God of War II almost gold - PlayStation 2 News at GameSpot:

On his blog, Sony Santa Monica developer Cory Barlog says “primary work is done” on PlayStation 2 sequel; demo due early February; new trailer inside.

Gamasutra - Majesco Sees Strong Fourth Quarter Sales, Large Losses Cut:

Majesco has released its fourth quarter report, showing sales rising to $21.5 million, up from $4.6 million the year prior, and drastically reduced losses thanks to relatively strong sales of Cooking Mama and Jaws Unleashed. Apart from the sales rise, Majesco said its net loss for the 2006 quarter was $2.9 million, compared to 2005’s same period loss of $34.2 million.

Gamasutra - Lost Planet , 360 Once Again Dominate GameFly Charts:

This week’s top rental charts from U.S. game rental company GameFly, representing the most requested games for the week ending January 26, highlight the popularity surrounding video game titles that have been already released, as well as those that are yet to debut. Unsurprisingly, Capcom’s action shooter Lost Planet continued its icy grip on the top spot for rental requests across all platforms, followed by Microsoft’s upcoming matured themed sandbox title, Crackdown. Eidos’ Battlestations: Midway rounded out the top three requests on the all platform chart for the week, while all three titles also made up the top three Xbox 360 requests for the week as well.

Gamasutra - GameSpot Parent Acquires GameKult, Reports Results:

Major video game site GameSpot’s parent CNET Networks has reported its delayed yearly results, revealing much-reduced profits of $9.4 million (down from $29.9 million) on revenues of $387.7 million, and the acquisition of French game website GameKult. While the quarterly profit for CNet was lower than expected at $6.3 million, partly due to the settling of its stock options probe for a one-time $6.5 million charge, the company’s yearly revenue was up 15% from previous year’s figures of $338.0 million.

News - Quake Wars in fiscal 2008 // PC /// Eurogamer:

Those of you dribbling at the chops in anticipation of Enemy Territory: Quake Wars may have to wait a little longer, as Activision’s financial report reveals the release date has moved into fiscal year 2008.

News - “Spring” for PS3 GRAW2 // None /// Eurogamer:

GRAW 2 PS3 will now be available in ’spring’, according to Ubisoft’s latest release schedule, despite previously being listed as a launch title for the console.

Analysts: Sony Profits Could Fall 50% news from 1UP.com:

“A drop in third-quarter results is largely expected on the games division. There’s no surprise unless the company further reduces its profit forecasts,” said Mitsushige Akino, who monitors $468 million in assets at the Tokyo-based Ichiyoshi Investment Management Co., told Bloomberg.

Peter Moore: We’re Not Giving Up on Japan news from 1UP.com:

“It’s not easy. But we’re not going to back down just because it’s not easy.”

Unreal Tournament May Still Support Console MODs news from 1UP.com:

Part of what makes first-person-shooters on the PC so appealing is the ability for aspiring designers, artists and programmers to develop their own character models, levels, weapons and whatever else their mind can conjure up, often times using the same tools the developers themselves did. That’s never been possible on consoles, but Epic Games has indicated in the past this is part of their goal for Unreal Tournament 3 — first on PlayStation 3 and PC and now, it seems, on Xbox 360, too.

Slashdot | ModDB Mod of the Year Winners Chosen:

It’s that time of year again and ModDB has released the winners of their annual Mod of the Year contest. Gamers who like to go beyond their initial investment have chosen their favorites for 2006: Point of Existence and Project Reality according to ModDB’s Mod of the Year competition. The contest took in over 80,000 votes and narrowed the field from 4,000 mods to the Top 5 released and unreleased mods, as well as a handful of genre awards and the Editor’s Choice awards. Perhaps it is ironic that the two top mods of 2006 are both for the Battlefield 2 platform, which has been abandoned by its developer and is notoriously buggy and difficult to mod. Despite these problems, both mods went on to beat out mods from the ever popular Half-Life 2 platform. The much better maintained Source engine is represented with the winners of the third through fifth places: Goldeneye: Source, The Hidden: Source and Minerva

www.GamersReports.com - No FFXIII For 2007 Confirmed:

According to FF-XIII.net, Tetsuya Nomura, designer of FFXIII, has confirmed that Final Fantasy will not debut on the PS3 until 2008. According to Famitsu, Square still needs to wrap up a few projects before concentrating on FFXIII.

www.GamersReports.com - Def Jam Demo Heads To Xbox Live This Week:

EA is giving gamers a chance to preview the first true next-gen incarnation of their popular Def Jam series, Def Jam: Icon. This Thursday, assuming there are no MS delays, will see the release of a demo on the Xbox Live Marketplace. The single-player demo will feature Big Boi and T.I. as playable characters for play in the Gas Station arena.

www.GamersReports.com - Call Of Duty 3 Xbox360 Valor Map Pack Re-launched:

When Tryarch and Activision originally release the Valor map pack for Call Of Cuty 3, gamers were very excited. Until they downloaded the pack, that is. The maps were apparently unusable. Well, now the pack has been revamped and is ready to go for sure. Hop on Xbox Live and download the pack now along with a new game update that adresses some of the more bugs.

“I really don’t know what I would look at there that we’re really missing. I look at the games and I feel really good at where we stand from a portfolio point of view. The online service…there’s nothing really there that I can really point to that I wish we had. The innovation that the Wii is, I’m certainly a big fan of.”

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It makes the Passion of The Christ look like Veggie Tales - Uwe Boll is going to get rich by doing the following: Making Osama Bin Laden one of the main characters. Killing school children to recreate the Columbine shootings. Full frontal nudity of News Radio’s Dave Foley. Full backside nudity of Dave Foley as he takes a shit on the camera.

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