Matt Barton writes "Gamasutra is featuring an illustrated history of the Vectrex. The article goes in-depth on the development, specs, and impact of the unusual but innovative vector-based platform. We also discuss the modern Vectrex homebrew scene and collectors' market."

The Next Generation site has a look back at 2007 through a political lens. Manhunt 2, crackdowns on game sales, and endless stories about gaming and aggression seemed to dominate game headlines this year. The article runs down the details on each of these thorny issues: "There is no conclusive evidence that playing violent videogames leads to violent acts. That hasn't stopped researchers from looking for links between videogames and aggression. A study released ... in November tainted [the role of games as teachers] ... A University of Michigan study by psychology professor Rowell Huesmann called violent videogames a public health threat ... And Villanova University in Pennsylvania found that games caused aggression, but not much: 'It's not as if this is a light switch that either videogames do or do not cause aggression...Most people assume it has a really big effect, but what we find from research is it actually has a very tiny effect,' professor Patrick Markey told Next-Gen in April."

A New York Times article from this past Friday highlights the 'problem' that Nintendo is facing: more people want to give them money than they can handle. Analysts quoted in the story discussing Nintendo's unique Wii shortage problem indicate that the company could be selling twice the 1.8 million consoles a month it ships. All told, these same individuals believe the company could be leaving as much as $1 billion on the table this holiday season. "'We don't feel like we've made any mistakes,' said George Harrison, senior vice president for marketing at Nintendo of America. He said there was a shortage because the company must plan its production schedule five months ahead, and projecting future demand is difficult. He added that there had been a worldwide shortage of disk drives that had hurt Nintendo as well as makers of many other devices. 'It's a good problem to have,' Mr. Harrison said of the demand, but he acknowledged that there could be a downside. 'We do worry about not satisfying consumers and that they will drift to a competitor's system.'"

WirePosted writes "A report has emerged suggesting the Xbox 360's inbuilt wireless system for communication with wireless controllers and headsets is transmitting over a wide area of the 2.4Ghz spectrum, causing interference to WLAN's and other 2.4Ghz devices."

Krinsath writes "CCP, publishers of Eve Online, have posted a Dev Blog detailing the circumstances leading up to the deletion of XP's boot.ini file, which was earlier discussed on Slashdot. The blog post has intimate details about how the mistake occurred (a new installer from their normal one), how they responded and what CCP has learned from it. While fairly dry, it is to the company's credit that they're being open about one of the more serious bugs to crop up in gaming's recent history."

An anonymous reader writes "The Escapist has up an article looking at a curve that represents the dissolution of large social groups, like online guilds. Called the Failure Cascade, it's essentially a way of examining the dissociation of members of an organization predicated on a culture of success. They primarily explore this phenomenon using descriptions of EVE corporate alliances. 'These are the two forces at work in [an] alliance's failure cascade: the individual and the guild ... This happens because the failure cascade is the inverse of a network effect. Websites like MySpace define their value by the people that use the service just as guilds define their quality by their members. As bad events cause players to leave or become inactive, the quality drop leads others to do the same in a spiral that rarely stabilizes, until no one is left.'"

trogador writes "Researchers are working to associate online avatars with physical bodies, connecting virtual reality robots with steel and software counterparts. The unification of software and mobility like this results in the so-called 'Ubibot' (ubiquitous robot), which the researchers predict is the future of interactive robotics. In the future, avatars on your pc/cell/pda screen may be able to bring you your tea or scratch your back. 'Two key components of the interface involve the sensor mapper and behavior mapper. The sensor mapper helps Rity get physical (ultrasound) sensor information from Mybot, enabling the virtual avatar to use physical information. The behavior mapper helps Rity actually perform physical behaviors using Mybot in a real environment, enabling the avatar to interact physically with human beings in real environments.'"

Ars Technica notes, via an interview at the StuffWeLike site, comments from Valve's Doug Lombardi indicating that the company has plans to continue the Half-Life series beyond Half-Life 2 Episode 3 . "While most sites are taking this as a confirmation of Half-Life 3, the quote is not a definitive on anything other than the continuation of the series. And, of course, there hasn't ever been so much as a rumor hinting at Half-Life's demise. As what is arguably the biggest franchise on the PC platform, there is no reason for Valve to stop producing the crowbar-swingin' good times."

The newest NPD numbers pass on a heartening statistic about the adoption of games: more than half of the US population plays videogames via some method. "Most people said that per week, they're either playing just as many or less hours than they did last year. Thirty percent said that they play more than a year ago, while another 30 percent said they play less and 40 percent say that they play the same amount of hours. Males aged 18-34 continue to be the heaviest gamers and are more attracted to hardcore games as opposed to casual games."

The recent debate brought about by Jeff Gerstmann's dismissal from Gamespot has focused a lot of attention on the role of advertiser manipulation of reviews. Now a lawsuit brought by PR firm Kohnke Communications against what remains of Perpetual Entertainment has unveiled an interesting element of their business relationship. From the language of the agreement: "Kohnke's public relations campaign was successful in creating pre-release 'buzz' around Gods & Heroes, and in convincing reviewers to write positive reviews about the game. In addition, on information and belief, Perpetual had signed up more than 100,000 beta testers for Gods & Heroes, a large number for an unreleased MMO." For another viewpoint on the Gerstmann issue, Dean Takahashi just recently interviewed the former reviewer.

An anonymous reader writes "For the first time, the Army has set up a project office, just for building videogames. The military has been training troops with games for decades, of course. But this is the first wing of the armed forces dedicated exclusively for gaming. One of the first projects: a tool kit that would let soldiers "build and customize their own training scenarios — just like the Marines' did, adapting Armed Assault for military purposes."

Next Generation has one of those end of the year 'top 10' lists we all love so much, with plenty of room for discussion on this one. They claim to have picked out the top 10 game design innovations of 2007. It's hard to argue with elements like Portal's portals or Mass Effect's conversation wheel, but was Metroid Prime 3 on the Wii really as good as a mouse-and-keyboard PC FPS? "When people ask 'How do we make a good shooter on a console' what they really mean is 'how do we make a shooter that feels as quick and responsive as a PC shooter on the console?' Apparently the answer is the Wii mote. I was blown away by this fact. Nintendo had always been the 'family friendly' console to me so I didn't consider the FPS ramifications of the Wiimote but clearly it's the best tool for the job. With some tweaking and some refinement down the line I could see the Wii (or a console with Wii like controls) becoming the platform of choice for hardcore FPSers, even over the PC. If this does become the case it will owe it all to Metroid Prime 3."

MTV's Multiplayer blog is working, all this week, on a series of interviews called Women Working in Games. They've already had great discussions with Ubisoft's Elspeth Tory on the Ubisoft/SomethingAwful thing, and X-Play's Morgan Webb about her work on cable television. They've also spoken with GameGirlAdvance's Jane Pinckard about the differences between men and women and the games they play. "I also think that women have traditionally been at the forefront of this, because they're burdened with more than their fair share of house work and childcare, usually. That's just statistical. And so they're going to have less leisure time for games. Now men are sort of catching up. But I think women have always been less free to play games the way that men have. So maybe that's why women play casual games or they play more casually. And they just don't want the same kind of game that requires 20, 40 hours of play. I think that's totally right." Tomorrow they're speaking with Brenda Brathwaite, a designer and author of the book Sex in Games.

Sales news is starting to trickle out for some of the big Fall games, with the Xbox 360 so far looking very strong. BioWare's Mass Effect has sold a million copies, while Bungie's blockbuster Halo 3 has already sold over five million copies since its September 25th release date. That last figure comes from a GameDaily interview with Xbox Marketing VP Jeff Bell. Aside from noting this week's release of Halo 3's first downloadable map pack, Bell also connected these sales back to the console itself: "The reaction has been very positive. In fact, we saw incredible sales of Xbox 360 for the week of November 18, including Black Friday of more than 310,000 Xbox 360 in the U.S. alone. This is really strong momentum for us given that we're already in our third year on the market."

WoW Insider had the chance to sit down with Ed Fries, the founder of the new and highly unique business FigurePrints. Fries is best known for his work at Microsoft on the original Xbox, but he hasn't been idle since he left the company in 2004. His newly launched service allows World of Warcraft players to 'print' their characters out as 3D sculptures. He and blogger Mike Schramm discuss the origins of the company, and the process used to make the figs: "At heart, it's basically an inkjet printer, which is pretty cool. It actually uses HP-11 inkjet printheads. But instead of printing on paper, it prints on a thin layer of plaster powder. So you have to imagine that there's a bay with a platform, and a spreader bar comes in and spreads a very thin layer of plaster powder, which has the consistency of flour. So it gets spread onto the platform, like a sheet of paper. And then the printheads come out, and they print right into that plaster. It sets the ink on top of it, and like paper it soaks into it-that plaster hardens."

bukharin writes "'w00t', the "small word that packs a pretty big punch", has been named Word of the Year for 2007 by dictionary gurus Merriam-Webster. Visitors to the Merriam-Webster website were asked to vote for one of 20 commonly searched words and phrases. Facebook was the runner-up. Previously honored geek words include google (runner-up in 2006) and blog (winner in 2004)."

The MTV Multiplayer site has the saddening news that the LittleBigPlanet demo, probably one of the most-anticipated PlayStation offerings for this year, has slipped to 2008. Not terribly surprising given the time of the year. "'I can officially confirm that there won't be a demo this year,' Ron Eagle, senior manager of PR for Sony Computer Entertainment America told me. But he did say he's played 30 of the games 50 planned developer-made levels and that it's a lot of fun. He seemed genuinely pleased about his time with the game, but his company won't be showing more 'LBP' at least until next month. Eagle could only add that the full game is set for a 2008 release. And with that, the video game release calendar for 2007 is complete. No more delays. No more surprises. Right?"

Slate has put together a great feature looking back at the entire year in gaming; Slate's Chris Suellentrop chatted with Newsweek's N'Gai Croal, the New York Times' Seth Schiesel, and MTV's Stephen Totilo (all MVPs of game discussion) about the best games of the year, big and small: "Some people have agreed with me that Desktop Tower Defense is wonderful, intoxicating, and addictive in its gameplay. But many have been flummoxed because I did not pick as my GOTY a truly grand, big-budget game. Lots of people seem to think that year-end lists should be reserved for epics like Halo or Grand Theft Auto. But that's not what 'Game of the Year' means to me."

Another year, another horrifying SpikeTV Video Game Awards show done and over with. BioShock grabbed the 'Game of the Year' nod, but both the title and designer Ken Levine were denied their moment in the sun. When the winner was announced some folks from Gamecock rushed the stage and basically said 'it sucks'. They're now apologizing: "Gamecock co-founder Mike Wilson apologized for the disruption on behalf of his team. 'I'd personally like to sincerely apologize to the BioShock team and Ken Levine in particular for GameCock infringing on their spotlight at this weekend's VGA Awards show ... The award acceptance they interrupted was the LAST one we would've wanted to interrupt , ('most addictive game fueled by mountain dew' would have been a wonderful choice) as we have the utmost respect and love for Bioshock.'"

Valve has released another round of stats, this one concerning all that Team Fortress 2 playing we've been doing. They have things broken out along a couple of different metrics, including lifespan, kills, assists, captures, and even just damage dealt. As Rock, Paper, Shotgun's commentary notes, the stats confirm every suspicion you've had about your fellow players. "Yes, there are more rushy-bastard Scouts than any other class. Yes, campy-bastard Snipers earn the most points. Yes, hitpointy-bastard Heavies get the most kills. Yes, hidey-bastard Engineers live longest. And so on. What's slightly odder is the breakdown of which side wins most frequently on each map. BLU has the edge in every killing field except Dustbowl and Gravelpit. Why? How? I thought we were all the same! Damn you for not being neater, demographics." We previously discussed Valve's stats release on Half-Life 2: Episode 2 .