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The Blu-ray Disc Association believes that the latest innovations in the technology will be a boon for the games industry, with the likes of Sharp's new 100GB capable BDXL upping storage significantly.

The PS3 is currently the only console to offer Blu-ray support, and it can only currently read a dual-layered 50GB disc.

But the BDA believes that spinning media still has a future in gaming - despite the growing weight behind downloaded content.

Ambition

"The ambition of [games] developers is unlimited and therefore you will see new and exciting innovations that could well require additional storage capacity," European Blu-ray Disc Association chairman Graham Heaton told CVG.

"Blu-ray is in a position to be able to grow with the industry and ensure that disc storage capacity can support the ambitions of the developers."

Of course, 50Gb is a lot of storage already, but games have traditionally been the most storage hungry pieces of software.

Microsoft has confirmed that a new Xbox 360 controller will be released this coming November.

The new pad, pictured here, will be out on November 9 in the US, where it will cost $64.99 (£42.25).

However, European gamers will have to wait all the way through until February 2011 to get their mitts on Microsoft's latest Xbox pad.

Unless you fancy a trip to NYC over the Christmas holidays, that is…

Ideal for beat-em-ups,

"The Xbox 360 Wireless Controller with Play & Charge Kit - with Transforming D-pad will be available beginning early 2011 in the UK," said a Microsoft spokesperson.

You can see Major Nelson's demo video below to get a better idea of the few minor design changes to the new Xbox pad.

Perhaps the biggest change is the fact that the d-pad raises up when rotated 90 degrees – ideal for combo-tapping beat-em-ups and the like.

Xbox Live will cost British gamers £12 extra a year, as of this coming November.

Microsoft is spinning the Xbox Live price increase as a mere £1 extra per month, but hardcore Xbox gamers are sure to respond with dismay at the news.

After all, nobody likes being asked to pay more money for a service that they feel they cannot live without!

Xbox Live price hike

The price increase in Microsoft's Xbox Live subs is both unexpected and unexplained, to date. We will, of course, reach out to Xbox UK for further explanation of the reasoning behind the decision.

"I wanted to let you know that as of November 1, 2010 we are increasing the price of an Xbox LIVE [membership] for some members," Major Nelson announced on his blog this week.

"This price increase only affects Xbox LIVE Members in Canada, Mexico, United Kingdom or the United States."

"Since launching Xbox LIVE in 2002 we have continually added more content and entertainment experiences for our members, while keeping the price the same. We're confident that when the new pricing takes effect, an Xbox LIVE Gold membership will continue to offer the best value in the industry," adds Major Nelson.

Microsoft is offering a lock-in 'promotion' to renew your subscription at the current £4.99 per month rate, before the £5.99 per month price hike comes into force in November.

Check out this page on Xbox.com to find out when your Xbox Live subscription expires.

Via MajorNelson.com

As if being described as 'un-British' by the defence secretary wasn't enough, EA's Medal of Honor has scored another PR win with the news that The One That Got Away author Chris Ryan is penning a MOH prequel.

Ryan is of course responsible for some of the bestselling men with guns thrillers around, and another of his books – Strike Back – was recently screened on Sky.

But not content with television, film and books, the former SAS man is now penning a prequel book for EA's Medal of Honor series.

Please don't hurt us

Now we don't want to anger a man who could kill us with the top off of his biro, but we can't help but wonder if he'll be sticking the 'u' back in 'Honor'.

"It is a real privilege to be involved in a game with such a heritage as Medal of Honor," said Ryan.

"Combining my experience as an SAS soldier in the Gulf War with missions from the videogame itself enabled me to create an authentic and respectful account of an elite soldier fighting in Afghanistan for Medal of Honor: The Book.

"Bringing together the disciplines of literature and videogames has been a new but compelling experience for me as a writer, resulting in what is hopefully an engaging read for fans of videogames and novels alike."

It's not been long since it emerged that Richard Morgan had penned the story for Crysis 2, and it's becoming increasingly apparent that gaming is a world that writers are keen to get involved with.

But rumours of JK Rowling's post-Harry Potter project being to write a (Hog)warts and all expose on Donkey Kong are probably wide of the mark.

Gaming giant Valve has told PC Gamer that the only way a Half Life movie will get made is if the company makes it themselves.

The adventures of the taciturn MIT grad Gordon Freeman are widely considered to be among the greatest games of all time, with the original also playing a large part in spawning famed multiplayer game Counter-Strike and redefining the first person shooter.

But developers Valve have so far resisted the calls from Hollywood, and according Gabe Newell their sensational Team Fortress 2 shorts are an illustration of them considering if they could make the film themselves.

"As a WoW player, I would much rather that the WoW team made the movie...than anybody else," Newell told PC Gamer.

"I like Sam Raimi, I've been a fan ever since Evil Dead came out, but I would rather see Blizzard making the movie.

"Where we got into this direction was after Half Life 1 had shipped. There was a whole bunch of meetings with people from Hollywood.

"Directors down there wanted to make a Half-Life movie and stuff, so they'd bring in a writer or some talent agency would bring in writers, and they would pitch us on their story.

Brutally, the worse

"And their stories were just so bad. I mean, brutally, the worst. Not understanding what made the game a good game, or what made the property an interesting thing for people to be a fan of," he added.

"That's when we started saying 'Wow, the best thing we could ever do is to just not do this as a movie, or we'd have to make it ourselves.'

"And I was like, 'Make it ourselves? Well that's impossible.' But the Team Fortress 2 thing, the Meet The Team shorts, is us trying to explore that."

If you haven't watched the brilliant Team Fortress Meet The Team shorts then clear half an hour in your schedule and watch them now at http://www.teamfortress.com/movies.htm

British gamers and fans of portable movie viewing can now purchase Plantronics' 7.1 surround sound headphones.

Plantronics latest £80 cans support Dolby 7.1 headphone tech, which is pretty much designed for those PC gamers that like to game on a laptop, either when travelling away from home or sat in the kitchen late at night to not disturb the spouse.

We've tested these comfortable cans out and can confirm that they work a treat, and are well worth that £80 price tag.

Late-night fragfest-friendly

However, if you are an audiophile that wants a high-end pair of headphones to get the best out of your music, you might well want to consider extending your budget a little.

These babies are not really designed for music listening, anyways, as the name suggests. The Plantronics GameCom 777's lightweight and open-ear design are really designed for those late-night Call of Duty sessions, when you need to hear everything that is going on around you to give you that extra competitive advantage.

The GameCom 777 features 7.1 Dolby headphone tech all squeezed into a plug-and-play USB sound card, which is compatible with both the PC and Mac, delivering a virtual eight-channel audio experience and positional microphone accuracy essential for competitive gaming.

"When it comes to headsets, the gaming community demands extreme audio precision and comfort for continuous wearing," says Stuart Bradshaw, EMEA Marketing Manager for Consumer products at Plantronics.

"We've reunited with Dolby to bring players virtual 7.1 surround sound for a more convincing gaming experience and leveraged our heritage in ergonomic headset design to alleviate discomfort that comes with extended headphone use."

The GameCom 777 headset is compatible with VoIP internet programs such as Skype and Google Voice.

Microsoft is working on real-time Xbox Live gaming between its new Windows 7 mobile phones and the traditional Xbox 360 home console, according to latest reports.

Speaking at this month's Microsoft X10 event in Toronto, a Microsoft rep outlined the plans for phone-to-console gaming functionality for its forthcoming Windows Phone 7 mobile operating system.

WMPoweruser describes how phones using Windows Phone 7 OS will at some point in the future be able to play games against opponents playing the same game on an Xbox 360 console in the home.

'Turn by turn' tech at launch

Initially, the first games will be tested out with strategy-style 'turn by turn' functionality.

"Initially we're 'turn by turn' based," said a Microsoft rep. "We are working on real-time phone-to-console, likely initially through Wi-Fi - again, operator networks are sensitive to that.

"That's not on day one; day one will be 'turn by turn' as well as companion-type gaming where you play a level on the phone and it may unlock a level or a weapon or some special achievement on the console game.

The rep added that Microsoft was "absolutely working on phone-to-console real-time. That is something we're working on and expect to have in the near future."

Head to Xbox.com for all the details you need on Windows Phone 7 and Xbox Live integration .

Microsoft has partnered with US accessories firm PDP to release an official range of Kinect accessories for launch this coming November.

If you want to hang you Kinect on the wall or place it on a freestanding floorstand, then PDP has the kit you need.

The firm is also set to release a nine-foot Kinect cable extension, which will let you put your Kinect pretty much anywhere you like in the lounge.

Microsoft peripherals: Kinect floor stand revealed

Wall-mounts and floor-stands

US pricing has been revealed which is $14.99 (£10) for the Wall Mount and $39.99 (£26) for The TV Mount (which uses the VESA spec standard as a one-and-all solution for mounting Kinect for Xbox 360 to any size TV (from 26" to 60")

The Cable Extension for Kinect will set US customers back $49.99 (£32) while the Floor Stand for Kinect will cost $29.99 (£20).

"With a large tripod base and secure locking mechanism, the Floor Stand is designed to allow the Kinect Sensor to be elevated above the floor to help protect the Kinect for Xbox 360 from foot traffic and dirt," reads PDP's press blurb.

Kinect launches in the UK on November 10.

Star Wars creator George Lucas is suing a gaming peripherals company called Jedi Mind Inc. that is attempting to market a gaming controller which allows gamers to control games directly with their minds.

The Hollywood Reporter notes that Lucas has filed a $5 million trademark lawsuit against Jedi Mind, Inc.

JediMind is currently selling three products called Master Mind, Jedi Mouse and Think Tac Toe.

Thought-controlled gaming

For its part, the peripherals manufacturer claims that its wireless headset can detect brainwaves on both a conscious and non-conscious level, letting gamers control their on-screen actions by their thoughts.

Lucas' LucasFilm production company originally sent a cease-and-desist letter to Jedi Mind back in May 2009.

At the time, Jedi Mind Inc's CEO, Brent Fouch, responded saying that he would phase his company out of Jedi Mind marks, which was enough to placate LucasFilm.

However, now LucasFilm is claiming that Jedi Mind Inc. did not keep its promise. Hence it sent out a second cease-and-desist letter last September.

LucasFilm claims the alleged trademark infringement will confuse consumers and harm its business and reputation and is demanding injunctive relief and recovery of damages estimated at no less than $5 million.

LucasFilm claims ownership over "all characteristics associated with the Jedi knights not memorialized in a registered trademark ... (including) Jedi robes, the lightsaber weapon, the power to levitate objects, a telepathic oneness with other Jedi and the universe, and the ability to shoot energy beams called 'Force Lightning' from the fingertips."

The new Xbox 360 Slim comes packing a new combined CPU-GPU processor – code-name 'Vejle' - with details now emerging on what exactly makes up the sixth Xbox 360 chip configuration.

Vejle – named after a city in Denmark – was been created by Microsoft in association with IBM, specifically designed to let the new Xbox 360 Slim console operate on less power and run noticeably quieter than past versions of the console.

Cost and space savings

The chip combines the 360's microprocessor and its graphics chip on a single piece of silicon, which has enabled considerable cost and space savings, letting Microsoft add in new features to the console such as wireless networking.

Microsoft's new combined CPU-GPU chip has 372 million transistors. It is being manufactured by IBM and one other unnamed manufacturer in a 45 micron silicon-on-insulator manufacturing process.

It marks a considerable step forward from the chip design for the first iteration of the Xbox 360 back at launch in 2005, which had an IBM-designed processor and an AMD-designed graphics chip built using a 90-nanometer silicon-on-insulator process.

No more RROD

That particular model was predisposed to overheating, which became the PR nightmare known to gamers as the 'red ring of death' – essentially bricking your Xbox 360.

Microsoft's latest combined chip uses 60 per cent less power and 50 per cent less space than the original 2005 pair of chips from IBM and AMD.

SCEE President Andrew House has revealed how Sony plans to reposition the PSP in the market, marketing the handheld at younger gamers than it has previously.

While many still hope for further announcements about new PSP hardware at next month's Tokyo Game Show (TGS), House explained to Edge this month how Sony plans to 'mine' its wealth of content it already has for PSP.

Deeper, more immersive content

"What is now a key emphasis for us is focusing on a younger audience who are the prime audience for a dedicated gaming device with deeper, more immersive content," said the SCEE President.

"They may have less disposable income, but they've got more time to play. We're looking to mine that content library which we've assembled over the last few years and restructure the value-proposition," added House, explaining how Sony has changed tack on PSP development.

"[The budget Essentials range] in its first couple of months since launch has been a phenomenal success on two fronts – not just in actual sales, but the uptake there has been on overall PSP software which has seen a knock-on effect," he continued.

"I would argue that we're starting to see what we originally intended – that it's helping to breath life into sales of the hardware as well."

What all of this sounds like is a slightly convoluted way of explaining why Sony is not pumping resources into developing major AAA-blockbusters for the current PSP. Whether or not this points towards an entirely new format in PSP 2, of course, remains to be seen.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 has officially become the best-selling game in UK history, with the first person shooter achieving this in significantly less than a year.

According to figures from GfK Chart-Track, CoD: MW2 has overtaken Dr Kawashima's Brain Training in 41 weeks, to take the UK title.

The game itself was beset with controversy for its slightly odd 'terrorist' level in which you played along as an undercover agent in an airport slaughter.

Shooting star

However, despite the disgust at this level – and the debate as to its justification is still raging – the game was a massive hit with the consumers.

Previously Dr Kawashima's Brain Training had taken 32 months to overtake the previous holder, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas.

So, if you want a formula for success, pile in a load of controversial nonsense onto an already popular IP and season with popular multiplayer. Boom, headshot.

But who would try to reinvent the wheel? *Cough* MOH *cough*

Britain's Defence Secretary has called for UK retailers to boycott the forthcoming version of EA's Medal of Honour game in order to "show their support for the armed forces."

Gamers will be given the option of playing as the Taliban in the latest version of Medal of Honor, which is what seems to have caused such upset over in Westminster.

Thoroughly un-British

Conservative Defence Secretary Liam Fox issued a statement about EA's forthcoming game, noting that:

"At the hands of the Taliban, children have lost fathers and wives have lost husbands. It's shocking that someone would think it acceptable to recreate the acts of the Taliban against British soldiers.

"I am disgusted and angry. It's hard to believe any citizen of our country would wish to buy such a thoroughly un-British game. I would urge retailers to show their support for our armed forces and ban this tasteless product."

EA is refusing to accept such calls for it to change the content of its new Medal of Honor, issuing the following response:

"The format of the new Medal of Honor game merely reflects the fact that every conflict has two sides. We give gamers the opportunity to play both sides. Nobody who plays video games is going to be shocked or surprised by this.

"Most of us have been doing this since we were seven: someone plays the cop, someone must be robber."

Microsoft has told CVG that it sees the use of Kinect motion control technology as a 'possibility' for PC gaming.

Microsoft's Kudo Tsunoda, general manager of Microsoft Game Studios, also thinks that Kinect's potential for "widespread applications" outside of gaming has not yet been fully realised or developed.

In addition to such numerous potential uses across other entertainment industries such as film and music, Kinect may also work with mobile phones in the future, according to Tsunoda.

Kinect on the PC

Asked directly if Kinect would soon come to the PC, Tsunoda replied:

"We're very focused on Kinect for the Xbox, and launching that. I think it's cool though - and this is just from me - I've been in the video game industry for a while now, and I know that in the games industry lots of times we'll take things from other industries and bring it into games.

Warming to his theme, the Microsoft game studios boss continued: "We take stuff from movies, or take technology from PCs and put it into games, and Kinect really is the first time that the video game industry is pioneering something that I really think has widespread application outside of just video games.

"So, hypothetically, if I worked at a company that didn't only make games, but also did things with PCs and phones, I think there could probably be some possibility that the tech might get used in other places. But, at least for now, [Microsoft is] focused on Kinect for Xbox."

Microsoft plans to launch Kinect worldwide later in November.

As gamers we're easily hypnotised by swish. When a game engine manages to make the real world look rubbish in comparison to a 3D tree, our eyes well up like we're witnessing dawn's rays rising across the ziggurats of Machu Piccu.

Games have a long history of mimicking reality and making games that look and feel like realistic environments are key goals for many developers wanting to immerse the player in their worlds.

Ignore for a moment honest physics, expressive facial animation, even the vast, open world of GTA 4 and the GPU shredding graphics of Crysis, because one other area where reality has seeped into games is the wall-to-wall coating of real-world products and ads in games.

For over three decades game developers have combined forces with advertising agencies and commercial brands to create games that have incorporated a plethora of ads from billboards, movie ads and mascots to in-game products and brand-hyping posters to your local polygonal neighbourhood.

These in-game ads have made game environments as commercially important to big corporations peddling their 'shiny new thing' as real ads, and naturally gamers have taken notice of the growth.

Space, I'm lovin' it

With enough promotional material from Pepsi, McDonalds, AXE Deodorant, Adidas and T-mobile to fill out a prop quota for an American sitcom, in-game adverts (IGAs) have developed a reputation for shamelessly commercialising games.

But since their inception thirty years ago, IGAs have changed in tone and style alongside the games themselves, and modernised almost as dramatically as graphics have in that time. Which begs the question, are IGAs as much a commercial coup as they were decades ago?

Step back just a few years to 1979 and we see product placement at its earliest. There she was, Atari's Lunar Lander, wretchedly archaic to us now. It was a bleeping, blooping coin-op game to be played on a single, hulking arcade cabinet. And even though Atari had no specific relationship with advertisers during its development, these days it's widely considered the first game to incorporate a corporate brand.

In this case it used McDonalds as its reference of choice. The game provided an Easter egg that allowed your astronaut to leave his ship to buy a Big Mac at a hidden McDonalds when you land on just the right spot. Lunar Lander followed the classic arcade tradition that fine-tuned gameplay to create compulsive titles that hooked arcade players into repeat plays, and this genre became the very first platform for true in-game adverts, which were seen throughout the early 1980s.

Pepsi is funded by martians (maybe)

It is astounding to realise that the corporate world had started kneading its bejewelled knuckles into game design at a time when games were struggling to make objects look round let alone recognisable.

Pac-Man had just been released on the Atari 2600, and so had Sinistar; the games industry was still in its infancy at this point. But alongside the arcades was a new genre of game: the adver-game.

One of the earliest examples had come out of a partnership between Coca Cola and Atari, with both companies pooling their expertise to create the Space Invaders clone, Pepsi Invaders. In a stroke of marketing genius worthy of The Apprentice, the game replaced all invading aliens with the letters 'P', 'E', 'P', 'S' and 'I' and added a command ship in the form of a Pepsi logo, followed by the words 'Coke Wins'.

These words would flash repeatedly on the screen once you destroyed its commercial rivals, presumably to counteract the effects of the Pepsi Challenge Pepsi Invaders had been commissioned specifically for a 1983 sales convention and it was a hefty piece of marketing that had more to do with strategic advertisement than it did game development. But this was the nature of the adver-game: a genre wading in corporate imagery and built largely to sell breakfast cereal and bargainpriced soft drinks.

The eighties were riddled with adver-games, and that trickled out into the nineties too. Pepsi Invaders was quickly followed by similarly heavy handed promotional video games that featured the likes of Johnson & Johnson's Tooth Protector and Kool-Aid's human pitcher of juice, the Kool-Aid Man.

That was followed by 7 Up's Cool Spot on the Mega Drive and Cheetos' Chester Cheetah: Too Cool to Fool on SNES.

Volvo: Need for Tweed

Today few modern brands bother to continue the traditions of adver-games because of the difficulty of finding an accepting market. The classically-styled adver-game has been crossed off the list of relevant genres and relegated to the ranks of interactive banner ads and free CD giveaways wedged in your mailbox.

It's only natural that modern adver-games in the vein of Pepsi Invaders are rarer finds on PCs and consoles as society, as a whole, has become more adept at blocking the messages they attempt to peddle.

There are always exceptions, and in 2003 Volvo made a go of it with their Xbox release Drive for Life. Burnout: Paradise It Ain't. Drive for Life was a pseudo-simulator designed for the sole purpose of marinating users in the brand's core value: car safety. The game challenged you with such tasks as moose-avoidance and the mouthwatering objective 'avoid pile-ups'.

Beyond the problems of developing a game that can actually compete in a market that expects the cutting edge, the real difficulty is finding gamers who have been clamouring for a good 4-door hatchback racer. Anyone?

Deodorant for the covert op in you

These days modern games embrace a level of subtlety that wasn't required twenty or thirty years ago. We're a street-smart bunch, we sniff out the heavy-handed promotional rubbish they throw at us, and both developers and ad agencies alike have learned to cater to this.

The next logical alternatives came in the form of static and dynamic in-game ads. Both kinds of adverts could be incorporated into a game's environment and placed in a natural setting. It was a slightly more subtle approach to promoting brands, and in some instances they actually helped to create an authentic-looking setting for the game.

An early example of this kind of advertising can be found in 1992's FIFA International Soccer, a game that featured a football field decorated with Adidas banners.

Similarly, 2005's Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory slid in an enormous, glowing neon AXE billboard into the New York mission. Players, controlling Sam Fisher, had to zap the AXE sign with their EMP pistol to get to a strategically placed zipline undetected, which led on to an adjacent building.

Both of these were static in-game advertisements insofar as they were put into the game and could not be changed on the fly. But dynamic ads let developers and ad agencies create advertisements that could be modified at any time, allowing campaigns to be promoted depending on their relevance at the time.

If a film needed promoting for a November release date then it could be done, and it could be pulled a month later when its promotion was no longer necessary.

In-game ad networks, such as Massive, IGA and Extent made dealing with in-game ads almost as apple-pie simple as churning out a web banner for your website by including a string of code in the upcoming title that let networks stream ads from their servers when the game was released.

The upside to this for the networks and game developers has been that they have avoided hard-coding an advert into a game for a single product that might not be relevant in six months' time and, in theory, offer a supply of relevant and up to date ads.

The downside, of course, has been that the products have often been completely unrelated to the game, which has sometimes prompted a gloriously ranty horde of gamers to headbut down the door of irrelevant ad peddlers in response – or prompted a Penny Arcade comic strip.

See your ad here

Recent IGA trends have led gamers into a tight corner. On the one hand these adverts rarely take anything away from gameplay; an IGA often will show up as a billboard on the side of the highway or a relatively innocuous poster and only exist in-game as a petulant eyesore on the worst of days.

On the other hand launching ads that are consistently suitable for any game and genre is highly unlikely, and combining a game with an ill-fitting ad provides a bucket of cold water for any gamer seeking an escape from everyday reality through a game world.

A billboard flashing an ad for Motorola might fit in the backdrop of Times Square in True Crime: New York City, but we're not always so lucky. In 2005, SWAT 4, a tactical shooter not known for wising cracks, included a promotional campaign for the Canadian animated sci-fi comedy Tripping the Rift for US players. While the game tried to convey the tense experience of leading a five-man team around a serial killer's lair and coping with realistic firearm protocols, ad posters for a comedy show peppered the walls. Surreal maybe, but also a great way to shatter the atmosphere.

Similarly, the MMOFPS Planetside, a game that took place one thousand years in the future featured posters promoting the premiere of Rob Schneider film Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo.

Ads saved the videogame

However IGAs don't always hinder a game, in fact they help pay for the big titles. With the current cost of cranking out good AAA games, ad revenues at least offer the possibility of offsetting initial costs. Costs so high you'll feel a bit ill.

Gone are the days when a developer could turn out an MMO for eight million dollars. The current poster boy, Modern Warfare 2 cost between $40 to $50m to produce and even after 12 million copies sold, the publisher wasn't guaranteed a profit. It has subsequently bounced back with a hefty $381m net profit for the first quarter for this year, but from a commercial standpoint, IGAs offer publishers a much needed cheque after years of production costs.

And likewise, the gaming industry has grown as a leading player in commercial entertainment. The work put into shoehorning brand names into games is evidence of the mainstream's acceptance of games as both a steadfast medium and competitor, as opposed to a simple novelty.

And with TV demographics drifting since the early noughties, advertising agencies all want to reach the 18 to 34 year-old, couch-bound male demographic. As we've seen with the internet, television and radio before that, games are being shaped into commercial spaces, although it's not necessarily a commercial takeover.

And that's because from a creative standpoint, the revenue taken from adverts can help to recover some of the costs put into creating games, giving development teams more leeway to take risks for the sake of experimentation and new innovative gameplay.

But more than that, it can offer a very helpful hand to smaller independent companies. It's a land of pirates out there in the commercial market, pirates and cheapskates. With the ease of downloading it can be hard for some to find the incentive to cough up the 30 or so quid for a top-class AAA game. But for an independent company already trying to avoid sickeningly high developing costs, pirated downloads can be crippling.

Traditionally this has been dealt with through dear ol' DRM, that's used various means, some more controversial (*cough* Ubi *cough*) than others to impose limitations on how game content can be accessed.

Security guru, Bruce Schneier once described attempts to make files uncopyable "like trying to make water less wet". Maybe then, ad revenues are the lesser evil that could be the far less tedious and cumbersome alternative for gamers and a way for developers to off-set their losses?

Thirty years in and IGAs are still a work in progress, but in their current form they have the potential to offer us DRM-free games – as well as a burger and a side of fries.

THQ has launched a pen and tablet peripheral for the Nintendo Wii called the 'uDraw' for use with a painting app for the console called uDraw Studio.

uDraw is what the publisher is referring to as a "GameTablet", and features a Wii Remote slot, which is how it communicates with your Wii console.

Draw-along-a-gaming

The pen is attached to the device, to ensure the kids don't lose it. uDraw features a 9 x 7-inch drawing panel and also uses the Wii Remote's buttons to control the app.

The minus-button on the Wii Remote acts as a last-action delete control, letting you (sorry, 'the kids') quickly scrap your last sloppy brushstroke.

THQ is already planning further educational drawing applications for the Wii, including a draw-along platformer called Dood's Big Adventure and a version of the family gaming classic Pictionary.

The publisher will be launching the innovative tablet-and-pen device and uDraw Studio in a $70 bundle in the US. No word as yet from the publisher on UK pricing and release plans.

If the idea of watching movies and catch-up TV via your PlayStation appeals, then you will be happy to hear that Sony plans to launch ITV Player and a PS3 movie streaming service in the UK this coming October.

Sony's announced at GamesCom in Germany this week that Sony will get another streaming film service called Mubi, which will launch in October.

The service will appear on the XMB, alongside iPlayer and the like.

Sony also announced that the PS3 will also be getting additional TV on-demand services, such as ITV Player.

However, the rumoured agreement with Channel 4 to bring 4OD to the platform was not mentioned.

You will access the movie streaming service via PlayTV's crossbar. Mubi will also include a number of community features, such as a forum for discussing your favourite flicks, alongside a rating system.

Ad-supported subscription packages

Costing is still to be finalised, though Sony is promising an ad-related subscription plan. We will of course bring you further news on that when we have it.

IPTV content agreements have been signed with providers in the UK, the Netherlands, Spain, Germany and Finland.

Finally, in addition to movie streaming on PlayTV, Sony also announced a new service called PlayTV Chat, with features such as Facebook integration and live chat with friends.

Sony has announced a 320GB PS3 Move bundle at GamesCom this week for €347 (£265) and a 160GB PS3 that is set to replace the current 120Gb model.

Sony Computer Entertainment Europe has also finally put a date on one of the most highly anticipated games of this generation, with Gran Turismo 5 set to arrive in UK stores on 4 November later this year.

More soon.

Sony has announced a 320GB PS3 Move bundle at GamesCom this week for €347 (£265) and a 160GB PS3 that is set to replace the current 120Gb model.

Sony Computer Entertainment Europe has also finally put a date on one of the most highly anticipated games of this generation, with Gran Turismo 5 set to arrive in UK stores on 3 November later this year.

Sony has also announced plans to release a Move-compatible version of Sega's Virtua Tennis 4, an announcement which is sure to get Sega fanboys everywhere hot under the collar.

Could this prove to be the definitive version of Virtua Tennis that we've hoped for for so long?

Create your own story and in-game characters

Elsewhere, Media Molecule's much-anticipated LittleBigPlanet 2 was shown off at Sony's GamesCom event this evening.

You can see the game's new trailer over on Sony's website, which shows how you can create your own music, cinematics, story, characters, controls and more.

LittleBigPlanet 2 releases on November 16 in the US, while a European date is still to be confirmed.

A beta arrives very soon. Stay tuned for updates on that.

Tabula Rasa's gone. Hellgate's gone. Warhammer, Champions and Conan have just a fraction of their original subscribers…

The MMO, says the wise man on the internet – the one who knows everything and nothing – is dying.

That's nonsense. Absolute, crazy poppycock. It's because 'MMO' doesn't even begin to cover what this genre is in 2010. Hell, even using the word 'genre' to describe them is wildly inaccurate.

We're no longer in an age where people are incredulous that games have online persistence and the option to interact with untold numbers of players. That "Ooh, it's on the internet!" mentality is worthless in the here and now. The vast majority of games are now created with the internet in mind, not as an annoying afterthought.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, with its much obsessed over ranking and unlock system, is approaching what we might call MMO territory. Farmville, the gotta catch 'em all 2D Facebook game, has social networking at its core. It's sister title, Mafia Wars (also available on Facebook), is similarly styled - and barely a game in the traditional sense, but strangely addictive all the the same.

Big publishers have been getting in on the act as well. Electronic Arts has been getting busy with its free-to-play multiplayer action. The flawed but just-about-free Battlefield Heroes proved that there is the potential for a market outside of the traditional subscription-based services in the west.

It's most recent release, Tiger Woods PGA Tour Online, extended the idea of micropayments to a more reasonable gaming model. Meanwhile Need for Speed World looks set to keep piston-heads off the streets, at least for a little while. Indeed for the most part 'Online games' is increasingly a better way to think about the shifting mass of what was once MMOs.

If, however, we're talking about hack'n'slash fantasy worlds derived from the Everquest model and slavishly looking to the terrifying prevalence of World of Warcraft then yes, times have changed dramatically. The last three years saw the largest surge of mainstream, high-budget MMOs to appear on the market since the clunky original acronym 'MMORPG' was coined.

EVERQUEST II: Everquest II continues to chug on, this time adding battlegrounds for levels 80 to 90

In quick succession, we had Lord of the Rings Online, Dungeons & Dragons Online, Vanguard: Saga of Heroes, Hellgate: London, Tabula Rasa, Age of Conan, Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning, Champions Online and Star Trek Online, not to mention endless imports from Korea.

They were exciting times – pick a theme or an intellectual property of your choice, and go live in a world built around it. Of those games, only Lord of the Rings Online could be said to be doing well, holding on as it is to a comfortable number two spot for subscriber numbers, behind the inevitable WoW. Plenty are holding on to a small but loyal subscriber base, but, barring a miracle, decline seems their only future.

Dungeons and Dragons Online is a fascinating exception to the decline, having recently opted for a free to play model with premium, unlockable content for a monthly subscription. Late last year, it looked weaker than an asthmatic kitten, but come its relaunch as DDO : Eberron Unlimited in September 2009, it netted itself over a million new players.

This resurgence is, in a way, the definite statement on the current state of play for MMOs. We're in a new age now: "WoW clones are going away" says Shawn Schuster, editor in chief of popular MMO news site www.massively.com.

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"Right now we're riding the waves of development from four to five years ago, because it takes about that long to make an MMO. Studios saw the success of WoW and figured it would be smart to mimic that, but that's not what the players want. If someone wants to play WoW, they will play WoW because it's a darn good product."

New model

There's one last gasp of that old model to come. Within the next year, World of Warcraft's third expansion Cataclysm should arrive, as should the Bioware developed Star Wars: The Old Republic. There isn't the slightest doubt that either of these will make an ungodly amount of money, but they're very special cases.

"Cataclysm will be important for WoW players and SWTOR will be important for sci-fi or Star Wars fans, but we can't lean on those as the most important products that will determine a 'new' direction for MMOs," says Schuster. "I honestly believe the new direction will be created by a studio with more passion than money, not the other way around."

There are several of those around already. Mortal Online, for instance, is a wildly ambitious (and complicated) independent project created by fans of MMO granddaddy Ultima Online, while the esoteric, procedurally-generated Love is the passion project of a single man.

Then there's Wurm Online, which has been around since 2006 but unexpectedly reached the limelight last year, as tales of its players' fantastic dedication and impressive constructions proliferated around the web. This is an MMO in which you can build anything you want, so long as you put the time in.

Unlike pervy creation title Second Life, this is genuinely a game of building – every brick must be hewn, every hole dug, every consequence felt. This is a game where you go to live out the imagined reality of existence in a harsh, technology-free world.

We've heard that kind of promise from other games, of course, but Wurm is very much the real deal. "I have been a bit nervous when games I consider to be in the same niche as Wurm has entered the scene such as Age of Conan, Dark and Light, Darkfall and most lately Mortal Online entered the scene," admits Wurm's Lead Designer Rolf Jansson.

AGE OF CONAN: The Godslayer expansion for Age of Conan adds much needed meat to the original

"They all have had their share of problems or unfulfilled hype and most players return to Wurm. I believe in what you could call gamer feature perversion. That is, if you have advanced features in one MMO, such as the possibility to alter the terrain or improve the skills of your pets, you will miss that feature in the next MMO in the same niche."

Secrets of success

So why has Wurm Online succeeded where other MMO titles, who strode onto the scene wearing gigantic money hats, have failed miserably?

"One reason is no doubt cost effectiveness. We have avoided costs and overhead and focused on a small, effective team instead of borrowing money or relying on funding. Another reason is, of course, niching and not doing what others did. We also gave the players massive amounts of freedom. This has cost us speed but we have gained stability and longevity."

While Wurm, along with its vague contemporaries, such as Mortal Online and Darkfall, might fall a little short in production values, they offer worlds that aren't just about hitting monsters with a sword until you've levelled up enough to go find and hit some bigger monsters.

The players drive the game as much, if not more than, the developers do. It's reflected in the very face of their polygonal lands – the buildings on them, the warring factions and even the dizzying number of neologisms all over the in-game conversations. Low cost, high ambition – and it's paying off.

But can we expect big publishers to go in this direction? "They would have to rethink their development strategies and tools a lot first," says Jansson.

"It will be very expensive. They will want it to be browser-based, and the trouble with browser-based games is that they usually have a portion of asynchronous data access and you'd need server farms that handled the data access in pretty advanced ways. It's going to be a pain for them for a number of reasons. I also don't know if they have the people with those skills or interests as employees. If they don't do it browser-based … they will take a huge risk of having a very hard time getting the people to play it."

New players

Crucially, browser gaming means no installation, no gigantic patches and therefore no worrying about whether you have the system requirements – and that makes it attractive to people who aren't traditionally gamers, let alone MMO players.

It should and will be the goal of every MMO before too long. Including Wurm: "A goal will be to make the client run in a browser. We are going to put a lot of effort into making data access and things like settlement management accessible via browser. A lot of new features such as multi-storey buildings, castles and player-made bridges are also planned. A lot of existing features are very basic and will be polished in the process. In a few years Wurm Online will be a very accessible and polished fantasy simulator."

Now we're past hungrily demanding uber-graphics in everything, low system requirements and easy access are coming to the fore. What doesn't get reported as much as it should in lamentations about the state of the MMO industry is how fantastically successful 2D, casual-ish fare, such as Maple Story and Puzzle Pirates are.

MAPLE STORY: Casual 2D MMO success stories, such as Maple Story often get overlooked

Then there's Dofus. You've probably never heard of Dofus – and yet it has 30 million players (three million of which are paying subscribers) and just happens to be bigger than World of Warcraft in several countries. French-speaking countries, pointedly.

It is available in English, and has a fair amount of fans in the US and UK, but really it's a bit of a ghost town over here in comparison. That doesn't mean it's not a new paradigm of MMO success. It's 2D, isometric and turn-based – exactly the kind of thing that habitual gamers sneer at, in other words – it was created by just a couple of guys, and its publisher/developer Ankama has barely marketed it. It hasn't had to.

Tu Dofus? Mais oui!

Back in April, PCF wandered over to Paris to attend the annual Ankama convention. As we roamed an exhibition centre filled with over 30,000 people (of all ages, but definitely skewed towards young), all feverishly buying Dofus plushie toys, cooing at cos players (proper ones, not bearded men dressed as sailors) and queuing for sneak previews of Dofus' multiple upcoming sequel/spin-off games, we couldn't believe that we were previously unaware of this quiet colossus.

"Back in 2005 Dofus was able to gather a strong French speaking community because it was known to be a French game, and there were not too many French MMOs out there back then. The game really took off in 2008 in France," says Ankama's Cedric Gerard.

DOFUS: The quietly spoken French-made MMO giant with three million subscribers

"We've managed to continue growing for the past few years for several reasons: the game is in a style of its own: a funny, manga-looking MMO with a turn-based fighting system. The low subscription fee is also one of the factors of its success, and so is the fact that being developed with Flash, it can be played on low-specced computers."

At just £3.99 per month, it's a much easier expense to justify than the £8 to £12 we're accustomed to from flashier MMOs, which, as we know, many games have struggled to sell to the punters.

"We decided to offer a free version of the game, and give players the option to access the full version and pay for it when they are able to do so. Because of the lower fee to play, the majority of the players have been able to subscribe for several accounts, which they use to play at the same time, actually playing several characters at once, which is possible thanks to the turn-based system."

English-speaking nations are very much being targeted by upcoming sequel Wakfu, which, unlike Dofus, has a more persistent world that scrolls as you move, instead of entrances and exits on one Flash screen.

Lay your preconceptions about 2D, foreign MMOs being cheap and tawdry at the door – Wakfu is genuinely gorgeous to look at, and experimenting with a concept of a living ecosystem. Unlike sleeping giant Dofus, expect to start hearing about it soon, thanks to a Pokemon-style cross-media invasion.

"There will indeed be a very big push of Wakfu in the English-speaking markets, especially in the US", says Gerard. "We're looking to make it very successful with the elements of ecology and political system giving a lot of freedom to the players. The TV series, comic books and browser game will allow us to develop different aspects of the story."

F2P Not 4Us?

Wakfu's pricing hasn't been revealed, but it seems clear Ankama are continuing to resist the conventional wisdom that the free to play model is the future of this still-young industry:

"The free-to-play (item selling) model seems to attract a lot of companies to make casual MMOs, because it generates more revenue over a short period of time. Player lifetime is usually shorter, and the community doesn't develop in the same way and the game itself therefore usually has a shorter lifetime as well.

This type of MMO game suits a certain kind of player, those that want to spend more money in order to evolve their character quicker. Some people might think of it as the fast food of MMOs. We believe there is a danger of affecting the quality of the product in the end if revenue is the only thing you are after."

Massively.com's Shawn Schuster doesn't agree, believing that the subscription model of MMOs isn't looking terribly robust. "It won't die completely just yet, but games like Dungeons & Dragons Online are proving that people are willing to bend and try something new.

Subscription payment models are unheard of in Eastern countries, and it's just a matter of time before a hybrid model (much like DDO's) will become the norm in the Western world.

"The surprise success of Guild Wars, a game which eschewed subscriptions in favour of pure purchase price and rapid-fire expansions, was a hint of what was to come. When the sequel arrives, hopefully next year, it will emerge into a changed world. 'MMO' means nothing anymore – it's an outdated label for a very particular type of game that's slowly vanishing – or at least consolidating.

This isn't about World of Warcraft and its competitors anymore. It's about finding a place, a pace, a population and a payment plan that suits you. An industry in are after."

An industry in trouble? Far from it.