Ant writes "Bezoar has a collection of old video game commercials ranging from Atari 2600 to SNES. These WMV files (1-2 MB each) can be downloaded for nostalgia flashbacks or if you are curious (you young kids!)."

PLMIV writes "Microsoft said the company's home and entertainment division, which includes games and the Xbox video game console system, posted its first profitable quarter on sales of its hit game Halo 2. But the company said the division probably would be back in the red for the rest of the fiscal year and would not achieve sustained profitability until sometime in fiscal 2007."

Lullabye_Muse asks: "I want to write a game program for an independent research class I am taking at my High School. I have until June to deliver a final product or a good demo. I'm somewhat new to programming and will be doing work at home, and at school (Linux and Windows, so cross platform OSS is best). What is the best language to learn to code games in, and do you have suggestions for any useful sites, on game programming?"

Tom V. writes "DevMaster.net has an article that outlines some of the technical differences between Half-life 2's Source and Doom 3 engines from various game development aspects such as graphics, A.I., physics, networking, etc. According to the author, the winner is the Source engine based on its 'completeness' as a game development package. However, in terms of graphics, the clear winner is Doom 3."

A press release from the Entertainment Software Association reveals the growing popularity of the gaming industry, as sales reach into the 7 Billion US Dollars arena. From the article: "In 2004, video games flew off the shelves as eight titles were sold per second per day throughout the year, evidence of the continuing vast popularity of games among consumers of all ages. This industry remains strong and poised for renewed double digit growth over the next five years as we enter a new cycle of video game console launches. The future could not be brighter."

Gamespot has the news that EA's corporate communications vice president Jeff Brown sees the MLB deal as 'stupid money'. From the article: "As far as we're concerned, this looks like stupid money. They are paying an exclusive price for a nonexclusive agreement."

GamesIndustry.biz has the news that the Nintendo DS has been slated for a March 11th launch in Europe. The launch will carry 15 different titles, and the handheld will be bundled with the Metroid Prime: Hunters demo, as it was in the states. Australian gamers have something to be happy about as well. From the article: "The £99 price point is around the expected mark. Interestingly, Australian fans will pay the equivalent of around £90 for theirs, and although exchange rate fluctuations are believed to be behind that slightly more flattering figure, they can hardly be blamed for the unusual sight of Nintendo hardware making it onto store shelves down under before it does so here; Aussie gamers will be able to pick up a DS from 24th February onward."

Cymoro writes "In an article Gamespot posted recently Ken Kutaragi, Sony Computer Entertainment president, was quoted in a japanese business magazine about the PSP square button defect as saying "There may be people that complain about its usability, but that's something which users and game software developers will have to adapt to." Apparently, flaws are a feature."

jvalenzu writes "Matt Matthews is at it again! The venerable owner of curmudgeongamer.com has posted his latest missive, All Emulation is Illegal." From the article: "Now, if this is how we interpret the law, then practically every use of a videogame system emulator is illegal. Even a user who dumps the contents of a videogame cartridge for an Atari 2600 game he owns to a ROM file cannot use that ROM file with an emulator unless the original's loss requires resorting to the archival copy. If true, then even my attempt to stay legal by buying games and only then using an emulator to play them is way out of bounds."

chris writes "Mobliss, Valve, Gas Powered Games, Sony Online Entertainment, Time Warner Interactive, Monolith Productions, Mary-Margaret.com, Konami Digital Entertainment - America, Zango Games, and Oberon-Media are just some of the game companies participating in the Seattle Video Game Industry Job Conference and Resume Workshop that takes place in the Seattle suburb of Shoreline, Washington on February 12, 2005 at the Shoreline Center. A number of companies are actively recruiting and looking for new talent at the conference. The event is designed for artists, programmers, writers, musicians, designers and others looking to get into the computer and video game business. Students and professionals looking to get into the computer and video game business will have the opportunity to speak with industry insiders, hiring managers and participate in an engaging resume workshop."

Gamespot and GamesIndustry.biz has the news from yesterday's conference call where EA CEO Larry Probst reported higher earnings for his company in Q3, despite a small yearly decline. He also held forth on the future cost of next-gen games, which in his opinion will likely stay as high as $50 and could perhaps fetch more on retail shelves. Just before this story was to be published, Tim Butler wrote in with the news from 1Up.com that EA was laying off members of its LA studio. From the article: "According to sources close to the company, Electronic Arts is currently in the process of laying off between 50-70 team members from its minty-fresh new EA LA office. The teams affected worked on the poorly-recieved GoldenEye: Rogue Agent and the forthcoming Medal of Honor: Dogs of War FPS titles." Update: 01/27 06:34 GMT by Z : Update to the layoff article: "The first step is to rebalance the team. This has required us to let go 60 people -- from many different teams. There is no focus on any one team or any one class of individuals. It's a studio-wide thing to reset the business fundamentals and get the studio to the next level."

KaiEl writes "Is Nintendo being penalized in the press for releasing their Nintendo DS before Sony's PSP? That's the quesiton I ask in a recent post on The Video Game Ombudsman. While DS games are being held up to the harsh standard of hands-on reviews, PSP coverage is mostly rosy glow previews and lofty PR promises. Readers comparing the two very different types of writing might notice a "preview bias" that seems endemic to video game writing. Is this a serious problem, or am I just expecting too much from what is simply a preliminary review?"

An anonymous reader writes "Take Two Interactive announced today that they have acquired the rights to the Civilization franchise. They also announced Civ 4, saying that "Civilization IV will also set a new standard for user-modification, allowing gamers to create their own add-ons using the standard Python and XML scripting languages." Okay, so XML's not a scripting language. But it's nice to see open source tech in a major PC game!" Civ IV will be released under the new 2K Publishing Label we reported on yesterday.

Craig Reynolds writes "In his recent book Artificial Intelligence for Computer Games: An Introduction , author John Funge takes us on a whirlwind tour of techniques from the literature of academic AI research and discusses their application to the nuts and bolts of game AI programming. While some of these topics are quite advanced, the text remains easily readable and grounded in what the techniques mean to real game programmers developing real game AI." Read on for Reynolds' review.

obchrisj writes "As reported by Slashdot on Monday, Red Orchestra, the popular UT2004 mod, won the grand prize (A full Unreal engine license and $50,000) in the Make Something Unreal Contest. FileFront had a chance to sit down and chat with the team members of the popular modification to discuss their multiple-award winning success." From the article: "You could call it a first person shooter but I feel doing so is unfairly categorizing Red Orchestra as yet another WWII shooter. Our main focus with Red Orchestra is realism, we want the gamer to actually feel the tension and fear of being a soldier fighting for his country and livelihood during the war. With our focus on realism you won't find any crosshairs to aim with, or health packs to heal yourself." Update: 01/26 21:34 GMT by Z : Fixed bad link.

An anonymous reader writes "The president of the Entertainment Software Rating Board wrote an open letter to Kotaku in response to an editorial that ran there a few days back about the ESRB and the system used to rate games. The editorial basically said that the ESRB isn't doing their job and needs to start if they don't want to be replaced by the Feds. The letter today said Kotaku is wrong and explained why. Does the current rating system serve its purpose?"

petbath writes "A long time UO player who is moving on makes some interesting confessions on how he managed to earn over 100k in real world money by setting up a bot farm." Commentary available on Terra Nova. From the post: " Between the pressures of my competition, the required maintenance work and the impending doom of on-line game markets, I decided to retire my bot farm in favor of other possibilities that required less work to maintain. Last May I sold off the last of my game assets and today I have posted my bot army for sale on Ebay. I don't want to part with these beasts of burden, but I do have to close this final chapter in the gold farming adventure."

Stargoat writes "The official mainland Chinese news agency, Xinhau, is reporting that China is banning 50 gaming titles. These titles include Battlefield Vietnam, The Sims 2, and FIFA 2005. A similar game banning event occurred six months ago in China, but not to this scale."

Gamespot has the news that Take-Two Interactive's MLB deal has already had repercussions. Sega has gotten out of the sports business, selling their internal sports studio Visual Concepts to Take-Two for a bargain price. This newest addition in hand, Take-Two has turned around and launched a new game label entitled 2K games. From the article: "2K Games will incorporate Take-Two's internally owned development studios Visual Concepts, Kush Games, Indie Built, Venom Games, PopTop Software, and Frog City Software, as well as the team at Take-Two Licensing..." This new label will have a subsidiary specifically tuned for sports titles. As expected, it appears the sports game market is now going to fall to only a few companies. Commentary on Greg Costikyan's Blog

Reader Ant wrote in to mention a Guardian Unlimited Gamesblog article which asks: Do Game Designers burn out like rock stars? From the article: "The games industry is getting on a bit now, and so are many of its key 'superstars'. You may not think it, given the proliferation of sequels and movie tie-ins that clog up the charts like that sickly white glue in the veins of heavy smokers, but this is a creative business. No matter how many people are involved in the process, there must be a spark of inspiration somewhere at its core. So what happens when the spark falters, or goes out?"