Heh, I can't help but chuckle at the sight of this terminal update on Iron Lore's website, announcing that the studio is shutting down, and as of February 19 it has "ceased active game development", after failing to secure funding for its next project.

Aside from Titan Quest and its Immortal Throne expansion, Iron Lore had recently finished developing another expansion, Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War - Soulstorm. Ironically, by the time this is released on March 4, Iron Lore will already be ancient history. Well, that's the way it goes in this industry, especially for companies who think they can get away with making mediocre Diablo clones.

We can all agree on the fact that Valve hit the Jackpot with its Steam service. Hell, even I use it sometimes, and I am certainly not a big fan of online distribution. I’d rather buy my games in their respective boxes, be it orange, pink, or be it the color of a big bad dump. But business is business, and it is going oh so well right now…

And since they have this area covered (I’m referring to game distribution), Valve decided to look further away. In an interview with Tom's Games, Valve’s badass Doug Lombardi confessed that they are looking to provide even more entertainment. Not just games, but music, movies, and anything that can be labeled as digital entertainment. According to his statement, before the end of the year, we’ll be seeing new stuff on Steam.

Destination Playstation is a nice and cozy meeting between Sony representatives, retailers and 3rd party developers, which takes place in Arizona, every year. If you are a console freak, then you probably know about all this bullshit, and even more, if you are a proud owner of a Playstation, be it a handheld, be it a PS3, or be it a PS2 for all those juicy bishojou games out there, you’ll be pretty interested in this.

First off, we’ll get a Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots PS3 Bundle in Q2 2008, which will include a nice 80 GB Playstation 3, a retail version of Solid Snake’s upcoming adventure, plus a Dualshock 3 controller, all for only 499.99 USD. The price is good, I must say, the only thing that I do not know for sure is the presence (or absence) of the dreaded backwards compatibility.

Secondly, PSP owners will get a huge boner when this pretty God of War PSP Entertainment Pack hits the shelves, for a mere 199.99 USD. The bundle will include a nice custom red PSP, with Kratos’ face forever carved into the handheld’s back, the upcoming God of War: Chains of Olympus, plus the voucher to freely download Syphon Filter: Combat Ops from the Playstation Store.

Last, but certainly not least, the much awaited Dualshock 3 will finally get its ass on the North American market, starting with April, 2008. It will be charged with no less than 54.99 USD, and it is said to be compatible with over 100 PS3 games. Frankly, I still think Sony lost a LOT with delaying this launch, but, hey, better late than never.

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.

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!

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.

Any aspiring young talent out there will have a shot at this year's GDC to join the ranks of BioWare, since the company recently announced they are searching for fresh cannon fodder. If you are a skilled 3D graphics programmer, technical artist, or maybe a talented writer, pay their stand a visit during the Conference in San Francisco, and you may just find a cozy spot along one of the best RPG developers out there. Derek Sidebottom, Bioware's Human Resources dude, had this to say regarding the generous offer:

"We're looking for people with a passion for excellence in video game development. Our core values are Quality in our Products and Quality in our Workplace, and these have been recognized by countless product-specific awards, as well as BioWare being named amongst Canada's Top 100 Employers for 4 years and Financial Post's 10 Best Companies to Work For."

Lagging a couple of years behind the pack, Take-Two has finally licensed Unreal Engine 3 for its 2K Games label. Today's announcement issued by the engine's makers from Epic Games only mentions some "unannounced games in development", so we can only guess what exactly they're working on... Neither party had anything intelligent to say on this occasion (other than the reciprocal pat on the back, as usual), so I won't drag this on any longer than needed, either.

Ubisoft sends along word that they will open a new internal development studio - their 18th, no less - over in Singapore. That's one step closer to Japan, so... ganbatte, Ubi-kun! The local technological infrastructure, thriving game-dev industry and friendly government were among the factors that favoured this decision, and I suspect so were other local delights (good food, hot chicks... again, not quite Japanese, but hopefully they'll get there, too).

The new Singapore studio will be located in Fusionopolis, "a state-of-the-art infocomms & media hub that is still under construction", and it should open for business early this summer. By the time it reaches its peak (years from now), the new team should become 300-people strong, under the training of an initial core team of Ubi veterans.

The boss? Olivier de Rotalier, currently the Director of Cost Control for Ubi's International Production studios. The goal? To develop titles for portable and home consoles.

While we were busy putting the finishing touches on this shiny new website, some folks from Blizzard were having a laugh over in Los Angeles at the D.I.C.E. Summit, reminiscing various stories and their past failures. Fortunately, we'll never know just how bad those failed games were, since they were cancelled long before they could reach us. But we did find out what games exactly they cancelled - some of which 99.9% of humanity had no idea even existed at all, prior to seeing this list.

- Games People Play
- Crixa
- Shattered Nations
- Pax Imperia
- Denizen
- Warcraft Adventures
- Nomad
- Raiko

The most dubious absence from that list is of course StarCraft: Ghost, which was clearly left out on purpose. So, in other words, it's still not dead and burried. Yep, Blizzard is "still in denial about that one”. Jeez, wake up and smell the fucking napalm already!

Another absence spotted by Blizzplanet is Diablo II: Salvation, a brand which Blizzard abandoned back in 2005. And finally, that same story points to Gamespot's "lengthy article covering the D.I.C.E. event with quotes from Mike Morhaime and a few screenshots"... Umm, screenshots?! This may come as a shock to whoever wrote that story, but those are actually photos of something called real-life. You know, that thing we all have to face once in while, when we're out of booze and need to run down to the store. Speaking of which, brb.