jZnat writes "Gamespot reports that Sony has made an official announcement warning gamers that the Holiday 2004 Demo disk, which includes the Viewtiful Joe 2 demo, will erase all memory cards in the system at that time. This was originally publicized by Playstation Underground, and now Sony has bit the bullet and confirmed it." Update: 11/27 22:38 GMT by T : Curt Feldman of Gamespot pointed out that his site's name had been garbled as "Gamepost"; no longer.

Biomemetic writes "Valve announced yesterday that they'll be releasing the Source SDK next week, along with a "surprise for the community". Incidentally, the sound stuttering bug (actually three bugs, to do with texture loading problems), has been solved and an update released through Steam." Relatedly, Highpriest writes "According to gamerankings.com, Half Life 2's average review is higher than Halo 2's. Half Life 2 has recieved a 96.6% overall rating wheras Halo 2 came in with a 95.1%."

GamesIndustry.biz has an article up about the Big N's future plans. Shigeru Miyamoto stated recently that Nintendo plans to be fully supporting online play within a few years, with the DS leading the way. From the article: "Miyamoto, credited as the design genius behind key Nintendo franchises including Zelda and Mario, told the magazine that online gaming will reach the mainstream within three to four years, and that Nintendo will be moving in that direction as a result." Gamespot also has details on upcoming Gamecube games, including another Mario, the next Legend of Zelda, Donkey Konga 3, Mario Baseball, and a new Kirby game.

Sixblade writes "The world's largest LAN party opend its doors this morning. With more than 6200 places, Dreamhack should be quite fun. Check out the webcams, Arwen, Eowyn, Haldir and Beren"

Drac8 writes "Blizzard Entertainment has announced that World of Warcraft has reached record sales in the first day, selling over 250,000 copies, and 200,000 accounts have been created. As of 5:00PM PST tuesday the game had over 100,000 people playing."

Cuber writes "The first modification chip for Nintendo's GameCube console has been announced. It will allow users to boot homebrew applications, loaders and BIOS'. Until now hackers where using an exploit in the game Phantasy Star Online and a broadband adapter to be able to load homebrew software like GC-Linux over a network connection but now they'll be able to run code directly from flash memory. The mod chip will require to solder only 4 wires and while the device comes empty it's not impossible to think 3rd party loaders will come that allow you to boot copied games."

ibn_khaldun asks: "A question in light of the EA controversy. I'm an academic researcher who does his own programming -- I have to eat what I kill. In my 35 years of coding experience, any time I try to work on a complex program for more than, say, 60 hours a week (coding, not just showing up) for a couple weeks at a time, I'm just asking for trouble: I generate buggy code and debugging it only makes it buggier. Numerous studies in other fields (law firms, hospitals) have shown that mistakes rise exponentially after anyone works about 50 hours per week (don't think about this if you go to the emergency room at 3 a.m.)." Are these rational working conditions? (More below.)

Reo Strong writes "Yahoo Finance is reporting that Infogrames isn't making enough money and as part of an announcement it was revealed they are selling the rights to the Civilization series. "Bonnell also said that Infogrames recently sold the franchise for the game Civilization, making a capital gain of 15.5 million euros, which should help second-half accounts."

Buzzcut.com has a nice piece on the lack of context video game critics have in making their arguments. It should be noted he is not referring to today's report card, but a list of Top Ten most violent games put out by the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility. From the article: "I followed up with a simple question, "Who on this panel has played which of the games?" Burke answered first, "I haven't played any of them." She backed up her willful ignorance of the games by suggesting that she didn't need to play Soldier of Fortune to know that she was opposed to its glorification of killing. "I think it's an irrelevant question," she concluded."

Steve Rock writes "To the surprise of no one, game manufacturers and resellers were again taken to task over the production and sales of games containing violent or sexual themes. According to the National Institute on Media and the Family's Ninth Annual Mediawise Video Game Report Card even games with beneficial or neutral content can be harmful to children because of the connection between gameplay and our obesity epidemic. Interestingly, out of fifty surveys mailed out by the Institute to retailers and producers only two were completed and returned. The industry was given a passing grade for the ESRB rating system but the actual enforcement of the system by the retailers was not -- it is worth noting, however, that the Interactive Entertainment Merchants Association has stated that self-regulation procedures were scheduled to be implemented by December 2004 and therefore tests of retailer compliance to ESRB ratings was premature."

The Metreon's Walk of Game, discussed previously, has chosen the first inductees. From the article: "Lifetime Achievement category - Shigeru Miyamoto, Nolan Bushnell. Favorite Game/Character - Halo, Link, Mario, Sonic The Hedgehog" Congratulations to every man and hedgehog who won the honor.

islandroots writes "In a statement issued soon after the problem came to light, Nintendo is offering to inspect and even fix the pixel problem at no cost as long as the machine is returned within the one-year warranty period. From the article: 'With a small number of Nintendo DS screens, one or two dots on the screen may appear to be 'stuck' on a particular color, such as white or red. This effect is caused when a particular pixel (the dots that make up the screen) is not working properly, even with the high quality standards set by LCD manufacturers. You will find this situation is common in many LCD devices, (PC monitors, televisions, cell phones, etc.)'"

Gamasutra has the news that electronics giant Sony has had their credit rating downgraded from A+ to A by credit ratings firm Standard and Poor's. The move is seen primarily as a result of the PSP's impending launch. From the article: "Although Sony's PlayStation Portable (PSP) was not mentioned by name, many consider the unexpectedly low Japanese launch price of the console, 19,800 yen (USD$186), to be one of the major causes for concern. With some suggesting that Sony will lose significant amounts of money on every PSP sold, the company will be looking at a loss of tens of millions of dollars in the first year of the format."

Sam Machkovech writes "Multiple stories about SMU's Guildhall game design school have already shown up on Slashdot, but none like this. My friend and coworker Paul dug into the motivations and stories behind people who dropped their lives to learn the art of game design in an upstart school, and what the story may lack in technical information, it more than makes up for in the students' accounts. Included is a particularly touching story about a student who survived the 2002 Sari Club terrorist attack in Bali. It also touches upon the excessive overtime and dedication that the job requires, which means graduates should be plenty prepared for their future careers."

hephaist0s writes "A company called Holo-Dek Gaming has opened a gaming center in New Hampshire where $5/hour buys gamers a 73-inch high definition projection screen and a networked Alienware PC or or Xbox. More impressive, though, are the prototypes for their 180-degree gaming theater... and their game sphere. Yes, sphere. This is just a pilot program--the Baltimore facility planned for 2005 would have 300 networked gaming stations. Story and pictures here, company website here."

BrookHarty writes "There is a large number of users reporting nausea while playing Half-Life 2. There is a thread on the Steam powered forums that talks about the wide spread problem. Some other sites are actively talking about the motion sickness, PlanetHalflife, 3DGPU, usenet group comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action has an active discussion, and gaming IRC network Gamesurge on channel #Halflife2." In related news from people with too much time on their hands, Jacques Chester writes "Folks discussing the visual merits of the Source and Doom 3 engines might want to look at this. The goal is to see what Half-Life levels might look like in Doom 3. An eerie result."

The last major MMOG launch of the year hits retail stores today. World of Warcraft finally goes live after years of debate, development, and a more than six month Beta test. The usual suspects have details on the game, with Gamespot already having details on upcoming content and Gamespy laying out personal experiences from the test and interviews with the developers.

An anonymous reader writes "Valve have disabled 20,000 steam user accounts belonging to users who have been caught using a pirated version of the game, or have attempted to use a cdkey to bypass the securom protection found on the retail version of the game. The Steam Forums have been swamped with people now claiming they are unable to play, many claiming they have had their accounts disabled for no reason. A Valve spokesman says, 'The number of people who actually had bought HL2 and used the CD key cheat was VERY small. VERY small. Most people just tried to rip off the game and not bother buying it.'" People are discovering that when you buy any product that is subject to "activation", you haven't really bought anything.

Thanks to Laurie W, who writes "Sudhain.com has a great comparison of D3 vs. HL2 (funny, too)." From the article: "Since Half Life 2 was released this week, I thought it'd make a good time to take the two games head to head and see which came out on top. I've spent a few hours in the beginning of each, playing through the first few levels. Although I haven't completed either, I've spent enough time in each (I think) to develop a feel for what the later sections of each game will be like. Given that each has been fairly consistent thus far, it'd take a major shift for my opinion of either to change significantly."

An anonymous reader writes "The global eco tech blog Worldchanging has a post commenting on about how SimCity borks urban planner ideas of how cities really work in the real world." From the entry: "While some of Lobo & Schooler's complaints arise from the fact that SimCity is built as a game -- the "God Mode," for example -- most derive from inability to modify the underlying model, whether to include mixed-use development (the ground-floor commercial/upper-floor residential buildings which help to make dense urban environments livable), to vary the demand ratings for various services, to make pedestrian travel more acceptable, or to alter the efficiency and availability of renewable power generation."