Via Gamasutra, an article at TheStreet.com talking with the interim CEO of Take Two Interactive. In the wake of the chaos of the board overthrow, Strauss Zelnick is taking pains to reassure investors that stability and security are now the company's goals. He also pointed out that his position as CEO is a short-term situation: "Before we seek to fill the CEO slot we want to stabilize morale, develop our strategy and improve the structure of the company... So, I don't think we will have a new CEO right away but I would guess we have someone in the chair permanently within the next 12 months."

The classic Sega Saturn title NiGHTS Into Dreams is finally, finally, getting a sequel. Joystiq reports on news at Famitsu, saying that a NiD sequel will be coming to the Wii this winter. "Takashi Izuka of Sonic Team USA is Producer of NiGHTS: Journey of Dreams. He leaves Famitsu, and the rest of the weeping-with-tears-of-joy world, with this comment: 'In 1996, we created the NiGHTS character to achieve a concept of being refreshed from being able to fly in the sky. 11 years later, at last, we have broken our silence. NiGHTS will now fly in a new dream world: new stages, new story, and on the new Wii platform.'"

Ars Technica opines on Eidos' decision to hold off on PS3 games until 2008. Though they make a point of mentioning all of the great steps forward Sony and the PS3 have taken in the last month or so (LittleBigPlanet, Home, the EU launch), they feel this decision may have ramifications for the console. "Though Eidos isn't the most prominent European developer--noteworthy releases for 2006 included the surprisingly decent Just Cause, Tomb Raider: Legend and Hitman: Blood Money--this may set a dangerous precedent for other developers. If Sony doesn't step up to become more proactive at keeping the flow of good games steady, the installed base may not continue to grow quickly enough and developers may begin to pull support, creating a lack of games. This vicious cycle is hard to escape, as Sony has previously learned with the PSP's port problem."

Earlier this year we discussed the discontinuation of the GDRom, and what that likely meant for the Dreamcast. In news covered by Kotaku, who translated a blurb on the Sega Nerds site, Sega has now announced that they're officially stopping the repair service for the Dreamcast and Sega Saturn. They've offered the service all these long years to loyal fans, and two new Dreamcast games were even released this year in Japan. Just the same, this looks to be the end of official support for 1999's unsung console hero.

Gamespot is reporting on the full details of the E For All event, the consumer-facing games show slated to debut this October. Along with additional details, the article offers up some basics on the show. First off, it "runs October 18-21 at the Los Angeles Convention Center, former home of the Electronic Entertainment Expo. Single-day passes for Thursday and Friday will cost gamers $50 each, while admission on Saturday or Sunday will run $75. A full pass for all four days will also be available for $110." Gamers will be able to try out almost all of the Holiday releases in a finished state, participate in tournaments, and buy games from retailers located in fabled Kentia Hall. It's also been announced that Nintendo will be headlining the event, though Expo officials try to reassure us that other publishers will be there as well. I have to ask: is anyone thinking about going to this thing? Now that the doors are open, are you as a gamer excited about the possibility of making it into E3?

figgen writes "Gamers and music fans have been waiting on details for the next Harmonix project, now that the company has been purchased. The development team behind Guitar Hero announced Rock Band via USA Today. The title is coming to the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, and will expand on the concept by adding singing and drumming into the mix. 'With MTV as a partner, Harmonix was able to sign deals with the major forces in the music publishing industry and has access to the master recordings of music from popular artists. Electronics Arts is also involved, and will use its global reach to help distribute the game.' GameSpot had a chance to sit down with Harmonix's Alex Rigopulos and EA Partners' David DeMartini to talk about the upcoming title."

YokimaSun writes "Homebrew coders push the boundaries on the PSP again, StrmnNrmn has released a new version of his Nintendo 64 emulator for the PSP that has been confirmed to play Mario 64 at Full Speed on Sony's Handheld. A full Compatibility listing is available with games such as Starfox64 playble too."

SlashRating©
Lambda
slashdottit! tm

Kevlar_Sindome writes "Verse Studios announced today that they have officially 'changed everything', with the release of their first game: Fool's Gold. Fool's Gold lets players take on the role of the heroic gold farmer seeking profit from gold hungry characters who seem to have an unlimited amount of money to spend, but never enough time to spend it. Touted as the first Gold Farming Role Playing Game ( GF-RPG ), Verse Studios hopes to get a jump on starting a new game genre. Fool's Gold is free for download off the Verse Studios website."

SlashRating©
$slashrating
slashdottit! tm

eldavojohn writes "ThinkGeek (Owned by same parent corporation as Slashdot) has recently started selling WiiHelms which allows the user to effortlessly play the Wii without tirelessly moving their arms around. An added foot pedal controls the A, B button pushing to minimize activity. According to the article, "After extensive scientific study it was found that manipulating muscles in your neck for 10 minutes uses 64% less energy than waving your arms about like a lunatic." Indeed, after watching the demonstration video, I myself will order four or five — I'm sick of flailing my arms around like a chump. Don't forget to check out ThinkGeek's other offerings today including inhalable caffeine sticks, the 8-bit tie and the most amazing T-shirt ever."

SlashRating©
70
slashdottit! tm

A blue post on the WoW forums shows that blizzard's official stance on player aversion to the Armory will be addressed by adding a new item, the Tinfoil Hat. "While the Tinfoil Hat provides the wearer with added protection against mind control and other befuddlements, the hat's most interesting and truly unique property is that it completely removes the wearer's character profile from the Armory website and provides enhanced privacy for its wearer!"

SlashRating©
42
slashdottit! tm

Bill Stubbs writes "NVIDIA has admitted to a killer bug in all GeForce 8800GTX/GTS cards, and will recall all affected cards and replace them. 'An NVIDIA engineer, who wishes to remain anonymous, has just clued us in on the whole deal. This engineer claims that while allegations of poor gaming performance are correct, the reason is not really poor drivers. Brace yourself for the truth: Right after the G80 was taped out, NVIDIA discovered a bug in the vertex shader that causes the GPU to generate slightly incorrect geometry transformation data. The difference was minimal enough to escape attention but it was significant enough to render a scene incorrectly.' The article also links to a secret website which will allow gamers to purchase Nvidia cards at cost."

togelius asks: "I have the feeling that when developers make the effort to put really sophisticated AI into a game, gamers frequently just don't notice (see e.g. Forza). Conversely, games that are lauded for their fantastic AI are sometimes based on very simple algorithms (e.g. Halo 1). For someone who wants to apply AI to games, it is very interesting to know what AI is really appreciated. What is the most impressive game AI you have come across? Have you ever encountered a situation where it really felt like the computer-controlled opponents were really thinking?"

eldavojohn writes "Strange as it may sound, Mexico City is giving it their all in their efforts to crack down on gun related violence. The chief of police has 'announced that anyone prepared to surrender a high-calibre weapon, such as a machine gun, will receive a free computer in exchange. And, perhaps in the interests of scale and fair play, anyone turning in a smaller calibre handgun will be presented with either cash remuneration or an Xbox videogame console.'"

I've mentioned previously how much I enjoy the writing of Newsweek's N'Gai Croal and MTV's Stephen Totilo. All this week, then, it's been a pleasure to enjoy their witty exchange on the PS2's most recent blockbuster, God of War 2. The conversation is spread across both Croal's LevelUp column and Totilo's Player Two blog, and features ruminations on the title from a number of viewpoints. If you have some time this afternoon I highly recommend you give their full correspondence a look. More than just a discussion about a single game, they manage to capture some of the greatness of the medium, with their conversation ranging across genre, time, and content to get at some of the most fundamental elements of videogaming. From N'Gai's final post: "I've said before that we 'see' videogames with our hands. Extending that analogy further, the way cutscenes are used today is the film equivalent of title cards during the silent film era: even though the audience came to the movies to watch people move, they had to do a fair bit of reading to get the full measure of the filmmaker's vision. Similarly, cutscenes leave gamers watching when they should be playing. Sure, cutscenes can communicate critical information; they allow for dramatic and spectacular sequences that might be too difficult to pull off interactively; they provide a nice breather or bookend to lengthy gameplay sections. But just as silent film gave way to the talkies, cutscenes need to keep giving way to gameplay so that our eyes--excuse me, our hands--are constantly engaged."

Nintendo has responded to accusations leveled against it earlier this week by GameStop, saying that Wii shortages are due to demand. Nintendo's George Harrison told Next-Gen.biz in a phone interview that "That's not at all the case. We have worldwide territories that are all competing over the available production. The Japan and European markets are doing extremely well with the Wii. People in Japan at NCL [Nintendo Co. Ltd.] are making the best decisions that they can about which products get shipped to which market and when." An EU marketing director is also quoted at GamesIndustry.biz responding to criticism about the lack of new Wii titles, as well as the supply shortage. Nintendo's Laurent Fischer asserts that the company has a 'release it when it's ready' attitude, and that they'll release products when they meet the company's standards.

bedake writes "The New York Times has up an article discussing the increase in retired people getting interested in online computer games. 'PopCap Games in Seattle, the maker of the diversions so popular at St. Mary, says its games have been downloaded more than 200 million times since the company was founded in 2000. A spokesman said that the company was stunned by results of a customer survey last year: 71 percent of its players were older than 40, 47 percent were older than 50, and 76 percent of PopCap players were women.' The piece goes on to discuss the popularity of the Wii console, as well, a subject discussed on Slashdot before."

Radon360 writes "A Wall Street Journal article reports that China's fastest-rising currency isn't the yuan. It's the QQ coin — online play money created by marketers to sell such things as virtual flowers for instant-message buddies, cellphone ringtones and magical swords for online games. In recent weeks, the QQ coin's real-world value has risen as much as 70%. It's the most extreme case of a so-called virtual currency blurring the boundaries between the online and real worlds — and challenging legal limits. A Chinese Internet company called Tencent Holdings Ltd. designed the payment system in 2002 to allow its 233 million regular registered users to shop for treats in its virtual world. Virtual currencies are in use in many countries — but nowhere have they taken root more deeply than in China."

Some would view it as vaguely ironic that, on the same day that the GTA IV trailer makes its debut, the Take-Two board is finally ousted in the culmination of a nasty inter-corporate feud. CNN's Chris Morris reports on the latest development in the company's saga: "The accounting and ethical quagmires that have bogged down the company for the past few years are likely to disappear. And Take-Two will almost certainly become a leaner company, shedding divisions and canceling games ... The arrival of a new board may also ratchet down the public scrutiny of the company a few notches - but that respite from the spotlight's glare might not last as long as they would like. You see, the thing that makes this game maker different from the rest of the industry is its rebellious streak. It's something that drives opponents insane and causes mass migraines in the boardroom, but without it, Take-Two wouldn't be the force it is today."

Mr_Congeniality writes "The much-anticipated trailer for the next chapter in the Grand Theft Auto series has been released. Rockstar's servers, including the one that hosts Rockstar's homepage, was completely overloaded with traffic last night as a result. Users desperately flocking to other websites like GTANet and GTA4.net, but even these websites were overloaded by the interest level. If these sites are still slow, try GameTrailers or GameVideos as an alternative. For analysis of the video, CVG has ten things you may have missed, while 1up's editors offer their opinions on what they saw."

Via GamePolitics, an exerpt from an upcoming Wired print magazine article on Rockstar's slide from grace. The article outlines a number of the problems we've discussed here on the site, such as their numerous lawsuits, the 'Hot Coffee' scandal, and stock-option problems. At four pages it's only a teaser for the longer article in the magazine, but it's still very much worth taking a look. "The irony is thick: The company that defined virtual criminality is now associated with the real thing. Rockstar and Take-Two executives declined to answer questions for this article, but their rich and troubled story is revealed by official documents and former employees. It seems the blokes forgot that in life, as in Grand Theft Auto, there are repercussions for the choices you make."