Well, there you have it. ArenaNet has announce the official Global release date for their upcoming Guild Wars expansion, Factions. A day for all Guild Wars fans to rejoice. April 28th is the day to mark on your calander, and to head down to your local gaming store to pick up your copy. For those of you who just cannot wait for the release date, ArenaNet is hosting a massive beta event where all existing Guild Wars players and their friends can get an early peak at the new expansion. And to add to the sweetness, Limited Edition pre-order packages are currently available at retail stores throughout North America, so check with your local retailer!

ArenaNet , developer of the award-winning online roleplaying game Guild Wars, and NCsoft Corporation, the world's leading developer and publisher of online computer games, announce today the release date of Guild Wars Factions, the hotly anticipated second game release from the critically acclaimed studio. Guild Wars Factions will be available in stores worldwide April 28, 2006. [ Read More! ]

After years of being hailed as a nerds sporting activity, video gaming is now taking the spotlight. In recent years pushing up and now competing with film markets to become one of the top selling commodities in the world. Online gaming is always on the rise, where the cost of servers, online support is being covered by user subscriptions and real-time in game advertisements. According to the DFC Intelligence Online Game Market Forecasts, "subscription revenue from online games was $2 billion in 2005 and is expected to grow to $6.8 billion by 2011. Furthermore, subscription revenue is only one part of the online game business equation. Advertising and digital distribution revenue are also expected to grow significantly." [ Read More! ]

‘Turning Games into a New Kind of Art’: that was the headline in The New York Times on January 21, of an article about a games exhibition – and provides all the more proof that to an ever increasing degree digital games are part of popular culture. In addition, digital games unite multiple disciplines such as film, photography, theatre and architecture. The medium appears to have begun an unstoppable advance, and forces – or tempts – us to a redefinition of our everyday environment. In its exhibition ‘Next Level’, the Stedelijk Museum shows work by artists and designers who make the vocabulary of games their own, and provide us with their personal reflection on it. ‘Next Level: Art, Games & Reality’ runs through June 18, 2006, in Stedelijk Museum CS. [ Read More! ]

New Australian developer Hidden Waters has announced their first project, a fantasy based massively multiplayer online role playing game entitled Restless World. Utilizing a heavily modified version of Garage Games' Torque Engine, RW will offer a unique fantasy realm not tied to the more traditional Tolkien archetype. Players will be able to choose from ten character classes, increase a variety of skills through repeated use, and unleash death upon their foes with a mana based spell system.

Restless World is a MMORPG that is based on our own, original set of rules. It is set in a varied 3D world full of all sorts of interesting creatures, which are unique to this world and not drawn from a Tolkeinesque world. There are no standard fantasy races like elves and dwarves, but players have access to a character palette with enough variation of physical appearance that they may create a character that resembles one of these races. [ Read More! ]

"Everyone is talking about more or less the same opportunities." says Jeffery Anderson, CEO of Turbine. "The goal for all the different studios, regardless of your product, is how you're going to maximize revenue.

He adds, "Today, a lot of revenue is being created by a small audience. In fact, the people who are paying most of the profits in the games we're running are the casual user, the people who are using the game lightly, a couple hours a week. They're the ones with the lowest variable cost.

"Ironically, they subsidize heavy users who are who are -- from a subscription basses -- a poorer value proposition. Right now, everyone is trying to figure out ways to do two things simultaneously."

He adds, "One is diversify revenue streams so you get away from doing hardcover books into doing paperback books and comics. We're trying to get away from the heavy priced subscription side. And conversely, we're tying to go after the intellect because the intellect should be treated differently. So when you see somebody who's willing to pay a hundred to two hundred dollars a year for item transactions, we also want to capture that revenue." [ Read More! ]

World of Warcraft is everywhere. Even the GameSHOUT.com radio staff is playing this game on a role-playing realm. There are over 4.5 million subscribers playing this game and people can't seem to get enough of it.

If you haven't played WoW (also known as World of Warcraft) by Blizzard Entertainment, you can download a 14-day free trial from FilePlanet. The trial includes 4 additional days over the standard 10-day trial available to non-subscribers of FilePlanet. All you do is fill out a quick form and then download. [ Read More! ]

Imagine you are a furniture dealer with a nice steady business, buying and selling, when one day you sell a rare antique chair and find that it magically replicates itself. The customer gets his chair, you get the cash and you still have the chair to sell again. You discover that it wasn't a one-off. You can make it happen again and again. What would you do?

Endlessly reproducing the chair would be conning the customer in a way: to some degree at least, the chair's value is linked to its rarity. Would your conscience get the upper hand? Or would you start duplicating and selling like mad to get as much money as you could before you were found out and/or the market collapsed?

It sounds an unlikely dilemma. Chairs don't magically replicate themselves. But this seems to be exactly what happened in the world of Everquest II, an online computer game. However, before you jump to the conclusion that this was a virtual-world scam involving just virtual-world money, stop. This is real money we're talking about. For this is a story about two types of money: game gold and US dollars. And the point is that you can sell one for the other. [ Read More! ]

CDC Corporation (Nasdaq: CHINA) announced it signed an agreement to acquire Gametea.com, an online casual games platform in China, through its 81%-owned subsidiary, China.com Inc.

Gametea currently offers its 10 million registered users over 80 online board and poker games. It has an active user base of over 1 million and its game portal reaches a concurrent user base of close to 90,000 during recent peak periods.
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Larkin was able to cash in because of the growing popularity of massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs), which now draw more than 20 million players globally. Alongside the multiplayer universe is a marketplace for the virtual characters and other assets created online.

Some big name corporate players have started to get into the business of virtual asset trading, which is so hot that some industry experts say it may be overheated.

Still, virtual asset trading has a long way to go before it rival's eBay's multibillion-dollar revenue. [ Read More! ]

Are phishing crews paying more attention to virtual worlds? Phishing attacks on massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs) have been around since at least 2002, and perhaps earlier. But some observers of online games say the growing market for virtual currency and player accounts may be attracting fresh attention from phishing scams, which are mass-mailing "bait" e-mails seeking to capture gamers' account logins.

Phishing attacks most commonly target banks, credit card companies and payment sites such as Paypal. This year phishers have expanded their target list to include smaller regional banks and credit unions. While phishing attacks on online games aren't new, they may represent a logical area of expansion for these scams, given the growing value of player accounts, the youthful demographics of online gaming, and a recent influx of new players due to the popularity of World of Warcraft. [ Read More! ]