Reports about a new SimCity game in the works at Maxis go back over three years, when two of the studio's leaders (general manager Luc Barthelet and general genius Will Wright) confirmed that development on SimCity 5 had already begun in January 2004. But it wasn't until last November that Electronic Arts finally dropped a hint of their own, by announcing that they are planning sequels for several franchises, including SimCity.

No actual title was given at the time, but now GameStop has a listing for a certain "SimCity Societies" game coming in November 2007. We wouldn't bet on their release date, but the title itself sounds good enough for the change of direction that the series will follow in the next iteration. We still don't know exactly what direction that is, but we should find out soon enough.

That's because SimCity 5 could very well be the next cover-story of the official Games for Windows magazine. In Jeff Green's blog from 1UP, the editor keeps a tight lip about what it will really be, only saying that "it's the new game in one of PC gaming's oldest franchises - a series [with] bazillions of fans". I know, that could mean a lot of things, but the next issue's alleged cover makes it pretty clear that it will be a new SimCity game.

Well, better start cleaning your mouse pad: if this turns out to be true, you're in for a whole lot of clicking!

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This may not be the ideal moment to announce this kind of a strategy game (with the genre's fans still drooling over the StarCraft II trailers and everything), but if the Bulgarians from Black Sea Studios saw fit to reveal their latest project today, then so be it. It's called WorldShift, and the way they put it, it will be a "next-generation, cyber-fantasy RTS game set in a dark future of Earth, where todays' civilization is only a fading mysterious legend".

Regardless of whether or not you know Knights of Honor - their previous (and so far only) game, WorldShift will be a completely different take on the genre. At least for them. Along with some distinct gameplay features detailed on the official website (e.g. modifiable factions, unqiue cooperative multiplayer gameplay, powerful relics, no technology trees), WorldShift will include three playable races: Humans - who now live in five independent Megacities scattered all around the plagued Earth; the Tribes - who are living humbly, populating the vast wastelands all over the planet; and The Hive - who are still a bit of a mystery, but we have reasons to suspect they are not quite what you would call "peaceful".

The first WorldShift screenshots look good enough already, and they say they've been working on it for a long time already. Still, there's no release date in sight, and no publishing deal announced so far. So we'll sure be hearing more about this game from now on; and so will you.

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We left the best for last today - the day we've been waiting for from the bottom of our gas masks, ever since Bethesda started that countdown on the official website about a month ago. And when the time was up, they gave us exactly what they promised and, unfortunately, nothing more: a short and sweet "teaser" trailer. With no gameplay whatsoever, since there's still plenty of time for that - until Fall 2008, from what the trailer says.

Although any comment is pretty useless right now, I can't help to express my relief at the sight (and sound) of the classic post-apocalyptic themes ("War, war never changes"), not only from this cinematic clip, but also from the previous artworks shown one by one on the Fallout 3 website. You won't find them there anymore, but we've kept them safe in our local vault.

In fact, you might not find even the trailer on the official website right now, since their poor server was slaughtered all day long, and the last time I checked it was still in a precarious (if not post-apocalyptic) state. Anyway, it's looking good, and hopefully the Fallout fans can breathe easier after seeing it. Although... the biggest revelation - that of the gameplay and game perspective - is still yet to come.

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They figured it out. Finally, EA figured out how to make the football stadium crowds less ugly in their FIFA games! And to think that the answer was so simple, all this time: just turn off the bloody lights, so that nobody will see them. And voila, no more ugly cardboards crowds! Well, all right, we have no doubt that the next game in the series - completely unsurprisingly called FIFA 08 - will also feature day-time matches. But the first screenshots issued by Electronic Arts only indicate a disturbingly thick darkeness engulfing the playing field. Exactly NOT like in real life.

The issue of games trying to hide their graphical shortcomings in the shadow is as old as 3D lighting itself, unfortunately, so we won't dwell on it any further. Instead, we'll let EA's PR team do the talking and see what they have to say about this year's edition of their FIFA series, at least regarding the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 versions:

"The FIFA 08 next-gen gameplay engine, built to maximize the power of Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, delivers animations and ball control that is so responsive you feel like you are actually on the pitch. Footballers in FIFA 08 now benefit from A.I. so smart, it features a 35-point decision engine which enables players to process multiple decisions and reactions in real-time.

(...) For the first time ever, fans playing FIFA 08 will face the pressure to improve their game that real-world players endure every day. A new play mode called Be A Pro locks you in the role of a single player and challenges you to master the same disciplines as a real football player - from positioning and tackling to reading the field and passing.

(...) FIFA 08 is dramatically more real and exhilarating with the inclusion of 620 licensed teams, 30 leagues, and more than 15,000 players making it 20% larger than FIFA 07 on current generation formats.

In a nutshell, these will be the main attractions of FIFA 08 on the Xbox 360 and PS3, but rest assured the game will also be released this autumn on pretty much every other platform: PC, PS2, PSP, DS and Wii. And mobile.

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Wii Selling 5 Times Better Than PlayStation 3 In Japan

Yet again, last month, Sony failed to reclaim a single piece of lost ground in its next-gen race against Nintendo, over in Japan. Whereas, back in April, the PlayStation 3 was selling there once every... 4 Wiis or so, things got even worse in May, when the abyss between the number of sold units for each console continued to widen visibly. And that, despite the PS3 shoving another fair amount of games on store shelves.

So it's pretty clear that without a price cut for the PlayStation 3 in the near future, Sony has little chance to get back in the race. Especially if the recent Metal Gear Solid 4 rumours regarding an Xbox 360 version will turn out to be true (that would be the final blow). Until it takes a decisive measure, Sony can helplessly look at the latest sales figures estimated by the Japanese research firm
Enterbrain (via Bloomberg):

"Nintendo sold 251,794 [Wii consoles] in May, outselling Sony's PlayStation 3 consoles five to one (...). The PS3 trailed the Wii by four to one in April."

Just as sad (for Sony) is the situation for their PSP, compared to the DS, the ratio also being about 5-to-1 in Nintendo's favour, according to the same report:

"Nintendo's handheld DS player outsold Sony's PlayStation Portable five to one in May, Enterbrain said. The company sold 620,670 of the touch-screen players, compared with 123,673 PSPs."

As for the Xbox 360... there's no more point taking it into consideration, when speaking about Japan. With only 11,000 units sold in May, Microsoft once again failed to make a stand. Although it is quite funny that they ended up measuring up to Sony, precisely like Sony measures up to Nintendo: X360 vs. PS3 - 1 to 5.

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Half-Life 2: Deathmatch & Lost Coast Free For ATi Radeon'ers

Since it's a pretty slow news day, it wouldn't hurt to bring back a great news for everyone who owns an ATi Radeon graphics card, which made the rounds while our main server was still recovering from its downtime. And the story is that anyone with this kind of a graphics card can download - and play - for free Half-Life 2: Deathmatch and Half-Life 2: Lost Coast through the Steam online distribution platform (which recently surpassed 13 million active accounts!), even without the original game!

If you didn't bother to keep your Steam up-to-date, the first step would be to get the latest version from Valve's official website and install it. Afterwards, it will automatically detect if you have a Radeon stuck in your computer, and it will let you know that you can download the two titles mentioned above. And from there on, I think you can handle it. A more direct link for those favored by this offer is www.steampowered.com/ati_offer1a.

Speaking of Steam, today marks the online release of Tomb Raider: Anniversary in the last few corners of the world (as in America) through this system, after Europe and other territories could enjoy it since June 1. And, finally, Steam is also the place to look for the same game's demo version, very cute indeed, and also recently released. Have fun with them (and her).

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Metal Gear Solid 4 Rumoured For Xbox 360, And Even Wii

Despite all the PS3 games betraying their exclusivity and (also) heading for the Xbox 360, Sony still retains the most important title solely for their next-gen console: Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots. That, at least, is the official story. Because rumour has it that not even MGS4 will remain exclusive to the PlayStation 3 for too long. According to some phantomatic online reports cited by British publication Digital Spy, 2008 will also bring an Xbox 360 version of Metal Gear Solid 4 - and maybe even a chopped-down MGS game for the Wii.

As if that last bit weren't too far-fetched already, the original report claims that "MGS4 for the 360 will also come with exclusive content and gameplay that will be lacking from it's PS3 counterpart", adding:

"Some of them are VR missions as well as Snake Tales or Snake in the Valley, (depending on where you live) which will let you go on objective based missions, some of which are very lengthy. These are the first two bonuses to emerge so far but be ready to expect even more."

So far, the most eloquent official response from Konami seems to be the one received today by SPOnG: "We don't comment on speculation". Ok, we love them for their eloquence and everything, but a straight answer is needed now more than ever! So, which is it, Konami?

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Company of Heroes Devs Form Smoking Gun Interactive

Relic is one of the few veteran studios who managed to keep their games above a fairly high standard of quality, so we take no joy in seeing them lose developers. Especially when these are people who worked on last year's best rated strategy title, Company of Heroes, including the game's producer John Johnson. Together with another couple of ex-Relic members - namely lead programmer Drew Dunlop and art director Angie Radwan-Pytlewski - they formed a new development studio called Smoking Gun Interactive, and today they announced its grand opening to the gaming world.

Joining the new studio's founding members are two more former Relic employees who worked on the Company of Heroes project (audio director Crispin Hands and story & script writer Duane Pye), making this a pretty solid, albeit still small start-up team. Needless to say, they're looking for more people to join them on their website. And by the way, they're located in Vancouver, Canada.

Although they have yet to announce any solid plans (i.e. games), they claim that Smoking Gun "will focus on creating innovative award winning cross platform games based on original or company owned intellectual property". Judging by their past experience at Relic - and by last week's Exoriare.com teaser / puzzle, odds are their first project will be a strategy game.

We'll be waiting to hear more from them, as we always are from the Relic front.

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No, it's not going to be a game about guessing what kind of apocalyptic future awaits us, nor about when will EA stop milking their Need for Speed franchise with cheap racing games (though the prophecy says NFS: Pro Street might be the chosen one). Instead, the new game announced by Microids (nowdays known as MC2, after their fusion with Wanadoo) will be a traditional adventure title, called Nostradamus: The Last Prophecy. It's being developed by Kheops Studio, TOTM Studio and Mzone Studio, and it's produced by an even larger group of companies that also includes the independent French producer Elektrogames.

For reference, the most recent adventures made by Kheops were Safecracker and The Secrets of Da Vinci: The Forbidden Manuscript. These should give you an idea of what to expect from Nostradamus, or if you haven't played them, maybe the the first few screenshots will. They're available now in the local gallery, and from what MC2 predicts, the final game should come out in the third quarter of 2007.

So now that we've gone over the technical stuff, here's a bit about the actual game. Nostradamus: The Last Prophecy is set in 16th century Provence, in a country ravaged by religious wars and devastated by the plague. Curiously, the player will take on the role of the prophet's daughter, Madeleine, who must pose as an astrologer and doctor, sent to aid the (former) queen - Catherine de Medicis. To be accepted as such, Madeleine must go in disguise and assume her younger brother's identity, Cesar, which means that the play style (and they way (s)he interacts with other characters) will alternate between "Madeleine the young woman" and "Madeleine disguised as Cesar".

All in all, Nostradamus promises to be a thrilling historical adventure full of political scheming and ancestral prophecies, with all the suspense of a detective novel: from one murder to another, players make their way through a test-riddled forensic investigation, and solve puzzles inspired by the works of Nostradamus, taking them through the worlds of astrology, medicine and medicinal plants. Fascinating.

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There's just one tiny little keyword in that title that actually ruins the news we've all been waiting for: "Al Lowe Returns *With* A New Larry Game". That's not the case, unfortunately, so for now we'll have to suffice with Al returning *in* a new Larry game... For mobile phones... And we're not even sure it's him. But hey, any reason is a good reason when you feel like talking about Larry, even when it's just a screenshot for a pseudo-gaming platform we don't normally deal with.

The image in question is from the upcoming Leisure Suit Larry: Love for Sail remake for mobile phones, to be released by Vivendi / Sierra this month in Europe, and in September in North America. As you can see, the grey-haired guy sitting in front of Larry looks suspiciously a lot like Al Lowe - the father of the classic Larry series on the PC, among other adventure games he created for Sierra before he left and retreated to the mediatic shadow.

So we tracked him down to see if he had any comments on this. When cuffed to a bed in flames, threatened with a mean-looking cactus, and poked for comments, Al said:

"Wow. Can I sue? Or should I feel honored?

I guess I'm fair game since I made myself a character in the games I did and [Vivendi] owns "all the rights to all the characters, stories, and situations" I developed."

Admitedly, this wouldn't be the first time he appears in one of his games - or in this case, in a remake based on his classic Larry 7. As Al explained some time ago on his website:

"When artists have to create so many characters, it's rough to be entirely original, so they look at real people for inspiration. I was an easy mark, for the same reason that I loved putting Ken Williams (Sierra's founder and CEO during its successful period) in the games - we knew we wouldn't get sued!"

Ok, so no one's suing anyone, but we'd sure love to see more Larry games on the PC one of these days. And for the record, NO! Magna Cum Laude was NOT a true Larry game.

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