simoniker writes "The Independent Games Festival has just announced its list of entrants for 2005, the seventh annual contest. The awards, to be given out at next year's Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, are all about 'Rewarding Innovation In Independent Games,' and there's a total of $40,000 in prizes, including a $15,000 grand prize for both the 'Open' and 'Web/Downloadable' categories. Notable entries this year include Nayantara's online CCG Star Chamber, Chronic Logic's ball-o'-tar platformer Gish, and Digital Eel's forthcoming Weird Worlds: Return to Infinite Space, the sequel to Strange Adventures In Infinite Space."

sp00 writes "In a press release, Meqon announces 3DRealms has purchased the Meqon Game Dynamics SDK engine for the upcoming title Duke Nukem Forever. There are some neat demos of the engine here. Is DNF finally a reality?"

Thanks to Slamdance for its submission. Coming up at The Slamdance Film festival in Park City, Utah - Jan. 21 to 28 2005, programmers can compete in The Big C Independent Game Competition. "The Big C is calling for entries of all new games from emerging talent. Selected games will compete and be judged by festival attendees, with a Jury Award and Audience Award that include cash and prizes presented at the end of the festival. Game submissions should have an early-postmarked deadline of Oct. 1, 2004 and a final postmarked deadline of Nov. 14, 2004. Entrants may submit games on disk or provide a URL for judges to download." The event has an entry on the Gamasutra Calendar, for additional info.

Coneasfast writes "A new Unreal Tournament 2004 demo is available. The new UT2004 demo has all the fixes and updates in the latest full version of UT2004, and also includes two additional maps, ONS-Primeval and CTF-FaceClassic, as well as the Instagib CTF game type. In addition, new demo servers are compatible with full version clients, so if you run a demo server, anyone can join it. The windows version is 282Mb, and the linux version is 77.2Mb." Update: Looks like the site is wrong, the linux client is 275 megs.

Thanks to Gamespot for the notification. Sony has confirmed that the PStwo will not feature a hard drive bay. "...consumers who want and use the hard disc drive are typically the more 'hard core' gamers, ... we feel that a majority of those HDD interested consumers already have their PlayStation 2 units."

pdawerks writes "Mobile Digital Media is planning to bring Madden NFL 2005 to the Palm OS and the Pocket PC platforms. The game is expected to be released next month. It will be available only on a SD card for $39.99."

An anonymous reader writes "A group of talented coders known as TeamXodus, have released an xbox modification chip with a difference, the 'Xenium' is a modchip which features a fully legal operating system that was coded by the team from scratch. The mod can be installed Solderlessly and will allow the end user to unlock the power of the xbox and run applications such as Linux on their Xbox. The onboard Operating system currently stands at version 2.0 and features a massive 1.35 million lines of code and was recently reviewed by HomeCinemaChoice whereby they declared the Xenium 'The creators of the easiest Xbox modification - the complete package.'"

skabb writes "Is Elite 4 back in development? The game, rumoured back in 2001 is a sequel to the popular Elite series, with a multiplayer version planned!"

erax0r writes "Gamespot reports that HL2 could be delayed yet again. "Court filings show VU Games has the right to sit on finished Half-Life 2 code for up to six months. Could it be deja vu all over again?"

An anonymous reader writes "The next Xbox may use Virtual PC for backwards compatibility for original Xbox games. According to reports from Geek.com's Apple insider section the reason for the delay of Virtual PC 7 is because Microsoft has given it exclusively to the Xbox team. The reason hinted at: Xbox will include an IBM PowerPC 970, and current Xbox game developers are shipped G5 PowerMac."

pgptag writes "From Daily News Tribune: 'If you could play God, would you be kind, cruel or just careless? The answer can reveal itself by the way you play "The Sims 2," the highly anticipated follow-up to the "real life" personal computer game "The Sims," which placed omnipotent players in control of the fates of digital people... What's funny is that we have a genetics feature now (which allows characters who mate to have children who share their looks and aspirations). So you can download some of the celebrities that the players have made, put them in the game and have them have kids.'"

Andy Phelps has once again begun blogging. A recent post of his to the Corante Tech site suggests an intriguing idea: B-Sides to major commercial games. "I think there is an interesting opportunity here: stick some "B-Side" experimental games on the DVD with the big title. Little Flash games, or student games, or Internet games that haven't taken off yet. Don't advertise them on the box, sell the "big game" just like always." Thanks to Hylton Jolliffe for the submission.

CheeseMonkey writes "If you've played Fable, you have probably seen the Bards in the game, and may have had them tell you to find a "better bard". That better bard was found on the Fable forums (reg. required). Or, so it seemed. He led on the gaming public for two solid days with a series of incredibly well crafted poems. Finally, he fessed up. I extensively blogged the whole ordeal, so you don't have to sift through all the rubbish."

roadies writes "EA confirms Tiger Woods and Need For Speed as launch titles for Japan and US. Also announced are NBA Street and NFL Street. A very interesting subtitle from a Gamespy article suggest Tiger Woods and NFS will be bundled with the system."

Andrew writes "Sony has confirmed via their TGS system specs page, that the PSP will support MP3 playback. The confirmation comes only a few days after Sony did a u-turn on their Atrac only stance, announcing that all their upcoming music players will also support MP3 media files."

BlueMoon writes "Gamespot has an interview with Dean Lester (Microsoft Windows Graphics and Gaming general manager) where he explains that the Xbox 2 peripherals will all work on PC too. So it looks like the Xbox 2 will probably use the 'normal' USB standard."

sm4kxd writes "EuroGamer is reporting that in a press conference at the Tokyo Game Show, Sony representatives stated that Gran Turismo 4 is still on schedule for release. They're looking for a December 4th Japan release, followed by a near December 14th release date in both the states and Europe, but it will be exclusively offline. There is to be a follow up GT game with online capabilities that has a speculated release sometime in 2005."

Thanks to Garage Games for their submission of "Dark Horizons: Lore is available for all Linux distributions. Dark Horizons is a breakneck-speed first-person shooter based in a universe where the unfolding history of a war-torn Earth is revealed before the player's eyes."

LGRiske writes "In this day and age of the Unreal Final Fantasy of Doom 3 it's nice to see a 4000 year old board game keep up the pace. There's now a whole Linux distribution dedicated to learning, playing and studying the oldest strategy game in the world, Go/Baduk/WeiQi. Named Hikarunix it is based on DamnSmallLinux, the Live Linux CD, and is small enough to fit on a 3" (80mm) miniCD. It is meant for Go players of all levels whether you've never even heard of the game or have been playing for decades."

Slashdotess writes "If you can't wait for the native Linux client, it seems Doom 3 can now be enjoyed under WineX. This installer is based on a guide by Rob Smith."