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Interplay's Black Isle Studios division has announced that it is working on a new role-playing game titled Torn. The company is promising a mixture of great 3D graphics, solid gameplay, an original fantasy world and real-time combat, all powered by an enhanced version of the brand new Lithtech 3.0 engine. Interplay's claim that the game will feature "a twisting, epic tale of noble allies, vile treachery, vengeful tyrants and maddened gods that will set the precedent for fantasy and adventure games to come" might sound like hyperbole, but given that Black Isle have been responsible for a string of great role-playing games such as Fallout, Planescape Torment and Icewind Dale, expectations are obviously very high.

From the makers of Action Replay 2 comes Game Studio, an emulation system for the PlayStation 2, which allows gamers to play GameBoy games on the PS2. Once you've booted up Game Studio, you plug the GamePort device into a memory card slot and insert a GameBoy or GameBoy Color game of your choosing. Game Studio then plays it on the big screen. Anybody who was around during the heady days of the SNES will remember Nintendo's own answer to this, the Super GameBoy, but it is not thought that GameBoy Color games were supported, making the Game Studio something of a breakthrough. "Game Studio takes advantage of the PS2's bi-linear filtering to display your Game Boy games in hi-res, with smoother edges and graded colours," the press release beams. Games like Zelda: Link's Awakening (arguably the best Zelda game ever) and of course the ubiquitous Pokemon franchise can now appear in their full screen glory on your television. Obviously they lose their portability as a result. The Game Studio features eight built-in games to get you going; Space Invasion, Karate Joe, Painter, ATV Racing, Full Time, Hang Time, Pocket Smash Out and Race Time. In total, Datel reckon you would have to spend £100 to secure these independantly. Most of that would of course be bus fares to dealers who still carry them. The Game Studio "Games To Go" feature allows you to download the built-in titles onto a cartridge for use in your actual GameBoy too. Whether this will mean more free games distributed by Datel via their website is unknown. One would think that if it does happen, the games will not take the form of ROM images. If that happened, any old pirated GameBoy game would function on the Game Studio. Game Studio is actually powered by the Action Replay technology, so you can also use it to gives yourself the edge in games that are proving too difficult. Not to mention expose any easter eggs left by the developers. Oh, and the games will learn to make use of the Dual Shock 2 controller's "rumble" function - pretty neat, eh? Game Studio is due out in April.

The CPL's European division has unveiled its latest event, to take place in the Dutch town of Loosdrecht near Amsterdam on May 11th to 13th. Featuring $35,000 of cash prizes and room for up to 800 players, it promises to be one of the biggest pro-gaming events held so far in Europe. Highlights will include a 192 player Quake 3 tournament and a 48 team Counter-Strike contest. CPL-Europe are also promising that a certain Miss Stevie Case will be in attendance. Since leaving her job at Ion Storm where she worked on .. ahem .. Daikatana with boyfriend John Romero, Killcreek has been an "ambassador" for the CPL. We're not quite sure if that's a step up or down in the world, or merely a sideways promotion for a woman who is sadly better known for posing topless in Playboy magazine than for her level design skills...

Blizzard is probably the most successful developer on the US west coast at the moment, with a string of hit games such as Diablo II, Warcraft II and Starcraft behind them. So when Blizzard's Bill Roper dropped by the Covent Garden Hotel in central London as part of his press tour of Europe earlier this week, natually EuroGamer was there to see the company's latest projects in action, and to find out more about what Blizzard have planned for us over the next year...

Commercial overclocking specialists asetek are showing off their 2GHz "Vapochill" unit at CeBit this week. Powered by a P4 1.5GHz, the Vapochill uses special vapor phase cooling technologies, which, after massive R&D, are now proven to cool processors so that they can effectively run at higher speeds for longer. The system has been tested successfully by hardware guru Dr. Tom Pabst at Tom's Hardware. Although the system is not ready for launch yet, asetek claim it will be by the end of the month, which will mean that hardware buyers with cash burning a whole in their pockets can pick up 2GHz systems at last, approximately a year after the 1GHz machines first became available to the public. How's that for speed growth then? We reported last week a chap in Japan who had reached the 2GHz mark using some seriously messed up liquid nitrogen cooling system. Vapochill are not expected to go quite that far. Related Feature - Pentium 4 2GHz overclocking drama

With the Kyro II about to debut in Guillemot's "3D Prophet 4500", Videologic have taken steps to piggy-back the chip's publicity by re-releasing its "Vivid!" Kyro-based card at a purse-friendly £64 ex. VAT, which puts it at around the same mark as the cheapest of GeForce 2 MX cards. A new 32Mb version of the card called "Vivid!XS" features TV-Out, better DVD playback and the newer Kyro II chipset! The XS will cost just £84 ex. VAT, which also puts it at around the mark of its competitors the Radeon VE and the GeForce 2 MX, even if the VE is aimed at business. The only problem is that both the MX and VE offer dual VGA output at that price point, whereas the Kyro has no support for the technology. Nonetheless, Videologic president Kevin Dale says that "For high-intensity gaming Vivid!XS provides segment leading performance at a very affordable cost with an enormous effective fill rate, intense scene complexity and all with the dazzling visual quality of full 32-bit rendering". Also on the release agenda for today are revised "silver, performance tuned" versions of the popular home cinema products the DigiTheatre DTS, DigiTheatre and the DRX-601ES digital radio tuner.

Content and web-games outfit GameLoft has closed its UK business after less than a year of operation. Speaking from a pedestal somewhere in the United States, a spokesman claimed that GameLoft sees "no profit perspective in the exploitation of its Internet portal", which is a nice way of saying that their business strategy relied too heavily on non-existant advertising revenue. The company will move to "concentrate on exploiting its game catalogue on a pay per play basis, on the web and interactive TV where strong business opportunities have already been identified". No staff cuts have been mentioned at the US branch, but most if not all of the UK employees have been given the boot. Just before six months of operation, GameLoft booted out most of its content employees worldwide after realising that it had no strategy for financially exploiting their hard work. The company has been in financial difficulties for some time, and was about to move its UK arm out of an expensive "loft" in Guildford to a smaller premises elsewhere in town. The website is still up at the time of writing, with a teary-eyed Article Archive placed prominently on the front page. Nothing has been updated since the 21st of March however, when it is believed all employees were ejected. Plenty of content operations have had to pack their bags recently, as the dotcom bubble burst. Trend-setters BarrysWorld went into voluntary liquidation at the beginning of this month, but were rescued by Electronics Boutique a fortnight ago. Others that have hit the dust recently include Freeloader.com (yesterday), c|net's GameCenter and Gamers.com. All have had interesting ways of describing the cutbacks, but our favourite was Gamers.com, which called the widespread sackings as the removal of "luxuries".

It will come as no surprise to anybody who owns the PlayStation or GameBoy versions of "Spider-Man" that Activision have won the rights to produce games based on the forthcoming film. Just the same as it was no surprise to see them producing a PlayStation 2 version of the original titles. According to the press release, the film is slated in for release in May of next year, which gives Activision and presumably Neversoft a good lead time to get cracking on a game. The agreement with Spider-Man Merchandising L.P., a limited partnership between Marvel Enterprises, Inc. and Sony Pictures Consumer Products Inc., gives Activision the right to develop games based on the film franchise on all next-generation gaming platform, including the PC and handhelds, as well as every console under the sun. The film will be directed by Sam Raimi, renowned for success stories like "Xena: Warrior Princess" and er, "TimeCop". That said, he did do "The Evil Dead," so he knows what he's doing. Although no release date for the game of the film of the comic has been touted, we'd guestimate just before the movie's release, or possibly Christmas. Either way the game will rightfully generate enormous revenues, especially if it's as well produced as the comic versions. Related Feature - Spider-Man Review

Sony's Playstation 2 welcomes releases from several major players this week, including "International Superstar Socer Pro Evolution 2" and "Zone of Enders" from Konami. The latter includes the first ever playable demo of Metal Gear Solid 2, and will sell through the roof based on that fact alone we are assured. Also making its way onto the PS2 this week is the eagerly awaited "Star Wars Starfighter" from Activision, which finally gives Star Wars fans something to get their teeth sunk into on the new console. Elsewhere, the PSOne welcomes "Tomb Raider 2 Ricochet" from Eidos and "KISS Pinball" from Take 2 this week, and also from Take 2 is PC extravaganza "Serious Sam". Meanwhile the beige box also gets a boost with the release of the "Icewind Dale : Heart of Winter" expansion pack and "F1 Racing Championship" from UbiSoft, not to mention the dubious honour of arcade-style shooter "Star Wars : Battle For Naboo". The Dreamcast gets a light serving, with the exceptional "Starlancer" finally arriving after unforseen delays from Ubi Soft. Oh, and anyone who was at ECTS can't fail to remember "Erotica Island" from Flare Media, the only game daring enough to show off two very brave young lasses in bikinis. The game is finally released this week, but we regard it almost as warmly as the atrocious "Football Strip" idea. Not one for the kids, or anyone, for that matter. Related Feature - Release Dates

GameSpot has caught up with Epic at the Game Developers Conference in San Jose, and brings a report on the status of the Unreal Technology, currently being used in at least two games, "Unreal 2" from Legend and an as-yet unnamed title at Epic, which many are calling "Unreal Warfare". According to GameSpot, Epic didn't show off any actual gameplay footage, but did demonstrate level design and architectual technology that's being used for both games. The short article focuses on the visual quality of the Unreal Technology, highlighting the engine's ability to shift enormous amounts of polygons onscreen at once, and its user-friendliness amongst developers thanks to excellent 3DStudio Max support. Unlike Doom 3, which was recently shown off at MacWorld, the Unreal engine can still do all of this on a GeForce 2 card. Prescripted footage looks to make up quite a big part of the two Unreal engine games in development, and several scenarios were briefly demonstrated, including a dropship sequence, and a journey through a misty swamp with dense foliage. Developers who have licenses to use the Unreal engine can already make use of this technology, because as usual Epic are keeping them in the loop in a timely fashion, something that has always impressed their partners. Another report on GameSpot indicates that Shogo 2 could be in development. Related Feature - Unreal2.com shows off

Reuters are reporting this morning that Sony have finally broken the 10 million units shipped globally barrier, a target they set themselves at the launch of the console last year but were unable to meet on schedule due to setbacks in production. Sony Computer Entertainment wants to ship 20 million units in the 2001/02 business year, which kicks off in April, producing 1.5 million in April alone and 2 million a month in the autumn. According to analysts, at the debut of the PlayStation 2 in Japan last year, it sold triple the amount of PlayStations shipped in the same post-launch period in December 1994. After production issues with a key graphical chip arose though, the target of 10 million in the 2000/01 business year had to be scaled back to 9 million. Profits were therefore marred slightly, and with Nintendo and Microsoft both aiming to launch consoles this year, SCE will have some serious marketing to work out. On a related note, Take 2 Interactive's "Oni" has been confirmed as the biggest-selling PlayStation 2 game so far. Read more here. Related Feature - Sony's plans made public

Yesterday, Sensaura used to Game Developers Conference 2001 to let people know that it has won the contract to handle 3D positional audio in Microsoft's Xbox games console. The Xbox's audio capabilities have never been in doubt - the console features the most powerful audio processor ever built in to such a console, now with 64 hardware-accelerated channels of Sensaura 3D Positional Audio (S-3DPA). The Xbox will also include three more hardware-accelerated technologies from Sensaura, the I3DL2 compliant EnvironmentFX reverb engine, as well as MacroFX and ZoomFX, which help make the sounds more realistic. In software, the technologies will be manipulated via an enhanced API based on DirectSound. "Sensaura has become the de facto 3D audio technology standard on the PC," says MD David Monteith, and naturally he is delighted to see the company gain some recognition by having its work singled out for use in the Xbox. The technology itself is based on 11 years of research and development including work at the famous Abbey Road Studios in London and Capitol Studios in Los Angeles. You can find Sensaura technology in over 40 million PCs worldwide, as they hold licenses with Yamaha, ESS Technology, Analog Devices Inc., Crystal/Cirrus Logic and nVIDIA amongst others. This announcement comes barely a month after Microsoft and Tetratel quietly announced the Xbox's inclusion of the EyeFX 3D glasses technology. With true 3D positional audio and EyeFX, gamers can look forward to some truly stunning realism in Xbox games. Related Feature - Tetratel to provide EyeFX tech to Xbox

As with most of Sonic's games, Shuffle is a direct competitor to a Mario title. You can trace it right back to when the first home consoles were kicking about. From Marioland on the GameBoy to Mario 64, a Sonic game has never been far behind. Mario Party is Sonic Shuffle's inspiration, and unfortunately for the sprightly blue hedgehog, this one hasn't worked out quite so well. With Mario Party, Nintendo created an eclectic board game, but in the form of a cartridge rather than a lot of counters and dice, which meant less faffing around drunk and knocking over the carefully arranged piles of counters, and more button bashing and general rowdiness. Sonic Shuffle has the looks - it uses the enchanting cell-shading technique put to use by Jet Set Radio - but thanks to the atrocious load times and overly complex instructions it will appeal to very few, and certainly fails to hit the target so clearly defined by Nintendo. Oh, and it's boring. The audio and visuals are deceptively good, but did a good job initially of hiding the hideous gaps in the gameplay. The characters are all well defined thanks to the cell-shading technique, and the actual game board is nicely textured and brightly coloured. Everything looks very much like a cartoon, with smooth 60 frames per second animations, and it's all accompanied by cheerful little musical numbers. Each of the characters has sufficient voice acting to back them up, and overall the game is just… pleasant to be around.

Elf-lovers and tree-huggers across the land were morris dancing in celebration when the Gathering of Developers announced that they would be publishing a sequel to their surprise hit Age of Wonders, a turn-based fantasy strategy game with more than a passing resemblance to the Heroes of Might & Magic series. Developed once again by Triumph Studios, the sequel will feature improvements to both gameplay and graphics. Amongst the most drastic changes to the formula is the way in which leaders will work in the new game.

There was a time when it was only Intel that told the consumer bare-faced lies about release dates. They would proclaim this, that and the other to be "available now", only to concede later that nobody on the planet can get you one for love nor money. Nowadays though, both Intel and AMD are at it, and today it's AMD's turn. The chip giant chose CeBit in Hannover to announce that its 1.3 and 1.33GHz parts are available now, and to demonstrate them to the press. The 1.3GHz chip is a 200 or 266MHz FSB part, whereas the 1.33GHz part is 266MHz only. According to AMD, if you wanted to, you could go out and buy one today. What a load of cobblers. Ringing round a few dealers this morning it became apparent that none of them have even heard of the 1.33GHz Athlon, but moreover, none of them even have the 1.3GHz chip! We spoke to Bolton-based Scan Computers, an industry favourite for specialist hardware sales, and they told us that despite advertising the fact that they will have chips this week, in actual fact the 1.3GHz Athlon is not due to be released to them until the middle of April. As for the 1.33GHz chip, well, he had no idea, and suggested I looked at AMD's website. So I did. And what do I discover? This press release. An extract: "At CeBIT, AMD today announced its continued industry leadership position by introducing the 1.33GHz and 1.3GHz AMD Athlon™ processors." The key point to note is the paragraph that none of the newswire reporters bothered to mention in their promotion of the new processors. "Systems featuring AMD's newest processors are available now from leading U.S. manufacturers such as Compaq Computer Corp., Hewlett-Packard Company and micronpc.com, as well as from top manufacturers abroad, including German-based MAXDATA." So in actual fact, nobody has 1.3GHz Athlons, except major US and European OEMs. Or do they? A quick glance around one of the namedropped sites, micronpc.com, revealed no evidence of such a system. Their configuration engine doesn't allow for the input of either of the new AMD parts. In fact, the only site amongst those namedropped in the press release that features Athlon systems based around the new releases is HP.com, whose absurdly difficult to find configurator features two separate 1.3GHz Athlon systems. No 1.33GHz. And at any rate, we feel that this may be some sort of error or badly-coded last-minute inclusion, since the "Details" page for both systems reveal "Included Features: 1.2 GHz AMD® Athlon® Processor". Ho-hum. Closer to home and companies like Dabs.com still plead long lead times (and have no mention of the 1.33GHz chip). Again, OEMs don't have a clue, and Dell don't do Athlons anyway. Major US website PriceWatch.com, which many swear by over there, also carries no mention of either of the chips, which are of course supposedly "available now". You may think we're being a touch unpleasant over all this, but we are paying consumers just like everyone else, and tired of having the mickey taken out of us. When companies blow their trumpets in public, we're more than happy to give them some promotion, as long as they don't take us and our readers for a ride. Wake up, AMD, and start delivering!

Eighteen months ago EuroGamer was at the official announcement of Warcraft III at ECTS 1999. Developers Blizzard were saying their latest game would be a revolutionary new blend of role-playing and strategy elements, with their first real-time 3D graphics engine powering the whole thing. And mighty impressive it was looking too.

Earlier this week, hardware enthusiast website OCWorkBench posted a story about an exhibition in Singapore Suntec City, which they claim not only had Leadtek Winfast GeForce 3 boards on display, but for sale. They even produced a picture, which you can view here. We were highly dubious, having heard claims quite to the contrary, that nothing would be happening until the drivers were finalised. Speaking exclusively to EuroGamer, Philip Wynn Jones, nVidia's European PR Manager said after viewing the website that "Leadtek aren't selling any boards at the moment, since the release driver isn't ready". To be absolutely crystal on this point, the driver finalisation must precede any release! The drivers should be ready "very soon in Europe." Since our discovery, OCWorkBench has updated its story to reflect that sets are not ready yet, but that the price, SGD888 (~USD507), is the amount Leadtek cards for which will retail. Related Feature - NVIDIA show off magic at The Gathering

Pure Entertainment Games PLC has decided to close its Freeloader.com website venture, despite its sales force meeting targeted projections for this year so far. The closure, announced this morning, is attributed to "a seasonal downturn in advertising revenue". The company's revenues outside the UK are totally reliant on advertising revenue. Freeloader.com's model turned advertising revenue that was "significantly below expectations", despite the company claiming to have 750,000 registered users on their books. It was very successful here in the UK, but in order to achieve the same levels of success abroad, further investment, fundraising and above all an international sales team would be required. Either that or a close partnership with an appropriate global player in games, Internet or advertising industries. Despite serious discussions with possible partners, the company failed to establish a link, and directors were not interested in a fundraising campaign at the present time. The Freeloader.com model may be sold on and surplus funds distributed to shareholders. Future moves depend on shareholders' interests.

Since we first ran across the game at a Codemasters press event just a few months ago, Operation Flashpoint has rapidly become one of our most anticipated releases for this year. Featuring a mixture of both on-foot and in-vehicle action to create a virtual battlefield on a truly epic scale, it's certainly an ambitious game for a small Czech company. And judging from the early alpha code we got our hands on last month things are certainly looking very promising. Now you can try it out for yourself, with the release of a small (64Mb) playable demo featuring a single mission in which you must neutralise hostile forces as part of an infantry squad. You can grab it from any of the following outlets -

Newly reborn console player Sega Corp. has appointed a new president and COO, Hideki Sato, after Isao Owaka died of heart failure last Friday. "The company believes Sato is the best person to take the leadership as he has long experience and deep knowledge about the company's technology and management," a company spokesman said. The Japanese media had been expecting co-COO Tetsu Kayama Kayama to take the post, so Sato's appointment comes as something of a surprise. Sega said Kayama will play a core role in management, supervising the company's restructuring plan as well as its software development division. Sato joined Sega last year at Owaka's request from Recruit Co, where he dealt with game and content businesses. Related Feature - Sega president dies

GameBoy Advance fans looking for some hardcore action will be impressed with Activision's GameBoy Advance lineup, confirmed this morning. The previously-announced "Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2" (now confirmed as a launch title) was at the head of the release, followed by "Spider-Man: Mysterio's Menace", "X-Men: Reign of Apocalypse", "Shaun Palmer's Pro Snowboarder" (working title), "Mat Hoffman's Pro BMX" and as a surprise entrant, "DOOM"! Spider-Man will follow on from the title's success on GameBoy Color late last year as an advanced platformer from Vicarious Visions, while X-Men will be a side-scrolling brawl-fest from Digital Eclipse. Pro Snowboarder will presumably be very similar to Tony Hawk's, except on the slopes, and will be developed by Natsume. Mat Hoffman's Pro BMX will be developed by HotGen, with vert, street and dirt track levels. As for DOOM, it's unlikely id themselves will handle the port, but the press release is distinctly vague. Crawfish were showing off an early tech demo for the GameBoy using DOOM II as the base, but they have no historical ties to Activision, despite being the obvious choice. True to the original game anyway, DOOM features an advanced 3D graphics engine and an onslaught of horrific demons. Related Feature - GBA Day: June 22nd

Not content with their processor at the heart of the Xbox, Intel are to contribute a new piece of software, "VTune", to the Xbox XDK. The Intel VTune Performance Analyzer is designed to make performance tuning easier and more efficient for Xbox game developers, which is no doubt to be welcomed. According to the press release, VTune "collects, analyzes, and displays software performance data from the system-wide view down to a specific function, module, or instruction in an Xbox game developer's source code. The tool specifically helps the developer to easily recognize potential performance bottlenecks and to produce a higher level of performance and competitiveness." Taking the strain off developers is unquestionably a good thing. Console games, unlike their PC brethren, really do have to be done right the first time round, so anything that helps quash bugs will prove useful.

As reported by industry forums last week, the GameBoy Advance handheld console - the successor to the 100 million-selling GameBoy format - will be released in Europe on June 22nd. The demand for the console is already such that people are importing units from Japan for more than £250. The actual price of the machine (120-130 Euros, or £76-82) is less than a third of that. The console will be released on June 22nd and is expected to break all known first-day sales records. It will be available in three colours; purple, clear blue and white. Software-wise, gamers will be able to purchase Super Mario Advance, Kuru Kuru Kururin and F-Zero: Maximum Velocity from Nintendo, Castlevania and Konami Krazy Racers from Konami, Rayman Advance from Ubi Soft, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2 from Activision, Ready 2 Rumble: Round 2 Boxing from Midway, as well as GT Championship and Tweety and The Magic Jewels, both from Kemco. Before Christmas Nintendo hopes to take the total to 50 titles on store shelves. Unfortunately the price of the games could be as high as £30 per title (between 45 and 50 Euros is the figure Nintendo have released), which would certainly prove prohibitive for many of Nintendo's younger potential customers. £30 is more than most people expect to pay for a PlayStation or Dreamcast game these days. As mentioned earlier, the machine goes on sale today, March 21st in Japan, where 2.7 million pre-orders are expected to be fulfilled. The traditionally enthusiastic Japanese crowds are expected to turn out, fighting for units in familiar style. Related Feature - Nintendo Ramp up for GBA Release

Since Duke Nukem 3D turned a platform game character into a first person action hero back in 1996, the franchise has been flogged more thoroughly than the proverbial dead horse, with several official add-on packs for the game as well as numerous console spin-offs appearing over the last few years. But although the long-awaited Unreal-engined sequel Duke Nukem Forever is still nowhere in sight, the Duke looks set to return (yet again) in digital form with Sunstorm Interactive's episodic third person action game "Duke Nukem : Manhattan Project".

Getting online with the Dreamcast just became a necessity. Sure, it could be argued that games like ChuChu Rocket and Quake III Arena were as good an excuse as any, but with ChuChu, the lag was quite silly (and ultimately it was more fun offline with friends), and as for Quake III Arena, well, the only reason it's fun these days is because of Rocket Arena, and you can't get that on the Dreamcast. Phantasy Star Online though, offers hope. Its offline game is dull and drab but it's pretty much lagless, and it invites gamers from literally all over the world to join together against a common foe -and who better- pure evil. PSO is not only the first online RPG on a console, it's the best online RPG for a long time. As an individual, the game can get tiresome, because the storyline itself isn't that terrific, but online, especially when pal'd up with a few friends, it goes beyond the old "one more go" adage - stuff outside the game stops mattering. I didn't play the original Phantasy Star games, but it doesn't really matter, because the sense of story in PSO is virtually non-existent once you progress beyond the first hour or so. The idea is that your homeworld is dying, and "Project Pioneer" has been conceived in its death throws to continue life offworld. The first ship, Pioneer 1, was sent out quickly to find a new home to colinize, Ragol. Pioneer 2 has now arrived, packed with refugees, and contact has been made with the settlers. Everything's looking good. But then there's an explosion, and contact is lost. In classic RPG style, you are one of a scant few on the ship in a position to help, and are sent down to discover just what the heck is going on.

York-based developer Revolution have confirmed rumours that they are working on a new game in the popular Broken Sword series. Subtitled "The Sleeping Dragon", Broken Sword 3 will be available on Xbox and PlayStation 2 as well as the PC, and is expected to be available some time next year. Revolution are promising to live up to their name with the new game, which they say will "take adventure gaming to the next level".

And the bad news just keeps on coming. As the gaming industry and related sectors continue to slump, Future Publishing (the Bath based company behind PC Gamer, Official Playstation Magazine, Future Music and other titles) has announced disastrous results for the last financial year. Although turnover was up by almost 30%, the company's losses widened dramatically from £3.5m to a staggering £59.3m during 2000.

Creative Technology, the Singapore-based company behind the SoundBlaster range of soundcards as well as numerous graphics cards, webcams, MP3 players and other peripherals, has announced today that it will be laying off upwards of 400 people, or around 10% of its global workforce. Worst hit will probably be America, with the company's manufacturing plant in Pennsylvania being shut down in an effort to cut costs and halt the recent slide in the company's share price. There will also be "sharp cutbacks in its non-revenue generating Internet businesses" according to reports.

Electronics Boutique have announced that their online store EBWorld.com will be launching a new rental service on June 1st which will allow players with broadband connections to rent games by streaming them from the company "without requiring downloading or installation". Exactly how this is all going to work is rather vague at the moment, and there is also no word yet on which games will be included in the system, although Electronics Boutique are planning to "acquire the streaming rights from leading publishers to popular and newly-released game titles" according to the press release. No doubt everything will become clear over the next couple of months.

Peter Main, Nintendo's Executive VP of Sales & Marketing, has had to face up to a letter he wrote to retailers which questioned their point-of-sales advertising for Xbox, despite Microsoft's "current zero share of the business", and the product's unknown release date. Main says that he believes this year to be another transition year for the industry, after a decline in revenues last year of between 5% and 6%. This important period (the front nine months of 2001) is absolutely critical to reversing the volume decline. Stressing that he does not want to tell retailers how to run their businesses then, Main questioned the presence of Xbox advertising. "Video games -hardware, software and accessories- hardly represent one of life's necessities and are therefore bought largely, on an impulse basis," he said. "This is why both manufacturers/publishers and retailers rarely promote new products beyond the proven maximum 4-8 weeks before launch." As the letter explained, telling people to go away and sit on their hands for nine months is financial suicide in an industry that thrives on impulse sales. After outlining the problem, it stressed that the solution lies with promoting current products. IGN asked some tough questions of another Marketing VP, George Harrison, who told them that "the purpose of the letter was to express to retailers our own curiosity as to why they felt this material belonged in their store. We clearly understood our competitor's motivation. Microsoft is not in the business, but they would like nothing more than to say to people, 'Don't buy PlayStation 2 -- wait until next October'." The confidential letter can be seen half way down this IGN interview with Harrison. Related Feature - GameCube : The Science Bit