Desperate Housewives (PC)

Blizzard
World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade (PC)

SEGA announced Rome: Total War – Alexander, the latest expansion pack for Creative Assembly's Top 10 MegaGame of 2005, Rome: Total War. Due for release on PC in June 2006, Alexander will utilize the unique gameplay of Rome to bring to life the meteoric rise of one of history's most brilliant generals: Alexander the Great.

SEGA and The Creative Assembly will offer Alexander exclusively for digital download through the Sega and Total War websites. The expansion offers an epic addition to the Total War series boasting more that 30 hours of gameplay and will feature a brand new campaign game map, spanning Alexander's unification of Greece and his subsequent conquest of the Persian Empire. The expansion pack will also include six new historical battles portraying Alexander's triumphs against the Greek, Persian, and Indian forces. These new battles will also be available for online and LAN multiplayer use.

The new historical battles in Alexander unlock sequentially, telling a story and accurately reflecting the conditions that Alexander endured and the tactics he employed.

For the first time in the Total War series, The Creative Assembly is elevating the production values and storytelling of its battles by linking them together with seven high-quality movies featuring the incredible voice talent of Brian Blessed (Alexander and Star Wars: The Phantom Menace). These movies will tell the epic story of Alexander and provide an in-depth historical backdrop to each of the battles.

The new campaign in Alexander will give players the objective of matching the achievements of one of the greatest generals in Western civilization. It adds four new factions to the original game, including the Macedonians and Persians. More than 60 new units are also now available, including Persian scythed chariots, elite immortals, and all of Alexander's most famous units, including the Hypaspists, Phalangists, and Companion cavalry.

Designed to make you smarter, wiser, and more successful, this year's sessions will cover topics such as:

*Making the mass-mobile marketplace a reality
*Understanding in-game advertising
*Successful strategies behind sponsorships, community marketing, and grass roots promotion
*Tapping the potential of downloadable games
*Cross-platform content integration: how it works and why it matters
*Understanding the Chinese marketplace
*New pay models and other trends in online gaming
*How to manage the bigger budgets of next-gen game development
*Digital downloads: what is possible today and what's in store for the future
*Videogame visionaries and their plans for the games of tomorrow
*Reaching the hardcore influencers and making the most of their networks
*Innovations in wireless broadband content

To help kick off this sure-to-be-thrilling E3 week, Sega has announced its acclaimed arcade fighter Virtua Fighter 5 will be coming exclusively to PlayStation 3 in Spring 2007.

Virtua Fighter 5 expands upon the VF4 cast by adding two new characters to go along with the complete cast of characters from each Virtua Fighter game to date. VF5 will feature high-definition graphics, supporting up to 720p. As for gameplay, Sega revealed that, much like Tekken 5 and Virtua Fighter 4: Evolution, you will be able to win in-game money through fighting which you can spend to buy accessories and colors for your desired fighter. The idea of online play was not addressed, but it is highly unlikely as the lead designer behind the VF series has said in the past that he is against it and does not expect it to appear in any Virtua Fighter game.

Despite (or perhaps due to) its comparatively small roster, the Virtua Fighter series is widely regarded as the deepest and most technical of the 3d fighters. While it remains a relatively easy game to pick up and play with its 3 button control scheme, the multiple types of traps, evades, grabs, and counters make for a very involving game.

New Tools For Wii
CRI delivers video and audio tools for Nintendo's new system.
by Anoop Gantayat

May 8, 2006 - One of Japan's most well-known development tool providers is on board with Wii. CIR Middleware, maker of the popular ADX and Sofdec sound and video libraries, has started official support for Nintendo's "new generation" console via four libraries: CRI ADX, CRI Sofdec, CRI Sound Factory and CRI ROFS.

Of these, ADX and Sofdec should be most recognizable to gamers, as logos for both have been appearing at the startup of games as far back as the Sega Saturn. ADX allows for at most 16 simultaneous audio streams, as well as support for the playback of streams from multiple audio files. Sofdec allows for multiple movies to be displayed simultaneously, with video streams even used for textures.

On Wii, Sofdec will compress a 10 minute, 6Mbps (megabit per second) bit rate movie to 450MB. The Wii implementation will support 60 frames-per-second progressive movie playback.

The other two libraries aren't as well known. CRI Sound Factory is a sound authoring system. CRI ROFS is provides a virtual file system to developers.

All four development libraries are currently available for other game systems

EDIT: also a disgrace that Crysis hasn't been mentioned anywhere on this board yet