Apparently last week's Wii MotionPlus controller announcement was a surprise to everyone -- including game developers polled by Game Informer: "We asked several third-party Wii developers about the Wii MotionPlus, and the general feeling was one of annoyance and betrayal. None of them said they had any advance notice about the peripheral, and we were told that they were as surprised as everyone else when Nintendo revealed its existence on stage."

With initial press reaction to the Wii MotionPlus controller mixed at best so far, this can't come as good news for Nintendo. Until more game devs get familiar with the new accessory, there will be a dearth of games with support for it. MotionPlus will need a killer app if it's going to have any chance of succeeding in the marketplace.

In an effort to help move sales of their flagship XPS notebook and desktop PCs, Dell has begun bundling an Xbox 360 Elite game console for free with the systems. For $2,999 you get an XPS M1730 equipped with a 2.5GHz Core 2 Duo T9300, 17" WUXGA panel, 4GB of DDR2-667MHz RAM, dual 7200 RPM 200GB hard drives running RAID 0 (400GB total), dual GeForce 8700M GT graphics cards, an AGEIA PhysX 100M PPU, 9-cell battery, and of course, the Xbox 360 Elite.

On the desktop side, Dell offers their $3,199 XPS 720 H2C. The system ships with a Core 2 Extreme QX6850 OC'ed to 3.67GHz, 4GB of DDR2-800MHz RAM, 750GB Seagate 7200 RPM HDD, dual GeForce 8800 GTs, and Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtreme Gamer audio.

But what if you don't want to spend that kind of cash? Finally, Dell also has an Xbox 360 Elite SKU for the XPS 630. Priced at $1,999 the system is powered by a Core 2 Duo E8500, dual GeForce 9800 GT cards, 4GB DDR2-800MHz RAM, a 640GB 7200 RPM HDD, and integrated 7.1 channel audio.

All three systems ship with Windows Vista Home Premium and can be decked out with optional components that take the price tag even higher. Of course enthusiasts will want to save some money and build their own rig, but it's interesting to see how eager Dell is to move XPS systems nowadays.

In a wide ranging interview with Fortune's Chris Morris, Nintendo CEO Satoru Iwata apologized to hardcore Nintendo fans for the company's disappointing showing at E3 this year:

"If there is any perception that Nintendo is ignoring the core gamers, it's a misunderstanding and we really want to get rid of that misunderstanding by any means," says Iwata. "We are sorry about [the E3] media briefings, specifically for those who were expecting to see Nintendo show something about 'Super Mario' or 'Legend of Zelda.'

"However, the fact of the matter is the so-called 'big titles' need a long, long development period. ... We really didn't think this year's E3 media briefing was the time to do so."

Iwata also acknowledged that supplies of Wii consoles have remained tight in the US, but the company is taking steps to rectify the situation "We are really intending to increase the shipments to the U.S., especially compared to last year,"

Morris also asks Iwata if he's worried about the iPhone taking share away from Nintendo DS. Iwata acknowledges the charm of the iPhone, but feels Nintendo's dual-screen gives them a unique advantage over competitors.

The good folks are Sapphire technology have decided to throw in a couple of sweet Sapphire ATI Radeon HD4850 graphics cards for our Crossfire Mass Effect writing contest. Grand prize is still a high-powered gaming rig based on the latest Crossfire technology with 2 new ATI Radeon RV770XT cards. The system will be built and tested by FiringSquad’s editorial staff, and of course tuned for blistering performance.

To enter: join the AMD Contest Group, and post a media blog telling everybody how awesome Mass Effect would look with a Crossfire gaming rig. Use poetry, visuals or videos. Humor and creativity will be rewarded!

In the spirit of the contest, the gaming rig will come complete with a cool custom Mass Effect paint job.

We’ll run the contest until the end of August and have the system shipped just after that.

The very first 55-nm GeForce 9800 GTX+ cards shipped to retailers this week. Online e-tailer Newegg is the first to list a retail card utilizing the new GPU, EVGA's e-GeForce 9800 GTX+ The card runs at the stock 9800 GTX+ speeds of 738MHz core/2200MHz memory and is selling for $199.99, that's $29 below the expected MSRP of $229.

Expect additional cards (including factory overclocked models) from the rest of NVIDIA's board partners to hit retail later this week.

Kotaku has posted some pics allegedly of a PSP prototype dubbed the PSP 3000. And -- big shocker! -- it looks a lot like the current and first generations of the handheld system, just a little thinner.

Full story and pics are here.

Microsoft is making a number of announcements today at their Gamefest conference in Seattle, including new details on DirectX 11:

Full support (including all DX11 hardware features) on Windows Vista as well as future versions of Windows

Compatibility with DirectX 10 and 10.1 hardware, as well as support for new DirectX 11 hardware

New compute shader technology that lays the groundwork for the GPU to be used for more than just 3D graphics, so that developers can take advantage of the graphics card as a parallel processor

Multi-threaded resource handling that will allow games to better take advantage of multi-core machines

Support for tessellation, which blurs the line between super high quality pre-rendered scenes and scenes rendered in real-time, allowing game developers to refine models to be smoother and more attractive when seen up close

Microsoft also has some exciting news for Games for Windows LIVE, and Games for Windows Marketplace:

Effective today, all Games for Windows – LIVE multiplayer features are now completely free. Achievements, enhanced TruSkill ® matchmaking, cross-platform play with XBOX 360 (in games that support it), voice and text chat, a friends list that is consistent across both Windows and XBOX 360 – everything – is now free to Windows gamers.

This change immediately affects all currently available Games for Windows – LIVE titles and all future titles.

Microsoft will also announce plans to deliver a Games for Windows – LIVE marketplace this fall, which will offer downloadable game content (free and paid, determined by the publisher), demos, trailers and more.

Microsoft is also making the Games for Windows – LIVE in-game interface much more PC friendly, and reducing the technical requirements for developers.

With solid state drives falling in price, the drives are becoming increasingly popular in high performance notebooks and desktop systems. But according to Sandisk CEO Eli Harari, the Windows Vista OS isn't optimized for SSDs:

As soon as you get into Vista applications in notebook and desktop, you start running into very demanding applications because Vista is not optimized for flash memory solid state disk," he said.

This is due to Vista's design. "The next generation controllers need to basically compensate for Vista shortfalls," he said.

Of course, Harari's comments could also be interpreted as an excuse for Sandisk trailing behind their competitors.

Gears of War is heading to bookstores. Sci-fi publisher Del Rey is turning the game franchise into a trilogy of genre novels, just like all the D&D, Star Trek, and Star Wars crap already clogging the sci-fi section at your favorite Borders.

The first novel, Gears of War: The Battle of Aspho Fields, is being penned by Karen Traviss and will be in stores on October 28. She's best known for writing a few of the better Star Wars novels, so maybe this stuff will actually wind up being readable. Stranger things have happened.

For more information on the Gears of War novels, go to the Del Rey website.

Capcom has followed last week's announcement that its zombie-smashing 360 exclusive Dead Rising would be ported to the Nintendo Wii. Dead Rising: Chop Till You Drop will arrive in North America and Europe in the winter of 2008. Which means Q1 2009, so don't put this one on your Xmas list.

Judging by the press release sent out today, the game will be almost identical to the 360 version that came out in 2006, with the notable exception of using the Wiimote to smack around the zombies. Oh, and the game is also being built on the Resident Evil 4 Wii platform.

I know it'll never happen, but I'd love to see a PC port, too. Full Capcom press release is here.

Blah blah blah. Does anyone really care anymore?

Anyhow, this is going to be big news if EA actually does pull off a Take-Two purchase. So I guess I can't ignore this slight moving up of the expiry date of EA's offer to the Take-Two board from Aug. 21 to Aug. 18. So the full non-story on the latest is over at GameSpot.

After launching new mobile GeForce 9 GPUs for the thin and light and performance mainstream notebook segments at Computex last month, today NVIDIA introduced 5 new GPUs for enthusiast-level laptops. The following chart lists the key features of the new GPUs, which are ordered in performance:

Enthusiast GeForce 9 Lineup
GPU	# of Stream Processors	GigaFLOPS
GeForce 9800M GTX	112	420
GeForce 9800M GT	96	360
GeForce 9800M GTS	64	240
GeForce 9700M GTS	48	180
GeForce 9700M GT	32	148

As you can see, at the top of the lineup is the GeForce 9800M GTX. The 9800M GTX features 112 stream processors, making it similar to NVIDIA's GeForce 8800 GT on the desktop (although the 9800M GTX runs at slower clocks). NVIDIA doesn't list final clock speeds for the new GPUs, as each notebook manufacturer is free to clock the GPU according to their own specific thermal needs.

The most confusing aspect of the new GPUs is obviously the GTS vs GT SKUs. NVIDIA's 9800M GT is configured with 96 shaders vs the 9800M GTS' 64, but in the case of the 9700M series the 9700M GTS has more shaders than the 9700M GT, 48 versus 32 respectively. To save power, all GeForce 9M GPUs support Hybrid Power. With Hybrid Power, the discrete GPU can be shut down completely when running 2D apps, with the system running instead on the notebook's integrated graphics. Once a 3D app is loaded, the discrete GPU then powers up in order to deliver improved 3D performance.

ATI has released their first official driver with Radeon 4800 support. Catalyst 8.7 also comes with a number of other improvements:

Performance improvements

3DMark Vantage: Performance increases of up to 20% are seen in the Performance Preset on single card configured systems when using the ATI Radeon™ HD 3600 or ATI Radeon™ HD 3400 Series of products

Company of Heroes DX10: Performance increases between 3% to 12% are seen in specific maps on single card configured systems when using the ATI Radeon™ HD 4800, ATI Radeon ™ HD 3800, and ATI Radeon™ HD 3600 Series of products

Lost Planet DX10: Performance increases between 4% to 15% are seen in specific maps on single card configured systems when using the ATI Radeon™ HD 4800, ATI Radeon™ HD 3800, or ATI Radeon™ HD 3600 Series of products

Call Of Duty 4 DX9: Performance increases of up to 4% in specific maps are seen on single card configured systems when using the ATI Radeon™ HD 4800 Series of products

Lost Planet DX9: CrossFire™ scaling improves up to 1.7x and performance increases up to 80% across all ATI Radeon™ products when Anti-Aliasing and Anisotropic Filtering are enabled

New features

Catalyst Control Center: Information Center enhancements
This release of Catalyst™ introduces an enhancement to the Catalyst Control Center Information Center. Full Hardware information will be shown for each physical graphics accelerator installed in the system.

Resolved Issue highlights

Assassin's Creed: Attempting to launch the game on a system containing an ATI Radeon™ HD 2600 series of product and running the Windows Vista operating system (32 bit version) no longer results in the game exiting to the desktop.

Crysis: Edge detect is now working when playing the DX9 version of the game with UBM enabled.

Frontlines Fuel of War: Setting the in-game option to 1152x864 and AA to N/A no longer results in corruption being noticed when playing the game on a system containing an ATI Radeon™ HD 38x0 series of product.

Hellgate London: Setting the display resolution to 2560x1600 no longer results in the game failing to respond.

Mahjongg Artifacts: Launching the game on a system running Windows Vista no longer results in the operating system failing to respond.

Rainbow Six Vegas 2: Flickering is no longer noticed when switching between the game and the Windows desktop.

Rainbow Six Vegas 2: Setting AA to 8x no longer results in AA failing to be applied.

World In Conflict: Setting the video quality to high no longer results in corruption being noticed.

World of Warcraft: The game's log-in background is no longer blank when using OpenGL mode.

Catalyst 8.7 for Windows XP, Vista, and Linux can be found here.

Fans of Aerosmith may be tempted to pick up the latest release of Guitar Hero -- which is focused primarily on the rock band -- but with just 41 songs Brett says you may want to think twice before picking up this game.

>> Click Here to read the article

Yesterday Intel cut prices on four desktop CPUs: the Core 2 Quad Q6600, Core 2 Duo E8500, E8400, and E7200.

The biggest cut by far went to the E8500, which went from $266 to $183, a reduction of 31%. Intel's entry-level quad-core CPU, the Q6600, saw its price trimmed 14% to $193 (from $224). And finally, the E8400 is now priced t $163 (from $183) and the E7200 is now priced at $113 (from $133). Besides the desktop CPUs, Intel also reduced prices on three midrange Xeon CPUs, including the X3220 ($198), X3210 ($198), and E3110 ($167).

As always keep in mind that these prices reflect Intel's tray pricing in quantities of 1,000, not retail prices. Tray pricing is generally a little lower than the retail price for many Intel CPUs.

Exclusives apparently mean a lot after all. Even though the release of GTA IV in May didn't cause a blip in sales of 360 and PS3 consoles, the same cannot be said of the impact of PS3-exclusive Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots in June.

NPD Group stats show that Sony moved a whopping 405,500 PS3 consoles last month, nearly double the 208,700 sold in May. Uh, wow. This number dwarfs the 219,800 360s that Microsoft sold, although it doesn't come close to the Wii juggernaut, which clocked another 666,000 sales in June.

More here.

Nintendo is claiming that its Wii console is now the number-one selling system in the USA. From a press release today:

Equaling its status on a worldwide basis, Wii has become the best-selling video game console in the United States. According to independent sales tracking information from the NPD Group, more than 666,000 Wii consoles sold for the month of June, and nearly 10.9 million Wii consoles have been sold in the United States in the 20 months following its November 2006 launch. The system is credited with breaking down the psychological barriers between gamers and non-gamers.

"Wii was created with the goal of expanding the gaming universe through its intuitive motion-sensing controller," said Cammie Dunaway, Nintendo of America's executive vice president of Sales & Marketing. "As we have demonstrated this week during the E3 Media & Business Summit, Wii continues to pioneer new ways for people to interact with their video games and with one another."

And yet I still have absolutely zero desire to buy one. Where's the must-play game?

With all the media raving about netbooks and how small and inexpensive they are (even though more recently announced netbooks are often more expensive than fuller-fledged notebooks), it's not surprising to see financial analysts questioning AMD's new CEO Dirk Meyer on AMD's response to Intel's Atom CPU. His response? "We're a much smaller company with not nearly the scale that our competitor has," Meyer said. "We don't intend to try to do absolutely everything they do in the marketplace. (But) slightly smaller form factor notebooks and inexpensive notebooks. That is a market segment that we're interested in."

Meyer is obviously referring in part to their Puma platform that was launched earlier this summer. So far Puma notebooks have been slow to hit retail, Newegg for instance currently carries just two Puma-based notebooks, but obviously the new platform will be important to AMD's profitability going forward.

The other key to AMD's success is their transition to 45-nm. Here Meyer said: "We're well on track with the 45-nanometer plan. We actually started production late last quarter and on track to begin volume shipment early in Q4." Moving production over to 45-nm should improve AMD's margins, which dipped as low as 37% this quarter.

When it comes to profitability, AMD's revised their outlook slightly. Whereas previous CEO Hector Ruiz stated that AMD would return to profitability in Q3'08, AMD now states they'll become profitable in the second half of 2008. This gives them a little more room for error in case they net a loss for Q3. AMD also stressed the importance of their asset smart strategy as well as Radeon 4800. More quotes from the conference call can be found here at CNET.

So we've known for a little over a month now that Intel plans to offer 3 SKUs for Nehalem in Q4'08, a 3.2GHz Extreme Edition part, a 2.93GHz CPU for the high-performance segment, and a 2.66GHz SKU for the mainstream market. Pricing info has been harder to come by -- until now. DigiTimes reports that the 3.2GHz Extreme Edition CPU will be sold for just $999.

While Intel's Extreme Edition CPUs have historically always sold for that price, starting with Penryn Intel has bumped it up as high as $1499, so a $999 price tag for Nehalem would be a nice surprise from Intel for enthusiasts.

DigiTimes reports that the 2.93GHz SKU will sell for $562, while Intel's entry-level offering will carry a price tag of just $284 in 1,000 unit quantities.

If this report is indeed accurate, CPU's based on Intel's next-gen Nehalem architecture will be offered at much lower price points than many had expected. For example, Intel's Q9300 officially sells for $266 today, while the range-topping Q9550 lists for $530.

In other Intel roadmap news, Expreview has updated their Intel CPU roadmap with two new Nehalem variants slated for Q3'2009: Lynnfield and Havendale. Lynnfield sports four processing cores and 8MB of L2 cache, with a dual-channel memory controller instead of the triple-channel memory controller Intel will offer on flagship Nehalem offerings based on their Bloomfield core. Havendale will be Intel's first dual-core part that is based on Intel's Nehalem architecture, and will ship with 4MB of cache. Like Lynnfield, the chip will also feature a dual-channel memory controller, and both CPUs will support Intel's Hyper-Threading technology.

Of course, the Expreview roadmap contradicts the DigiTimes report on pricing. Their roadmap suggests that the 2.66GHz entry-level Nehalem CPU based on Intel's Bloomfield core will be priced similarly to today's Q9550 when it's launched later this year, and go up in price from there.

DigiTimes is normally pretty accurate, but this report doesn't mention who their source is (usually motherboard manufacturers contribute to their reports), casting some doubt on its authenticity. We'll just have to wait and see I guess...

As reported earlier this week, the European Commission has filed additional charges against Intel. More specifically, the EU has added three additional items:

First, Intel has provided substantial rebates to a leading European personal computer (PC) retailer conditional on it selling only Intel-based PCs.

Secondly, Intel made payments in order to induce a leading Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) to delay the planned launch of a product line incorporating an AMD-based CPU.

Thirdly, in a subsequent period, Intel has provided substantial rebates to that same OEM conditional on it obtaining all of its laptop CPU requirements from Intel.

The EU goes on to state: "Each of the conducts outlined in the 26 July 2007 Statement of Objections and the SSO is provisionally considered to constitute an abuse of a dominant position in its own right. However, the Commission also considers at this stage of its analysis that all the types of conduct reinforce each other and are part of a single overall anti-competitive strategy aimed at excluding AMD or limiting its access to the market."

Intel has 8 weeks to respond to the new charges.

AMD Board of Directors Elects Dirk Meyer President and CEO
− Hector Ruiz Named Executive Chairman of AMD –
SUNNYVALE, Calif. — July 17, 2008 — AMD (NYSE:AMD) today announced that its board of directors elected President and COO Dirk Meyer as the company’s chief executive officer. Meyer succeeds Hector Ruiz, who will become executive chairman of AMD and chair of the board of directors. As executive chairman, Ruiz will ensure a smooth executive leadership transition, focus on driving the company’s asset smart strategy to completion, and assist with high-level government and strategic partner relations.

“Dirk’s election to CEO is the final phase of a two-year succession plan developed and implemented jointly by AMD’s board of directors and executive team,” said Robert Palmer, lead independent director. “Under Hector’s strong leadership, AMD drove the industry adoption of pervasive 64-bit and multicore computing, became a trusted enterprise-class partner to leading technology suppliers and significantly expanded its global footprint in high-growth markets like China.

“Dirk’s extensive experience as a business leader and his notable engineering accomplishments before and during his 12 years at AMD make him ideally suited to build upon the foundation Hector created and lead AMD.”

“AMD has fundamentally altered the industry landscape, leading the innovation agenda while delivering greater choice and better experiences for our customers and users,” said Ruiz, executive chairman, AMD. “Dirk is a gifted leader who possesses the right skills and experience to continue driving AMD and the industry forward in new, compelling directions. I am placing the company in excellent hands.”

Meyer, 46, joined AMD in 1995 and made his mark as part of the design team responsible for the original AMD Athlon™ processor, a breakthrough product for AMD and the industry’s first processor to break the 1GHz barrier. From 2001 to 2006, Meyer led the company’s microprocessor business, overseeing related R&D, manufacturing, operations, and marketing. His leadership skills during these five years resulted in a doubling of revenue for the microprocessor business and a substantial expansion of AMD’s global profile. In 2006, Meyer was appointed president and COO, and in 2007, he was elected to AMD’s board of directors.

“I’m tremendously excited by the opportunities ahead for AMD. As the only company that possesses expertise and leadership in both x86 microprocessor and graphics technology, AMD has a unique capability to drive the next wave of innovation through the integration of computing and graphics processors to deliver a better computing experience,” said Meyer, president and chief executive officer, AMD. “We are in the midst of re-shaping AMD’s business model with the goal of delivering sustained profitability through a focus on the core technologies that differentiate AMD. My immediate priority is to work with the leadership team to accelerate this transformation. I appreciate the trust that the Board and Hector have placed in me. During the years that I’ve worked under Hector, he has been an excellent leader, mentor and friend.”

Ruiz, 62, joined AMD as president and chief operating officer in January 2000 and became AMD's chief executive officer on April 25, 2002. He has served on AMD’s board of directors since 2000 and was appointed chairman of the board of directors in 2004. His accomplishments at AMD and contributions to the industry include:

Expanding AMD beyond the consumer desktop market into the commercial and enterprise market, resulting in AMD technology being used by as much as 90 of the top 100 companies on the Forbes Global 2000 by the year 2007.

Growing AMD’s customer base to include the world’s top 10 computer manufacturers and the world’s top 10 consumer electronics manufacturers.

Redefining the future of enterprise computing with the introduction of the AMD Opteron™ processor, paving the way for the industry-standard x86 architecture to deliver the advantages of 64-bit computing.

Sharply growing AMD’s global presence, with new teams and new design centers in China, India, and other high-growth markets. In 2007, AMD’s international sales represented 87 percent of total consolidated revenue, as compared to 66 percent in 2001.

Focusing the industry on innovating to better meet customer needs. This strategy, commonly referred to as “customer-centric innovation,” has become a hallmark of Hector and of AMD, and is a primary point of AMD’s competitive differentiation.

Broadening AMD’s platform advantage to include leading-edge graphics and paving the road for the next generation of computing, Accelerated Computing, with the ATI acquisition in late 2006.

Promoting fair and open competition in the global microprocessor market with AMD filing a landmark antitrust suit against Intel. Since 2005, antitrust regulators around the world have validated claims made by AMD regarding Intel’s illegal business practices by launching independent investigations that have thus far uncovered evidence of illegal monopoly maintenance that harms consumer choice.

AMD posted a loss of $1.19 billion for Q2 on revenue of $1.349 billion. That figure is 7% below Q1'08 and 3% higher than their performance from a year ago. That loss includes an $880 million goodwill writedown as a result of their ATI acquisition. AMD announced that they divested themselves of their consumer electronics business (formerly ATI's DTV/handheld division), although they didn't state if that is the result of a pending sale of the unit. Excluding the goodwill charge, AMD's Q2 loss was $269 million, which is much better than Q2'07 when AMD lost $531 million.

“While we had a disappointing quarter financially, customer adoption of our recently introduced microprocessor and graphics products and platform offerings is strong, and we see increasing momentum across our businesses,” said Robert J. Rivet, AMD’s chief financial officer. “In the face of challenging macroeconomic conditions, we remain committed to achieving operating profitability in the second half of the year based on the continued ramp of new products, increased market penetration of our differentiated solutions, and continued actions designed to reduce our breakeven point.”

AMD's margins continue to look ugly however. Gross margin for Q2 was 52%, but this figure includes the sale of old 200mm manufacturing equipment. Once the equipment is excluded, gross margins fall to 37%. In comparison AMD's margins were 41% in Q1'08.

One of the worst-kept secrets in gaming finally leapt out of the bag today. EA has officially confirmed that BioWare and LucasArts are working on a Knights of the Old Republic MMO.

This was sort of an offhand announcement, so no other details about the game were revealed, such as title or projected release date. Still, this is Star Wars, so it's good news no matter how sparse the specifics. I just hope BioWare rips apart the KOTOR/Mass Effect engine, as it's awfully bland in comparison to a truly modern RPG.

More here.

Apparently NVIDIA isn't finished trimming GeForce GTX 280 pricing. Early this morning online retailers began selling GeForce GTX 280 cards for as low as $449.99 without mail-in rebate. Factory OC'ed cards are now selling for $499.99. This marks the second price cut for the GeForce GTX 280, which originally launched 30 days ago priced at $650. Who is carrying the card at $450? For the sake of my sanity, I'll limit the links to Newegg and Zipzoomfly, who seem to be carrying more cards priced at $450 than other online etailers at the moment:

Zipzoomfly
ASUS ($420 after rebate)
BFG
EVGA ($440 after rebate)
Gigabyte
Palit
XFX

Newegg
EVGA
Gigabyte
PNY ($420 after rebate)

Since splitting from Microsoft, Bungie fans have been eager to hear what the game developer is now up to. E3'08 was supposed to provide some answers, but Bungie was notably absent from Microsoft's press conference on Monday prompting Bungie President Harold Ryan to apologize to fans on bungie.net: "For the last several months, we've been building toward a reveal of something exciting that Bungie is working on. We were looking forward to sharing that with our fan community during the week of E3. However, those plans were just changed by our publisher. We realize that many of our fans are disappointed by this turn of events; members of the Bungie team share that disappointment. When the right time comes, we look forward to sharing this exciting announcement with you. Until then, we appreciate your continued support and patience."

So what could have prompted Microsoft to pull Bungie from their press conference? According to this story from the LA Times, the answer is simple. To save time:

"Don Mattrick, senior vice president of Microsoft's Xbox games business, said the company decided to pull Halo ...

... to help trim its E3 presentation to under 90 minutes, from 2 1/2 hours, to accommodate attention-challenged reporters. "We had an embarrassment of riches," Mattrick said. "We felt we could do this game more justice with a more dedicated event."

Hmmm, let's see, which game is more important to Microsoft's bottom line: Halo, or You're in the Movies? Halo, or Lips? This is definitely one of the more puzzling decisions from the Xbox camp this year (Spotted on Kotaku).

How does a factory OC'ed 9800 GTX card compare to NVIDIA's 9800 GTX+? Does the GTX+ OC further, and how does it compare in power consumption? In this article, we take a look at PNY's $210 factory OC'ed GeForce 9800 GTX card. Should you splurge and get the GTX+ or save your money and go with the GTX? Judge for yourself after you've seen the results!

>> Click Here to read the article

At E3 today, Sony confirmed that it has stopped shipping the $399 40GB PS3 to retailers in favor of an 80GB model for the same price. The catch? This new, cheaper 80GB PS3 doesn't have backwards compatibility support for PS2 titles, just like the little brother that it is replacing.

Interesting response to the Microsoft 360 price cuts, although I can't see it having much if any impact. All Sony has really done here is doubled the storage space on the already partially crippled version of the PS3. An extra 40 gig isn't exactly stop the presses times.

More here.

BFG has joined the roll call of NVIDIA board partners to offer cash back for GeForce GTX 200 card owners who purchased boards before NVIDIA's latest round of price cuts:

Due to recent price drops in the market on the GeForce GTX series graphics cards, BFG is offering customers who purchased and registered a BFG GTX 280 or 260 graphics card between June 16 and July 16 2008 up to $120 based on the model and price paid.

Also, for qualified customers, BFG will offer $50 off the purchase of a second GTX 200 series card of the same model you already have to help complete your SLI system.

Cash back offer does not apply to Trade Up cards

You must contact BFG within 14 calendar days to see if you qualify

Once you contact us, we'll verify your registration and proof of purchase and provide you further details

If you meet the criteria above and would like to take advantage of this offer please fill out the form below and we'll contact you with more details.

* This rebate is only avaliable for US & Canadian customers.

One question many Xbox 360 gamers have asked about the new dashboard UI is how their themes will work with the new interface; some were concerned their themes they've spent hard-earned money on will become useless. Major Nelson has updated his blog with screenshots of how themes tie-in to the new interface, specifically themes for Gears of War, Halo, and Viva Pinata are illustrated.

To see video footage of how the new interface looks and works, click here.

And it'll be for PC, too! Activision Blizzard has unveiled a new Wolfenstein shooter at E3 today. It's a co-production of id Software, Raven Software, and new UK development house Endrant Studios.

Few details were released about the game other than that it will be designed for 360, PS3, and PC, be called simply Wolfenstein, and once again star B.J. Blazcowitz. More here.