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If you were a fan of the original F.E.A.R and have been awaiting the release of its successor, you might be interested in some footage put together by Monolith on the progress they are making. This week a short clip with John O'Rorke of Monolith was released, which includes several in-game shots of the engine as it is being developed, and has some commentary from the developers on how development is going.

The video itself is pretty short, but definitely looks tantalizing if shooters are your thing. The game’s release this upcoming February will be, as with most big titles, a tri-platform release for the PC, Xbox 360 and PS3. The developers specifically mentioned how development has been influenced by the more robust and capable consoles of today, so I am looking forward to see what Monolith has in store.

Following last week’s report that Microsoft had updated the 360's motherboard, the company has now confirmed that the new Arcade models come with 256MB of onboard memory. The upgrade will allow more games and media to be stored inside without the need for an external memory card and of course make the Arcade model NXE-compliant out of the box.

Although a bump in the amount of onboard memory seems like a good thing at first sight, it actually means a loss in portability and storage space for new Xbox 360 Arcade owners as they would presumably no longer be eligible for that free 512MB memory card or cheap 20GB hard drive upgrade Microsoft has been offering.

The company made no particular mention of the oft-reported Jasper motherboard update that supposedly brings a cooler running 65nm GPU. Instead, the just company stuck to its usual response that “it is constantly updating the console's more than 1700 internal components.”

Responding to a letter from a fan, Valve co-founder Gabe Newell left no doubt about his company's stance on DRM, claiming such strategies “are just dumb.” The fan letter expressed concern about Valve’s publishing partnership with Electronic Arts, which has recently faced outrage from consumers over its use of secuROM DRM in a number of games.

Valve’s partnership with EA didn't restrain Newell from commenting on some of its anti-piracy ideas, though, mirroring what appears to be a common sentiment among gamers: “The goal should be to create greater value for customers through service value (make it easy for me to play my games whenever and wherever I want to), not by decreasing the value of a product (maybe I'll be able to play my game and maybe I won't).”

He added that Valve really discourages other developers and publishers from using the broken DRM offerings and in fact claims there is a groundswell to abandon those approaches – even though DRM seems to only be getting more ubiquitous, with Rockstar being the latest to employ SecuROM in the PC version of Grand Theft Auto 4.

Nintendo is currently the undisputed leader in the gaming console market and it's a well-known fact that, unlike Sony and Microsoft, the company has been turning a profit on every Wii sold since the very beginning. But just how much profit are they making exactly?

According to new analyst estimates, Nintendo currently makes about $6 in profit on each Wii console it sells. It may not sound like a lot, but when you actually consider almost 35 million Wiis have been snapped up to date, one can imagine the high profit Nintendo is making with its popular motion sensing console.

In addition, Forbes points out that Nintendo first-party publishes roughly 60 percent of all Wii games itself – compared to 30 percent for Microsoft and 15 percent for Sony – and enjoys a gross margin on game software sales of 65 percent. Put it all together along with the wildly successful DS handheld and the bottom line is Nintendo is doing very well financially.

The Xbox 360 experienced “record-breaking console sales” over the busy shopping period known in the United States as the Black Friday weekend. According to Microsoft, the 360 outsold PlayStation 3 consoles three-to-one, noting that it's 2008 Black Friday sales were also 25 percent higher than the same period a year ago.

It seems the combination of low prices along with the New Xbox Experience and Netflix support is making the Xbox 360 a very hot buy. What’s more, this success is not exclusive to the United States, with Microsoft claiming Xbox 360 sales have surged worldwide since the September price drop, where it says console sales “are up as much as 400 percent.” Of course, data regarding the Nintendo Wii's sales on Black Friday was notably absent from the announcement, so we’ll just have to wait for the NPD report.

Microsoft is recovering from a bit of an embarrassment recently, as they have now admitted that a botched update for the Xbox 360 is what caused some people to completely lose audio on their systems. The update included a change to HDCP, which has been identified as the source of the problem.

Some workarounds included using analog audio temporarily, which was a workable solution for those who had devices capable of taking analog input. A more crude workaround was to pull the hard drive from the system, preventing the updated software from loading, which is certainly an unacceptable solution to a problem caused by an update to HDCP. Microsoft hasn't mentioned anything about how many users were affected only that it was a "very small number."

Is Valve quietly preparing Linux ports of its games? Rumors of an impending Source engine port emerged over six months ago, and today, Phoronix claims to have located some Linux libraries in the Windows version of the Left 4 Dead demo that further point in this direction, in particular, one named 'steamclient_linux.so.'

While the game's full release does not include these libraries, their inclusion in the demo suggests that Steam games could have native Linux clients in the near future, especially considering the libraries contain several strings nonessential to a Linux Left 4 Dead dedicated server but rather point to a Steam 3 release client on a Linux file-system.

Despite the somewhat limited appeal such a move could possibly have among the gaming crowd, it doesn't seem entirely out of the question that Valve would be striving to make Steam completely platform-agnostic, and a recent job listing at the company looking for someone whose responsibilities would include porting Windows-based games to the Linux platform seems to support this.

The year is almost over, but Sony has once again reassured gamers that it will make good on its promise and make its long delayed PlayStation Home virtual world open to everybody before the end of 2008. Speaking to IGN, Home director Jack Buser said that the service is nearing the final stages of its closed beta and that just last week it was moved to its 1.0 client.

For those not in the know, Home is an ambitious “3D social gaming community” where users can customize their avatar and virtual space. Sony hasn't had the best track record with the service, though, as the virtual world has been marred with delays on a number of occasions since it was announced in March 2007. More than a hundred thousand people have been invited to the closed PlayStation Home beta already, but hopefully it won’t be much longer before everyone can walk around in the free virtual world – whether it lives up to the hype (which has rather faded by now) remains to be seen.

Epic has released an update for its Xbox 360 blockbuster title Gears of War 2, intended to fix the long waits some players have been experiencing in multiplayer matchmaking. In order to get the update out as quickly as possible, the company focused just on immediate infrastructure issues and have left any potential gameplay issues for a future update.

Besides making public matchmaking faster, the update should also stop stats from being lost when playing online (which apparently happened frequently) and addresses an issue where some players were unable to start the story-based campaign if Xbox LIVE was down or unavailable. If you haven’t already downloaded the update, next time the game is loaded you should be prompted to do so.

Microsoft never officially comments on its internal redesigns of Xbox 360 hardware, but it is no secret that the company does periodic revisions to make its console perform better, fix bugs and lower production cost. And now, with the holiday shopping season in full swing, many of you will be happy to now that the latest such revision is finally starting to become available in stores – or so it seems.

Code-named Jasper, the new design is a successor to Falcon and brings with it a smaller 65nm GPU that should bring down overall power consumption, heat generation and noise – it should also further alleviate some of the infamous Xbox 360 RROD problems. Multiple Xbox 360 Arcade units have been spotted in the wild with the new motherboard, and notably it appears that the internal flash memory has been bumped to 265MB (up from 16MB), which means the console can update to the NXE dashboard without the need of fitting a new hard drive or memory card.

It is likely that all other models will come with the same amount of internal memory so as to keep designs similar across the board. Check out some pictures of the new Jasper motherboards over at Xbox-scene.

Valve has announced that THQ and Relic games will be running sales on Steam this weekend that will get you a bunch of games along with amazing savings of more than $100. For instance, the aptly named THQ Collector’s Pack, which includes a dozen titles from top franchises such as Company of Heroes, Titan’s Quest, and Dawn of War, is now available at Steam for just $99.99.

Alternatively for RTS fans there’s the Relic Super Pack, which comes stuffed with Company of Heroes and expansion Opposing Fronts, Dawn of War Gold Edition, and Dawn of War: Dark Crusade for just $49.99. Steam is also halving the price for Titan Quest: Gold Edition to $9.99 until Monday and – as earlier reported – offering Valve’s entire PC games catalog for $99.99.

Assassin’s Creed has been one of Ubisoft’s best selling franchises, becoming their fastest selling new IP since 2002, with the game doing well even on the PC despite being leaked early on torrent sites. Thus it is not surprising to hear that the company is “working hard” on a follow-up.

This was revealed in a conference call to analysts, and while no further details were shared, it is being rumored that the game has changed time frame from 1191 to “several hundred years in the future,” most likely, the French Revolution in the 1700s. Additionally, it is also speculated that Ubisoft is aiming for a holiday 2009 launch of the game, but has been no official confirmation yet.

Sony has announced that the latest PlayStation 3 firmware update is set to be available today across the PlayStation Network. Version 2.53 isn’t going to bring any groundbreaking new features to the table, but it will still bring a number of welcome tweaks, including full-screen Adobe Flash support for the console’s integrated web browser.

Other changes include a new power saving option to stop your controllers from running out of battery while inactive as well as a number of new and revised settings. The new update will be available via the PlayStation Network later today – check out the full list of changes here.

On a separate note, there have been rumors about the PS3 getting more affordable in March 2009, but this topic has been brought up (and debunked) so many times that I’ll believe it when I see it.

Massive, the ad network owned by Microsoft, has signed a multi-year deal with THQ whereby it will exclusively serve dynamic in-game ads for several of the publisher’s upcoming titles for the PC and Xbox 360. Saints Row 2 will be one of the first THQ games to feature Massive's dynamic in-game ads, and while the company declined to disclose other candidates, other popular games in its catalog include some WWE/UFC games and Age of Empires: Mythologies.

THQ isn't new to in-game advertising. It has had deals with Massive in the past, as well as Double Fusion and IGA Worldwide, and is still open to negotiate with other vendors for advertising on the PlayStation 3 and Wii consoles. The deal is also a good one for Massive, which has been relatively quiet since it was acquired by Microsoft in 2006.

It appears Bethesda is taking the right steps to embrace the modding community, with recent announcements that the company plans to release developer tools before the end of the year. The official Fallout 3 Creation Kit is supposed to be released next month, completely for free, for both the PC and the Xbox 360. Calling it, aptly enough, the G.E.C.K., Bethesda claims they hope people will create their own add-ons. If the response to the construction kit for Morrowind is any indication of how this will fare, we can expect a tidal wave of user-generated content as time goes on.

Bethesda plans to release additional content for the game as well, in the form of three “content packs,” which will be downloadable add-ons for the game. These are not due until after “G.E.C.K.”, with one pack schedule for released every month for the first three months of next year.

For those who haven’t yet tried the alternate-history strategy title Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3, their chance has arrived today – EA just released a PC demo for the game. The single-player demo will include one campaign mission from both the Soviet and the Allied campaigns, in addition to the game's cinematic opening and three playable tutorials.

The demo will give fans of the series a taste of what it's like to use an array of fictitious and over-the-top weaponry, before the game’s first major patch releases later this year, which will include C&C Red Alert 3’s map-making and mod tool “WorldBuilder” plus a number of bug fixes and multiplayer enhancements. The 1.8GB demo is available now at FileFront.

Much of the fanfare surrounding Fallout 3 has died away and now Bethesda has begun work on fixing flaws discovered since launch. Following up from the initial patch for the PC version, Bethesda has mentioned that they are preparing a cross-platform set of patches, looking to update the game on the PC, Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3. With no set release date on the actual patch or a list of fixes planned, we can only speculate on what Bethesda intends to do.

Most likely they'll continue to focus on bug fixing, as even after the initial PC patch there were complaints of frequent crashing on the official forums. Issues with crashing were much less prevalent on the consoles, so it's a bit of a mystery as to what they plan on doing there. It's also strange that they'd announce a patch coming for all three platforms at once – unless they have a laundry list of very game-specific issues to deal with.

Hopefully Bethesda will learn their lesson from the post-launch reception to Morrowind and Oblivion, and make the decision to release a SDK or some form of development tools for the game to let modders and the game community step in.

Can’t get enough of Far Cry 2? Then you’ll be happy to know that the first round of extra content for Ubisoft’s open-world shooter is just around the corner. Entitled The Fortune’s Pack, this downloadable content will include three new weapons for both single and multiplayer modes as well as two new vehicles.

Along with the new equipment, the multiplayer mode will also be expanded to include four new maps: Cheap Labor, Last Resort, Lake Smear and Fort Fury. No specific release date has been announced other than Ubisoft saying the pack will be out “before the end of November” for about $10 on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 consoles.

When purchasing a game, how often do reviews and scores given by specialized websites factor into it? Eidos believes people put a lot of weight into that, so much that they are seeking to bar negative reviews appearing for their games before release with the purpose of achieving a higher score on Metacritic. What started out as a Twitter update, with a journalist claiming that Eidos asked him to withhold his review if it was negative, has turned into Eidos outright confirming that they don't want negative reviews coming out.

This certainly isn't the first time Eidos has been seen doing this. Earlier this year, the company was assumed to have pressured GameSpot into firing one of their executive editors by threatening to pull ad deals. This was in response to a negative review that GameSpot posted, which was retroactively edited afterward. Both companies denied the two events being related, however.

In this instance, a PR company for Eidos has outright admitted that they are trying to coerce sites into not posting negative reviews, at least not until after the game is actually released. They do not state that they would prevent reviewers from getting advance copies of the game, nor that they would be under obligation to pull a review if it was negative. Still, the implication here is pretty severe. Should a game developer or publisher even be involved in the review process at all?

Rockstar Games has finally begun sharing details of the forthcoming Grand Theft Auto IV downloadable content it promised long ago. In an interview with USA Today, Rockstar’s Dan Houser has confirmed that the oft delayed Xbox 360 exclusive episode will not make it this holiday season, dating it for February 17 of next year instead.

Titled “The Lost and Damned,” this will be the first of two exclusive episodes for Xbox 360 owners, and centers on a new main character with a plot that intersects with the main storyline of the original game. It will feature new missions, multiplayer modes, weapons, vehicles, and music. Sadly, no price was given for the downloadable expansion.