"I am a gamer myself, and I really wanted to create a video game that I could play with my kids."
That’s what Steven Spielberg declared recently regarding the new video game in which production it is involved, called Boom Blox, in collaboration with Electronic Arts.

After winning three Academy awards, the movie director started to think in this new video game about players building and manipulating groups of blocks offering them the possibility to build their own levels.



The game modes established are single player, co-op and versus with more than 300 levels and over 30 funny characters.
Spielberg is very fascinated about gaming and this is ot the first time he comes u with a new idea for a new game, as he put the bases for The Dig, a point-and-click game developed by LucasArts, and currently the director is working at another project with EA which is an action adventure game, “set against the backdrop of an epic story” as he said.



For this one though no title or release date was made public yet but what we know is that it’ll be developed for PS3, Xbox 360 and personal computers.
But we know that Bloom Blox will come out in May this year for Nintendo Wii first and after a short time we can expect a mobile version too.

According to the RealNetworks survey conducted among 1,500 RealGames players, 90% of the casual gamers are watching the streaming video ads in order to play games for free, and 34% of those interviewed would even click on the in-game ads t read more about the product advertised.

A recent report coming from the Yankee Group showed that in 2006, the global in-game advertising generated $77.7 million and it will reach $971.3 until 2011.

The detailed results of the survey showed that 55% of the respondents would watch any ad, 34% would watch only the relevant ads for their interests, 31% of the players would like watching the ads for the relevance plus their needs, and when they had to choose which products and service would they prefer to see in the ads over 50% opted for entertainment activities such as music and movies, 30% would watch hair and skin care products ads, followed by home and cleaning products.

AGEIA Technologies is known as a specialist in gaming physics and many companies have used its PhysX software in developing over 140 games for PS3, Xbox 360, Nintendo Wii and personal computers, AGEIA reaching this way more than 10,000 registered users of the PhysX SDK.

Besides this, the company became famous after building the PhysX processor which was the world’s first dedicated hardware physics processor.

On the other hand, NVIDIA, the inventor of graphic processing units which revolutionized the entire gaming industry, becoming the world’s leader in visual computing technologies, has just announced the acquisition of AGEIA which was also focused on creating never-before-seen gaming environments, and the new fusion is to deliver the GefOrce models based on PhysX to hundreds of millions of gamers worldwide.

According to AGEIA, the NVIDIA giant has the world’s best parallel computing technology and together with AGEIA’s innovation spirit creates the most powerful combination in this industry.
It didn’t pass long time since the acquisition and the AGEIA physics accelerators’ prices got lower to $100 from $150 in several places.

"The computer industry is moving towards a heterogeneous computing model, combining a flexible CPU and a massively parallel processor like the GPU to perform computationally intensive applications like real-time computer graphics," declared Mr. Huang. "NVIDIA's CUDA technology, which is rapidly becoming the most pervasive parallel programming environment in history, broadens the parallel processing world to hundreds of applications desperate for a giant step in computational performance. Applications such as physics, computer vision, and video/image processing are enabled through CUDA and heterogeneous computing."

[Thanks for the tip, Codrut Nistor!]

<-250x250 Square - left->CompAmerica introduced what might be world’s most advanced gaming PC.
It is called Super Eagle Extreme and comes with 3 NVIDIA 8800 GTS video adapters, the new Intel QX9650 processor, a high performance S-ATA RAID controller for 10 Sata-3 GB/second HDD and the support for 8GB of 800/1600 GHz dual channel memory.

The powerful computer has a not so appealing case though, or at least you can’t compare it with the one used for the $45,000 world’s most expensive gaming PC, but at least it has enough space for a top mounted 200 mm Big Boy TriCool exhaust fan, 2 front loaded HDD cages for up to 6 HDDs, 2 120 mm TriCool blue LED front fans for HDD cooling, 120 mm fan mount for VGA cooling which is an option for the window side panel, and not at last, the top tray for digital devices.

This ANTEC Thermal Housing is designed to allow 4 to 5times more thermal performance compared to the other housings, and has a perforated front bezel for air intake and space for the power supply at the bottom of the case.
The hard disk cages are designed as air ducts to guide the air flow more efficiently, while there is also an option to add a middle 120 mm fan bracket for video cards and processor cooling.

The advanced cooling system includes 1 top 200 mm TriCool fan with 3-speed switch control, 1 rear 120mm TriCool fan with 3-speed switch control, 2 front 120mm special black TriCool blue LED fans with 3-speed switch control to cool HDDs, 1 optional side 120mm fan to cool graphic cards, and 1 optional middle 120mm fan to cool CPU or graphic cards.

The 9 drive bays can be arranged in the following combinations: 3 external each of 5.25 inches and 6 internal each of 3.5 inches; 6 external each of 5.25 inches and 3 internal each of 3.5 inches; all 9 external each of 5.25 inches.

Other characteristics of the ANTEC Thermal Housing for the Super Eagle Extreme include micro and standard ATX motherboard support, 7 expansion slots, power/reset button with a blue LED indicator, 2 USBs, 1 IEEE 1394, and audio.
This case has a net weight of 18.52 lb (8.4 kg) with a gross of 24.36 lb (11.05 kg), and measures 19.4 x 8.1 x 18.4 inch (49.3 cm x 20.6 cm x 46.7 cm).

Now let’s see what you get in exchange of $6,000 for the Ground Zero configuration:
You get the overclockable Intel Quad Core QX9650 with a 3GHz speed, 4 GB DDR II RAM, an Nvidia 780i SLI mainboard with support for 3 PCIE 16X, 3 Nvidia 8800 512 GTS video boards in 3-way SLI (1.5G video RAM), 4 WD Raptor 150G SATA 3GB/second stripped Raid 5 (2 x 2 stripe/mirror), the ANTEC gaming case with the advanced cooling system, the Corsair 620 Watt PS, 1 Blu Ray Burner Drive, 1 Sony DVD burner with 20x speed, Windows XP/Vista, the Logitech Gaming Keyboard Ultimate 6000, and the Logitech Laser/Mouse Ultimate.

"The theory behind the Super Eagle, is to use three 16x PCI Express Video Adapters to more than double the performance normally available from Microsoft Windows Vista and XP, running gaming software as a competitive sport." said Dr. Jack A. Shulman, company’s CEO. "We have been shipping water cooled overclockers to Extreme Gamers since the 90's, and recently Intel and nVidia have jumped on the Extreme Gamer bandwagon: it's a highly competitive field of extraordinarily skilled Video Gamers who demand the best, so we decided to make the very fastest Video Gamer in the industry, at a reasonable price."

"A fully configured SEE series runs from $2000 to $5000 or more, so expect to pay a good amount for top of the line systems," added Dr. Shulman, "but expect to also get the best performance for the price in the industry!"

ReplayGamez.com is a new game trading website in charge with certifying the games’ working conditions before trading procedures.
This is an improved video game trading alternative sustained by Richard Reid, the Vice President of Marketing, who declared:
“We’re not hands-off like most of the other sites where game exchanges take place directly between individuals with the site never seeing them. We actually receive, validate, and certify the working order of each game traded and ensure that the game traded for is the game received.”

The trading process via ReplayGamez starts with the users’ registration and continues with submitting the game for trading and the one they want in return, so when other web site’s user is interested in this offer and accepts it, both users are informed that they have to send the games to ReplayGamez via a pre-paid mailer.

After validation, the two parties are announced about the shipping of their games and they also receive a tracking number.
After finishing the game, a user can start trading it again.
The price for trading a game is of just $5.99 and you can register for free to start searching your favored games.
More than that, you get the chance to get a free game for Wii, Xbox 360, PS3 or Nintendo, if you win the launch sweepstakes.