Software News

Despite being much praised by its employees and by gamers alike, it seems that Valve, the company behind such franchises as Half-Life and Portal, has grown too big for at least one former employee who is now working at Arkane Studios.

Viktor Antonov, who is best known for the level design he has done on City 17 for Half-Life 2, has told Eurogamer that, “Valve has grown into a much bigger company, and what I really enjoy about the philosophy of Arkane is that it’s a small, core team that does risky creative projects.”

He added, “And when I went to Valve, they were a small company. They’ve grown now, they’re much bigger, and I’m interested in a certain level of creative risk taking and a certain energy that can be compared to jazz, jamming or rock n’ roll, where it’s small, it’s intense and it’s about making revolutions in the media.”

Antonov last worked on the pitch for Team Fortress 2 and has since grown dissatisfied with the way Valve has approached the development of the Half-Life franchise, focusing on episodes rather than delivering another AAA project.

His current project is Dishonored, the first-person action and stealth game that allows the player to use a wide variety of weapons, items and supernatural powers in order to navigate a steampunk city and solve a number of mysteries.

Antonov is the chief visual design director working on Dishonored, which is set to arrive during October on the PC, the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3.

The game uses a very distinct style, which mixes elements from European history with standard fantasy and steampunk elements.

The co-directors working on Dishonored are Harvey Smith and Ralph Colantonio, who are well known for their work on action games.

Valve has not announced any clear plans for the future of the Half-Life series.

Via: Former Valve Developer Says Company Got Too Big

Scientists at the Michigan State University (MSU) have determined in a new study that the human brain has a tough time learning a new task after the rules have changed. The process is prone to error, and it takes a longer time for people to master these skills than it would if they learned something altogether new.

The example the research team gives is that of a person traveling to the United Kingdom, and suddenly having to drive on the left side of the road. Even though they know all the rules and regulations, adapting to performing all required actions in the mirror is unbelievably difficult.

In such cases, the tendency of the brain is to suppress the old rules and focus on the new ones at the same time. This action takes a lot of effort and resources to complete, which opens the way for many errors. In some cases, the consequences of such error are more significant than in others.

“There’s so much conflict in your brain, that when you make a mistake like forgetting to turn on your blinker you don’t even realize it and make the same mistake again. What you learned initially is hard to overcome when rules change,” the MSU team writes.

Via: Changing Rules Makes the Learning Process More Difficult

Remember that time when Gerard Butler almost died while shooting a scene for a surfer movie? The first trailer for it, a passion project of Butler's called “Chasing Mavericks,” has finally arrived online.

Check it out below in full.

The film tells the story of real-life surfer Jay Moriarity whose love for the sport of surfing pressed him on to take on the biggest challenge of his life: ride the dangerous waves at Mavericks in Northern California.

He is played by Jonny Weston in the film, while Butler plays the legendary Frosty Hesson, who (at first reluctantly) helps him train for the challenge in a record time of several weeks.

Elisabeth Shue, Abigail Spencer and Leven Rambin also star, with Curtis Hanson on the director's chair.

“Chasing Mavericks” is scheduled for theatrical release on October 26.



Via: Gerard Butler Is Surfer, Mentor in First Chasing Mavericks Trailer

AMD is in no hurry to upgrade its Brazos 2.0 nettop and netbook platform as Intel’s own Atom is very much behind in performance and manufacturing technology. The A68 chipset has brought USB 3.0 support, but the company is working hard on the new Jaguar APU and the Yangtze FCH.

The company is taking the tablet market very serious and considering that the tablet sales in the following years will be much more than all the global PC sales from 2012, all the work for the Jaguar APU and the supporting platform is very important for AMD’s future.

For energy efficient platforms, low power consumption and features integration are probably the most important aspects.

Therefore the Yangtze FCH doesn’t bring extraordinary performance features, but rather brings increased feature integration and a much needed power efficiency.

Tablet specific functions like the xHCI 1.0 and SD/SDIO 3.0 support will reportedly come inside AMD’s new chipset and the 7.8 watts TDP AMD’s Bolton dissipates will likely be reduced in the Yangtze chipset.

The xHCI 1.0 is a different way of managing the USB devices connected to the chipset and the SD/SDIO 3.0 support means that there will be no need for an additional SD Card reading controller to be added to the platform.

AMD’s Jaguar APU will likely use a more powerful or rather more advanced iGPU than the Richland desktop APU.

Both will come with Steamroller x86 cores that are said to be 15% better than Piledriver, but considering that the desktop domain is not the main issue for AMD right now, the new chipsets will be just as interesting and innovative as the new APUs.

AMD is leaving the FM2 and AM3+ desktop platforms stay alive and largely unmodified until next summer, but then new chipsets are likely to come to the market together with the Steamroller upgrade.


Via: AMDs Yangtze Brings xHCI 1.0 and SD/SDIO 3.0 Support

Colorful a Chinese video card manufacturer seems to be determined to make a strong and lasting impact in the video card market. Fortunately for video card enthusiasts, the company is not willing to do this by using lower prices, questionable quality or high sales volumes, but by using innovative designs and powerful configurations.

The company has decided to launch the world’s first fanless Nvidia GeForce GTX 680 graphics adapter and it has been working on the design from some months.

Colorful’s innovative design uses a two part cooling system with detachable components that have absolutely no moving parts.

The main piece is the principal cooling heatsink that’s directly attached to the video card’s PCB and the GPU.

Enthusiasts will be pleased to find out that there is a second cooling part that will attach to the main one in order to provide additional heat dissipation capacity to allow the user to overclock the device or use it in hotter environments that require additional cooling.

The video card will reportedly come with double the reference video memory quantity.

Therefore, Colorful has decided to use 4 GB of GDDR5 video memory on its fanless Nvidia GeForce GTX 680 video card.

This will ensure higher frame rates and generally better performance when running 3D applications in very high resolutions.

The new card will be called Colorful iGame GTX 680 and will also come with various overclocking features.

We’re not quite sure if overclocking features are the best fit for a quiet, fanless video card, but we’re glad Colorful is working hard on building a quality graphics adapter.

The video card comes with a dual 8-pin power connector setup and a dual-VRM design with a special “extra” VRM card that will be user connectable when needed for overclocking.

Unfortunately we will have to wait until September to see the card on the store shelf.




Via: Worlds First Fanless GTX 680 Video Card Details Exposed

The two Softpedia reviews for this week are: Civilization V: Gods & Kings, the turn-based strategy from Firaxis, and Dead Trigger.

When it comes to Quick Looks, we have one for Orcs Must Die 2.

We also have the two Gamer Diaries, one wrapping up our almost month-long look at cycling with PCM 2012 and another linked to Sins of a Solar Empire- Rebellion, the solid strategy title that was launched by Ironclad.

As always, we also deliver Weekend Reading features dealing with the way a Nvidia GTX 670 can influce one’s experience of The Secret World and with the exploits that affect Diablo III.

We also take a look at our own gaming time with EndWeekGame and we deliver a selection of the most interesting pieces of news from the last seven days.

On Monday, Nintendo talked about the coming launch of the Wii U and how it would not be impacted by announcements from Sony and Microsoft, while gamers revealed a new glitch for Diablo III, which allowed wizard characters to become invulnerable.

Tuesday was dominated by FIFA 13, with the development team at EA Sports offering information on the Career Mode just as one of the producers revealed that he was interested in working with the Wii U and the Xbox SmartGlass.

On Wednesday, we learned that God of War: Ascension would deliver a Kratos more relatable and easier to understand, and analysts talked about the potential impact of the coming PlayStation 3 SuperSlim home console from Sony.

On Thursday, publisher Capcom teased information on a possible Western adaptation for one month-long Monster Hunter title and Gabe Newell, the leader of Steam creator Valve, declared that the coming Windows 8 was a catastrophe for PC gaming because it was a closed system.

On Friday, DICE revealed information about the Aftermath expansion for Battlefield 3 and EA Sports talked about cheating in FIFA 13.

On Saturday, the developers offered more information about Dishonored, while Capcom talked about zombies in Resident Evil 6.

Via: A Gamers Week: July 29

You’d think that the shares of a company that has its factories under water would be dropping in value. Well, usually you’d be right, but when that company holds half of the world’s HDD supply in its pocket, the share price is only going up.

You really need to check out the first and the second part of this series before reading any further.

Investors knew that if there was no competition left, the HDD prices and the rate of development would be at the mercy of the two giant HDD makers.

WD’s share price almost doubled from the $24 it was in October last year and reached a high $44 this May.

This is almost a 100% share price increase, and it was most likely fueled by the company’s own intensive buying of its own shares that sent the price up.

The initial share buyback amounted to more than $2 billion, and once the company stopped buying, the share fell to about $34, but that’s still almost 50% higher than it was just 8 or 9 months before.

Seagate’s shares went from $9 in October to about $32 in May of this year, and that was a 355% increase of the share value.

There’s nothing stopping these two giants setting whatever price they desire for their products, and the authorities did absolutely nothing to stop this from happening.

In fact, the authorities even helped WD negotiate a deal with Toshiba, so that the Japanese small HDD maker would buy some IP and equipment and pose as a third 3.5” HDD maker.

Now, WD and Seagate have a hybrid 3.5” HDD puppet called Toshiba to point at when anybody inquires about the de facto duopoly in the global hard disk drive market.

Getting back to WD’s latest profits, we see the company proudly announcing that they’ve managed to generate a whole $1.1 billion in cash and some more in cash equivalents.

Basically, WD made $3.2 billion in cash equivalents this quarter and spent $584 million in cash to repay a debt and $604 million to buy back even more shares.

Make sure you read the fourth part of our HDD market analysis here, and find out how you’re getting robbed by the HDD makers.

Enjoying Market Manipulation – Western Digital Posts Huge Profits Again – Part 4

Via: Enjoying Market Manipulation Western Digital Posts Huge Profits Again Part 3

Bing Gordon, one of the legendary figures of the video game industry, believes that the current strategy at Nintendo will see the company leave the hardware business after the launch of the Wii U home console.

Gordon, who was one of the executives behind the early success of publisher Electronic Arts, tells Games Industry that, “I think Nintendo’s already on track to become primarily a software company. We saw that with Sega back in the day; Sega made some missteps and became primarily a software company.”

He admitts that Nintendo is in better shape than SEGA ever was during its own hardware phase, mainly because of the quality of the leadership and the game developers.

Bing Gordon also speaks about the pressure on Nintendo, saying, “Apple’s most directly competitive with Nintendo. So far, when Miyamoto makes a perfect game, in his career he makes games worth $200 – it’s worth buying a system for. I think the handheld is going to be under a lot of pressure. I can imagine a day when Nintendo wonders – and maybe it’s generational change – when Nintendo wonders if they ought to take some of their best games and make them apps.”

The former video game executive, who now works at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, would love to see a future where the lack of a hardware platform allows Nintendo to deliver games on Apple devices.

But he is sure that the talent of Shigeru Miyamoto is enough to keep the 3DS and the Wii U afloat for the coming future.

Nintendo has not yet announced a price or a clear launch date for the new Wii U home console, although the company has promised it will be out before the Christmas shopping season.

The 3DS has also managed solid sales during the last few months, after a problematic debut.

Via: Former EA Executive Sees Software Only Future for Nintendo

German company Xilence has just launched a new mini-ITX case featuring improved cooling and support for powerful video cards. The new case will perfectly fit mini-ITX mainboards and powerful processors.

Xilence’s new mini-ITX computer case is called Torino and is part of the company’s SQ series.

It features a large 120-millimeter intake fan in the front and a smaller 80-millimeter fan in the back. This means that the case has every chance to fill up with dust, as the front filter is a simple metal mesh and will not be able to keep the dust out.

The case is well built and even features a 5.25” bay where we would recommend mounting Ivy Dock’s innovative MB994IPO-3SB Dual-HDD enclosure that we reported about here.

This way, your new mini-ITX case will be able to house two more 2.5” storage drives, may those be SSDs or HDDs.

The front of the case will be illuminated by the 120mm fan and it also features two USB 3.0 ports and the usual D audio jacks.

The inside of Xilence’s new Torino mini-ITX computer case will allow mounting of coolers with a height of up to 10.5 centimeters and video cards with a length of maximum 27 centimeters, featuring a double-slot cooling system.

The front of the case also sports two hot-swap 2.5” bays that will house properly-sized HDDs or SSDs.

On the inside, Xilence’s new Torino mini-ITX computer case also has support for two 3.5” HDDs for a total of maximum four HDDs.

Unfortunately, the power supply needs to be in a small form factor unlike Cooler Master’s Elite 120 Advanced mini-ITX case that we reported about here.



Via: Xilence Launches Torino SQ Series Mini-ITX Case

One of the studios in charge of the Silent Hill series is currently under review and might be closed down in the near future.

Kuju has confirmed that it is evaluating the performance of Vatra and will arrive at a conclusion soon.

A statement from the company reads: “The new management team at Kuju have been conducting a strategic review of all aspects of the business, as part of this process the on-going business activities of the Vatra studio are currently under review, however, at this stage no decisions have yet been made.”

Vatra is made up mostly of employees coming from illusion Software and 2K Czech.

Kuju has a long-term partnership with publisher Konami, linked to the Silent Hill series.

When Downpour was launched earlier during the year, it received mixed reviews and some fans of the franchise were very vocal about criticizing all the changes made by Vatra.

Via: Silent Hill: Downpour Studio Might Be Closed Down

The pair of developers who are currently leading work on Dishonored believe that the nature of the gaming industry makes innovation more difficult, but they are also pushing for titles to become more interactive.

Raf Colantonio, the co-creative director working on Dishonored at Arkane, tells Gamasutra that, “When you think about the '80s and '90s, every game was a new genre, almost.”

He adds, “Every art always needs references, and it's usually an iteration of something else, or a fusion between two things that you like and then you bring in something in the middle. I don't think there is anything wrong with that.”

The evolution of the industry means that genres are now more clearly defined and every developers need to decide early on what kind of experience they plan to create and how they will fit inside their own space.

Colantonio believes that modern games can be innovative by taking solid mechanics from two big influences and by mixing them in order to create a derivative experience that does not feel broken.

The creative director and his peer, Harvey Smith, are both passionate about video games that offer the player choice, both when it comes to the tools that he will use to solve a challenge and to the way he will deal with characters.

Dishonored puts gamers in the role of Corvo, a former bodyguard who has been framed for killing the Queen he was supposed to be protecting.

He has supernatural powers, ranging from silent movement to body possession, and an arsenal of weapons and gadgets that will be needed in order to uncover who’s to blame for his situation and a wider conspiracy.

Dishonored is set to be launched on the PC, the PlayStation 3 and the Xbox 360 on October 9 of this year in North America and three days later in Europe.

Via: Dishonored Developers Want More Interactive Games

An extremely active planetary system has been detected around the nearby star Eta Corvi, by astronomers using the infrared NASA Spitzer Space Telescope. Its sensitive detectors identified signs of multiple collisions going on around the star, probably between comets and planets.

What Spitzer is detecting are clues pointing to a devastating scenario, where a massive comet was recently disintegrated following a large-scale collision with a rocky exoplanet. The event would have split the original comet into the debris field the telescope is detecting.

In this image, “a glowing red flash captures the moment of impact on the planet. Yellow-white Eta Corvi is shown to the left, with still more comets streaming toward it,” NASA explains. The event most likely produced a belt of dust and other debris around the impacted planet.

A similar situation may have occurred within our own solar system, during a period that spanned between 4.3 and 3.8 billion years ago, called the Late Heavy Bombardment. On the bright side, this is when Earth is believed to have acquired most of its water, and potentially the first seeds of life.

Via: Spitzer Sees Rain of Comets Around Nearby Star

Canonical today, July 18th, on the Ubuntu One blog, that they've just released a Java library that will allow access to files stored on your personal Ubuntu One cloud storage account.

This means that using this Java library any developer can now build applications that will have built-in support for the Ubuntu One cloud storage, allowing users to access their files.

"You can bundle it with the Ubuntu SSO Java library and harness Ubuntu One cloud storage in your apps. The Ubuntu One Files Java library allows you to talk to the Ubuntu One REST API from Java."

The Ubuntu One Java library has no Android dependencies, which means that it's suitable for use in applications built with Java SE 1.6 runtime, as well as Android apps.

For detailed documentation about the Ubuntu One Java library, how to download it, implemented it, etc. you can check out the official blog announcement.


Via: Ubuntu One Files Java Library Released

José Antonio Rey proudly announced a few hours ago, July 17th, that the Ubuntu on Air! project is now live.

Ubuntu on Air is an idea discussed by some Ubuntu developers and contributors at the Ubuntu Developer Summit for Ubuntu 12.04 LTS (Precise Pangolin), during the IRC Workshops sessions, which consists on a series of broadcasts via Google+ Hangouts.

"Last UDS, we were in the IRC Workshops sessions, when a huge idea came out. We all know the developer announcements for the releases as Fridge posts, and classroom sessions as IRC-based."

"But we wanted something else, something where people could actively interact with our instructors, or with our developers. That’s why, we decided to launch Ubuntu on Air!" José Antonio Rey said earlier today on his blog.

Image credits: OlisStudios

Ubuntu on Air! is a new project designed to help Ubuntu users easily interact with Ubuntu instructors, leaders, developers, etc. in real time.

The best part of Ubuntu on Air is that the sessions will also be streamed live via a dedica ted YouTube channel.

Ubuntu users will be able to ask questions related to the Ubuntu operating system, but they will also be informed about releases, and classes for the Classroom project.

"We’ve set up an IRC channel for you to participate, and we’ve got a dedicated YouTube channel, so you can replay past sessions."

"We’ve even got a bot to do some hard work on IRC! We’ll be using it to give some developer news, as well as Classroom sessions" José Antonio Rey explained in the blog announcement.

The first session of Ubuntu on Air will take place next Thursday, July 26th, at 18 UTC, and it will host Benjamin Kerensa with the Developer News, and Brian Murray explaining how important are bugs in creating a successful Ubuntu release.

Users will be able to chat in the #ubuntu-on -air channel on irc.freenode.net.

Via: Ubuntu on Air Is Now Live

Made official back in February, Samsung Galaxy mini 2 hit shelves one month later in the UK. In the meantime, the Android smartphone was introduced in most regions.

Vodafone Australia launched the Galaxy mini 2 a while ago with Android 2.3.6 Gingerbread onboard. Today, the carrier announced that a minor software update is available for Galaxy mini 2.

According to the carrier, the small update is meant to fix two bugs, though these issues are not detailed yet. For the time being, the update is only available via Samsung Kies desktop software, but a FOTA (firmware over the air) will be made available later.

It is also worth mentioning that the maintenance update is released in stages, so not all Galaxy mini 2 owners will get it at the same time.

Via: Vodafone Australia Pushes Android 2.3.6 Update for Samsung GALAXY Mini 2

With yesterday's updates, Canonical made some changes to the upcoming Ubuntu 12.10 (Quantal Quetzal) operating system, regarding the Date and Time Indicator.

After revamping the Session menu Indicator last week, the Ubuntu developers added sorting support to the multiple time zones function in the Date and Time Indicator of the upcoming Ubuntu 12.10 operating system.

Therefore, users who have added multiple time zones can now easily sort them by name or by time, accessing the "Time & Date Settings -> Clock tab -> Choose Locations" dialog.

Moreover, it appears that a new function has been added to the Date and Time Indicator, called Time in auto-detected location.If checked, it will automatically insert the current location of the Ubuntu machine.

However, considering that Ubuntu 12. 10 is in Alpha development stage, everything is subject to change. We will keep you informed about future changes.

Via: Ubuntu 12.10 Allows Users to Sort Time Zones

SSD manufacturer Silicon Power has accustomed us with affordable, yet modest-performing SSDs over the past years, and now the company is introducing a performance-optimized SSD based on LSI’s SandForce 2281 controller. The novelty is called Velox V70 and uses the SATA III interface.

The performance improvements in Silicon Power’s Velox V70 SSD are due to the use of higher grade Toggle/Synchronous NAND and a new version of firmware.

In the storage industry, and especially the SSD business, firmware has a great impact on the product’s performance and it may mean the difference between a high-end drive and a low-end SSD, while both may be using the same hardware.

The best example is Marvell’s famous 88SS9174 controller that’s used in Crucial’s M4 series, but also power OCZ’s high-end Vertex 4 line.

Silicon Power touts a 557 MB/s ideal read speed and 507 MB/s write speed with a random 4K write performance up to 86,000 IOPS.

The manufacturer acknowledges SandForce’s inability to provide overall sustained performance, and thus mentions the fact that when uncompressed files are used, the read speed will only reach 500 MB/s.

Silicon Power also states that the NAND flash used in the new Velox V70 SSD is of higher grade than what’s used for other products in the manufacturer’s lineup and thus offers a longer life span.

The problem is that the company is not keen on c learly displaying the P/E cycle certification for its new drive and we believe that this would be mandatory for flash storage manufacturers.

Velox V70 SSD is backed by a 3-year warranty and comes in 60 GB, 120 GB, 240 GB and 480 GB versions.

Pricing has not been made available yet.



Via: Silicon Power Intros Velox V70 SSD

One of the leading developers working on the upcoming Total War: Rome 2 has revealed that there are no home consoles powerful enough to run the series and that the development team could easily create a control scheme adapted to the platforms if the hardware becomes available.

Mike Simpson, the studio director of The Creative Assembly, tells Eurogamer that, “Total War on console, the reason it’s not there has never been about control. There has never been a control reason not to have the game on console – that’s not the problem.

"It’s a difficult design problem, trying to figure out how to control a game like that with a pad, but even that is a solvable problem – it just requires some clever design.”

The main problem is that no console is currently powerful enough to allow a battlefield with 10,000 soldiers engaged in battle to be simulated.

Simpson adds, “Now, it may be that at some point in the future, some of those constraints disappear, and at that point, then yeah, some possibilities open up. I’m not saying that we’ll actually go down those routes – it depends how things turn out. They’re not there at the moment – those routes don’t exist. They may, or may not, turn up in the future.”

Considering that Microsoft and Sony are set to announce details about their new devices in the near future and the Total War designer probably has enough information about them to know whether they are powerful enough to run the Total War series.

The second game in the series based on the Roman setting aims to blend naval and land battles and will offer players more opportunities to take decisions that shape the game world around them.

Total War: Rome 2 will be launched exclusively on the PC at some point during the fall of 2013.

Via: Home Consoles Are Not Powerful Enough for Total War: Rome 2

David Tavares, the developer of Pear Linux, has announced today, July 16th, that the fifth iteration of the Pear Linux operating system is now available for download.

Pear Linux 5 (previously known as Pear OS and Comice OS) comes with thousands of free applications and it is designed to do everything you need it to.

"Pear Linux 5 is a fast, stable, and powerful operating system for everyday use. It's completely free to use, study, and share," David Ta vares said in the official release announcement.

Pear Linux 5 is built on top of the GNOME 3 interface, powered by Pear Linux Shell, which is a modification of GNOME Shell to look like a Mac OS desktop. It also includes a Launchpad viewer, which creates pages for all your apps, allowing you to switch between them using your trackpad.

One of the most highlighted apps of Pear Linux 5 is the Pear Appstore, which features parallel downloading, resuming of downloads, updates notifier, cache cleaner, and one-click installation.

"Software Repository gives you a handy way to choose and install desired applications by one click. With powerful mufti-threaded download back-end, they are available to you in a shortest time limited only by your network connection," said David Tavares, Pear Linux developer.





Above you can enjoy some screenshots of the Pear Linux 5 distribution, provided by David Tavares. The following system requirements are recommended for a fresh Pear Linux 5 installation:

· Intel Pentium III 500 MHz or higher CPU;
· At least 512 G B of RAM (1 GB recommended);
· At least 8 GB HDD free space;
· Supported graphics card capable of 800x600 or 1024x768 resolution: Nvidia, ATI/AMD, Intel, SiS, Matrox, VIA (3D desktop effects require a video card with 3D acceleration).

Pear Linux 5 is distributed as Live DVD ISO images supporting both the 32-bit and 64-bit architectures.

Download Pear Linux 5 right now from Softpedia.

Via: Pear Linux 5 Officially Released

Well-known power supply unit (PSU) and computer case manufacturer Enermax has just shown four new case cooling fans using its patented Twister bearing technology. This new technology claims lower operating noise and longer mean time between failure (MTBF).

We don’t really see what would prolong the life of these fans in real life, but until real benchmarks become available, we’ll take Enermax’s word for it.

Probably the most important aspect about these four fans is the fact that they use the new Batwing blades and the manufacturer claims these bring a 30 percent increase in air flow.

We would certainly like to test this in our labs before purchasing the new cooling fans.

The model names for today’s subjects reportedly are UCEV14, UCCL14, UCTB14P and UCTB14B.

They all sport a 139 millimeters diameter and are 25 millimeters tall while coming with 3-pin or 4-pin PWM power cables.


Via: Enermax Shows Four New Twister Fans

With Le Tour de France taking place in the real world, the big review on the Games section of Softpedia this week is that for Pro Cycling Manager 2012, the simulation and management game which has been created by Cyanide and published by Focus Home Interactive.

We also have a review for Gas Guzzlers: Combat Carnage.

When it comes to Game Diaries, we still have two running in parallel, one for PCM 2012, which details my own exploits in the virtual competition and compares them to the real world, and one for Sins of a Solar Empire - Rebellion, the strategy game Ironclad Games.

On the Quick Look front we have an article about the Gods & Kings expansion for the turn-based strategy Civilization V from Firaxis and one for The Secret World, a new mystery-oriented MMO from developer Funcom.

This week, the Weekend Reading features talk about the reasons that gamers have for not finishing the games they start and one about summer sales.

As always, we also have an EndWeekGame piece about our free gaming time and a selection of the most important video game news of the week that passed.

On Monday, Sony talked about next-generation consoles and retail sales, while the developer of Total War: Rome 2 suggested a darker take on warfare and its effects.

On Tuesday, Michael Fassbender, one of the best leading men of recent years, has been linked with the Assassin’s Creed movie project, while Starbreeze, the developers of the Syndicate remake, have denied that they have any free-to-play project in development.

New details for the Earth DLC for Mass Effect 3 were leaked and an analyst stated that the Xbox 720 will cost 99 dollars and will include a cable subscription on Wednesday.

Thursday, Rockstar released some new information and two new screenshots for GTA V, while the Earth DLC for Mass Effect 3 became official and was revealed as coming for free to all players.

Friday, Steam introduced its Summer Sale, while Arkane talked about the art style of Dishonored.

On Saturday, we saw the first images of the new PlayStation 3 model, a nd Maxis assured gamers that SimCity would not have the online issues of Diablo III.

Via: A Gamers Week: July 15