Fourteen new screens

The organisers of GameCity in Nottingham have revealed that as part of the event's line-up this year there will be a director's commentary on the hugely successful online game RuneScape, conducted by the game's director Christoph Vietzke.

He will also offer a look inside the company, Jagex, and talk a little bit about the history and culture of the developer in a rare public appearance.

"I am looking forward to being a part of GameCity in Nottingham and talking about how we manage to keep our MMO, RuneScape, as successful as it is," he said. "As a company that concentrates on making great games rather than advertising campaigns, Jagex stands as example that there is room in the games industry for independent developers.

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The Beatles: Rock Band, which debuted in the US monthly chart for September in fifth place - making it the number one music game that month ahead of Guitar Hero 5 - sold 100,000 copies of the downloadable single "All You Need is Love" in total, with proceeds going to the Doctors Without Borders charity.

And according to MTV Games the title was the second-highest revenue-earner behind Microsoft's Halo 3: ODST for that month, selling over a quarter of a million units on the Xbox 360 platform.

"We've heard countless stories about how The Beatles: Rock Band has inspired and brought friends, families and even complete strangers together," said Scott Guthrie, executive VP and president of MTV Games. "The overwhelmingly positive reaction by music fans, hardcore gamers, critics, retailers, young and old alike, has been extremely gratifying.

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2:16 of cinematic footage

PixelJunk developer Q Games has said that it's not likely to port any more games to Sony's PSP handheld due to piracy.

The PixelJunk series has been exclusive to the PlayStation Network for PlayStation 3, with the success of releases PixelJunk Monsters, PixelJunk Racers and PixelJunk Eden prompting Q Games to port a version of Monsters to the PSP.

But founder Dylan Cuthbert has said anti-piracy measures are unlikely to stop any hacking of his games, and he was shocked to discover users openly discussing piracy of Monsters Deluxe in chat rooms.

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The city-building genre has been around for a very long time indeed, but this month French developer Monte Cristo released its take on that sector of the industry with Cities XL, a game that can be played offline or online, and with significant meta-game elements taking place on the official website. Following the game's launch, we caught up with studio head Jerome Gastaldi to get an impression of how gamers have responded to the title, what the challenges of multiple play-styles (and multiple revenue streams) have been, and what the plans are for ongoing development.

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Unique armour and weaponry available with pre-orders

Real world and in-game events give the community lots of opportunities to get in the spirit and have fun

The British Board of Film Classification has bestowed an 18 (Adult) rating upon Grand Theft Auto: Episodes From Liberty City, the bundle which features both The Ballad of Gay Tony and The Lost and The Damned.

In doing so, their report contains a few spoilers from both games, which we won’t detail here. The BBFC noted that “at least four uses of very strong language that crop up in some of the cut scenes” bounced the rating up from 15 to 18. “Strong sex and violence and hard drug use” also contributed to the higher mark.

There is also sex scenes, which are “quite strong, but always masked and the characters concerned are invariably fully clothed (no nudity).” Portrayals of cocaine, in addition to references to drug trafficking, are also spread liberally throughout the game.

Additionally:

“There are blood spurts as people are shot and stabbed etc. and pools of blood form on the ground. However, there is never any discernible injury detail and it is not possible to inflict post-mortem injuries, although there is considerable ragdolling as dead bodies are shot.”

Click through to see the whole BBFC report, and don’t worry, sections that contain spoilers must be expanded to be read.

|Via EuroGamer|
 

Cross-governmental rivalry between the Chinese Ministry of Culture (MOC) and the General Administration of Press and Publications (GAPP) appears to be behind continued contradictory statements concerning the legality of foreign investment in the Chinese games industry.

Last week the GAPP issued a statement claiming that all online games will need an official Internet Publishing License before they can be officially released. Additionally, foreign companies would be prohibited from investing in Chinese online game publishers as sole owners, joint venture partners or cooperative partners.

However, all the major Chinese publishers already benefit from foreign investment of some degree and the draconian new rules appear to be a result of in-fighting with the MOC. A transcript of a speech by the MOC's Tuo Zuhai at the recent GDC China event has been obtained by website web2asia and paints a far different picture.

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This zoo-based sim game has 95 species of fuzzy, wuzzy animals to care for and observe.

Ttitle will be released to online channels early December just in time for Christmas

The NPD Group has released its sales figures for the month of September 2009, revealing a dramatic surge in sales of Sony's PlayStation 3 following the introduction of a new hardware model and subsequent price reduction.

According to the NPD, the PlayStation 3 sold approximately 491,800 units during the September tracking period of August 30 through October 3, 2009, more than doubling units sold during the previous month and in the same period last year.

"This portrays a very strong consumer reaction to the price decrease as August and September both realised a lift of more than 70 per cent over the prior month," said NPD analyst Anita Frazier. "This is the first month that the PS3 has captured the top spot in console hardware sales."

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A new marketing agency has been launched today with to focus on promotion and consumer visibility for online games.

The company, called PlayReplay, will be headed up by Oliver Birch, who has previously worked on campaigns for Kuju, Rebellion and Introversion Software and will deal with companies releasing products mainly on Xbox Live Arcade, PlayStation Network, WiiWare, DSi, PSPgo, PC and iPhone platforms.

The move comes at a time when more and more independent developers - particularly in the UK - are looking to digital platforms to communicate directly with consumers and take on more publishing responsibility for themselves.

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SouthPeak Interactive has announced a net loss of USD 12.1 million (GBP 7.6 million) for the fiscal year 2009, a result that compares unfavourably to its 2008 performance when it returned profits of USD 1.5 million (GBP 940,000).

The company's net revenue was up 18 per cent however, to USD 47.4 million (GBP 29.8 million) from USD 40.2 million (GBP 25.2 million) in fiscal 2008, a result which it attributes to videogame sales that rose by over one million on last year's.

Unit sales reached 2.4 million for the year, which was an increase of 1.2 million. In particular, strong demand for My Baby on DS made it one of the best-selling titles on the platform.

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Cartoony DSiWare strategy from France's BiP media

0:47 of gameplay footage

If you happen to be a thermal engineer with a specialty in low temperature, cryogenic applications and you’re feeling a little out of practice, a new interactive training simulator can get you back up to speed.

Cool-It emerged from The University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Division of Information Technology department. Users choose from a selection of jobs for the Navy or NASA—overseeing a variety of minesweepers or space depots—before being tasked with building the object so that it falls within tolerances.

The Flash-based sim is rather polished and the explosions resulting from failed engineering attempts are neat as well… trust us.

The Rabbids' first comedy-adventure will take them to the moon or bust

Finally, the cat's out of the bag...