I still have to figure out a way to share my PC Internet connection with the Wii (without leaving home to buy a router, if at all possible), so for now I'll just trust the countless reports saying that the Wii Forecast Channel has already gone live, and can be used to get the weather forecast from around the world. It's a great little perk, and it's presented with a very cool 3D globe that you can spin around like crazy. Not to mention it's a great way for picking random holiday destinations!

In order to get the new weather feature, you obviously need to have the Wii network going, and then choose "Update" on the empty Forecast Channel menu screen.

Also this week, Nintendo will finally launch the Wii Opera browser, initially free of charge. The update is expected to be available this Friday, on December 22, thus confirming an earlier report "leaked" from the Nintendo Sweden website. The only bad news is that this will be a trial version of Opera, but it will support Flash-based websites, so no worries!

The final version will probably be released in March 2007, and it will be free to download until June or July - at which time the browser will cost 500 Wii points, equaling a meagre $5.

And while we're on the topic of online features, Akamai sent out a couple of press releases yesterday to announce that their worldwide network infrastructure was adopted for both the Wii and the PlayStation 3. Nintendo and Sony will both be using the Akamai content delivery platform for their network services (Wii Virtual Console and PlayStation Network), which should allow for top-notch performance in delivering their playful stuff online.

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Because EA's Medal of Honor: Airborne didn't turn out to be for the Wii after all (just for the PC, PS2, PS3 and Xbox 360), it was about time they revealed how the famed WWII shooting franchise would make its inevitable debut on the Nintendo Wii console. And they did - by announcing Medal of Honor: Vanguard and once again promising to "build on the key tenets of the franchise including historical accuracy and authenticity". Although I for one would rather go for fine-tuned Wiimote accuracy, than historical accuracy.

The new Medal of Honor: Vanguard may come sooner than one might expect from a game announced in late 2006, as Electronic Arts plans to release it in March 2007, for the PlayStation 2 and Nintendo Wii. Here's what they have to say about it, for now:

"Step into the boots of Frank Keegan, Corporal of the 82nd Airborne Division and engage in battles throughout Europe. From Operation Husky on the shores of Sicily to Operation Varsity inside Nazi Germany, you'll fight behind enemy lines in the epic WWII battles that turned America's first paratroopers into heroes of WWII. Featuring spectacular graphics adding to epic combat intensity, Medal of Honor Vanguard makes you the driving force in the struggle to liberate Europe. As the first game in the Medal of Honor series to be released on the Nintendo Wii platform, players can expect Medal of Honor Vanguard to take full advantage of Wii's one-of-a-kind controllers."

Vanguard is being developed by EA Los Angeles, and it already boasts an official website, with a couple of screenshots that you can view locally.

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Entertainment Software Association President Lowenstein Quits

Following an early report from a few days ago, the Entertainment Software Association (ESA) is now confirming that Douglas Lowenstein is resigning as president of the organization he's been leading for the past 12 years (!). He will be leaving the group early next year, in order to launch "a start-up trade group in the investment industry". According to various sources cited by GameSpot, Lowenstein has accepted a position with a still-forming trade organization that would represent a consortium of investment community firms.

Lowenstein is one of those people who made a huge impact on the gaming industry, without actually making any games or dealing with the creative process in any direct way. He founded the organization - then known as the Interactive Digital Software Association - in 1994, advocating against piracy and, in recent years, against the likes of Jack Thompson or inapt politicians trying to ban violent video games. The ESA also became synonymous with the North American rating group ESRB (Entertainment Software Rating Board), and up until this year, with the greatest of gaming shows - the E3, of course.

During Lowenstein's mandate, revenues in the gaming industry grew from about $3 billion to more than $10 billion. But surprisingly, the ESA only grew from 2 employees at launch to just 32 employees, who are working on a range of programs - from anti-piracy enforcement and domestic and international intellectual property policy, to government and media relations and research. Then again, the ESA reunites many more members and companies, who collectively account for more than 90% of the $7 billion in entertainment software sales in the U.S. in 2005 (and billions more in export sales of entertainment software).

Taking Lowenstein's place as president of the ESA will probably be Robbie Bach (ESA Chairman and President of Microsoft's Entertainment & Devices Division). At least until they can find for a proper replacement.

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Metal Gear Solid 4 Still PS3 Exclusive, Says Konami

Yes, we know it's been rumoured many times before, and Kojima already denied it back in Spring. But what can we do: over the past two months, there have been at least a couple of new rumours claiming that Metal Gear Solid 4 would one day make its way onto the Xbox 360. In late October, the cover of EGM magazine was recycling the same rumour, and last week it happened all over again, on Noooz - whose "Emperor Boutros" invoked a highly anonymous source close to the dev team for his "exclusive" information. Guess what Konami's official position is on the matter. Again.

When questioned by Joystiq, Noooz editor Daniel Boutros said that his source for the information is quite high up: "I rarely run with anything unless I'm 100% confident". I guess this would make a good example of how "rarely" ain't quite "always". But still, even after Konami's negative response (we'll get there in a bit), the guy insists on the validity of his info:

"It's coming [on the Xbox 360] a few months later than the PS3 game, but it's happening folks. This is said to be because publishers - including Konami - don't believe there'll be enough PS3s out there by the time the game hits because of the blu ray diode failure issues. (...) this came pretty much from the horse's mouth, so you can count on this being legit."

Oook, so what's Konami's response to this?

"Konami has no plans to bring Metal Gear Solid 4 to the Xbox 360 at this time," a Konami representative told CVG, reiterating that the Hideo Kojima stealth-em-up was still "exclusive to PlayStation 3."

We bolded that tricky part of the statement because - for instance - neither did Ubisoft have any official plans in early 2006 to bring Assassin's Creed on the Xbox 360 and PC, "at that time". And with a release date set in Q4 2007 for Metal Gear Solid 4, there's still plenty of time left for things to change. Especially if the alleged Xbox 360 version is only due "a few months later".

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Not a month (or week, at times) goes by, without some big legal confrontation making the headlines in this gaming industry of ours. Inapt politicians pushing for unlawful laws, crazed lawyer(s) seeking to ban violent video games, patent holders suing half a dozen companies at a time, class action lawsuits being filed against greedy publishers, you name it. It almost feels like a great legislative curse is slowly taking over the entire industry... when, in fact, things weren't that different a couple of decades ago either. There may have been less publicity, sure, but nonetheless litigations have been around ever since the early days of Pac-Man, Donkey Kong and Breakout.

Since I wasn't even born at that time (we're talking about the late '70s!), I had no idea about most of them. Until today, when I came upon a fine piece of editorial over on Gamasutra, titled "Litigations that Changed the Games Industry". The article highlights a few of the interesting game cases (or types of cases) and considers how these have affected the industry. "Readers may be surprised, but some of these cases produced real changes for the better", the author points out. And rightly so: sometimes, a bit of regulation is actually a good thing. Just like radiation. Or alcohol.

But anyway, here are a few excerpts from the article, starting with Atari's Breakout case from almost 30 years ago:

"Atari attempted to register the copyright for Breakout with the United States Copyright Office and was denied. This began a struggle involving Atari, the Copyright Office, and U.S. courts that lasted more than 5 years. (...) In the end, the Copyright Office registered the game and with the support of previous court decisions, this helped pave the way for copyright protection for all modern games.

(...) The game industry is now fighting for the additional respect that comes from First Amendment protection of artistic expression. (...) To date, the ESA has fought and won nine out of nine cases [attempting to limit the sale of games], having the state laws declared unconstitutional. Furthermore, the ESA has sought and won more than $1.5 million dollars in attorneys fees.

(...) The final group of cases to discuss are the newest type in this article. These cases have developed over the past few years and that will probably continue in coming years. These cases may be referred to collectively as "patent troll" cases.

Read on to see what they mean by "patent troll". In case you haven't figured it out already, there was a strong example in last week's news about Nintendo getting sued over some shady patent.

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New Kingdom Hearts And Xbox 360 Games From Square Enix?

We thought that Square Enix' announcement of Dragon Quest IX for the Nintendo DS was enough of a shock for this last month of 2006. But immediately afterwards another couple of Final Fantasy Tactics games were also revealed, and guess what: there's more where that came from! The recent Jump Festa show in Tokyo played host to even more teasing from Square Enix, whose presentation concluded with the revealing message "New Project Starting in 2007". Why so revealing?

Well, first of all because it followed right after the trailer for Kingdom Hearts II Final Mix (a Japanese release of the English version of Kingdom Hearts II), and also because the briefly shown text was decorated with sparkles a la Disney - making it a pretty sure match for a possible Kingdom Hearts III sequel.

Nothing's certain, for now, but it's going to be interesting to see what platform they'll be making it for.

In the meantime, another report coming from Japan (via TVG) claims that Square may be working on not one, but two unannounced Xbox 360 games! Is this just a coincidence? Quite likely. After all, it would be too much for the Kingdom Hearts series to leave the PlayStation 2 and hop right onto Microsoft's next-gen console, which has yet to be embraced by most Japanese gamers.

Not even the Xbox 360 version of Final Fantasy XI wasn't received too warmly, so again - it should be interesting to see what they're cooking up.

P.S. Speaking of FF XI, word is the recent PlayStation 3 firmware update version 1.31 also added support for the likes of Final Fantasy XI, and other PS2 games that require a HDD attachment.

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If you're a fan of Milla Jovovich - as any sane (and preferably male) human being should be - you might be disappointed to learn that her next Resident Evil movie could well be the last one. Even though there were previously some rumours about a fourth film in the game-to-movie series, these were practically squashed by Sony Pictures' latest official synopsis for Resident Evil: Extinction (a.k.a. Resident Evil 3 and Resident Evil: Afterlife). According to a report on IGN, the studio refers to the flick as "the third and final installment" of the Resident Evil series.

"Alice (Milla Jovovich), now in hiding in the Nevada desert, once again joins forces with Carlos Olivera (Oded Fehr) and L.J. (Mike Epps), along with new survivors Claire (Ali Larter), K-Mart (Spencer Locke) and Nurse Betty (Ashanti) to try to eliminate the deadly virus that threatens to make every human being undead... and to seek justice. Since being captured by the Umbrella Corporation, Alice has been subjected to biogenic experimentation and becomes genetically altered, with super-human strengths, senses and dexterity. These skills, and more, will be needed if anyone is to remain alive."

If the movies will truly end as a trilogy, we have every reason to be sad over this, since the Resident Evil films are so far among the very (albeit relative) best movies based on video games.

Next year's Extinction is said to be related to the story of the upcoming Resident Evil 5 game on PS3 and Xbox 360. Both of them are set in a post-apocalyptic desert environment, and supposedly "fans of the series will be pretty damn happy with a new boss monster that's going to rear its ugly head in the film".

Capcom's survival horror game series is also expected to make a comeback on the PC early next year with Resident Evil 4, and a Wii compilation of past games called Resident Evil: Umbrella Chronicles at a later date.

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If my external memory serves me right, this is the first time in the history of QuakeCon that the famous LAN party is being announced so soon, in the year preceding the actual event. As tradition would have it, QuakeCon will once again be held in Texas, during the month of August. The exact dates and place were announced yesterday on the event's official webiste, along with a few details to whet the future attendants' appetite.

QuakeCon 2007 will be held during August 2-5, 2007 at the Hilton Anatole Hotel in Dallas, Texas, and the organizers are already promising "more gaming, events, exhibits and fun planned than ever before", for this 12th edition.

"This year's BYOC Area will consume the entire Trinity Hall 1, with over 70,000 square feet of floor space and 2,700 player spots - over (ed. - "almost", actually) 1,000 more seats than 2006. We've also increased the exhibit area 5X to 25,000 square feet, enough to accommodate up to 50 exhibitors demonstrating their latest games and computer hardware. Of course, it wouldn't be QuakeCon without our high-stakes pro gaming tournaments; and attendees can also look forward to the return and expansion of our enormously popular and one-of-a-kind "Quick Draw" tournaments, which pit randomly selected attendees against each other in high-pressure battles for serious cash. And in keeping with QuakeCon tradition, every day will be packed full of contests, conferences, announcements, and entertainment."

You can already make a hotel room reservation at the Hilton Anatole (details on the QuakeCon website), however the registrations for the BYOC Area will only start on March 2, 2007. And we can only hope that, by then, "BYOC" will still stand for "bring your own computer", not "console".

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Dev News Round-Up: Perpetual, Red 5, Ritual, Empire, Ubi & more

There have been lots of dev / biz news over the last week, some of them pretty big stories, so I'll try to summarize most of the ones we haven't already covered. Kicking off this round-up is Perpetual Entertainment - who, according to a report on Gamasutra, has laid off 35 of its employees and delayed its ancient MMORPG Gods and Heroes: Rome Rising. The layoffs are said to be "a cost-saving measure to accomodate this increase in development time", however some of the 35 devs that left were actually working on Perpetual's other upcoming MMO, Star Trek Online.

Perpetual also issued a public statement on the Gods and Heroes forums, saying that they are "within a month of being content complete on Gods & Heroes", meaning that several devs didn't have much else to do (so they had to go). The MMO's release was pushed back to summer 2007.

Next we turn our attention to Red 5, the online development studio founded by key members from Blizzard's World of Warcraft team in 2005 (story). A few days ago they announced that they have secured a $18.5 million investment from Benchmark Capital and Sierra Ventures, which should come in handy for their MMO efforts. Red 5 Studios is currently working on a MMO game financed and distributed globally by Webzen, and powered by the impressive Offset Engine.

In other investment news, Realtime Worlds secured $31 million in funding recently, from venture capital firm New Enterprise Associates. Realtime Worlds was founded by CEO and Creative Director David Jones, who created the Grand Theft Auto and Lemmings games franchises, and the studio plans to release its first title, Crackdown, on Xbox 360 next year. Realtime is also currently working on All Points Bulletin, a MMO game to be published on PC and Xbox 360 by Webzen.

Another major deal was also revealed today on GI.biz, as German / Dutch investment group Catalis made a $8.5 million offer for Kuju Entertainment's parent company, Kuju Plc. Kuju's board of directors has unanimously recommended the offer to shareholders. The shareholders are pondering.

And while they're pondering, we move on to Ritual Entertainment. Yes, Ritual as in "OMG where are all our devs going?!". Fortunately, nobody else is leaving (for now), but they appointed Ken Harward as the new studio director. Ken previously worked on Counter-Strike: Condition Zero and SiN Episodes: Emergence, and is currently over-excited with joy.

All right, what's next... We also mentioned Empire Interactive in the title, so here goes: yesterday they announced that they are releasing three of their games through Steam. The first three Empire titles made available for digital distribution are FlatOut 2, Vegas Tycoon, and Ghost Master.

And finally, a few days ago Sentinel Studios officially came to be. This is a new independent development studio in North Carolina, headed by industry veterans Paul Potera (formerly of Ubisoft) and Marc Racine (former co-owner of Vicious Cycle Software). Sentinel currently employs only 5 people, so they obviously can't be up to much. Nor did they reveal any solid game development plans, so we'll them staff up for now.

Oh and speaking of Ubisoft (this is the last one, I swear), they sent us a note yesterday to let us know that they launched UBI|art| at www.ubi-art.com. What' that? Well, go see, I'm sure you'll figure it out!

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SCi Gets 11 Warner Licenses, Warner Gets 10% of SCi

As part of a deal announced today between SCi Games and Warner Bros. Entertainment, valued at 66.4 million Euro, the British publisher was granted 11 licenses which they'll be turning into games for various platforms, to be released from 2008 onwards. Among Warner's titles licensed to SCi are the comic book version of Batman, the Looney Tunes (including Bugs Bunny & co.), select titles from the Hanna-Barbera catalog (including Tom & Jerry) and television properties The OC, Loonatics Unleashed and Legion of Super Heroes.

In return, Warner Bros. has acquired a 10% stake in SCi Games, and the two companies have entered a distribution agreement, under which Warner Bros. will provide warehousing, logistics, merchandising and media buying services in the United States to Eidos (SCi's publishing brand, acquired in 2005). Eidos will continue to run - through its US publishing office - all other aspects of its US operations including manufacturing, sales, marketing and PR.

Below are the the exact licenses granted to SCi, as detailed in the announcement:

- Batman. The license enables Eidos to create games based on the comic book version of the DC Comics' renowned super hero.

- Looney Tunes. Eidos will create games using the library of Looney Tunes characters, including Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Road Runner and Speedy Gonzales and more, for handheld platforms.

- Hanna-Barbera catalog. Eidos will develop up to twelve games based on a number of individual characters in the classic Hanna-Barbera catalogue including Tom and Jerry, The Flintstones, Wacky Races, Yogi Bear and Huckleberry Hound.

- The OC. The license is for the interactive rights to the long running global TV series The OC, based around the lives of teenagers in Orange County, California.

- Other animated properties. Eidos has also signed license agreements relating to the children's animated TV programs, Loonatics Unleashed and Legion of Super Heroes.

The deal is still pending SCi shareholder approval, but they will most likely give it the green light.

P.S. Speaking of Eidos, CVG has word that they're already thinking about sequels to Battlestations: Midway - but that they'll have to wait and see how the game does at retail first, when it launches early next year.

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