Sony is considering proposals from commercial distributed computing concerns, mulling over rolling out more Folding@Home-like clients to their PlayStation 3 consoles. Gamasutra reports on a Financial Times article, discussing the future of the system. Because they would be commercial and not charitable organizations, the company is considering some form of compensation for users who would participate. "Sony Computer Entertainment CTO Masa Chatani indicated in an interview that Sony had already received numerous inquiries. 'A start-up or a pharmaceutical company that lacks a super-computer could utilize this kind of infrastructure. We are discussing various options with companies and exploring commercial applications', he said."

Ars Technica's Opposable Thumbs blog has the word on the first three downloadable content packs for Guitar Hero II on the 360. The good news is that song selections include tracks like 'Ace of Spades', 'Killer Queen', and 'Bark at the Moon'. The bad news is that buying just three songs is 500 points. "The price of around $2 per song isn't outrageous, but it isn't generous either. I'd also prefer they allow you to buy each song alone, instead of being forced into the bundles. It's also worth noting that if you bought every song in the original Guitar Hero at this rate, you'd pay $97.92. Not exactly a compelling deal."

Bloomberg is reporting on the publisher scramble for Wii titles, prompted by the console's explosive popularity since its launch late last year. Though the article focuses on EA's initial coolness on the console, they certainly weren't the only company that initially missed the bus. "Electronic Arts wasn't the only publisher slow to see Wii's appeal. New York-based Take-Two Interactive Software Inc., maker of Grand Theft Auto games, had no Wii titles when the player was released and now plans to have three this year, said spokesman Jim Ankner. Activision Inc., based in Santa Monica, California, plans to release six Wii games this year, giving the second-largest publisher a total of 11, said spokeswoman Maryanne Lataif." Though that's great news for Wii gamers, the question is: how many of these titles are going to be 'shovelware'?

CVG has word that the Halo 3 Beta is coming May 16th. "The beta will run through to June 7 at 7:59am - giving you just under a month to tone your Halo 3 fragging skills. Three maps will be available for you to stomp around in your 360 Spartan armour; Snowbound, High Ground and Valhalla ... New guns and vehicles available for sampling include the nippy Mongoose all-terrain vehicles, Brute Spiker, Spike Grenade, all-new Assault Rifle and Warthog-smashing Spartan Laser." They also point out the functionality behind the much-talked about X button: "The secret function of the little blue button is for deploying equipment and you see three different kinds in action in the latest video documentary. While the developer doesn't specify exactly which pieces of equipment are exposed in the video, we're guessing that the new bubble shield, trip mine and mobile gravity lift are all assigned to the fancy new X button functionality."

segafreak writes "ShackNews reports that S.T.A.L.K.E.R.:Shadow of Chernobyl may contain unlicensed assets from other commercial games such as Doom 3 and Half Life 2. Though this has yet to be confirmed by any of the developers involved, if true this would be somewhat worrying. 'Responding to inquiries made by Shacknews, id Software CEO Todd Hollshead stated: I've seen a post on a web forum that claims DOOM3 assets are used in another game, but we've been working hard on Enemy Territory: Quake Wars as well as our own internal project and have not had the time to fully investigate or otherwise verify that the claim is true. Only from what I've seen on the Web, it's concerning. However, it may turn out to be nothing.'"

Croakyvoice writes "Rodolfo Portillo has released a port of ScummVM for the Nintendo Wii and Nintendo Gamecube. ScummVM is a program which allows you to run certain classic graphical point-and-click adventure games like Simon the Sorcerer, Broken Sword and Flight of the Amazon Queen. You will have to use SD Load to run this on your console." No offense to Broken Sword, but it's all about Day of the Tentacle for me. Update: 04/10 16:45 GMT by Z : Technically, this is a GameCube port. The Wii's backwards compatibility allows it to work there anyway, but it's worth clarifying.

1MC writes "The Chinese govt is requiring game houses to modify MMOG's to restrict under 18 users to 3 hours "productive" gameplay per day. This "anti-addiction" software must be in place within 4 months, with games not compliant by July 15 liable to be shut down in China. Net9, Shanda and NetEase will be moving to comply with the government regulations. Users will have to register with their real names and Chinese identity card numbers to be allowed access to the games."

An anonymous reader writes "In the overlooked case between Blizzard and MDY Industries, the creator of the WoWGlider bot, Blizzard is arguing that using any programs in conjunction with the World of Warcraft constitutes copyright violation. Apparently accessing the copy of the game client in RAM using another program infringes upon their rights. Under that logic, users do not even have the right to use anti-virus software in the event that the game becomes infected. Furthermore, Blizzard's legal filings downplay the role of their Warden software, which actively scans users' RAM, CPU, and storage devices (and potentially sensitive data) and sends information back to Blizzard to be processed."

Gamasutra is reporting on announced plans from EA to invest in The9, the Massive firm that currently runs World of Warcraft in the Chinese market (among several other properties). EA Mythic recently announced they would be sending Warhammer Online into Asia, and one could easily imagine The9 being an instrumental part of that endeavor. The WoW angle is another wrinkle to keep in mind, as well: "Shanghai-based MMO executive Bill Bishop points out in some detailed analysis on his weblog: 'EA and Vivendi Universal Games (owners of Blizzard, developer of World of Warcraft) are direct competitors. Perhaps the Blizzard-The9 contract does not have any protection for Vivendi in the event that a competitor takes a significant stake in The9, but that would be surprising.'"

This past week, Epic's VP Mark Rein spoke with the gentlemen at 1up on the '1up Yours' Podcast. It was ... most informative. It seems that the much-delayed downloadable content for Gears of War is being held up by Microsoft, who wants to charge for the content for the game. "In the effort of promoting a profitable marketplace, however, Microsoft's compromised with the studio by deciding to follow the successful model that Halo 2 pioneered a few years ago: the new Gears of War maps will be available for a to-be-determined fee, and made free a few months from now." The site also has hands-on details for 'Annex', the new (free) multiplayer gameplay type.

adachan writes "It seems that Microsoft has decided to add Xvid playback into the upcoming Spring Xbox 360 dashboard update. Xbox.com has a list of all the upcoming enhancements to the dash. The playback of video using H.264 and mpeg4 codecs seems to be the biggest news for those using the system as a media extender. If this is indeed true, my Xbox Media Center will be used less and less." Update: 04/09 17:29 GMT by Z : MSN Messenger is kinda interesting as well. Several sites are reporting that instant messenging is being added to the Xbox Live experience, with a USB keyboard controller attachment to be offered sometime in the near future.

An anonymous reader wrote in to say that there is "...a new law review article that explores the tax treatment of players in Second Life and World of Warcraft. The bottom line is that commercial activity that occurs in virtual worlds should be taxed the same as in the real world. But purely personal activity within virtual worlds should not be taxed."

An anonymous reader writes: "On the Wired site, Clive Thompson has up an article that points out a sobering truth: gamers are getting older. Folks who grew up playing videogames like Doom and Quake are now facing parental decisions with their own kids regarding appropriate content. Thompson cites well known gamer dads like Kotaku's Brian Crecente, discussing some of the approaches folks educated in gaming take with their own offspring: '"Everybody knows, as an adult, that the world is not always a nice place," Crecente told me. "But I don't want him to know that yet. I want him to have a childhood." So he disallows games with "realistic" combat, like World War II titles, or Resistance: Fall of Man, but permits highly cartoony shooting, like Starfox on the Nintendo DS -- since he regards it as essentially as abstract as playing cops and robbers with your fingers as guns.' Where do you think gamer parents should draw the line? If you have kids, what approach are you taking to introducing them to gaming? How old is 'old enough' to start fragging?"

Thilo2 writes "As most of you probably know, id software released the Quake3 engine in summer 2005 under the terms of the GPL, nearly two years ago. Ever wonder what came out of it? Even though the engine is eight years old, just recently two independent projects have released fully featured multiplayers games, weighing in with downloads of about 550 megabytes each. Urban Terror and World of Padman, formerly modifications that required you to have the original Quake III Arena game, can now be played independently as stand-alone versions. Urban Terror combines realistic environments and weaponry with movement similar to Quake3. World of Padman on the other hand is a colorful shooter in comic style giving you fun weapons like water balloons and water pistols to shoot with. Last but not least there is Tremulous, a first person shooter with added real time strategy elements which has been out for quite some time now. Interesting to note, its game data is licensed under a CC license. All three games use an improved Quake3 engine from ioquake3, which has cleaned up the Quake3 source code since its release and made many improvements like OpenAL, Vorbis and SDL support, and thus are available for Windows, Linux and MacOSX. If you are willing to compile the engine yourself you can get support for even more platforms like Solaris or *BSD."

An anonymous reader writes "In the latest 'Analyze This' series of exclusive Gamasutra features, analysts from Screen Digest, ABI Research and DFC Intelligence look at what Sony and developers can do to improve the PSP platform, to generate more excitement for it among developers, gamers and the industry overall — or if they even need to. 'My feelings on the PSP are mixed: It has shown there is demand for a more high-end portable system. The portable market has room for two competing portable systems. We forecast that over the next five years dedicated portable systems will sell just as many units as the new console systems. However, the PSP could really use a new model. This has been the secret to Nintendo's success.'"

MrPinstripeCom writes "Take Two interactive is now officially under investigation by the SEC. They've agreed to allow regulators to subpoena and investigate their practices with current and former employees as it relates to stock options purchases and disbursements. 'The company was the subject of an informal, non-public, investigation into allegations of back-dating stock option grants last year, while a separate internal investigation by Take-Two also found evidence of improprieties. The scandal ultimately led to the departure of then chairman and CEO Ryan Brant, who was singled out by the SEC investigation and was forced to pay $7.3 million in "disgorgement, interest and penalties" at the New York State Supreme Court.'"

fistfullast33l writes "A video posted on You Tube shows three PS3s networked together to perform Real Time Ray Tracing. Keep in mind that PS3 Linux runs in a hypervisor, so the RSX graphics chip is not being used at all. Even more impressive, PS3 Fanboy is reporting that Linux also limits the number of SPEs to 6 at once, so not all the horsepower on each of the PS3s is being utilized. According to the You Tube Summary, IBM Cell SDK 2.0 is being used for the IBM Interactive Ray-tracer (iRT). This apparently was done by the same team that presented a tech demo at GDC 2007 of a Linux PS3 rendering a 3 million polygon scene in real time at 1080p resolution."

In an update downloadable on April 9th, the newest multiplayer mode for the Xbox 360 hit Gears of War will be made available. Called Annex, the mode is an objective-capturing gameplay scenario. Each map will have physical locations which must be taken and held, and allows for infinite respawns on a fifteen second timer. "On the map, a projected ring marks the physical location and boundaries of the objective in the world. The ring's color indicates the current captor: White means neutral, blue COG, and red Locust. To capture an objective, players must stand inside the glowing ring uncontested for a short period of time. How long depends on how many teammates stand in the ring at once. One player can capture an objective in eight seconds, two players in four seconds, three players in two seconds, and four players in one second. Once a team takes an objective, they are not required to remain inside the ring to maintain ownership."

Wired's Game|Life blog, and writer Chris Kohler, have the news that the PSP will be aiming at teen users in the near future. This from PSP senior product manager John Koller, who connected the recent system price cut to this new initiative. "Going forward, Sony will unveil the 'Dude, Get Your Own' campaign. The idea this year, says Koller, is to 'break out of the home cycle.' A significant amount of PSP users in that 13-17 group play the device at home. 'The teens that are doing this value the ability to utilize the portability,' Koller notes paradoxically. By portability, he clarifies, he means 'I can play it upstairs while my parents are watching the TV downstairs.'"

AbsoluteXyro writes "IGN reports that the Wii version of Resident Evil 4 was confirmed earlier today, as Famitsu spilled the beans on the title in its latest issue. The new version boasts point-and-shoot gameplay, along with a bevy of motion controlled actions that Capcom hopes will put you in the game. Better yet, the game features the visuals of the Gamecube version and all the bonus content of the PS2 version. Famitsu also delivers some info that IGN apparently missed in their translation, including new enemies and bosses, as well as a retail price point of about $30 USD. The game reportedly hits shelves (overseas anyhow) on May 31st."