get to choose which of the character's skills is improved as a result of your experience, and since only certain characters can wield certain weapons and special abilities, it's essential to afford each of them equal priority. The battle system borrows heavily from last year's Squaresoft PlayStation smash hit Vagrant Story, using real-time and turn-based combat allowing you to perform Chain Attacks by pulling your weapon in various directions with the D-Pad as you strike. There is a complex magical association between all living creatures, weapons and such that becomes a key factor in how much damage your attacks can do, as well. Think of it as Summoner's version of The Force.

During the American presidential elections last year, many people in the gaming community were backing George "Dubya" Bush because of the threat they saw from Al Gore's running mate Joe Lieberman, a well-known critic of violent games and movies. Which today seems a little ironic, as Bush's recently appointed Attorney General John Ashcroft once again lays into the "culture of violence" in America.

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