We already know that EA was desperately trying to get its sticky hands on Take-Two, in this endless attempt to take over the world and infest it with American bunnies. As a result, other big publishers like Ubisoft are practically forced to react, one way or the other – after all, lately, the whole fucking gaming world has been narrowed down to just a bunch of big companies, acquiring anything they possibly can.

Ubisoft was, as we recall, targeted by EA’s conquering grasp not long ago, in an attempt for a “hostile” takeover, but somehow managed to survive. Now, as a response to EA’s not-so-generous offer towards Take-Two, Yves Guillemont stated that his company is aiming to purchase as many game licenses as their budget allows.

"The desire of EA to buy Take Two pushes us to go faster, to accelerate internal growth but also to look at acquisition opportunities."

Ah, well, good luck to them. Forbes scoop.

Mass Effect’s PC ass is getting as hyped as hell, and that is a good thing. Too few good RPGs are coming out lately, and from what we’ve heard, the X360 version of Mass Effect was actually pretty good. BioWare and their co-workers at Demiurge Studios promised lots of improvements in the PC version, a brand new UI, blah blah, yada yada, and various other things.

The latest news concerning this Sci-Fi title came recently – the game’s final release date – so prepare your itchy fingers for a long gaming session starting May, the 6th. Personally, I can hardly wait, and it seems that not even my huge stash of anime porn is able to compensate for this. Must... play... lesbian... intergalactic... chicks...

Excellent. According to this here press release, the girls at ArenaNet are proud to brag themselves with more than 5 millions copies of Guild Wars, sold worldwide. Congratulations, it sure is a big chunk o’ players stuck in their virtual world.

Let’s see now… World of Warcraft – 10 millions registered users. Guild Wars – 5 million games sold. Lineage – a couple of million dudes getting spanked by big breasted Dark Elven chicks there, too. This sure leaves some gaming space for upcoming MMORPGs… Yaright. Call me a grumpy and hateful old bastard, but I bet my (second) WoW account that some extremely hyped online games that are supposed to hit the market soon, will get totally pwned.

I have stopped thinking weird things about Japan and its inhabitants since I, myself, became obsessed with anything related to that place. Well, almost anything, their little 2D girls especially. We all know that place as a paradise for gamers, with people of all ages, be it youngsters, be it 80 years old dudes that run around in wheelchairs, playing like madmen every game they can possibly get their hands on.

A quick visit to the Kotaku website reveals some nice and interesting statistics regarding the Japanese grannies (you know, those nice old ladies which are supposed to cook a lot, and which provide their grandsons and granddaughters with endless advices regarding the meaning of life), and their time spent in front of a gaming console. From a “pool” of over a thousand obaa-sans, aged between 50 and 69, no less than 41.3 percent own a gaming console.

Not bad. Almost 13 percent are playing games frequently, be it puzzle games, study games or simulators, with a bit of love for action titles, also. So remember kids, next time you have to visit granny on weekends, think twice before rejecting such a kind offer. She might have just bought that awesomely fantastic God of War that you have been drooling on since September. For those who love numbers, here is a short list with the most common consoles that can be spotted in grandma’s living room:

Nintendo DS 65.5 percent
PlayStation (any model) 61.5 percent
Super Famicom (SNES) 36.5 percent
Famicom (NES) 28.2 percent
GameBoy (including Micro) 25.5 percent
GameBoy Advance 17.8 percent
Wii 17.6 percent
PSP 14.2 percent
Nintendo 64 12.8 percent
Sega Saturn 5.0 percent
Xbox (doesn't specify) 4.5 percent
Dreamcast 4.5 percent
Other 2.9 percent

Ok, so Assassin’s Creed may have rocked some people’s worlds, but it’s sure as hell it didn’t rock my PC just yet. The incoming computer version, which *should* be up and running at the end of March, is said to use tons of DirectX 10 features, according to Charles Beauchemin, Ubisoft’s Technical Lead.

Even so, we won’t be seeing any visual difference between DirectX 10, DirectX 9, or any other X, be it direct or indirect, for that matter. The game only uses Shader Model 4 to provide us with increased performance. In other words, it goes something like this:

Charles Beauchemin: DirectX 10 enables us to make fewer calls to the API to perform the same actions. Therefore, it will be possible for the drivers to make optimizations making the game faster without any change to the game engine. Since most of the DX10 drivers are still young, we can expect a lot of gain to come from the optimization of these drivers.

The whole story.

While some companies have such a massive income that they can afford to purchase almost anything, others are, like... dying. Literally. And this seems to be the case of Perpetual Entertainment, also known as P2 Entertainment, the San Francisco based game developer that used to work on the already canceled Gods and Heroes.

Well, we all knew they had problems. Big ones. The said MMORPG got trashed like hell, in favor of some sort of Star Trek Online game. Then, in January, Perpetual announced that it will sell all their Star Trek things, including the last remains of Jean Luc Piccard’s hair, to another company, only to focus on it’s MMO software, called Perpetual Platform.

If this is true, companies like BioWare, that licensed this product, will probably be affected in one way or the other.

Warcry scoop.

Sick and tired of mindlessly leveling an Elf, Gnome, or other fucked up race to level 70? Is your middle finger itching for some naked Arnold in the upcoming Age of Onan, but waiting for a God damned release tends to suck? Never fear, SAGA is here!

Well, at least the Beta. Test. Silverholde Interactive announced that, starting today, we can all get in touch with their MMORTS, raping it, testing it to the limits, and unlocking all the possible content it has to offer.

I suggest you give it a try before you spend 19.95 USD for the retail product, who knows, it may suck donkey balls. Or it may not. I ain’t gonna try it, too busy with my shaman.

Provo, UT – February 25, 2008

The World’s First Collectible MMORTS entered Open Beta testing on Tuesday, February 26th, 2008. All players who sign up at www.playsaga.com will receive accounts, allowing them to create nations on the Beta servers. For the duration of the Beta test, all game features will be unlocked and available to testers. At release, a full unlocked copy of SAGA will cost $19.95; however, promotions will be available during the open beta period to purchase the full version of SAGA at a reduced price.

During the stress test conducted on Saturday, February 23rd, the servers performed excellently, with no crashes or other server issues. The SAGA servers are expected to support up to 20,000 players per realm with thousands of simultaneous users. Should a greater-than-expected number of players attempt to login to the world at the same time, a login queue will be implemented and additional realms will be brought online.

Go now to www.playsaga.com to check out SAGA Open Beta!

Two fucking billion dollars. That’s like… holy shit, so many manga volumes that even I cannot handle them. Just think about all the booze you can buy with it. All the whores you can LEGALLY rape with it. Every spermatozoon I can possibly produce in a wanking session will have a bright future with this kind of money.

…And EA seems to have this kind of spendola, ready to roll. Target? None other than Take Two, the owners of the Grand Gay Theft Auto franchise. After all, why should only Activision be able to suck Vivendi’s extremely enlarged penis, getting a share of Blizzard’s World of Warcraft while they are at it? We know that EA means business. As in… the whole fucking gaming business. Good for them. If Take Two accepts the deal, Viacom (MTV owners who were actually trying to buy Take Two before EA started negotiations) will get owned. Big time.

Let the purchase begin!

Not even MMORPGs are safe today, with terrorists infiltrating every dark corner of the virtual world they possibly can. Or, at least, that’s what the U.S. intelligence community thinks. To “counter” things up, the specialists across the ocean are developing some kind of new software, which is supposed to detect any sort of violent extremists that might try to enjoy the likes of World of Warcraft, Guild Wars, Lineage and Co.

According to a report from the Director of National Intelligence, this Reynard project will automatically profile each type of gaming behavior, and, after it has developed a strong database, ir will “detect” any suspicious actions that might take place in Azeroth and beyond.

This is a complete bullshit. Each MMO has its own bunch of retarded kids that enjoy ganking, griefing, or generally trying to ruin other people’s fun. How the hell will an automated software tell the difference between an avid ganker that is, actually, a fat and horny 15 years old Chinese farmer, and a would-be Osama bin Laden trying to recruit folks for the next terrorist anti-American attack? Or how the fuck will it manage to tell the difference between a role-playing guild of assassins from Defias Brotherhood and a group of Muslims?

American “Intelligence” my ass. Via Wired

As you may (or may not) know, Gas Powered Games is the company responsible for pretty well marketed titles, such as Dungeon Siege or Supreme Commander. Just by playing 10 minutes of the latter, you’ll know that it is not your average, casual strategy – on the contrary, it’s more like a worthy successor for Total Annihilation. So it’s pretty much hardcore stuff.

Sadly, events such as GDC tend to reveal a lot of things from behind the scene, things like “hi, we are money hungry bitches that will suck it up from any type of gamer just to get a few bucks”. The dude in charge of Gas Powered Games, Chris Tayor, held a select meeting at the Convention, in which he revealed that his studio is currently targeting the more casual population of the gaming phenomenon, such as people playing the likes of Peggle, and that his employees are working like slaves to provide us with such kind of games.

"I'm curious about how to get a game out to the 200 million people that have been downloading Peggle and all of these 'match three' games. That's what I'm going after. I've been cooking something up,"

While I do understand that there are more retarded and narrow minded people out there than smart ones, and while I also understand that a marketing target of 200 million is a dream came true for any respected developer, casual gaming is pretty much starting to fuck up the whole industry. For any gender. We’ll end up playing titles with absolutely no real depth in no time at all, if more and more developers start to hug casual gaming like this. At least hug your fucking little sister, it’s more… worthwhile.

GamesIndustry scoop.