Remember Tom Clancy? Come on, we were talking about him and the fact that Ubisoft purchased exclusive rights to use his name in computer games and related material just yesterday, and now, we already heard first news regarding a massive multiplayer online game closely related to this topic! Interesting enough? Well, read on and you'll see!

War, espionage, politics, shooting, a lot of shooting, explosions, and all that comes with it - "A major step in the development of Ubisoft" - or, to give this a name, the upcoming Tom Clancy MMO that's currently starting to take off for the development process. Now, the future game has green light, and Guillemot is trying to get a team together and start working on this new title.

While details are still in the shadows, it is known that the MMO from the Tom Clancy series has a budget of around $50 million, and that's all for now...

To be honest, if someone tells me "Tom Clancy", my mind goes "...ooooh, that FPS franchise!", but Tom Clancy, also known as Thomas Leo Clancy Jr., is a US author of political thrillers, full of technical details, most of them having the action placed during and in the aftermath of the Cold War. Obviously, Tom Clancy was in a close relashionship with Ubisoft already, but its name was also used as a brand for similar books written by ghost writers, and now this may come to an end...

...because Ubisoft announced it has purchased all the rights to the writer's name for games and related products (pheew, so I guess those ghost writers won't lose their jobs, after all). Apart from getting an undisclosed umount for selling the rights, Tom Clancy will also get payments in each of Ubisoft's next 2 fiscal years.Since 2000, Ubisoft has published no less than 18 Clancy-themed games, and Rainbow Six Vegas, the latest great hit, has sold more than 1.6 million copies only in the United States, while its sequel is expected to go even higher! The entire series have been sold in no less than 50 million copies, so... I guess Ubisoft got a pretty good asset added to its portofolio today, don't you think?

Halo 3 is one of the things that Microsoft managed to pull out as a great success, just like the previous games in the series. Now, Microsoft and Bungie keep releasing map packs on a regular basis, to enrich the Halo 3 gaming experience, and they have just announced that the Legendary Map pack will arrive pretty soon...

The official announcement says the Legendary Map Pack will become available on the 15th of April, on Xbox Live Marketplace, for 800 Microsoft poits. Just like the Heroic Map Pack, which arrived back in December, this new pack will feature 3 brand new maps.The Legendary Map Pack will include Ghost Town, a mid-size map for team and objective games, Avalanche, a huge map well suited for vehicle combat, and a surprise map, so that's one reason for us to keep our eyes on Microsoft and Budgie, and for you, to keep an eye on us, or simply subscribe to our news by email, if you haven't done that already!