In light of the EA Maxis' Spore going gold, concern once again has hit the PC gaming segment over the definite inclusion of digital rights management (DRM) software with each copy. Many have argued over the integration of SecuROM on executables of The Sims 2 and its expansions, and now that Spore producer Lucy Bradshaw has confirmed Spore will be succeeded by at least one expansion, there's a whole lot of bickering to come for PC gamers. More details at the full story.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs recently talked to the Wall Street Journal about the iPhone. During the interview, Jobs dished out a few impressive figures about the recently-launched App Store. He also talked about the iPhone "kill switch" uncovered by hackers, saying that yes, it does exist. Details in the full article.

So it would appear that some third-party developers are getting what Stardock meant - the fate of PC gaming is on the hands of the developers. BioWare, a reputable PC developer of the past, has also expanded to the console market like many others, but they aren't about to abandon the gaming platform. Speaking to MTV, CEOs Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk said that the role-play experts might keep developing PC exclusives in the long run. And there's a little hope for Apple iPhone games from them as well. More on that when you click "read more".

The cute little robotic garbage compactor known as WALL-E is definitely making its way into your households as a video game this year. Heavy Iron Studios' Keith Pope talks about the details of the upcoming cross-platform game and reveals the launch date as well. Catch the interview in the full article.

Few games for the Nintendo DS, the Nintendo Wii, the PC and Mac are as anticipated as Spore from Will Wright's crack team of developers over at Electronic Arts. It'll still be a hefty wait before we get our hands on it, but at least we've got the devs on hand to talk about it. Watch the video interview after the jump!

Ron Carmel and Kyle Gabler, founders of 2D Boy, are the creators of the 2008 Independent Games Festival finalist (IGF), World of Goo. In their interview with Gamasutra, they talk about how they were able to create such a game, their opinions on the state of the independent game developers, and their thoughts on the game itself.

What they had on their minds after the jump!

It's always a wonder why gaming is not so big in Macintosh as much as it is in Windows operating systems, and its just a shame why there's so many games that don't make it to Apples and Macintoshes. Case in point: the Half-Life franchise. Kikizo talked with Valve's big boss Gabe Newell about the issue, and things aren't looking so cool with the future of gaming in Apple's operating systems.

Newell said that he tried to talk with Apple about how to improve gaming on the Macintosh, and while they gave a positive response, he said that Apple didn't follow up on what was agreed upon:

Well, we have this pattern with Apple, where we meet with them, people there go "wow, gaming is incredibly important, we should do something with gaming". And then we'll say, "OK, here are three things you could do to make that better", and then they say OK, and then we never see them again.

An even sadder fact is that whenever Newell meets with another group sent by Apple, they were most likely unaware on what was agreed upon in previous meetings. Because of this, Newell is now convinced that Apple is not serious on gaming at all. "None of the things developers ask them to do are done," he said. "And as a result, there's no gaming market there to speak of."

It truly is a sad outlook for Macintosh users hoping to get more games in the future. Hopefully Apple will listen this time: Newell does seem to know what he is talking about after all, with his valuable inputs about managing a company as well as dealing with customers.


Check out the Read link for the entire interview!

Fighting a war on a different front, two factions have always been at each other's necks. On one side, we have the superpower called Microsoft, and across the border we have the alliance called Apple. Whichever side you root for doesn't change the fact that they've been delivering top quality games and gadgets for everyone throughout the years.

The Wire has had a chance to talk to Glenda Adams, director of development for Aspyr Games, a company responsible for bringing PC games such as The Sims 2 and Star Wars: Empire at War to the Mac. She talks about the perks and quirks of porting games from one system to another.

While the most difficult thing for making games for the Mac has always been the smaller market, her love and background with the Mac has always prompted her to go for this line compared to any alternatives.

Adams states that the difficulty in converting a PC game to the Mac isn't as hard as people think. The bulk of the work really relies on optimizing, debugging and finishing all the small details to make it compatible for the Mac is what takes up the most time. Especially now that the integration of Intel chips for the Mac has resolved more compatibility issues when converting games.

When asked about the pros of the Mac over the PC gaming-wise, she had this to say:

Installing games on the Mac is always easier than Windows, I think. And because Apple has tighter control over hardware, we have a much better chance to test and optimize our Mac games for all the hardware we support than on the PC. There are so many combinations of motherboards, sound cards, video cards, and peripherals on the PC that it can be a mess for a developer to make sure their game works on most configs.

Well, PC or Mac, it doesn't really matter in the end just as long as they deliver to us more goods to keep the gamer in us happy.

Video gaming site Shacknews recently scored a huge interview with id software's Todd Hollenshead and Tim Willits. In it, both men talk about Rage, id's upcoming title for the Mac, PC, PlayStation 3, and Xbox 360 platforms.

First off, the setting. Rage takes place after a comet hit Earth and wiped out civilization. While civilization tries to rebuild itself, players will take on the role of the hero as they try to help the remnants of humanity fight back against the new regime that's risen.

Surprisingly enough for an id title, there's a lot of racing involved in Rage. Players can soup up their cars with modifications and upgrades then head on to different towns where they can take part in races. Players will also need their car to travel around Rage's world getting missions, playing through instances and even stopping in the middle of nowhere to admire the scenery.

Of course, Rage also includes a lot of shooting. As Hollenshead said, there's a certain level of anarchy in the game as represented by the "A" in the game's logo. Side content is also a big thing in Rage, and the game looks pretty big judging from the interview. Willits references Bethesda's Oblivion by saying, "You can go and just do all the missions in the story, like in Oblivion, or you can go do other missions."

On the multiplayer side of things, Hollenshead said that he expects the game to be online on consoles. There will be co-op but versus multiplayer has yet to be decided on. According to Willits, the plan is to let players "find someone who can go on and do some co-op missions. If you finish a few, you can go do something different yourself, then go find someone to do the rest."

To find out more about Rage, click on the Read link below. The full interview's a pretty interesting read so check it out.

In a recent interview conducted by community fansite BeyondUnreal, Steve Polge sat down down with BU's hal to finalize the first of many details as Unreal Tournament III preps for an all-out invasion on the PlayStation 3, Windows PC, Mac and Xbox 360. We know start of the story, and we know what enemies we'll face, but what we still don't know, Epic Games' Polge helped single out.

 

Unreal Tournament first debuted on the PC, and in honor of that tradition the PC version has been engineered to accept low-level hardware rig setups, while allowing monster machines to take full advantage of Unreal Engine 3.  Enthusiasts will have another title to gauge their systems' performance, but budget performance PCs won't be left in the dust.

In fact, Polge mentioned low level hardware performance was a focus for UT3. "Visually, the game scales very well to a wide variety of hardware," added Polge. But it didn't turn out well for the next generation consoles: although Unreal Engine 3 has been optimized for each platform, as Epic claimed, it won't be running like liquid mercury on the Xenon-based Xbox 360 or even the CELL-packing PlayStation 3.

"The game plays a bit slower on the console versions. ... Of course, the user interface will be significantly different on PC to take advantage of mouse and keyboard input, as well as PC monitor resolution," said Polge, but he maintained that every version will be completely identical to each other in content, albeit not in features.

Epic did announce previously that PC mods can be utilized over PlayStation 3, but cross-platform multiplayer is still a question that has yet to be addressed. Polge said, "There is some aiming help [on consoles] (although the system weÂ?ve developed, while very effective, feels quite subtle)," which probably means while Epic is considering the idea, it's unlikely to push through without additional time consumed for a control balancing act.

There has been no mention of a demo yet as of press time, but we'll be keeping tabs on that.