I’m pleased to see this being set up by one of my local universities; I was present for the launch of GameCity and the announcement of this:
An archive to preserve the history of videogames is being set up by university experts.
Nottingham Trent University says the global videogames industry is worth about £22bn and steps are [...]

NPR ran a piece the other day headlined with the abominably delicious pun “In Tough Economic Times, Video Games Console”
It’s a rather fluffy piece, but is a non-specialist press pointer to an important trend: Entertainment does well during times of recession, and games are growing much faster than any other form at the moment.
Boing Boing [...]

We’ve only had a vague idea of what UK based Emote are up to until now, as they’ve been keeping their technology close to their chest, only demoing it behind closed doors at GDC this year.
Some details on their first project are now coming to light though, with Develop reporting on a collaboration with Avalanche [...]

East Midlnads based Monumental Games have won £300,000 of funding from the Technology Strategy Board, they announced yesterday.
It makes a lot of sense, as networked technology is looking like one of the safest bets in games at the moment.
I do wonder if Rocco wrote this or it was written for him, as press release quotes [...]

Bruce Sterling gave a keynote at the Austin Game Developer’s Conference, and Rudy Rucker quickly posted a transcript of the talk. He manages to use a set of nonsense words to illustrate how the present regards the past, presenting his talk as someone from the future talking about our present. The entire thing is entertaining [...]

Interesting and rather provocative quote on MTV Multiplayer, from CEO of Activision Bobby Kotick:
“[Their] version of ‘Guitar Hero’ generated far more in revenues than any Aerosmith album ever has,” said Kotick. “Merchandising, concert sales, their ability to sign a new contract [have] all been unbelievably influenced by their participation in ‘Guitar Hero.’”
An Aerosmith rep was [...]

(EDIT: Apparently, Google are not buying Valve, but I’m suspicious. Both companies seem to have been fairly evasive, with Valve’s “This is 100% rumour” not being a flat out denial, and Google refusing to nix the speculation. Nicholas Lovell reinforces the quote from Kim Pallister below: Content doesn’t make much sense for Google, but Steam [...]

Take-Two’s shares tumbled 24% this week on the news that EA was no longer interested in buying them. “Strategic mistake” seems like an understatement.
The most interesting part of the whole thing is that, while Take-Two own Rockstar, their latest contracts with Sam and Dan Houser end next February. This is being reported with full on, [...]

Techcrunch highlighted Facebook app Packrat on Monday, which seems to be causing a bit of a disturbance there. In a piece titled “Facebook Isn’t A Social Network. And Stop Trying to Make New Friends There”, Michael Arrington writes:
A big part of the game is “stealing” cards from friends, and so a lot of users add [...]

A couple of stories this week highlighted the current boom in games. Not only were analyst forecasts for UK game sales doubled recently, but Chief Exec of HMV Simon Fox told The Sun:
“Within the next 12 to 18 months, it’s possible games will be bigger than music for us.
“Music is in our DNA and we [...]