1up had a man on the ground at the announcement of StarCraft II to a legion of South Korean fans. James Mielke also had the chance to sit down with the developers of the game for a one-on-one hands-on with everything they're willing to share so far. Includes video with some new footage of the title. From the article: "Dustin Browder admitted that the Black Hole attack was something that would have to be nerfed immediately, as both he and Sigaty laughed at the sight of my entire fleet taking a nosedive in one fell swoop. As I stated earlier, there's still a lot of balancing that needs to go into the game, and this play session was one way for the developers to see what things need it the most. After all, Blizzard has been working on this game for two years already, and we were the first fresh eyes to see the game in a long time, so things that the dev team may now take for granted, are still a surprise to new players. Whether the Black Hole will be nerfed to absorb a limited number of ships, or do a specific amount of damage, or powered-down in some other way hasn't been decided, but the tide of battle will undoubtedly require slightly more skillful play than simply producing a Mothership and hitting 'Black Hole' on the enemy."

This past weekend Game|Life went to Vegas, to attend the annual Classic Gaming Expo event. They came back with a bevy of tales about the show. The best include a short interview with Pitfall creator David Crane, a look at the classic games museum set up every year at the event, and (of course) glamour shots of dealer swag.

The New York Times has an article on a first for pro gamers: network television coverage of a match. Sunday at noon EDT CBS Sports will be airing coverage of the World Series of Videogames. Events will include Guitar Hero II, Fight Night and World of Warcraft 3v3 Arena combat. The article explores some of the challenges of making gaming understandable on television: "The dollars are already quite mainstream. Americans bought about $13 billion worth of video game systems and software last year, more than they spent at the film box office (around $10 billion). Advertisers for Sunday's broadcast include KFC, Intel and the Marines. But for gaming to make it as a major-network TV sport, the big hurdle will be translating a medium that is by its nature meant to be experienced firsthand into a compelling hands-off spectator experience. It is a task that in some ways is no less daunting than that of the early baseball television producers who eventually realized that a camera way out in center field would provide the best view of pitches." Update: 07/28 23:19 GMT by Z : Fixed day of the weekend the show is on.

mytrip writes "In hopes of avoiding potentially embarrassing incidents, IBM is taking the unusual step of establishing official guidelines for its more than 5,000 employees who inhabit Second Life and other virtual worlds. 'IBM appears to be the first corporation to create rules governing virtual worlds. The move has critics, who say that mandating behavior for the so-called "metaverse" is unlikely to reform impish avatars. They also question why IBM would add a layer of buttoned-down bureaucracy to this relatively rollicking corner of the Internet. IBM executives counter that having a code of conduct is akin to a corporate stamp of approval, encouraging workers to explore more than 100 worlds IBM collectively calls the 3D Internet.'" This regulation may be coming from more than self-interest: IBM sees these environments as management training courses in some ways; working inter-personal skills via chat and human resources via guild activities.

Thursday saw the release of the Heavenly Sword demo on the PlayStation network. Kotaku has impressions from the play experience and GamesRadar offers up some helpful tips to make the most of the short playtime. From Kotaku's rundown: 'Seven minutes, and it ends just like that. No big boss fight to try out, no giant plot revelation, no finding an ancient artifact. Just, "here comes more enemies, see you in two months!" You know that feeling you get when you're about to sneeze and then can't? Exactly the feeling I got here. As for aesthetics, the graphics were solid but the framerate was erratic at times. Sound was excellent no matter which language option I chose in order to stretch out my playtime a little by pretending I was a different guy from another country. By far the best aspect of the whole demo for me, the music was completely top notch. Very atmospheric and brilliantly arranged. ' Back at Kotaku, Brian Crecente received a longer version of the demo than the one publicly available, and is now playing through it live over the internet.

Joystiq reports that the HD-DVD add-on for the 360 has been permanently dropped in price to $179. Additionally, Bob Barker style, you get five free movies too: "Appearing at Comic-Con in San Diego, the announcement was made amidst promotion for the HD-DVD releases of the film 300 and the cheerleader epic, Heroes. Not content with just a twenty dollar dip, Microsoft has extended Toshiba's 'Perfect Offer' promotion to Xbox 360 owners, awarding five free movies with purchase. The hard part now is choosing between Casablanca and The Dukes of Hazzard. Naturally, the Xbox Live Marketplace wasn't left out in all this news as 300 will be making its way to the service in HD on August 14th, while free content for Heroes will arrive sometime before its HD-DVD release."

njkid1 writes "David Jaffe is now the former Creative Director for SCEA Santa Monica Studios. He's confirmed rumours that he was revving up his own studio, and has partnered with Incognito's Scott Campbell to form a group called 'Eat, Sleep, Play'. The company has partnered exclusively with SCEA on a multi-year, multi-title deal 'to create titles for the PlayStation family of products, with the first slated for release in 2008.' It will be based out of Utah (cheap rent), and Jaffe notes that they did ask around with other companies before partnering with Sony. Their first title will be Twisted Metal: Head On for the PS2. The title will use some unreleased material from the last Twisted Metal title, and combine that with a documentary on the series."

A Next Generation story details comments by EA's CEO John Riccitiello about the surprise hit that is the Wii. The exec as much as admitted that they 'bet on the wrong horse' by focusing on the PS3 and 360 during the console transistion, and now are turning the mighty corporate ship as fast as they can to stay with Nintendo's success. "Nevertheless, Riccetello said that EA had the second-largest market share on Wii as of March with 19 percent, thanks mainly to Tiger Woods PGA Tour. Only Nintendo had a larger share. The firm shipped six new Wii titles in fiscal 2007. EA also shipped eight titles on Nintendo DS. The emergence of online, wireless and geographical differences in the console realm also made things complicated in fiscal '07."

CVG is reporting that Monolith, makers of the upcoming Condemned 2, are working with the ESRB to avoid an AO rating. As we've discussed previously, an AO ban in the states is effectively a ban on retail sales. From the article: "When asked for examples of what we might now never see in a game again, we were told, 'An example of what we cut would be putting someone's head in a vice. That was too much, you know. There are also some decapitations we've lost. But this is more Sin City than it is real world and we want people to know that this is not a real world.'"

Pcol writes "The New York Times reports that in a poker game this week between man and machine, a program called Polaris fought a close match, but lost to two well-known professional poker players. Designing a poker playing algorithm is a different and more difficult challenge for software designers than chess and checkers because of uncertainties introduced by the hidden cards held by each player and difficult-to-quantify risk-taking behaviors such as bluffing. The game-tree approach doesn't work in poker because in many situations there is no one best move and a top-notch player adapts his play over time, exploiting his opponent's behavior. Polaris build a series of "bots" that have differing personalities or styles of play, ranging from aggressive to passive. Researchers monitored the performance of three bots and then moved them in and out of the lineup like football players."

June was the first month that Nielsen's new approach to tracking game play was fully implemented, and the statistics from last month are now out. Some sample numbers: "The company determined that 68.1 million individuals used a videogame console in June, playing an average of 7.5 days during the month. The PlayStation 2 was the most-played console, accounting for 42 per cent of the total console usage ... The Xbox 360 accounted for eight per cent of console playing time. Its users logged in an average of 2.2 sessions per day, with an average session length of 61 minutes. The PS3 accounted for 1.5 per cent of console usage. Its users logged in an average of 1.9 sessions per day with an average session length of 83 minutes-the longest playing session of all consoles studied. The Wii, by comparison, accounted for four per cent of overall console playing time. Its users logged in an average of 1.78 sessions per day with an average session length of 57 minutes." GameDaily has further demographics from the results.

Next Generation explores the price jump for 'next generation' titles, looking into the success of the $60 price point for videogames. They have a copious number of graphs and charts to support their findings: "Even without Guitar Hero II, prices in 2007 are still at historically high levels. In January, fully four of the top 10 games sold for $60 or more. In February, that jumped to five $60 games, and the average rose accordingly. While there were four $60 games in March, they shared the top 10 with two Nintendo DS games which brought the average down sharply. This happened again in March -- the month of Pokemon -- and also in May."

Tech.Luver sends us to The Inquirer, which notes the banning of all gambling in Second Life. Here is the Linden Labs blog post about the change in policy, which is, to say the least, not popular. From the article: "[T]he large chunk of users that enjoyed using in-world casinos and betting Linden Dollars on events both inside and outside the game world will now have nothing left to do. Perhaps more to the point for Linden, the move will cut off the revenues earned from those owning Casino-style islands in the game, the owners of which are some of the top contributors to the Linden coffers through currency fees and land rental."

The Escapist takes a crack at ascribing 'power rankings' to this year's E3 players. Microsoft, EA, and Irrational are in the top three spots, with Bethesda and the newly-employed Peter Moore rounding out the top five. From the site's commentary on Microsoft: "Despite the lawsuits, the man with the biggest pockets earns the top slot by a fair margin. Microsoft has cleaned up on big-name exclusives and is slowly but surely building up Games For Windows as a brand. However, what really does it for Microsoft is Fallout 3, Halo 3, Mass Effect and BioShock. If one of those doesn't sell you a buggy, overheating, now-under-warranty Xbox 360, nothing will. Their upcoming billion-dollar 360 repair costs might dethrone them sooner than later, though." Meanwhile, the rumour is going around that LA won't be the site of the event next year.

Ars Technica's Opposable Thumbs blog passes on the comments of ESRB President Patricia Vance on user-generated content in Unreal Tournament III . As you may recall, it was announced at E3 that user mods will be available for the PS3 version of the game, and eventually the 360 as well. Vance clarified the situation from the ESRB's viewpoint: "The ESRB's Online Rating Notice, which warns consumers that 'Game Experience May Change During Online Play,' is intended to advise the buyer that, because the game enables users to play with others over an internet connection, they might encounter user-generated content that isn't a part of the ESRB rating ... That content can vary, whether it's chat or skins or maps or what have you, and it's certainly possible that some of that content won't be in line with the rating that we assigned to the product. That's why we created the notice in the first place."

Wowzer writes "Blizzard today announced that their MMORPG World of Warcraft is now played by more than 9 million gamers around the world. From the article: 'That's half a million more than the number of monthly players WoW had back in March five months ago. — It's interesting to note that if the World of Warcraft were a nation, CIA's World Factbook says that out of 236 listed countries it would be the 90th most populated country on Earth above Haiti, but behind Sweden.' Also revealed this week was that DC Comics are creating World of Warcraft Comic Books based on the MMORPG, with the first issue appearing on November 14th. The ongoing monthly series will be written by industry veteran Walter Simonson (Thor, Orion) and feature art by Ludo Lullabi and inker Sandra Hope."

Might E. Mouse writes "Cynics might say 'Who needs a storyline for an FPS game?' and if we're talking Quake or Doom then fair enough. But to brand the entire genre as lacking in story is to condemn gems like Half-Life 2 or Chronicles of Riddick. So what goes into writing a really compelling storyline for an FPS game? bit-tech has an article exploring this topic with the likes of Martin Lancaster, writer / designer for Crysis, Rob Yescombe, writer of Haze and more: 'There's nothing wrong with that of course, back in the day Quake was amazing in its own, essentially plotless, right. But it's interesting that only recently has a push for coherently told storylines appeared among FPS fans, bought on by another few years of maturity in what is an undeniably young medium. Paintings and music have both been around since time out of mind, but computer games have only been around for a couple of decades and only recently have they begun to be recognized for the artistic merit posed by their interactivity.'"

Klaidas writes "The BBC reports that sales of Sony's PlayStation 3 console in the US rose by 21% in June, though the machine still trails the Wii and Xbox 360. NPD numbers show 98,500 PS3s were sold, compared to 198,400 Xbox 360s (up 28%) and 381,800 Wiis (up 13%). Sony said that the $100 price cut to the 60GB PS3 led to a 135% sales rise over the last two weeks, though independent confirmation of that jump is not yet available. 'Nintendo's DS handheld sold 561,900 units , while Sony's PSP, which has been boosted by an April price cut, sold 230,100 units, NPD reported. Software sales in the US are 31% higher than the same time last year, the market research showed, buoyed by new consoles from all three firms.'"

Knuckles writes "The Times reports that Japanese consumers have been 'abandoning television' in order to play with Nintendo's Wii. Recent figures from Japan's audience-tracking firms show that 'last week was the first in nearly two decades where no single show on any commercial station attracted more than a 9 per cent audience share ... According to one senior executive of the country's largest commercial television channel, Fuji TV, families who used to tune in to its colourful diet of soap operas, panel games and comedy variety shows may, instead, be drifting away and choosing to spend the same, economically-critical golden hour time playing on their Wii.'"

The Next Generation site is running a piece discussing new findings about in-game advertising. The results of collaboration between an ad firm and a research company show that ads in games are actually having an effect on players. Double Fusion's involvement in the study throws the results into question. Take these statistics with a grain of salt: "75% of gamers engage with at least one ad per minute across most, but not all, game types; 81% of gamers engage at least every other minute. Less-cluttered ads are three times as effective at garnering gamer notice than ads that are either cluttered or within cluttered environments. While both contribute positively to ad engagement, placement of the ad in the primary camera plane (eye-level) is more important than large size ads. Not all ads are created equal - dynamic billboards, around-game interstitials, sponsorships, and interactive product placements all offer different levels of user engagement and pervasiveness in the game" Eidos certainly thinks so; Kotaku notes that they've signed up with the same company featured in this study.