""US, October 10, 2008 - ANAHEIM--Blizzard dropped a bombshell at the 2008 Blizzcon today by announcing that StarCraft II, the highly-awaited sequel to the smash hit 1998 real-time strategy game, StarCraft, has been split into three. The company said that StarCraft II now consists of three different stand-alone titles--one for each faction campaign. The first of the StarCraft II trilogy will be StarCraft II Terrans: Wings of Liberty. The second will be StarCraft II Zerg: Heart of the Swarm, with the third and final installment of the main trilogy being StarCraft II Protoss: Legacy of the Void. Blizzard says it made the change to make each story that much more epic and to flesh out the StarCraft universe. By splitting the game, the company says that players will access more story content, more characters, and more customization. Rob Pardo, executive vice president of game design, said that each game would be approximate in size to the original StarCraft. Each game will be a stand-alone installment – not an expansion.
The original StarCraft, according to Pardo, had 32 missions; 12 for the Terrans, and 10 each for the Zerg and the Protoss. According to Blizzard, each of these StarCraft II games will consist of more than 30 missions. Pardo explained that the multiplayer remains relatively unchanged; each StarCraft II game will have a fully functioning multiplayer suite with all three races playable. "[In] the shipping product, all three races will be fully featured and balanced in gameplay and also in content," he said. We asked about the timeline for the three StarCraft II games, using Valve's original prediction of shipping all three episodes of the Half-Life 2 episodes within a single year, but reality is that it will take more than more like three years.""
- IGN.com.au

Three years for the complete SCII? That's a lifetime in gaming years. And as for rumours that Diablo III will ship first, Pardo had this parting shot:
"It's going to ship before Diablo III for sure; Diablo III is further out."

“”Ubisoft Shanghai creative director Michael de Plater has told VG247 that a PC version of EndWar would most likely be shipping alongside the console SKUs if it wasn’t for rampant PC piracy, and that copyright theft is essentially destroying the PC games market.
“To be honest, if PC wasn’t pirated to hell and back, there’d probably be a PC version coming out the same day as the other two,” he said, talking of the voice-controlled RTS.
“But at the moment, if you release the PC version, essentially what you’re doing is letting people have a free version that they rip off instead of a purchased version. Piracy’s basically killing PC.”
We asked if piracy was the main reason to keep EndWar off PC.
“Yeah, at the time of release,” he said. “You know, the level of piracy that you get with the PC just cannibalizes the others, because people just steal that version.”
De Plater also told us that a PC version is likely to be released further down the line, as reported yesterday.
Tom Clancy’s EndWar does appear to be very good, from what we played of it. Looks as though you’re not going to be leeching a PC version for a while yet, though. You know who you are.””

- VIDEOGAMING247
October 8th

With Windows 7 due to deploy next year, one wonders why Vista has had such a short shelf life. When you look at it, though, it is readily apparent.
On Friday, Microsoft gave computer makers a six-month extension for offering Windows XP on newly-shipped PCs. While this doesn’t impact enterprise IT — because volume licensing agreements will allow IT to keep installing Windows XP for many years to come — the move is another symbolic nail in Vista’s coffin. The public reputation of Windows Vista is in shambles, as Microsoft itself tacitly acknowledged in its Mojave ad campaign. IT departments are largely ignoring Vista. In June (18 months after Vista’s launch), Forrester Research reported that just 8.8% of enterprise PCs worldwide were running Vista. Meanwhile, Microsoft appears to have put Windows 7 on an accelerated schedule that could see it released in 2010. That will provide IT departments with all the justification they need to simply skip Vista and wait to eventually standardize on Windows 7 as the next OS for business.
So how did Vista get left holding the bag? Here then are the five most important reasons why Vista failed:

1. It broke too much stuff.
Microsoft either forgot or disregarded that fact when it released Windows Vista, because, despite a long beta period, a lot of existing software and hardware were not compatible with Vista when it was released in January 2007. Since many important programs and peripherals were unusable in Vista, that made it impossible for a lot of IT departments to adopt it. Many of the incompatibilities were the result of tighter security.
After Windows was targeted by a nasty string of viruses, worms, and malware in the early 2000s, Microsoft embarked on the Trustworthy Computing initiative to make its products more secure. One of the results was Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2), which won over IT and paved the way for XP to become the world’s mostly widely deployed OS.

2. There wasn’t supposed to be a Vista.
It’s easy to forget that when Microsoft launched Windows XP it was actually trying to change its OS business model to move away from shrink-wrapped software and convert customers to software subscribers. That’s why it abandoned the naming convention of Windows 95, Windows 98, and Windows 2000, and instead chose Windows XP. Microsoft released Windows XP and Office XP simultaneously in 2001 and both included product activation and the plan to eventually migrate to subscription products. However, by the end of 2001 Microsoft had already abandoned the subscription concept with Office, and quickly returned to the shrink-wrapped business model and the old product development model with both products.

3. Vista is too slow.
For years Microsoft has been criticized by developers and IT professionals for “software bloat” — adding so many changes and features to its programs that the code gets huge and unwieldy. However, this never seemed to have enough of an effect to impact software sales. With Windows Vista, software bloat appears to have finally caught up with Microsoft.

4. Windows XP is too entrenched.
In 2001, when Windows XP was released, there were about 600 million computers in use worldwide. Over 80% of them were running Windows but it was split between two code bases: Windows 95/98 (65%) and Windows NT/2000 (26%), according to IDC. One of the big goals of Windows XP was to unite the Windows 9x and Windows NT code bases, and it eventually accomplished that.

5. Apple successfully demonized VistaApple’s clever.
"I’m a Mac" ads have successfully driven home the perception that Windows Vista is buggy, boring, and difficult to use. After taking two years of merciless pummeling from Apple, Microsoft recently responded with it’s I’m a PC campaign in order to defend the honor of Windows. This will likely restore some mojo to the PC and Windows brands overall, but it’s too late to save Vista’s perception as a dud.

In summary, with Vista, there are simply no major incentives for IT to use it over XP. Security isn’t even that big of an issue because XP SP2 (and above) are solid and most IT departments have it locked down quite There are some who argue that Vista is actually more widely adopted than XP was at this stage after its release, and that it’s highly likely that Vista will eventually replace XP in the enterprise. I don’t agree. With XP, there were clear motivations to migrate: bring Windows 9x machines to a more stable and secure OS and bring Windows NT/2000 machines to an OS with much better hardware and software compatibility. And, you also had the advantage of consolidating all of those machines on a single OS in order to simplify support. Microsoft needs to abandon the strategy of releasing a new OS every 3-5 years and simply stick with a single version of Windows and release updates, patches, and new features on a regular basis. Most IT departments are essentially already on a subscription model with Microsoft so the business strategy is already in place there.

In what will come as a big disappointment to PAL gamers, Nintendo has said that software for its upcoming DSi handheld will be region locked.
That means that the DSi games you import from Japan and North America won't work on your Australian handheld. It's the first portable Nintendo console to suffer this fate.

"[The] DSi embeds net communication functionality within itself and we are intending to provide net services specifically tailored for each region," Nintendo told Eurogamer. "Also because we are including parental control functionality for Nintendo DSi and each region has its unique age limit made by different independent bodies."

Oddly, despite the above reasoning, all future standard DS games won't be affected and will still be region free worldwide. The DSi was announced last week, where game journalists were told that Nintendo would be adding a digital camera, music player and a SD card slot to the DS Lite's existing repertoire. One way to beat the importing of games...one that Sony suffered for terribly with the PS One.

Following in the footsteps of Valve's successful "Team Fortress 2" and "Day of Defeat: Source" Free weekends, Electronic Arts have announced that gamers will be able to play "Crysis Wars" - the newly-minted multi-player component of the sci-fi shooter series that has just been released alongside "Crysis Warhead" - for free on the weekend of October 10-12.
Players will be able to register their interest from Monday, October 6 at the official "Crysis" website where they will be given a unique registration key to test the game out for free. Although online play will only be available from October 10-12, players will be able to grab a few friends together and experience "Crysis Wars" via LAN play from October 6.
If you don't already own a copy of "Crysis Warhead", head on over to the official Crysis website this Monday to try the online fun of "Crysis Wars" for yourself. Not happy with the original MP? This one is more of a typical Team Deathmatch approach, which is far more popular.