Remember when Atari sold their Driver franchise to Ubisoft, last summer? If so, then you may also remember that one of the reasons invoked for the $24 million deal (other than the financial mess they were in) was that they wanted to focus their portfolio on just a handful of franchises. And since Test Drive Unlimited is the most prominent racing series (still) left in their possession, it's only natural to assume they would continue to "focus" on it by milking more titles.

Exactly what kind of sequels they have in mind, that's a whole 'nother story. A story that, according to Polish website GRY-OnLine, just got a little more clear today. Citing an anonymous, but "100% reliable" source, they claim that Test Drive Unlimited 2 is indeed in production, with a projected release in March 2008 for the PC and Xbox 360. May we remind you that the latest TDU - which was received fairly well on all platforms - was also released on the PlayStation 2 and PSP. So it would be pretty weird for Atari not to plan a PS3 release for Test Drive Unlimited 2 (assuming GRY-OnLine's info is accurate).

Platforms aside, they also predict that the sequel will introduce off-road racing, a dynamic weather system, and, from what they told Blue's, over 2400 Km of more-or-less-exotic roads. Which means that the sequel could have a larger world, compared to the 1000 miles (1600 Km) allegedly featured in the first TDU. And that's great, because free driving is what this game is all about.

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StarCraft 2 or World of StarCraft, What Will It Be?

Many speculations have arisen over the past few days, but one thing's for sure: come this May 19, Blizzard is going to WOW us (no pun intended), hopefully with a new StarCraft game announcement. The moment of truth is expected to reveal itself during Blizzard's third Worldwide Invitational event, set to begin in Seoul, South Korea on May 19. "We're looking forward to creating another memorable show for [fans] this year as well", hinted Mike Morhaime, president and cofounder of Blizzard. But while the event's announcement from a couple of months ago said nothing about any new games, in late April rumour had it that the Korean event would finally mark the revelation of the real-time strategy sequel StarCraft 2.

Now, the tide is slowly turning. Following reports that Blizzard is currently hiring for "next-generation massively multiplayer online games" (so much is true), CVG claims to have learned from "well placed US sources" that the game Blizzard plans to announce on May 19 is actually a StarCraft MMO.

Sure, there are plenty of reason to believe otherwise and to stick with the StarCraft 2 RTS rumour. For one thing, space MMOs such as EVE Online or Earth & Beyond have never gotten too close to the 1 million subscribers mark. And you could also argue that Blizzard would not risk losing players from World of Warcraft, and to have two less-populated MMOs. But such assumptions have little weight, really, when you think about the potential of the StarCraft universe.

But hey, we wouldn't mind either way, as long as they actually make the announcement this month. Which is still nothing more than pure speculation...

Oh and speaking of speculation, since Blizzard is also hiring for a new Mobile Wireless Development Department, BlizzPlanet is already dreaming about browsing the WoW Auction House or at least playing Lost Vikings on mobile phones. So much for "real life", if their dreams come true!

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Fracture, A Groundbreaking Project For PS3 And Xbox 360

Not as much a conceptually-groundbreaking game, though, as a literally-groundbreaking one. Fracture is the latest next-gen project announced by LucasArts, as an original new IP currently in development at Day 1 Studios - makers of the MechAssault series, the Xbox 360 port of F.E.A.R. and, most recently, its PS3 version. Shortly put, Fracture will be a futuristic shooter that will allow players to freely deform the battlefields, through the use of seismic weapons alongside other sci-fi gadgetry.

Of course, that brief description doesn't do the game justice, so here's a little bit more about it. Fracture takes place in 2161, on an American soil split in half not only by war, but also by ecological and seismological disasters. The Western states are called the Republic of Pacifica and having allied with Asia, resort to solving their problems at the genetic level, effectively restructuring the DNA of its inhabitants (hence its genetically enhanced soldiers) - a morally unacceptable method for the Atlantic Alliance that was formed between the Eastern American states and Europe. It's this Atlantic Alliance that you'll be fighting for in the game, as a demolitions expert named Mason Briggs, who fully benefits from his faction's superiority in the field of cybernetics.

Using an arsenal of futuristic weaponry to strategically reshape his surroundings on the fly, Briggs will be able to dynamically reshape the earth (thanks to the game's next-gen technology known as Terrain Deformation). To better illustrate this idea, LucasArts provided the following gameplay examples:

"When Briggs throws a tectonic grenade on a level battlefield, the ground blasts upward to provide access to an otherwise unreachable area. Moving on, when he comes across what appears to be an impenetrable structure, Briggs utilizes the alt-fire functionality on his rocket launcher to create enormous craters to burrow underneath the wall. Surrounded on all sides by enemies, Briggs heaves a vortex grenade, creating a swirling tornado-like mass of boulder, dirt and debris to dispatch his foes."

They also provided some screenshots, but to really understand what this game is capable of, you'd better watch the trailer linked from the official website. Fracture is planned for release in Summer 2008, on the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 consoles.

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While the rest of us PC gamers keep on waiting for that elusive port for Windows (Vista?), Epic Games and Microsoft have released yet another multiplayer map pack for last year's little-argued Xbox 360 game of the year, Gears of War. Called "Hidden Fronts", this latest offering is now available on Xbox Live, and fans willing to depart with 800 Microsoft points ($10) will get four new action-packed multiplayer maps out of it: Bullet Marsh, Garden, Process and Subway.

If you think the price is too spicy, you can also wait until September 3, 2007, when all four maps will be made available for download free of charge over Xbox Live. Or if you can't make up your mind yet, maybe seeing this latest batch of screenshots and learning a bit more about each of these maps will settle your mind.

So, the first one - "Bullet Marsh" - is set in a Kryll-infested swap, with an old generator still powering the area lights. Players should take note that a few stray bullets could easily knock out the generator, leaving combatants to fend for themselves against the Kryll.

Next, "Garden" is presented as an overgrown and crumbling conservatory that still has a working fertilization and pesticide system. Be warned that this system can pose a serious hazard to anyone who ventures into the greenhouse, without first venting the air.

On the "Process" map, teams must fight for control of a subterranean Imulsion processing plant, reportedly still active despite the cessation of the Pendulum wars.

And finally, "Subway" is actually Timgad's Central Subway station, which used to serve as a central hub for commuters. Now the tunnels are crawling with Locust, so if you step in something icky, it would better be a dead one. Or else...

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Fallout 3 Trailer Next Month, ex-Fallout 3 Demo Now!

In what may very well be their last posting on Van Buren, No Mutants Allowed have finally dropped the bomb we've all been waiting for since 2003, more or less answering our question: "What if... Fallout 3 would have been made by Black Isle?". For those who haven't been following the "post-apocalyptic" evolution of the Fallout series, Van Buren used to be the project codename used by Black Isle Studios for their own little Fallout 3 game. A game that was cancelled along with BIS' closure in 2003, only to be later revived by Bethesda as a completely different project - much to the community's general disbelief in their ability to re-capture the Fallout feeling.

But getting back to the bomb, this week NMA released the Van Buren tech demo, which is certainly as close as we'll ever get to playing Black Isle's cancelled Fallout 3. The package is a hefty 241 MB in size and it offers multiple paths to victory, along with multiple bugs of course, like back in the series' early days. NMA also has a guide for the demo, if you feel like playing (with) it a little more.

While waiting for the download to finish (and if you don't mind ruining the surprise), there's also a gameplay trailer of Black Isle's Van Buren on YouTube, appropriately accompanied by the "Dream a Little Dream of Me" song...

And speaking of dreams and trailers, Bethesda has a teaser of their own coming up on the (real) Fallout 3 website, in just 32 days. Let the countdown begin!

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Like we suspected last week, Ken Kutaragi's retirement from his executive position at Sony wasn't the last we heard of "the father of PlayStation". Although I have to admit, this is way earlier than expected! Sure, Sony practically confirmed the obvious next PlayStation console since December, when they responded to analysts predicting there may not be any PS4. But who thought that Kutaragi would begin sharing his vision for the PlayStation 4, just one month after the PlayStation 3 launched in Europe?

Admitedly, "sharing his vision" may be a bit of an overstatement here, since he didn't go into any specifics yet. But Kutaragi did say in an interview with EE Times that he now feels free to start talking about the future:

"As a matter of course, I have the vision of Playstation 4, 5 and 6, which will merge into the network."

This "network" idea, albeit still vague, seems to be the very heart and soul of Kutaragi's vision, as he plans to create a new world on the network. "The design concept of the Cell processor is the network processor", EE Times quotes him, adding that when the PS3 was introduced last year, Kutaragi said the network environment was not ready for a net-based game console. "Now it has become possible, so why not enter?", he said triumphantly.

It's interesting to see how things will unfold, now that Kutaragi's future projects are largely independent from Sony, according to his own statement. Who knows, maybe that media-storage-drive-less console idea wasn't so far-fetched after all...

P.S. Oh-oh, looks like Hironobu Sakaguchi, "the father of Final Fantasy" doesn't like Ken Kutaragi.

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In a move that is bound to remind us of the notorious merger between leading US retailers GameStop and EB Games from 2005, it was announced today that UK's top specialist retailer, GAME, has acquired rival retail chain Gamestation, in a deal worth £74 million (€108m / $147m). This puts another 217 stores under GAME's indisputable domination, therefore reinforcing the group's leadership over the European games market.

Much like the aforementioned merger, both "GAME" and "Gamestation" will be kept as separate brands, despite this being a more unilateral kind of deal. Part of the reason is that, even though GAME is more popular among mainstream buyers, many hardcore gamers still rely on Gamestation to whet their uncompromising appetite.

Commenting on the acqusition, Wedbush Morgan analyst Michael Pachter told GI.biz that he sees this as a missed opportunity for US giant GameStop, who could have set a major foothold in the UK, had it purchased Gamestation before GAME:

"[GameStop] should be in the UK market, and instead of purchasing Gamestation and immediately being one-third the size of Game Group, they allowed Game Group to get bigger. If GameStop were to open 200 stores now, they would be a quarter the size of GAME. They could have been two-thirds the size of GAME by buying these stores and opening 200 more."

There was also some speculation that GAME's suddenly increased market share would allow them to exert more pressure on publishers, but the same analyst refuted such a scenario, arguing that "If GAME tries to squeeze the publishers, the publishers will sign exclusives with Wal-Mart or Dixon's on games like FIFA or GTA, and GAME will suffer mightily. They will NOT sign exclusives if GAME treats them well."

As it stands now, the GAME group has a combined total of 1047 stores, and while there are no immediate plans to close down any of them, GAME CEO Lisa Morgan did admit that Gamestation's head office in York will likely be "consolidated" with GAME's state-of-the-art facility in Basingstoke.

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If you were to make a list of the most commercially successful MMORPGs out there, space / sci-fi themed games - such as the critically acclaimed EVE Online - would likely appear somewhere around the bottom. And yet, we can't help getting excited over a new space MMO project, currently in development at Colony Studios. The reason being that the core team behind this name is made up of industry veterans who worked on big ones such as World of Warcraft, Lord of the Rings Online, City of Heroes, EverQuest, Dark Age of Camelot, Ultima Online and, yes, the one and only EVE Online. How's that for "commercially successful" experience?

Like others before them, they are stating from head start that their goal is not to make another WoW clone, or any other "safe" MMO. Oh no, whether the publishers will like it or not, the folks from Colony Studios are risk takers, and they plan to breathe new life into this "stagnant increasingly generic genre" of online games.

They wouldn't say what their space MMO will be titled, but they do have a vague release date in mind - late 2009 - and plenty of gameplay ideas. Some of these they are already prepared to talk about, as evidenced in this interview with RPG Vault:

"Our IP will be centered on a dynamic living "world" far more than a linear storyline that hinders replayability. We will provide a ton of history and backstory in the game, but the players will consistently influence the content. The important differentiator is this - players will log in and react to what's been happening in the game, not log in and get the same exact experience they had the last time they played. Our game is dynamic, so you'd better keep up with it."

The interview also reveals that Colony Studios have licensed the impressive Hero Engine from Simutronics, and they're more than pleased with it so far:

"[Hero Engine] has been fantastic for us, and in our opinion, supersedes all other MMO middleware solutions on the market, both in terms of render power and server flexibility. We want big battles... REALLY big battles for both PvE and PvP, and right now, this package will deliver them."

We look forward to hearing - and seeing more of Colony Studios' debut MMO.

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Lineage III Code Theft Could Cost NCsoft Over $1 Billion

I'm sure we all remember the frenzy that ensued three and a half years ago, after some of the Half-Life 2 source code was stolen and made public. And I'm also sure that Valve's losses due to that unfortunate incident were nowhere near disastrous - considering all the free publicity they gained. So you'll have to pardon me if I raise an eyebrow in doubt, when NCsoft blatantly claims that they could lose over $1 billion (that's right, with a "b"!), as a result of an alleged code theft. And boy, what a code!

According to the Korean company, seven of its former employees took away software code for the upcoming Lineage III game, and showed it to a major Japanese competitor. No, we don't know which one, and we're not throwing any blind sticks at Square Enix or anyone at this time - even if they do seem to be having some problems with their own MMOs...

The story was picked up by Chosun Ilbo, who say that the Seoul Metropolitan Police is currently investigating this case. The police believes that the Lineage III code may have been copied by the Japanese company during a job interview attended by the seven ex-NCsoft employees. And they are also suspected for another "leak" that took place at NCsoft last September, involving the program design of Lineage III.

And to top it all off, the report also states that the Korean online giant recently took another massive blow, after it fired one of its senior game developers on account of "poor leadership skills". The only question is, if he was such a bad leader, how come most of his 90-member team also quit along with him?

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