Aziphirael writes "The MMORPG Project Entropia has just announced that its first treasure island sale via Auction has gone for a grand total of US$26,500. Project Entropia's unique selling point is the ability to convert real money into ingame cash and vice versa. The owner is Zachurm "Deathifier" Emegen who intends to develop the island into a place for the community." From the article: "A large island off a newly discovered continent surrounded by deep creature infested waters. The island boasts beautiful beaches ripe for developing beachfront property, an old volcano with rumors of fierce creatures within, the outback is overrun with mutants, and an area with a high concentration of robotic miners guarded by heavily armed assault robots indicates interesting mining opportunities."

Among many to report on this issue, OneHungLo writes "GamesAreFun.com is reporting that several defective PSP units have been shipped, suffering from problems such as dead pixels, broken UMD drives, air bubbles in the screens, dust in the screens, and the analog "nubs" not working, or actually falling off. They also have a video of a UMD popping out of the PSP as it's running, due to the unit being twisted/turned. I wonder how long it will be until Sony issues an official statement about this?"

Starsmore writes "IGN is reporting that Ziff-Davis Media has pulled the plug on two of its magazines: Xbox Nation (XBN) and GMR (the collaborative effort with EB Games), for undisclosed reasons. Andrew Pfister (GMR Editor) confirms the report as well via 1up.com " From his post: "The news has broken over the Intraweb, and unfortunately, the documents are real. As of the February issue, GMR is being discontinued. Subscribers will be the only ones to receive the February issue, and all subscribers will have the option to switch over to another Ziff mag."

wraggster writes "The team at DC Evolution has put together a truly unique image in honour of the Christmas season. The newest DC Evo image is a brand new e-book, consisting of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol. The image includes the entire, unabridged text of the original novel, some unique illustrations, an mp3 jukebox, and a radio play from 1938. Be sure to check it out at the A Christmas Carol Ebook page."

sushant_bhatia_progr writes "eWeek has an article on how Microsoft Corp. is readying a Tablet PC game software development kit and a new Tablet-PC-specific game, both meant to attract new developers and users for Tablet PCs." From the article: "The Redmond, Wash., software maker is co-developing both the SDK and the new game, called Arcs of Fire, in conjunction with software partner 3 Leaf Development. 3 Leaf officials did not respond to a request for comment. Microsoft expects to release a first beta of both the new game and the SDK in early January."

Grub writes "EA has signed a 5-year agreement with the NFL that gives them exclusive rights to use NFL players, teams, and stadiums in their products. CEO Larry Probst, 'The five-year agreement will usher NFL fans through the console technology transition with new ideas and innovative game play experiences.' This is a crushing blow to competitors and an enormous victory for EA, who will undoubtably make sure everyone knows that only they have NFL players and teams come next year's football game advertising bonanza."

Steve E. writes "Apparently someone has made the first hardware mod to the Nintendo DS. An entry over at the Nintendo DS Livejournal Community gives detailed instructions on how to modify a DS to play legacy cartridges." From the post: "1. Disassemble your Nintendo DS. This step is fairly self explanatory, if you can't figure out how to take your DS apart, you should stop here."

ayersrj writes "The folks over at IGN have started a "Battery Journal" in an attempt to provide us with some relevant information regarding the battery life issue on the PSP in a realistic playing environment. The first run: a little under five hours with no wi-fi. Not too shabby."

Last Friday Blizzard put up a message on the World of Warcraft site stating that Ebaying of in-game items would not be tolerated. This is the first time a MMOG developer has come out of the gate with so strong a policy, and combined with their tough policy on hacking is a heartening sign that community infractions will be taken seriously. TerraNova has commentary on the development as well. From the article: "If they do [succeed], we might have to start thinking of World of Warcraft as the first of a new generation of virtual worlds. It may not seem all that different in terms of some design aspects, but if its war against eBayers succeeds, it will end up being very different in terms of atmosphere."

EvilAvatar has a heads up about a new trailer on the Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children site. (Trailer 3) It is quite impressive, and features glimpses of all the major characters from the game, more hints as to what the plot will revolve around, and a few moments from the game's plot as well. Japanese language only.

dory writes "Newsreview has up a story from October on America's Army and the way the military is using it. The piece discusses a clan, the Army's research mentality and implementations, as well as some MRI studies on gamers." From the article: "The Army has been collecting player information in a vast relational database system called "Andromeda," Wardynski said, which recruiters will be able to use to look up a player's statistics if one of them shows up in a recruiting office. A version of America's Army now in development will take that a step further, allowing players to create a "persistent" online alter-ego, one that steadily progresses through the virtual ranks by taking additional training or specialized missions, generating valuable data along the way."

An Anonymous Reader writes "The Wing Commander CIC is reporting on the tenth birthday of the classic PC game, Wing Commander 3. "Much like Wing Commander 2 with the sound card and Wing Commander Prophecy with the 3d accelerator, Wing Commander 3 encouraged a legion of PC gamers to go out and buy a CD-ROM drive for hundreds of dollars. In little over four years we went from a handful of floppy disks to a stack of CDs. Once computers had their CD-ROM installed, systems with only 8 megabytes of RAM sufferred 5+ minute load times before the missions. Still, we happily waited for one of the most incredible gaming experiences ever." Though the game obviously looks dated by today's standards, it's held up remarkably well as a vehicle of adventure and storytelling. It's amazing that it's already been ten years."

_xeno_ writes "LEGO, everyone's favorite plastic building block company, is creating a Star Wars video game. Yes, that's right. A video game based on the LEGO Star Wars sets, which are of course based on Star Wars. GameSpot has a preview of the game. It covers the three prequel movies, allowing you to play through levels containing LEGO friends and allies. At first you can only play with characters appropriate for the level, but you can unlock other characters to swap in as you play through the game. Because the world is based on LEGO blocks, there are puzzles that involve the creation of LEGO structures to bridge gaps. It's scheduled for an April release, just before "Revenge of the Sith" opens." I guess this would be an...ahem...puzzle game.

An anonymous reader writes "E4engineering has a story on Cosmic Blobs, a 3D modelling tool designed for kids and marketed as a game. Blobs breaks new ground both on the UI side (for instance, the UI has no text whatsoever) and on the modelling side: an object stays smooth as it is pushed and pulled, and animations are automatically adapted to arbitrary shapes. I tried the demo and it's fun, but sometimes unintuitive ( tutorials on the website are useful). I could make animals and get them to hop around with relative ease even though I have no artistic talent. Could this be the way real artists model in the future?"

HellSpam writes "Some robbers tried to burglarize a poor old lady and her 3 grandsons. Her grandsons happened to be playing Grand Theft Auto:San Andreas, and the sounds of the police from the game scared them away! From the article: "The police in the game were saying, 'Stop, we have you surrounded. This is the police.' The burglar, unknowingly, thought this was the actual police and panicked ... being apprehended by PlayStation." Now, no more saying games are bad for you..."

Juergen writes "At 7 a.m. JST, the first shops in Tokyo's 'Electric City' Akihabara opened their doors and sold the brand-new Sony PSP to the long queues of gamers (Mirror) who had waited already for more than 24 hours in a chilly 5 degrees Celsius."

ctwxman writes "Sure you've got a Segway - now what? How about Segway Polo from the Bay Area Segway Enthusiasts Group? Yes, they do fall off from time-to-time, though they're getting better! Spectators are welcome for the two events each month in San Fransisco. Be there and be square."

Gamespy has a piece up today comparing and contrasting the feature sets of Everquest 2 and World of Warcraft. It's a pretty thorough story, covering the newb experience, combat, character customization and more. From the article: "In one corner, you have EverQuest II, the sequel to the undisputed heavyweight MMO champ EverQuest, the game that has probably caused more divorces than any other video game in the world. In the other, you have the challenger, World of Warcraft, the first MMO created by Blizzard Entertainment, the development house best known for StarCraft, Diablo, and the original Warcraft RTS games."

morrison writes "A little over four years after moving to SourceForge at a current rate of several hundred downloads every day, BZFlag has finally "gone platinum". With over 1,000,000 SourceForge downloads, BZFlag looks to be the third game (following Tux Racer and StepMania) to go 'sf platinum'. While this doesn't include the many tens of thousands distributed prior to the project's migration to sf.net during the SGI days, it's a momentous occasion for open source gaming regardless."

frood writes "In a follow-up to slashdot's previous mention of the 2005 Independent Games Festival they have gone ahead and announced the finalists. There are 20 different games all produced without any outside publisher funding. Budgets range from 1.3 million dollars down to $0.00, with the majority coming in under 10k. There are at least 3 that can be run on Linux (Gish, Lux and N)."