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The Japanese get all the breaks when it comes to console goodies. Even though the Dreamcast is set to cease production on the 31st of March, it still retails for a staggering £150 in many places, while our Japanese friends can now pick up the console for an absolutely horrifying £50. Yes, fifty notes, half a ton, fifty squid. Some games cost nearly that in certain quarters around here. Daily Radar reckon we should buy an imported Jap console for a pittance and then use an adapter to play UK games, of which many now retail at less than £20, including classics like Soul Calibur and Crazy Taxi. We contacted Sega's UK press officer regarding the price cuts, but all we could get out of them was a standardized "We have not made an announcement regarding price drop" response. Hopefully this is set to change, but we're not holding our breath. And frankly, if you don't own a Dreamcast now, you might as well wait six months until they are really cheap and pick one up then. That said, we'll all be buying them in our DVD players and VCRs this time next year, so who's counting? Related Feature - Sega Confirms New Business Strategy

Development/publishing giants Electronic Arts have teamed up with Quake III: Arena developers id software to produce a PlayStation 2 version of the game, titled Quake III Revolution, as we reported last year. EA intend to release the game early this year under their new "EA Games" publishing brand. The press release is mostly fluff, with no real information on new additions and the like, but it does include some jolly comments from both EA's European managing director Bruce McMillan and id's CEO Todd Hollenshead. Related Feature - Console Quake III Wars

Half-Life creators Valve have issued the following statement regarding the forthcoming 1.1.0.6 release of the seminal first person shooter. "A new update (v1.1.0.6) for all Half-Life games is in final testing and expected to be released later this month. In addition to various fixes, this release will include new player models for all Team Fortress Classic classes. The new models feature higher resolution textures, increased polygon counts, and enhanced animation technology. This update will also include the winning entry from Planet Half-Life's January 2001 mapping contest." The new TFC models can already be seen in action at Blue's News. Valve also recently issued a server side fix for the infamous speed cheat that has been doing the rounds. Related Feature - The OGA's "speed cheat" statement

Now you know your president loves you when he does this. Isao Owaka, president and chairman of Sega, has donated 85 billion yen's worth of stock to Sega in order to keep it solvent. The company's shock announcement that it was pulling out of Dreamcast production has apparently severed an important source of income, and the donation, which includes 32.7 billion yen of Sega stock alone, will help keep the company moving until such time as it starts pulling in cash again. Mr. Owaka's decision to donate the shares means that he is no longer chairman of Sega, no longer the owner. Sega themselves are reeling and uncertain of what to do with the shares, according to Famitsu they say that any decision will be made once the effect on Japan's market is known. The stock, which is worth over £500m at current exchange rates, is reported to include shareholdings in NextCom, CSK and Ascii amongst others. According to The Register, the losses Sega expected to see after dropping the Dreamcast would have been in the region of 80 billion yen. Obviously this donation covers that. Related Feature - Sega Kill off Dreamcast

Sony's relationship with its publishing allies is now stretched to breaking point according to Reuters. The company has been more difficult to work with than it was with the PlayStation, mainly because of the tight schedule it opted to maintain and the problems it was itself experiencing with the manufacture and distribution of the console. This report at Yahoo states that one of the key reasons Sony were able to break into the then Nintendo-dominated console market was its third party development support. The costs associated with using the SNES for development of new games were enough to lure publishers and development houses away. The problem is, according to Yahoo, the positions are now reversed, and companies need Sony more than Sony need them. Apparently this has led to a bit of neglect from the console giant. Sony Computer Entertainment America (SCEA) disagrees. "It's clear that companies that have invested a lot of money in development understand that our business model is long term," said spokeswoman Molly Smith. Part of the problem for potential buyers now is that once again we are on the verge of new console releases. The GameBoy Advance while aiming for a different market could do damage to PS2 sales, and looking further ahead both Nintendo and Microsoft are developing next generation consoles to compete with Sony. Now more than ever it would seem the company needs the help of third parties. Microsoft are in a very strong position with the Xbox because major developers are flocking to them despite the absence of a strong history in the console market. Any history at all in fact. The Redmond-based PC giant has already acquired companies like Bungie (Halo), and boasts support from Lionhead and other key development studios. Buying their own in-house talent has cunningly sidestepped the trap of not having enough pre-branded games to use at launch, either. Outsiders (including Electronic Arts President John Riccitiello) criticized Sony for their poor array of launch titles, including games like Ridge Racer V and Tekken Tag Tournament, which failed to live up their initial promise. Sales of the PS2 are thought to have suffered due to the lack of high quality Sony-branded games, despite success stories from both EA (SSX) and Eidos (TimeSplitters). Sony's recent show-boating over the capabilities of its next next-generation technology have less helped more hindered, too. The only positive step the company has been seen to take is financial interest in companies like Naughty Dog. By all accounts, Sony should be vying for the support of third parties and not shunning them, if indeed it is, by restricting development kits (SDKs) and other necessary tools as the reports indicate. Doing so would be almost suicidal at this point in the PlayStation 2's growth. Related Feature - Sony Buys Developers

According to a report on movie rumour site Dark Horizons, yet another computer game may be coming to the big screen - step up "Crusader : No Remorse". Yes, we'll admit that when we first heard this one we thought it seemed rather unlikely as well. After all, this isometric action game was released way back in the dark mists of time (1995 to be precise) and it wasn't that good - Dark Horizon's description of the by now largely forgotten title as "[still] one of the most popular computer games out there" is rather wide of the mark to say the least.

Sony have disclosed technical details of their latest graphics rendering engine, which is said to make the emotion engine in the PlayStation 2 look like "child's play". The chip is 462-mm squared, with 256Mbit of on-chip embedded DRAM and 2,000 bit internal buses, giving it some serious bandwidth. The company claims that the chip can process 75m polygons in a second and boasts a fill rate of 1.2 to 2.6 gigapixels a second. That said, these figures are pretty close to the initial claims for the PlayStation 2. The chip is said to contain some 287.5 million transistors, and is as big as the manufacturing process is ever likely to allow. Despite its size and complexity however, the chip is yielding within reasonable parameters. The "yield" in this case refers to the percentage of chips produced in bulk that work. Related Feature - PlayStation 3 up, PlayStation 2 down

March 4th, 2000 was the day the first PlayStation 2 units were sold in Japan. To mark the coming anniversary of this date, Sony have decided to throw a big party, held from February 24th to 25th at their building in Tokyo. Games on show and playable will include the highly anticipated Z.O.E., Gran Turismo 3, Code: Veronica and more as-yet unconfirmed titles. If you're in the area (hey, someone's bound to be) and fancy swinging by, let us know how you get on! If Sony's area at ECTS was anything to go by, free drinks and plenty of high-class food will be the order of the day. Now you know why we got up to so little reporting.

For those of you who aren't aware, for some time now, Overclockers UK, otherwise known to all as "OcUK", have been in a price war on many fronts with rival Sheffield-based company The Overclocking Store or "OCS", formerly Power Computing. Both companies have issues with demand but both run fairly successful businesses, and adopt a healthy hands-on approach. As you may be aware, we have in the past reviewed one or two OCS products on these pages, most memorably guaranteed overclocked processors. As the UK scene has grown, so have both companies, and nowadays they enjoy a fierce rivalry. However, today marks the first time we have seen this rivalry slip into "farce" territory. OcUK announced a pretty impressive deal today on Lian-Li aluminium cases, a close rival themselves to Coolermaster's impressive range, describing them as "fabulous". According to the update on their company news page, "It has become clear that other suppliers have been having having (sic) a field day with their pricing policy on these cases," and OcUK want to change this. Which is all very well - they have something of a point; the expensive imported items are a bit dearer at OCS and the undercutting is welcomed no doubt by the consumer. However it's fairly obvious that OCS' success with sales of these cases is one of the main reasons OcUK have decided to introduce them, rather than, as they have indicated, a change of heart... So what do we have here? Two companies sparring for market share on elitist hardware items basically, and again, there is nothing wrong with that. What we do find cause to object to, however, is such rampant gamesmanship as this news update on the OcUK website, dated 11th January this year. I hope you won't mind us quoting in full:- "At OcUK we get sent lots of products on approval and on Monday we received one of the Lian-Li aluminium cases. We were told by the supplier that they were comparable to the gorgeous Coolermaster range but at a slightly lower cost. What a load of rubbish! To say we were dissapointed with the finish of these cases would be an understatement. Unfinished sharp edges to the drive bays and cheap tacky appearance comparable with cases we have seen at computer fairs. We don't sell stuff like that at OcUK so don't be fooled by descriptions. If you are looking for a high quality aluminium case then it's Coolermaster all the way. Needless to say the Lian-Li is going back. Sorry guys." Seems fairly clear cut! But hang on, Lian-Li aluminium cases are "fabulous" according to today's update! So what's going on? The cases have been described by OCS as stunning. A short snippet at the end of today's item reveals all. "By the way, the review sample we were sent some time ago had apparantly 'been around' a little, hence my comments at the time." Are we the only ones not taken in by this act? The man has the balls to slag off a competitor's products outright, but doesn't have the guts to admit that he was wrong? In all likelihood the original item discrediting OCS was placed so prominently on the website to act as a deterrent to potential buyers of the Lian-Li range. It's hard to get hold of a Lian-Li representative to discuss the matter, but if you need some evidence, here are a few points... OcUK are a retailer, yet they would rather not stock a shoddily made item than let the product's popularity rule them. Until of course, it proves to be very popular. Also, major hardware community websites have offered glowing reviews of Lian-Li products, such as Ars Technica, Dan's Data, Virtual Hideout and Overclockers Australia - apparently they were all wrong, but not any more. We're rather sick of the overly competitive business tactics of companies like OcUK. We're not trying to take sides, because we're consumers, just like you, but the overclocking community in the UK is still growing - a leading overclockers' portal and retail service such as OcUK giving it such a poor reputation early on could be fatal. Come on lads, let's try and keep it civilised.

According to a report at The Register, AOL UK and Freeserve have condemned BT Openworld, the monster telco's ADSL service as a "national disgrace". Both companies resent Openworld's market share, and point to a relationship between the supposedly separate divisions within BT. There are currently 30,000 ADSL customers in the UK, several on the EuroGamer staff in fact, and BT Openworld is apparently increasing in size by some 1,000 or 2,000 customers each week. Incredibly, BTIgnite, the service dedicated to installations, handles nearly 500 BT Openworld customers a day, but Freeserve and AOL UK are allocated an astonishing 13 and 20 a day respectively. Is someone getting a drink? Another point to be made is that BT Openworld isn't actually as good a service as some of its competitors. Users have complained on many counts, that latency is absurd, download speeds are suffering even in areas of low contention and that on the whole the service is shoddy. These customers also risk being thrown off for running mail, FTP or HTTP serving programs from their connections. In stark contrast, while Nildram's residential ADSL service advises against such practices, this writer was even able to seek assistance with some of them, and has received no grief, despite running SMTP and other usually-restricted services pretty much all the time. Customers of BT Openworld apparently just don't know what they are missing for the most part. We phoned up BT regarding ADSL and were immediately put through to Openworld sales, despite assurances from us that our query was not about installation. Apparently it's company policy. When asked about resellers such as Nildram, our Scottish chum on the other end of the line lowered his tone and told us that he wasn't in a position to help. Our findings somewhat contradict those of BT, who defended themselves, insisting that no cross-department bias exists, and that our claims are groundless. AOL UK and Freeserve have a slightly stronger case, pointing out that BT's actions probably go against Oftel enforced regulations regarding ADSL. Regarding the news that BT have secured two thirds of the nation's ADSL customers, Freeserve company secretary David Melville said, "If this is true we will be consulting our lawyers." His opposite number at AOL UK agrees. Oftel has declined to comment, pending an investigation by the regulator.

Oni is a peculiar one. It's driven by a powerful leading lady, it has bags of class and it infuses Anime art into an action adventure. Unfortunately though, Konoko is treading on uneven ground. Her dashing good looks, human proportions and martial arts supremacy aren't enough to carry Oni the whole way, and it seems like the initial prognosis we made at ECTS last year was correct - Oni is more underwhelming than it should be. The story is pretty average Anime fair too - Konoko is an agent for the Tech Crimes Task Force and is up against pseudo-cyberpunk Mafioso types, who frame her for a crime she did not commit, neatly setting the whole world against her instead of just the Japanese Mafia. Ouch. The word "Oni" itself means "ghost" or "spectre" and that's a fair indication of how the game treats young Konoko, and how she has to act if she wants to survive. Despite the spooky premise though (pun intended), the already weak plot develops in ways that 10-year-old children find clichéd when watching cartoons at 9am on a Saturday morning, and it's flanked by animated cutscenes which vary in quality. However most of the details of Konoko's plight are related to the player via pop-ups at computer terminals, and in-game dialogue sections. The scripted sequences are well set out, but despite the dubbed voice-overs the characters' mouths remain stock and still. Oh, and as for the voice acting; I hope someone, someday recognises that nobody in the real world talks like this and sorts it out. If this sort of tripe appears in the sequel God help them, I'll go on a rampage. They could at least have put in Japanese voices with subtitles - that would at least have created some sort of likeable cultural crossfire.

Arguably the best game of last year and a big hit on this side of the pond, even if the Americans didn't seem to appreciate it, "Deus Ex" predictably enough spawned a sequel which is now under construction at Warren Spector's Ion Storm Austin studio. Although we still don't know for sure whether the sequel will follow in the footsteps of the first game by using the latest Unreal technology from Epic, or whether it will switch to id's new Doom engine or Monolith's Lithtech, one feature which all of the leading 3D game engines now have in common is the ability to handle huge outdoors areas.

"Super Bubble Pop" is destined to become the first computer game to be released with a special tie-in hair care product, although perhaps John " The Hair" Romero could have used this ploy to improve sales of "Daikatana". The man behind Super Bubble Pop is Zombie's Mark Long, whose girlfriend owns a punk beauty shop in Seattle called Vain, from where you can buy "super bubble pop styling gum".

Grandia II is ever so nearly upon us, and EuroGamer was able to get its hands on a copy early. Described as a Beta, the version we played is nigh-on what you will be buying in the shops a few weeks from now. And we reckon you will be buying this, because at first impressions, it's a top game. For those of you that don't know, you take control of a young lad called Ryudo, ever helped along by his good friend Skye, who just so happens to be an eagle. Ryudo is a Geohound, a pseudo-mercenary who goes around putting his awesome sword-fighting skills to use ridding the world of monsters, without a care in the world, and no strings to hold him down. That is, until he meets Elena. Before long he's caught up in a tale of mystery and intrigue, dating from the War of Good and Evil, when the great God Granas gave the world the holy Light, plunging his arch-nemesis Valmar to earth with a sword that cut a deep trench like a scar upon the face of the planet. Grandiose is about the only suitable word, one would think. And as I said, it seems like it could be the biggest RPG on the Dreamcast since Shenmue. Even bigger, one might argue. However, despite its popularity in the States, and how impressive it looks at first glance, we were a little disheartened to see the odd niggle here and there. One annoyance is the animation of the characters themselves. They tend to glide somewhat, when they run or walk, their feet edging slowly forward, which smacks of lazy programming. Obviously these problems can be resolved in the last few weeks pending release, however, and we hope they are, but even in spite of them, Grandia II is shaping up to be something truly spectacular. If you're interested, we've also captured a few screenshots from early moments within the game. We're anxious not to give too much away, but check them out anyway! Related Feature - Exclusive Grandia II Screenshots

Not satisfied with releasing their full contact action game "Oni" on both PC and PlayStation 2, Take 2 have announced a special "prequel" mini-game will soon be available at wap.oni-game.com for mobile phone users with WAP-enabled handsets. You don't believe us? We have the first screenshots of the game in action to prove it! The prequel was designed by WAP specialists Quantum Sheep, and features Konoko battling a training simulator, complete with anime-style animations and briefing cutscenes.

Following two weeks of bad news here in the UK - Barrysworld being liquidated, Gameplay shedding 275 workers, Sega sacking most of their third party division, and Codemasters losing 90 employees - it seems that the industry gloom has now spread to the continent. Last Friday Mannheim based publisher TopWare AG (the company which published games such as "Earth 2150" and "Gorky 17") announced that it had filed for insolvency.

Nintendo are still aiming to ship a million GameBoy Advance units in the system's first week, shattering any previous records, and with the level of interest displayed by gamers the world over in this cute little unit, many insiders are saying the figure may be a gross under-estimate. Nintendo's public relations officer in Japan says that the company will produce a million units for launch, and a further 1.5 million for April and May. When all is said and done, the first two months should net profits for four million units. The GameBoy Advance is currently set to launch in Japan on March 21st. Nintendo aim to have sold 24 million GBAs worldwide by March 2002. A sales projection and a half. If you intend to import a GBA when it first hits shores, expect to pay a premium. Mail order and high street importers will all have stock, but the prices will be through the roof. Pre-orders in the £450 range have been confirmed in Greater London.

Following on from the spate of Infogrames stories yesterday, which saw the monolithic French publisher picking up rights to the classic Peanuts cartoon strip and TV series "La Femme Nikita", today sees rumours emerging that the company is now trying to get its hands on "The Terminator" franchise. Ocean published a series of games based on the first two Terminator movies before being absorbed by Bruno and the boys in 1996. Now Infogrames are reportedly trying to extend those rights to include games based on "Terminator 3", which could be in cinemas as early as next year, and a possible fourth movie in the series.

Sony Marketing and NTT West have announced this week that they are experimenting in Japan with high-speed fibre-optic Internet connections for the PlayStation 2. With said connection, users can download all sorts of media (although mainly movies, anime and sports programming) over fibre-optic cables leading to their PS2. This is much more than current xDSL and cable subscribers can do with their Ethernet-based connections. According to Sony Marketing, they have lent 32 PS2 units and 43 PCs to 63 applicants living in Osaka. The transmission rate of the cabling (more than 3Mbps) enables users to watch shows at more or less their intended bitrate without issue. Although that said, as this glossary at the BBC explains, "For digital television, bit rate is closely related to the quality of pictures. Sport, for example, with lots of fast action, camera pans, etc might need as much as 6 Mbit/s; a talking head only 3 Mbit/s." Obviously with this in mind, providing shows on-demand over fibre optics may be slightly limited unless contention is low. Big-name Anime titles like "Mobile Suit Gundam" have already been confirmed for the system. It is thought that pending success in the closed testing, the fibre-optic option will become commercially viable some time this year.

If you downloaded and installed the new "Detonator 3s" that NVIDIA released the other day, then watch out. It seems that there is a rather glaring bug yielding itself to users of the new drivers. According to 3dchipset.com owner Jeff Knight, users have discovered that when you return to normal Windows use from monitor standby, the drivers apply "overclock settings to your card on top of your current settings, causing hard lockups or visual anomalies associated with overclocking." Jeff has verified this on his own card. Kyle from HardOCP also says that he has been hearing the same sort of thing from his readers. No official confirmation has been issued. In an attempt to confirm the bug for ourselves, we put our Windows 2000 / GeForce 2 GTS PC running older drivers into Standby, then returned. No effect. Upon installing the new drivers though, returning from Standby mode did increase both the memory and GPU clock rates. This is quite annoying, although not terribly dangerous. Our recommendation to anyone who is forced to regularly use Standby mode is to download older drivers, either from 3dchipset.com, or from a similar distributor. As soon as official confirmation is provided, we fully expect these drivers to be withdrawn and replaced with a "good" set. Naturally we will report on this as soon as we can confirm it. Update: The relationship between this issue and the unofficial "CoolBits" registry tweak which allows overclocking by way of the control panel applet, has not been confirmed. All that is known is that the unusual overclock takes the settings far beyond the options offered in said applet. Related Feature - NVIDIA Release New Drivers

Last week we reported that EA Europe had fixed the date for the eagerly anticipated launch of Peter Molyneux's "Black & White" as Friday 30th March. Then came reports from developer Lionhead that they were still expecting the game to be ready for release in late February or early March. To add to the confusion PC Gamer UK rather optimistically declared "it's finished, and we've played it" on the front cover of their latest issue - believe us, it isn't. And the uncertainty continued as we got a tip-off last night that the release date had been pushed back again.

In the end it wasn't enough that GameCenter was a well-written, content-driven gaming website. Like so many others, CNet's popular gaming destination has been axed due to a lack of success in the banner revenue business. The cuts at CNet focus heavily on GameCenter, with 190 jobs going in total across the company. Like so many dot.coms, CNet is taking care to plug the loss-making cracks in its business strategy, and what with last year's acquisition of ZDNet, GameCenter, is surplus to the company's requirements anyway. It is thought, however, that very few if any of the website's staff will move sideways into jobs at GameSpot, now the company's other gaming asset. As we reported last month, GameCenter have already scaled back on their banner-ad-dependant "Alliance" network, which hosted and supplied revenue to a plethora of gaming websites. Although CNet's steps may seem drastic to many, and the redundancies are unfortunate, this move once again demonstrates the climate of despair that envelops much of the ad revenue-dependant sector (i.e. content-driven dot.coms). There is no money in advertising any more, thanks largely to the lack of interest from advertisers due to the poor rate of click-throughs. As an example of this, CNet lost approximately $400m last quarter, and forecasts revenue for 2001 at just over that. The company's stock has also plummeted. Ironically, following the closure of the "Gamecenter Alliance" just a month ago, CNet spokesman Josh McCloskey told PCShooter that the company had shut down the network (which hosted popular sites such as Stomped and the Crossroads sites) "to concentrate on making Gamecenter and Gamespot the strongest gaming sites on the Internet". Today it appears that they have decided to shut down Gamecenter itself to focus on ZDNet's better known GameSpot. No doubt this won't be the last gaming website to shut down this year, as the collapse of online advertising is leaving everybody without an alternative source of revenue strapped for cash. Related Feature - Another Gaming Network Hits the Dust

Popular gaming service provider Barrysworld confirmed today that it has gone into liquidation following a meeting with the company's creditors in London yesterday. This seems to dash hopes that the company would be rescued after the shock announcement in January that they had run out of cash just nine months after a multi-million pound investment deal. The website and servers are still online for now as "the liquidator is using his best efforts to ensure Barrysworld remains online until such time as a sale can be completed", according to a statement from co-founder TedTheDog. "We all believe that Barrysworld has something of considerable value to offer to someone with a little vision, and we are talking to various interested parties and the liquidator is doing his thing."

Based on the popular universe from the recently demised role-playing company FASA, the Mechwarrior series of games on the PC has been running for what seems like an eternity, and throughout this time the formula has remained largely the same.

Publishing giant Ubi-Soft have just dropped us a line with their latest release date for the Dreamcast, as of yesterday. "Snow Rocket Racer" and "Starlancer" are now scheduled for release this month, and RPG spectacular "Grandia II" is scheduled to hit these shores in March, along with the much-anticipated Dreamcast release of "Stupid Invaders". Beyond that, "Tetris" (the online version as far as we know) is due in April, with "Dragon Riders" in May, "Evil Twin" and "Soldier of Fortune" in June. We expect to be able to preview SoF within the next few weeks. All titles will have an RRP of £39.99.

As we reported earlier this week, Microsoft has been approached by Xbox Technologies, an American company in possession of the original "Xbox" trademark. The CEO of Xbox Technologies said he would fight to the bitter end to retain his trademark, whinging to pretty much every news network that would listen, whilst Microsoft plotted to overthrow him. It turns out, however, that the company is worth a fairly meagre $3.86 million, and could be bought out to secure the 'mark. However, the plot thickens. Rumour has it (and it's early days yet) that Sony intends to swoop in and buy the company before Microsoft can. This would present Sony with the "Xbox" trademark, leaving Microsoft with either an incredibly hefty lawsuit or some seriously nasty royalty payments. Either way this twist will put even more pressure on Bill Gates' firm, and could well usurp their plans to use the name. We shall keep you posted. Related Feature - Lawyers start Xboxing

Infogrames have sealed yet another deal to produce branded console and PC games using hot intellectual properties. This time it's "Peanuts" that is being subjected to the Infogrames treatment, thanks to "strategic development and distribution deals" with United Media. The deal gives Infogrames the right to sour Charles M. Schultz's wonderful 50-year old comic strip featuring the likes of Snoopy, Charlie Brown and others until 2006 with games on every platform under the sun. The first game past the post will be "Snoopy Tennis" on the GameBoy Color, due for release in March at the end of a pretty impressive development cycle of .. oh, about a fortnight perhaps. We can also expect Infogrames' latest hot property to hit the PC, Macintosh, PS One, PlayStation 2, Xbox, Dreamcast, GameCube and GameBoy Advance. After all, what use if a dead horse if one can't flog it? Speaking to GameCenter, Robert Watson, a senior VP at Infogrames, commented that "Peanuts is as American as apple pie, and more importantly, we feel it has mass-market universal appeal, even in Europe and Japan". In other words, it's about as close to a minting license as you can get around here. Not only that, but mass-market appeal means the company can create two-a-penny console dross and shovel it to the old and young, on every level. We hope you'll forgive the rant, but when we review these games in the next few months, we have a rather uncomfortable feeling that we will be proved correct about their quality. Still, that's all well and dandy. Related Feature - Infogrames et la femme

Every time a new console system is announced there soon follows a chorus of industry "experts" proclaiming the imminent demise of our beloved beige boxes. With not one but two new console systems due to be released in Europe next year, and another one just recently arrived, reports that the PC gaming industry is dead are once again on the rise. Yves Legris, COO of Infogrames US, is sceptical though.

French behemoth Infogrames has announced that it has partnered with Warner Brothers to release a game based on "La Femme Nikita". Sadly the game will be based on the American TV series rather than the excellent Luc Besson movie that inspired it, but the basic plot is essentially the same - a young woman imprisoned for murder is selected by a shadowy intelligence service to be trained as an assassin. Infogrames are promising "fast-paced action, unique cooperative gameplay and a thrilling plot-driven story", with the ability to play as either Nikita or her mentor Michael as they "track a sinister terrorist group across the globe in six non-linear missions". With the game slated for release on PC and unspecified "next generation consoles" this autumn, we should know more soon...

If you thought the idea of a portable PlayStation with a cute little LCD screen was utter genius (as we did), then you will no doubt be intrigued to discover that Thrustmaster is to launch its own branded LCD panel, a 5" corner-to-corner model called the "XL Screenmate". The Screenmate is obviously larger than the official screen (which is 4" from corner to corner), and is also backlit, with built-in speakers, fixing screws, as well as PAL and NTSC compatibility. Earphones support is included, as is an AV port to plug in a TV. Other perks include a car adapter with protection circuitry so it doesn't blow you up (or get blown up), and as if this were not enough, the screen is non-reflective, making gaming from any angle perfectly possible. The Thrustmaster XL Screenmate will retail from March this year at an estimated price of £129.99 and you can read the company's entire release here.