Rob Fahey (Page 133)

Nokia has announced that the N-Gage game deck is to go on another promotional tour in Europe, this time covering 27 major winter sports locations in seven different countries with a tour featuring major prizes for competition winners.

Publisher Sega has confirmed that it has development hardware for Nintendo's Dual Screen portable console at its offices, but says that it is still only evaluating the system and is not committed to creating games for it as yet.

Publisher THQ has reported figures for the quarter ended December 31st, revealing a huge rise in net income and strong sales during the quarter, and announcing that it is set to publish another Disney/Pixar movie tie-in title.

Leading publisher Electronic Arts has signed a new deal with comic book empire Marvel which will see the company developing a series of fighting games featuring Marvel superheroes and a range of new characters.

Trauma Studios, the creator of the popular Desert Combat free modification for Battlefield 1942, has been signed into a commercial deal with BF'42 creators Digital Illusions CE (DICE) to collaborate on future games in the series.

Media conglomerate Vivendi Universal has announced its revenue figures for the fourth quarter and full year of 2003, revealing that the company's videogames division suffered a 28 per cent drop in revenues during the year.

Microsoft has announced plans to launch the Xbox Live gaming service in Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore this April, continuing the Asian roll-out of the service following last October's launch in South Korea.

Austrian publisher JoWooD claims to have completed the turnaround of its business, with the company posting a full-year profit of €3.6 million and achieving a 30 per cent increase in revenue in its core business areas during 2003.

Japanese publisher Sega has announced that its net profit for the nine months to December 31st rose by some 92 per cent, although the December quarter saw declining revenues and profits.

French publisher Ubisoft has announced its consolidated sales figures for the quarter ended December 31st, revealing a 20 per cent rise over the previous year and leaving the company on track to meet its full year targets.

Major US retailer GameStop has announced that it is to stop selling Nokia's N-Gage game deck 450 of its stores, representing almost a third of its retail outlets, with remaining inventory being moved to other stores.

The offices of German developer Crytek, currently finishing work on PC first person shooter Far Cry for Ubisoft, were allegedly raided by police this morning following a tip-off from a former employee regarding pirated software.

Implementing control systems which use voice recognition in PlayStation 2 games is set to become easier, with voice recognition systems developer Fonix announcing that it has signed up to Sony's Tools and Middleware program.

Following the recent announcement that he has acquired the rights to make a movie based on Eidos' Fear Effect games, producer/director Uwe Boll is also set to make films based on Dungeon Siege and BloodRayne.

Valve's massively anticipated first person shooter, Half-Life 2, will not meet the April date announced for the game last year by publisher Vivendi, and is now set for a summer release according to a statement from the developer.

Electronic Arts continues to dominate the UK software charts, with Need for Speed Underground holding on to the number one position as the first major batch of new releases of 2004 fail to make much impact on the market.

French publisher Infogrames has reported of its last nine months of trading, revealing that the company's operating profits have climbed significantly, but US subsidiary Atari has announced poor results for the last quarter of 2003.

Sony has announced that it is to invest 131 billion Yen (€988m) in chip fabrication facilities for the Cell microprocessor at factories belonging to both itself and Cell consortium partners Toshiba and IBM.

Publisher Take Two Interactive has knocked $27 million off its sales guidance for the quarter ended January 31st as a result of a number of factors, but shares remain buoyant as key analysts indicate that the stock is still undervalued.

Plans to launch a new "crystal" limited edition version of the Xbox console in Europe in the next few months have been confirmed by Microsoft, which has also announced that a new Xbox Live bundle will be available later this month.

Japanese publisher Square Enix has announced its financial results for the nine months through to December 31, revealing that the company is on track to meet its full-year forecasts despite the bankruptcy of retail subsidiary DigiCube.

Genki's samurai action title Fuun Shinsengumi has taken the top spot in the Japanese charts in a week which saw the first major new releases of 2004 arriving at last, with five new titles in the top ten alone.

UK developer Argonaut has been revealed to be working on a game based on Warner Bros' forthcoming summer action movie Catwoman for publisher Electronic Arts, with work on the title already well progressed.

Bungie's hugely anticipated sequel to best-selling Xbox launch title Halo: Combat Evolved is now due to arrive this autumn, Microsoft has confirmed, marking a further slippage only weeks after the game was scheduled for summer.

A senior source at Microsoft has revealed that its next-generation console is set to use multiple PowerPC processors in parallel - while the hard drive may not be shipped as standard, being supplied as an optional extra instead.