Next Generation is running a piece entitled Why PC Gamer Kicked Out Gold Farmers. Editor-in-chief Greg Vederman talks about why they decided to no longer accept advertising from 'Gold Farming' services for Massively Multiplayer games like World of Warcraft. Though there are moral grounds for this decision, it contrasts with a Eurogamer piece on the negative reactions Chinese players recieve on English-speaking servers. From that article:"Apparently there is a common belief among English speaking players that most non-English speakers are gold farmers and are only playing for commercial gain. As a result, players are asking anyone who wants to join a group to type one or two sentences in English. If the sentences contain spelling or grammar mistakes, the player is rejected. Since you have to join groups to complete certain quests in WOW, this is presenting many Chinese players with a serious problem. "

Gamespot reports that retailer GameStop expects to fill of of its Xbox 360 preorders by the end of February. From the article: "Gamers who thought they were getting the jump on the Xbox 360 shortage by preordering the system from retailers may have unknowingly stung themselves. Some of those who put down money up front for the next-gen console are still without their systems, as Microsoft continues to struggle to keep enough 360s in the channel to satisfy customers."

An anonymous reader writes "Recently certain 'rare' videogames like Rez, Disgaea: Hour of Darkness and Gitaroo-Man have circulated in the market starting at internet retailer Game Quest Direct. How did a seemingly unknown retailer end up getting these games? By acting as a financing publisher. Is this a possible future for other online retailers?"

The Guardian Gamesblog has an interesting piece wondering outloud about the greying of the gaming population. Both the people who make the games and the people who play the games are increasingly older, far from the targetted 15-year-old male in typical gaming marketing. From the article: "Not only does this [marketing] policy cost the industry over 50% of its potential market on gender terms alone, but in a few years time, it's also going to cut out a huge audience on the age side of things too. I wonder, are forward-thinking publishers already having brain-storming sessions in order to address the challenge of the grey gamer? Wired.com ran an article this week on how the ageing population in Japan is bringing about some major cultural changes. Have Namco, Nintendo, Capcom and Konami et al caught the zeitgeist?"

Next Generation reports that yet another analyst sees the U.S. PS3 launch a ways off. A gent from the Pacific Crest Securities group forsees a 1M unit strong launch in the U.S. sometime in November, with a Japanese launch the summer before and an EU launch the spring after. From the article: "Despite speculation of high launch prices - some quoting a ludicrously high $700 mark - these numbers will certainly lead to severe shortages. Sony will struggle to meet retail demand with a million units at launch, and will face the same kind of criticism leveled at Microsoft if it fails to back the launch up with regular pre-Holiday shipments."

hapwned writes "Jerry 'Tycho Brahe' Holkins and Mike 'Jonathan Gabriel Gabe' Krahulik of Penny Arcade gave an interview to Shannon Drake of the Escapist about their charity Child's Play. In the piece, they reveal the first hint of their next endeavor: 'Talk of crazy ideas and the future brings us to their next enterprise, which is still hazy, but very exciting all the same. Right now, they're throwing around the idea of a Penny Arcade Scholarship, which should debut this year.'"

Next Generation reports that Microsoft's willingness to support Blu-Ray on the 360 was highly overrated. From the article: "The question of whether Xbox 360 has the flexibility to adapt to consumers' needs is a different issue entirely. Xbox 360 is a future-proofed system - one that allows us to add features as consumers demand them - as evidenced by our offering of the HD-DVD drive as an accessory. Current reports indicating that we have a back-up plan, which includes Blu-Ray support are incorrect. At this point, we're fully committed to HD-DVD and have absolutely no plans to support other optical formats." IE: They have the option of adding Blu-Ray if it turns out HD-DVD is a flop. We've reported on this claim earlier.

The 2005 finalists for the Annual Interactive Achievement Awards have been announced, Gamespot reports. The event, sponsored by the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences, will announce winners on the evening of January 9th. From the article: "Leading the nominees this year was GameSpot's 2005 PlayStation 2 Game of the Year, God of War. Developed and published by Sony Computer Entertainment America (SCEA), the game got a whopping 11 nominations, including Overall Game of the Year, Action/Adventure Game of the Year, and Outstanding Innovation in Gaming. The game's number of nominations ties last year's AIAS Game of the Year winner, Half-Life 2."

An anonymous user submitted a review of the ZBoard Gaming Keyboard. You really ought to check this one out just to see how nuts it is. It has custom plates with keys that are movable and... well just look at it. I can't decide if its pure genius or just ridiculous.

LinuxCowboy writes "CNN is reporting that a 20 year old Cal Tech student set a new record by solving a 3x3 rubrics cube in 11.13 seconds. In addition, he was blindfolded while doing it." From the article: "Still, the world record alone didn't gain Lo the overall champion's title at the event, which was determined by averaging three of five solution times in the final round. For that title, Lo went up against the teenager widely considered the fastest Rubik's Cube solver on the planet -- Shotaro "Macky" Makisumi, a 15-year-old from Pasadena."

Gamasutra reports on a partial list of the top-sellers in the Japanese market for last year. From the article: "With the Nintendo DS dominating hardware sales during the year, it was no surprise to find Oide yo Doubutsu no Mori (aka Animal Crossing: Wild World) at number one with approximately 1.17 million copies sold. The second ranked title, and one of the few games to feature prominently in the top tens from all three countries, was Sony's Gran Turismo 4 for the PlayStation 2, with 1.07 million units sold."

USA Today has a piece up talking with the writers of Smartbomb about the greater significance of gaming in the here and now. From the article: "In 2002, the military released America's Army, a game designed to inspire young men and women gamers to join the army. Within one year, it was registered by 2.4 million people and nominated for an award by a top gaming organization. It was a blockbuster. America's Army, along with a game used to train recruits and a sci-fi, holodeck knockoff (a room that allows the participant to see, feel and smell a virtual environment), will be used to 'train soldiers for the emotional experience' of war, making up a part of the U.S. military's new DNA, according to Chaplin and Ruby."

ajs writes "Monte Cook Presents: Iron Heroes is an advanced role playing rule book, based on Wizards of the Coast's d20 System (the rules that underpin the current edition of Dungeons & Dragons). What's unusual about it is that it presents both a setting and rules for "low magic" fantasy that doesn't sacrifice high adventure to get its gritty action." Read the rest of Aaron's review.

GameSetWatch has details on the finalists in the first Independent Games Festival Modder category. Mods for Doom 3, Half-Life 2, Neverwinter Nights, and UT2004 were considered. From the article: "Regarding the highly competitive IGF Best Mod - Unreal Tournament 2004 category, finalists comprise LudoCraft's 'surreal insect-laden action game' Dragonfly Variations, Eigensoft's adorable hamster-ball action mod HamsterBash, Lotus.Arts' Jade Empire-esque third-person Asian action mod Path Of Vengeance, The Art Institute of Vancouver's multiplayer survival horror mod The Awakening, and HELM Systems' epic fantasy action multiplayer mod The Soulkeeper." Some amazing stuff here. If you've been looking for something new to do with old games, these should keep you busy this coming weekend.

Edge Online is featuring another edition of its Time Extend article series, this time looking back at Peter Molyneux's Black and White. From the article: "It's this contradiction which is at the heart of all god games. Although promising ultimate power, the design challenge is always focused on how to limit that power: it wouldn't have made Black & White a better game if you'd been able to toss off a mouse gesture that casts 'I Win'. And so your potency is metered, dependent on the prayers of your followers. Your influence is circumscribed, penned in by a smoky ring of red. In an odd ecological twist, you're even dependent on natural resources: strip the land of trees and the seas of fish and your godhood can soon be brought up short."

Early next month Slashdot Games is going to participate in a traveling roadshow. This event wanders, with no home and little love. The Carnival of Gamers pitches a tent every month on a new site, and offers up the latest wares from gaming commentary blogs from across the internets. Previous Carnivals have covered MMOGs, consoles, the law, copyright, and the always interesting Jack Thompson. In order to participate, just write something (anything) interesting on your blog. Email the Carnival's ringleader (carniegrue (at) gmail.com) with a link to your post by February 1st. There's always a few really interesting pieces each month, and we're looking forward to seeing what gets submitted. Good luck!

GamesIndustry.biz reports that despite rumours to the contrary there are no immediate plans to redesign the Nintendo DS. From the article: "Nintendo's Reggie Fils-Aime confirmed late last year that a redesign was in the pipeline, and it's thought that there are low levels of DS stock remaining - the handheld has proved a huge hit in Japan, the US and Europe and more than 13 million units have been sold worldwide." IE: There will be a redesign for the handheld console, but not any time real soon.

Class Act Dynamo writes "A sports fantasy league company has asked a federal court to decided whether baseball statistics belong in the public domain as history or are the property of major league baseball. Basically, they had been licensing the statistics for nine cents (US) per gross from the Major League Baseball Players Association. But MLB recently bought the rights to be the sole licensor and has refused to renew the license of the fantasy league company. From the article: 'Major League Baseball has claimed that intellectual property law makes it illegal for fantasy league operators to commercially exploit the identities and statistical profiles of big league players.' What does the Slashdot community think? Shoud Barry Bonds' record 73 single season homeruns be in the public domain, or should I worry about having to pay royalties for the first part of this compound sentence?"

Ant writes "This Tom's Hardware article says that in the latest generation of graphics cards, PixelShader has become mainstream. Version 3 features 3D effects like HDR rendering for bright light sources, and parallax mapping for even more vivid features in walls and stones. The brand-new ATI Radeon X1000 series and the NVIDIA GeForce 6 and 7 master these improved graphics features. It looks at today's newest computer games (e.g., F.E.A.R.) and compare the 3D effects."

If you were worried about your Azeroth fix on the new Intel Macs, worry not. Ars Technica reports that World of Warcraft is officially supported on Apple's newest toys. From the article: "What Blizzard did today was pop the cherry on Mac gaming with Intel inside Azeroth. Apple was cool enough to provide a prototype iMac, and Blizzard was cool enough to have been working overtime on the Intel version of Warcraft. WoW for Intel will be publicly available in about three weeks--for free! As if people wouldn't take a Krol Blade to their non-mousing arm in payment for a real FSB for 3D."