Unless the whole thing is a well thought out hoax, rumours have sprung up on the Internet indicating the GameSPy have been sold to an anonymous buyer for US$60 million, with GameSPy president Mark "Bastard" Surfas (that's his nickname, not an epithet) pocketing a cool US$20 million for his trouble.

Not convinced? Well, we weren't either when our friendly neighbourhood rumourmonger D33 pointed us at his post on trickery.net, however the source of this post, a comment by Richard "Lowtax" Kyanka (ex PlanetQuake and creator of the infamous JeffK) on the Something Awful forums seems to bear out this rumour:

Thought some of you might be curious to know that Mark Surfas sold Gamespy for $60 million and is personally pocketing $20 million himself. I wasn't told who bought them out, so I don't know. Since they haven't released any "official" press release yet, I guess it's still technically a "rumor" and isn't confirmed / proven true yet, but I'm assuming there will be some announcement sometime soon.

The third wave of Xbox Platinum Hits has started, and the following seven great games are shipping at a reduced price:

1. Conflict Desert Storm (Gotham Games)
2. Dave Mirra Freestyle BMX 2 (Acclaim -- ships December 2003)
3. Mech Assault (Microsoft Game Studios)
4. Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance (Midway)
5. Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon (Ubi Soft)
6. Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell (Ubi Soft)
7. WWE Raw (THQ Inc.)

Gamer's Hell have interviewed Peter Wyse, senior producer of Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines which was released in the UK yesterday.

So what does the game offer that marks it out from other shooters?

You play as the Terminator! For the first time in a first-person shooter it makes sense how I can take thousands of bullets and keep coming. I'm a Terminator - that's what I'm designed to do.

And I'm not just any generic Terminator model, I'm Arnold. Also, not only do we play out some levels as the good Terminator, protecting life, but we also get to play as the bad Terminator, hunting down humans in the future.

The next racing game from Namco R: Racing Evolution (first seen at the recent Tokyo Games Show) will be distributed in PAL territories by Electronic Arts. The developers aim to have versions for the PS2, GameCube and Xbox localised for Europe by March 2004. The game is being developed by the creators of Ridge Racer, and will have a realistic setting.

Xatrix is another new contributor to News0r, and we'd like to welcome him to the team. Xatrix will be bringing us regular updates from the French gaming scene and games industry.

In a post on the Hardware France forum (in response to a question I asked) the director of Focus (the French publisher of TrackMania) has announced plans for additional downloads for the recently released game.

Bon, sinon, pour pas faire trop transparent, je vous annonce déjà que la mise à jour présente sur le jeu vous permettra de dl bientôt de nouveaux blocs, de nouveaux challenges ( rémunérateurs), skins, circuits, et même un studio de replay qui tue, car nous sommes tombés amoureux des vidéos qui s'uploadent un peu partout sur le net, et nous pensons que vous devez avoir l'outil ultime.

(roughly translated this reads as) We're announcing that the in-game updates will soon allow the download of new blocks, new challenges, new skins, circuits and even a new replay studio tool, since we love the videos that players have been creating that have been appearing on the Internet, and we think you should have a decent tool to create these

Regular readers may have noticed a strange name at the bottom of the last post. So we'd officially like to welcome a new contributor to news0r - Vib.

Keep an eye out for an upcoming review from him as well!

Haitian-Americans in New York City and certain elected officials are calling for a boycott of Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, calling it racist and a "cultural attack." Protesters gathered at Rockstar games' offices and New York's City Hall to demand legal and legislative actions against the game. The protesters say that the game labels the Haitians as thugs, drug-abusers, and includes dialogue such as "Kill all the Haitians." (read more...)

AlienPants (News0r's parent company) has announced a deal to provide user support and hints, tips and cheats to Digital Jester's customers through the use of a premium SMS dedicated keyword in the UK.

From today, people who purchase Digital Jesters games will be able to access a live hints, tips and cheats service by using their mobile phone and texting DJESTERS and a question to the UK shortcode 60070.

The service supports all titles published by Digital Jesters, including the recently announced Savage. We've posted the full press release below for you.

(read more...)

(article by Media Create)

Total sales for the TOP 100 this week amounts to approx. 761,000 units. This represents 140.73% of the last week's total, and 91.05% of the weekly average. There were 17 titles in total made it into the ranking this weeks including "Neon Genesis Evangelion 2" and "Pokemon Colosseum", both of which had sold over 100,000 units each. The ratio of new releases are also high this week at 58.52% of the total unit sales, which was attributed to the increase of new releases this week.

As for the hardware market, Xbox made a remarkable development following the price reduction: hardware price was reduced from JPY16,800 to JPY14,800, and at the same time "Xbox Platinum Pack" (incl. hardware, 2 software ("Project Gotham Racing 2" and "Halo" (Xbox Platinum Collection)), 2 controllers, DVD kits, and Xbox Live coupon for 2 months) debuted at JPY19,800. Following this price reduction and also the introduction of "Xbox Platinum Pack", Xbox has seen increase of about 7,000 units over the last week.

Digital Jesters have announced they've secured the publishing rights to Savage, an online-only FPS/RTS game. Already a hit in the US, and playable (at least in demo form) already in the UK on servers hosted by people like Jolt, the game will finally be given a UK retail release.

The game is a lot of fun, is easy to get into and is easy to play. It'll be out in the UK in February next year.
(read more...)

News0r has been a little quiet of late, however we'd like to make a little more noise.

So we're on the hunt for a few news posters interested in joining the fast moving world of games journalism. We're interested in people of all skill levels and experience, with an interest in all types of gaming and games consoles and with an interest in working on a games news website.

The key skills we're after are a dedication and enthusiasm for games and the games industry, a good grasp of English, and (obviously) an interest in games news.

If you're interested, drop us a line via news@news0r.com or drop by #news0r on QuakeNet.