Strategy Informer  

EA has released 18 new screenshots for The Sims 3.

You can see those screenshots here.

We've prepared another competition for Strategy Informer members! Codemasters were kind enough to provide some cool prizes to pack it with. The prizes that we have are: Xbox 360 Faceplate, Statue, Keychain and a T-Shirt. They're all themed with the upcoming multi-platform RPG game, Rise of the Argonauts.

Almost lost in the uproar over the DRM complaints surrounding Electronic Arts Spore, are complaints concerning the online accounts for Spore. Contrary to what is stated in the manual Spore only allows one online account to be created per install – so on a multiple use system you can only have one Spore screen name regardless of how many users share the system.

Activision CEO Bobby Kotick has claimed that the company is currently stomping competition in the music genre, with the Guitar Hero franchise outselling its main competitor Rock Band by six to one.

The claim was made at the Goldman Sachs Communacopia XVII Conference, were Kotick said; "We’re outselling (Rock Band) 6:1, when you think about the access we have to 30 percent of the world’s music at Universal, we have a unique advantage there."

The release of Electronic Arts Spore with the much maligned SecureROM anti-piracy system drew mass criticism from users on the Internet. Many forum posters complained about the restrictive DRM requirements and the average customer review of the game on Amazon.com as of this writing is 1.5 stars out of 5. Many of the reviews complain about problems installing the game and reaching activation servers in order to play the game. Others complain about the limit to the number of allowed installs.

Sony Computer Entertainment Europe announced today that SingStar ABBA is currently in development for the PS2 and PS3, and will be available for this Christmas.

Owners of either system will now be able to sing along with some of the most iconic pop tracks of all time including 'Mamma Mia', 'Gimme Gimme Gimme', 'Waterloo' and 'Dancing Queen'.

SingStar ABBA is being developed in full collaboration with ABBA and Universal Music Group in Sweden, which manages the rights to the ABBA brand. The terms of the agreement include a window of exclusivity for disc-based PlayStation titles until December 2009.

To celebrate the launch of the game on PC DVD-ROM our friends at SEGA have given us 5 e-GeForce 9600 GT 512MB graphics cards to give away. These high-spec graphics cards from EVGA feature NVIDIA® SLI™ technology, next-generation superscalar GPU architecture and full Microsoft® DirectX® 10 shader model 4.0 support.

Atari and Red Mile Entertainment are bringing Heroes over Europe, a realistic tactical flight combat game, to the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and PC in 2009.

The sequel to the mighty World War II flight combat game Heroes of the Pacific, Heroes over Europe takes aspiring combat pilots into the bullet-ridden heart of major World War II European air battles in glorious dogfight-friendly high definition. Heroes over Europe follows the Allied campaign from the attacks on London to the destruction of Berlin, with players under orders to strap themselves into the authentically rendered cockpits of the campaign’s iconic aircraft. Their mission: to survive the most ferocious dogfights ever seen in a flight combat game.

During Activision's unofficial E3 Press conference on Tuesday evening, two developers commented about future Guitar Hero games being compatible with other instruments that haven't been designed with Guitar Hero in mind, like Rock Band's instruments.

Following our string of live updates, we give you Microsoft’s announcement of a new interface coming this Autumn for all 360 users.

Dubbed the “new xbox live experience”, this new interface will be modelled along similar lines as the expected PS3 ‘Home’ system.

The new interface will include ‘Avatars’ (more realistic looking Mii’s), video and picture sharing, along with a load more community based options.