Reuters is reporting that the mega-publisher EA will soon be reorganized into four separate labels underneath the company's umbrella. The four groups will be known as EA Games, EA Sports, EA Casual Entertainment, and a label simply called 'The Sims'. All four organizations will be supported by two additional EA groups, which will handle publishing and 'development services'. "The changes, based on the success of a pilot program that placed games based on "The Sims" franchise into their own unit, mean it will require fewer executives to sign off on new games or to approve launching an existing game on a different platform or in a different regions. "We ran an organizational experiment and it was pretty damn successful. The Sims grew aggressively," Frank Gibeau, head of the new EA Games unit said."

Ars Technica is reporting on the highly-anticipated downloadable content for GTA IV mentioned by Microsoft at last year's E3. It appears that, first off, that content is only coming to the Xbox 360. Secondly, Microsoft paid some $50 Million for the privilege. This is from a financials conference call held by Take Two, and a question about a deferred payment from Microsoft reveals the general release schedule for the content. "The first 25 [million] is for the first episodic content package that's supposed to go out and that is in March of '08. That's why it moved into current because it's in the next 12 months. The second 25 [million] will be for the second episodic, the episode, and that will be later in fiscal '08."

An anonymous reader writes "This weekend's New York Times Magazine puts a human face to the 'gold farming' profession. Virtual world economist Julian Dibbell travels to Nanjing, China, for a look at the working conditions and first-hand experience of farming gold from virtual monsters as a way to make a living. From the article: 'At the end of each shift, Li reports the night's haul to his supervisor, and at the end of the week, he, like his nine co-workers, will be paid in full. For every 100 gold coins he gathers, Li makes 10 yuan, or about $1.25, earning an effective wage of 30 cents an hour, more or less. The boss, in turn, receives $3 or more when he sells those same coins to an online retailer, who will sell them to the final customer (an American or European player) for as much as $20. The small commercial space Li and his colleagues work in -- two rooms, one for the workers and another for the supervisor -- along with a rudimentary workers' dorm, a half-hour's bus ride away, are the entire physical plant of this modest $80,000-a-year business.'"

To go along with the still fairly-mysterious World of Warcraft movie, via CVG comes the word at Blizzplanet that a movie based on Blizzard's Diablo games may be in the works. "Few weeks ago, a rumor circulated the net that Gary Whitta would be working with Legendary Pictures to develop a Diablo film. The participation of Gary Whitta hasn't been confirmed, but surprise-surprise. Legendary Pictures website is listing DIABLO under the 'In Development' section. No press release has been made available. The news section has been replaced by a 'Legendary 2.0 is coming soon' notice. A week ago, the news section over at Legendary Pictures website had not been updated since Q3 2006. Stay tuned for any updates. A press release could be posted by them in a few days. Diablo is coming to the big screen!"

From all reports Microsoft has upgraded the Xbox 360 consoles coming from their factories, and modified the consoles heading back to consumers from service calls. The trouble is, they're having a hard time admitting it. The company has always maintained there aren't any excessive heat problems with their console, so admitting now that they've added extra heatsink capabilities would be ... somewhat embarrassing. Dean Takahashi at the San Jose Merc has an interview with Todd Holmdahl, the 'hardware guy' at Microsoft: "We're very proud of the box. We think the vast majority of people are having just a great experience. You look at the number of games they are buying, the number of accessories they are buying, the Live attach. They love the box. They continue to buy the box. That said, we take any customer issue very seriously. We continue to look into these things very deeply. You have seen we have made some changes to our customer service policy."

CVG is carrying details out of the newest Game Informer magazine, which has a huge feature on Fallout 3. The relatively spoiler free information gives us hints at some of the biggest elements of the game, such as combat, character creation and growth, and the possibility of multiple endings. " Fallout 3 kicks off with your birth and your mother's death in a vault hospital. This is where you get to create you character as your father (voiced by Liam Neeson) hands you over to the DNA analyser, before removing his mask to reveal similar traits to the ones you picked ... Fans will be pleased to hear that the Karma system is making a return, and there are 9-12 possible endings based on your actions. If it's even half as good as Oblivion, this should turn out to be something very special indeed."

Shacknews reports that Half-Life 2 Episode 2 is finally, finally, due out on the 9th of October. The game will release for the PC, 360, and PS3, and will be joined by Team Fortress 2 and the FPS/Puzzler Portal. "Today's news follows rumors originating last month that the PlayStation 3 versions of the games would be delayed into 2008. Valve's Doug Lombardi noted to Shacknews that development has been progressing well on all three platforms. Electronic Arts is distributing the games at retail as a package entitled Half-Life 2: The Orange Box, which also includes the original Half-Life 2 and last year's Half-Life 2: Episode One. It will sell for $49.99 on PC and $59.99 on Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. Previously, the company intended to sell a slimmer package, The Black Box, which would not include Half-Life 2 or Half-Life 2: Episode One, but those plans were cancelled last month. It is expected that Steam customers will retain the option to purchase only the newly-released games."

Gamasutra has several coverage elements about last month's NPD figures, which unsurprisingly show Nintendo's continued dominance of console sales numbers. A combined 569,000 units sold for Pokemon Diamond and Pearl probably helped some. "According to official sources and a number of independent reports, total industry sales were up 49 percent to $815 million for the month, with hardware sales up 79 percent to $221 million, and the Nintendo DS selling an impressive 423,000 units for the month. The rest of the hardware sales revealed that the Wii sold an impressive 338,000 units for the month, with the Xbox 360's sales down somewhat at around 155,000 units and the PlayStation 3 sold just 82,000 during May in the U.S. On the handheld side of things, the PSP trailed the DS but still sold around 221,000 units, and the Game Boy Advance sold just 80,000 units for the month. Rounding off the major players, the PlayStation 2 sold 188,000 units during May." Those DS sales are nothing to sneeze at, as an analyst group estimates that by 2011 there will be some 112 Million DS units sold ... with an 89% install base in Japan. The site has a further breakdown of last month's numbers, analyzing the dip in overall console sales and the potentials of each platform. The Curmudgeon Gamer is the mind behind that analysis, and he had two further points to make about the numbers on his site.

Via GameDaily a Financial Times interview with with Sir Howard Stringer, Sony's CEO, gives fans the first hope that price cuts may be coming soon. Lauding the Wii's performance in last month's NPD numbers, Stringer says that Sony is looking to 'refine' the PS3's pricepoint. "'Nintendo Wii has been a successful enterprise, and a very good business model, compared with ours . . . because it's cheaper,' Mr Stringer said in a video interview. 'That [price cuts] is what we are studying at the moment. That's what we are trying to refine.' Sir Howard said he expected 'energy [in PS3 sales] by Christmas, and then you will begin to see break-out games'. Sony is launching a virtual-world game called Home this year, and up to 30 other games."

Doctor Mario writes "The AMA has issued a set of findings and recommendations (Word document) which follow a lengthy look at possible connections between gaming and violence, as well as gaming addiction. Ars Technica has a very good summary of the report, which suggests that gaming addiction is likely to be a subset of Internet addiction 'as it most frequently occurs in players of MMORPGs. In both of these addictions, the current definition is currently informal — the described symptoms actually most closely resemble pathological gambling, rather than an addiction. In either case, the report notes, "there is currently insufficient research to definitively conclude that video game overuse is an addiction."' The report also recommends that Internet and videogame addiction be included in a revision to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders."

Two new posts have appeared on Sony's PlayStation blog, and they mark a significant step forward for the company's efforts to bridge the gap between players and the company. Even their competitors are lauding the decision to join the discussion online. Maybe Nintendo will be next? 1up, in the meantime, offers links to both stories and culls the best content from both entries. From a post by SCEA president and CEO Jack Tretton: "We fully realize that past success is no guarantee of future success, but it does give you some perspective. We have to bring the games to market that will showcase what the PS3 can do and ultimately entertain you like no other games have. We need to provide proof of what the PS3 can do for you and work tirelessly to improve the value and justify your investment. At the end of the day, it's always been about the games. To push the boundaries of gaming beyond where they currently lie takes a great deal of risk. I think all the hardware manufacturers are doing that in some way."

Spamicles writes "European Union justice ministers met today in order to discuss the regulation of sales of violent video games to minors. Europeans were riled up last year when a German gunman shot several people before taking his life at a secondary school. A European Union Commissioner is taking advantage of the shootings last year called for stricter regulations in the video game industry. A motion introduced last month calls for legislators to "put in place all necessary measures to ban the sale of particularly violent and cruel video games.""

GameSetWatch is running an editorial written by Alex Handy, the former editor of Game Developer magazine and a well respected figure in the games journalism business. Today he's discussing the recent show of support from EA and id Software for the Apple platform, essentially saying that he doesn't think much of it because it's all been said before. "We've been here before. I've been here before. Waaaaaaaay back in 1999, id was right there at MacWorld, with Carmack talking about how rad the OS was, and demanding that a multi-button mouse arrive. And this was Mac OS 9! People applauded. Those, like myself, who covered the Macintosh gaming world for a living saw a bright future ahead. EA wasn't there, but Activision was, and Aspyr was bringing Madden to the Mac anyway. MacSoft was bringing Unreal Tournament over, and StarCraft was still on the Mac, and still kicking ass. And then, nothing happened. There was a little while there when Mac game companies were expanding, and the best PC to Mac game porting house, Westlake Interactive, was barely able to keep up with all the demand for its services ... By 2001, the brief flash that was the Mac game boom was gone."

InformationWeek is running an article looking at a piece of technology Canadian developer Bioware will be including into their in-development Massively Multiplayer Online Game. The still un-announced project, the article also lets on, is likely to launch sometime in 2009. The technology, called StreamBase, is a form of complex event processing. Bioware plans to use the ability to change the codebase on the fly, while the game is live. "One of StreamBase's functions is to analyze events and make sure no intruder is trying to disrupt the game's logic, make malicious movements against the activity of other players, or activate the hidden Easter eggs that are sometimes known to lurk in the game's logic. An Easter egg might make a sound that was not consistent with the game's design, show a message, or cause a character to move out of the logic of his role, Dalton explained."

1up has coverage of a strange development: a gaming portal focused on tabletop and strategy games. The site is slated to be a editorial/community site focusing on Avalon Hill and Wizards products, as well as potentially offering a venue for independent PC games. "Wizards of the Coast is eager to stress that Gleemax is not about pimping their own products, so much as it is about strengthening the overall culture of gaming as a whole. It's a husbandry approach; by creating a fertile ground where the various tribes of gaming can meet and greet, they hope to build interest (and presumably sales) through the basic principle of cultivating a strong player community." The whole thing is something of an odd move for the company, and for some insight into the launch Greg Kostikiyan at the Games*Design*Art*Culture blog clarifies the reality of Gleemax as an indie game publisher. You'd think he would look at the site as competition for his own Manifesto Games, but he seems fairly philosophical about it.

Telltale Games, makers of the recent Sam and Max episodic series of adventure games, has announced that they've gotten ahold of $6 million in funding. GamesIndustry.biz references the press release, which states that a San Francisco-based venture capitalist firm took the plunge ... apparently based on the power of the digital distribution methodology. Telltale's CEO and co-founder Dan Connors said, "This funding will allow us to stay on the cutting edge of innovation by building out our team and our tools, and by taking on new licenses for the episodic treatment ... Telltale has it all-a great group of people who are changing an industry while doing what they love," said Granite Ventures managing director Chris Hollenback, who has now joined Telltale's board of directors." Considering that a year ago no one was sure if the Sam and Max games would work in this format, I think this is telling about the future of games and digital distribution.

Activision has released information on eight more tracks from the upcoming Guitar Hero Encore: Rocks the 80s. In addition the previously announced songs, the company has now confirmed that the following glam and metal ballads will be available: "'Hold On Loosely' (as made famous by .38 Special), 'No One Like You' (as made famous by Scorpions), 'Only a Lad' (as made famous by Oingo Boingo), 'Radar Love' (as made famous by White Lion), 'Ballroom Blitz' (as made famous by Krokus), 'The Warrior' (by Scandal), 'What I Like About You' (as made famous by The Romantics), and 'Wrath Child' (as made famous by Iron Maiden)." Would have liked "Dead Man's Party" or "Weird Science" better from Boingo, but you can't have everything.

Capcom titles will be appearing on Valve's Steam service, reports GameDaily. "The first game to come to Steam under this agreement will be Devil May Cry 3, scheduled for later this week. Following that in the next few weeks will be Onimusha 3 and then Lost Planet: Extreme Condition on June 26 (which is day-and-date with the retail PC version). And later this year Steam will get Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo HD Remix."

Eurogamer reports that Sony is going after users sidestepping the PlayStation 3's protection software. Firmware 1.10 and 1.11 have both been cracked, and as a result illegal game copies can be booted from the console. "Booting games and playing them are two different things, however; so far, hackers have not been able to get any of the copied games to run, nor have they been able to run homebrew software. Every hardware launch brings with it a race for hackers to defeat the system's protections, whether for the technological challenge, to run copied software, or to allow for homebrew games. Despite Sony's attempts to prevent its emergence, the PSP has a strong homebrew community - and hackers are doubtless hoping to establish a similar base for PS3."

The British Gaming Blog dispels a rumour floating through the internets this week. The site Rumor Reporter is claiming knowledge of a new Monkey Island game in the works at LucasArts. Coincidentally, Steve Purcell (creator of the Sam and Max series) sends some concept art to the Monkey Island fansite The World of Monkey Island. As McBacon, at the BGB says, this is probably just interesting timing. "As much as we'd all love to believe a new Monkey Island is in the works (even after Escape from MI), and as great as the coincidence is, Steve doesn't even work at Lucas Arts anymore, so the dots just don't join up. Don't hold your breath for E3, but enjoy the concept art." Update: 06/13 19:12 GMT by Z : Added the crucial but missing words 'Sam and Max' to the article.