It fits that a game about precognition should be so ahead of its time. Playing through Free Radical's psychic-themed stealth shooter today is to tick off a checklist of features big and small that have since become vogue. And yet, in other ways, Second Sight arrived just too late - a misadventure born of unlucky scheduling and scuffles with publishers that led to it launching against the superficially similar Psi-Ops and then being overshadowed by 2004's heavy hitting sequels to Halo and Half-Life.

Imperfect though it is, Second Sight pips those games to the mark in some striking innovations. You play as John Vattic, an escaped mass-murdering mental patient, imbued with incomprehensible powers and plagued by flashbacks to a military operation. Vattic's telekinesis offered physics manipulation before Half-Life 2 made it cool, and as he unravels the conspiracy of his incarceration, he's joined by Jayne - a female companion as self-possessed and sympathetic as Alyx Vance.

Characters clip into cover, peering around and over it to fire in a way that has become de rigueur following the success of Gears of War. Throughout, there's a smattering of minor technologies that have received adulation in other more successful titles: camera within camera pictures, interactive computer screens a la Doom 3, TV monitors showing security feeds from elsewhere in the level, destructible cover, cloth physics and ragdoll animation. It even satisfies Reddit's current obsession with foot-to-floor contact.

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The story of Free Radical Design begins with one of gaming's milestones, and after almost nine years it ended with the studio's blood on several publisher's hands. Founded in April 1999, the Nottingham-based studio created the much-loved shooter series TimeSplitters and third-person psychic drama Second Sight during the PS2 era. But Haze, the company's final game, received a critical mauling, sold poorly, and shortly afterwards Free Radical entered administration.

This article began with the question 'Did Haze Kill Free Radical?' But after speaking to every key figure in the company's history, the story turned out to be much bigger than the poor reception of one title. It's about how big publishers sometimes manhandle the developers they work with, and how badly they handle change. It's about how they asphyxiated one of Britain's finest independent developers, and drove an industry legend out of the games business.

Free Radical Design was founded by key members of the Rare team that made GoldenEye. Released on N64 in August 1997, it was the first classic console shooter and sold a stunning eight million copies. "I think at the time we naively believed we did everything ourselves," laughs Free Radical co-founder Steve Ellis. "We were kind of a company within a company in Rare and credited ourselves for the success of GoldenEye, without really acknowledging that many other people played a part in that."

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How bad must a game be to get refused release on Xbox?

Canadian developer Beenox is perhaps best known for its Spider-Man games: Edge of Time, Shattered Dimensions, and upcoming film tie-in Amazing Spider-Man.

But before this Beenox worked on Fist Firehead, a 3D platforming shooter set to be an exclusive for the original Xbox.

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Shadowrun creator Jordan Weisman wants to resurrect Crimson Skies.

Weisman, who is currently at the helm of the Kickstarter-fuelled, already funded Shadowrun Returns, wants to revive the Dieselpunk air-pirate series - and he's already talked with license holder Smith & Tinker about doing so.

"I'm hopeful that's another property that I can approach soon," Weisman told Shacknews. "I'm in discussions with them about that. I'm hoping that we can bring that back to life as well."

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"How long have you got to talk?" I ask Peter Molyneux at the beginning of our Skype interview.

"I've got the rest of my life."

We in the video game press aren't used to this, and I admit that I'm thrown. We're used to 10-minute interview slots - timed to perfection by a watch-tapping publicist - that rarely result in anything useful.

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Bungie has closed its support for Halo stats and released a new infographic that shows just how popular the first-person shooter series has been.

"We have followed your careers with great interest here on Bungie.net, and you have gifted us a mountain of heroic moments to memorialize," community manager DeeJ wrote. "It is with a sense of awe that we step back and admire the impact that you have had on our games, and upon our studio. Thanks for sharing your stories with us."

Since September 2004, two months before the release of Halo 2 on Xbox and the beginning of stat tracking, a whopping 20 billion games of Halo have been played online. That's 5.4 billion on Halo 2, 11.5 billion on Halo 3 and Halo: ODST, and 3.9 billion on Halo Reach. That's over two billion hours of playtime - or, 235,000 years.

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I've played roughly a billion games with moral meters that paint in broad black and white stokes with the occasional sloppy shade of grey, but only one has ever made me turn. See, I usually stick to the straight-and-narrow goodie-two-shoes path on my first playthrough of these things, but in Jade Empire, I just couldn't do it.

I spent all of my time at Master Li's school of not-so-hard knocks devoutly following the Way of the Open Palm - defending the innocent, and helping those who didn't feel like helping themselves. And I even made it through most of the drought-ridden Tien's Landing playing Kung-Fu Boyscout for a horde of overly trusting teashop owners, weak-willed ministers and cowardly townsfolk who categorically refused to solve their own damn problems.

Then it dawned on me: I hated these people.

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Microsoft patented two styles of video headsets in 2010: an aviation-styled Gaming Helmet for Xbox gamers, and a pair of sunglasses for smartphone and mobile device users.

Patentbolt unearthed the patents, which were filed in Q3 2010 and published by the USPTO early this year.

The images produced by Microsoft's eye-wear would be 16:9 and "appear to the wearer as if it were 21 inches in diagonal and viewed at arm's length".

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Update: The official Xbox website has been updated with a timeline to celebrate today's anniversary.

The timeline stretches back to 2000, when Bill Gates unveiled the Xbox at GDC 2000. "I'm announcing the Xbox, which we're modestly titling The Future of Console Gaming," said Gates at the time.

Gates unveiled the console a year later at CES 2001. He was joined on stage by wrestler Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson. "They wanted a guy like The Rock," said The Rock at the time, "powerful, exhilarating, cutting edge - that's everything that the Xbox is."

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Fans need not worry about the Fable series following Peter Molyneux's shock exit from Microsoft - so say the creators of the franchise.

Molyneux co-founded Lionhead in 1997 after leaving EA-owned Bullfrog. While there, he created Black & White, Fable, Black & White 2 and The Movies before Microsoft swooped in to buy the studio in 2006.

Fable was developed by Big Blue Box, a satellite studio of Lionhead, by founders Dene and Simon Carter. The brothers left Lionhead recently to start a new game company called Another Place Productions, a venture announced on 1st March.

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Drew Karpyshyn, the lead writer of Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic and Mass Effect 1, has retired from BioWare and video games.

The parting was "completely amicable and 100 per cent my decision", wrote Karpyshyn on his website. (His website post didn't mention his retirement from video games as a whole, but his post on Twitter did.)

He retired to focus on writing books, "screenplays and other projects". He wants to finish the first book in his own original fantasy series, Children of Fire.

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Through a locked gate, down a winding path and by a still pond a few miles outside of the leafy village of Twycross, England, a bonsai tree stands. It was a gift given to Rare by Shigeru Miyamoto, the most famous game designer in the world, as a thank-you for the game developer's critical and commercial success in creating games for Nintendo, the most famous game maker in the world.

For Rare's staff arriving to work at 8:30 sharp each morning, it has served as a reminder of the company's heritage, of who they are, of how lucky they are to be a part of something so admired, so rare. An unassuming trophy of past glories, it's also an inspiration for future goals, a symbol carefully cultivated to weather trends, transcend fashions; rooted, a gnarly resolution.

On 20th of September 2002, Microsoft paid $375 million for this bonsai tree and all that it symbolised: creative excellence, technical mastery, innovation, originality, soul and the precious fingerprints of Nintendo. The fledgling Microsoft Game Studios, desperate to acquire world-class talent that could help establish its game console, saw in that tree everything it desired to become.

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Naruto, that weird spiky-haired manga beat-'em-up franchise that spits out games you probably ignore, has achieved 10 million sales now.

Streamers!

North American people bought most of the Naruto games (4.3 million), followed by Europe (3.8 million) and then Japan (1.9 million).

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Green and white supermarket Asda believes there are 12 million "outdated" games consoles lurking in homes up and down the UK.

But what does "outdated" constitute?

"We asked people to quantify how many items (from a list) they owned but no longer used," Asda explained to Eurogamer.

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Back in October 2001, Rockstar released Grand Theft Auto 3 exclusively on PlayStation 2 and everything changed. A genre was defined by a gameplay formula that still persists to this day, many millions of copies were sold, and a megabucks franchise was born. 10 years later, Rockstar has unleashed a celebratory new version of the game for iOS and Android mobile devices - so what better opportunity for Digital Foundry to begin its long-threatened Retro Face-Off coverage?

In this article we'll be examining this iOS GTA running on iPad 2, and seeing just how Rockstar has converted it onto mobile platforms, noting the improvements made and perhaps the opportunities missed. We'll also be factoring in the PC version of the game, released seven months after the original in 2002, and most intriguingly of all we'll be examining the classic Xbox conversion, released precisely two years after the original once Sony's exclusivity period had expired.

In our usual Face-Off coverage it's rare that we actually see enormously significant differences between platforms these days. There's seldom any kind of financial imperative in making different versions of the game that utilise the respective strengths of each set of hardware to produce exciting, unique features, so instead it's all about finding a balance. With GTA3 on Xbox though, it was different, and with Rockstar Vienna on development duties the Xbox version was enormously improved over its predecessors on PS2 and PC.

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The Xbox is ten years old today.

Microsoft's debut video game console was released on 15th November 2001 in the US, and challenged Sony's PlayStation 2, Sega's Dreamcast and Nintendo's GameCube.

It was the result of research work from Microsoft's DirectX team, which included Kevin Bachus and Seamus Blackley, and production work from Ed Fries, Microsoft's game publishing boss. Then-Microsoft CEO Bill Gates unveiled the Xbox at the Game Developers Conference in 2000.

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Speaking in an interview with Develop, Cage argued that many publishers are underestimating customers' appetite for more daring game concepts.

"The games I make don't include a gun," he explained.

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That's what BioWare co-founders Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk told a packed audience at the Eurogaer Expo 2011 today.

"We've been talking a lot about that actually on and off over the years," said Ray Muzyka, BioWare CEO.

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As detailed in a blog post on its official site, the game was in development back in 2002 for unspecified consoles.

"Dungeon Duel combines fast-paced RTS strategy with the addictiveness of card game trading in a unique fantasy setting - a true RTS game built specifically with consoles and their controllers in mind," read the pitch.

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As a hormonal and tone-deaf teen I went to see Megadeth live. Despite my unfathomable love for speed metal with Sylvester the Cat-style vocals, their support act Pantera stole the show. I could only pity Megadeth for having to follow Pantera's aural sledgehammer of a performance and I feel the exact same kind of pity for Deus Ex: Invisible War - for it had the unfortunate task of following up a game that would come to be seen as a classic at a time when the technology or budget couldn't match the team's vision.

By now you've probably read or heard all about the first Deus Ex countless times in the build up to the release of Human Revolution. How it's a masterpiece, how it changed gaming, how Human Revolution has a massive legacy to live up and how Eidos Montreal's game better not be another Invisible War.

These days it seems that no one has anything good to say about the black sheep of the Deus Ex family. The mention of its name brings back old wounds for those who worked on it. Human Revolution's developers talked of the 2003 sequel as "a cautionary tale", a what-not-to-do lesson for their reboot of the franchise. Every mention of it on discussion forum involves sage nodding of heads and plenty of backslapping chat about just how dreadfully disappointing it was.

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The weapon will be supported in "special, classic playlists", according to the announcement.

The patch, due some time in October, also brings with it a number of multiplayer fixes. Armor Lock has been tweaked so that it now absorbs damage based on the amount of remaining energy a player has.

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It's a big year for Bungie. Not only does it celebrate its 20th birthday but, with the impending release of Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary, it's also formally signing off custodianship of Master Chief to 343 Industries.

With an hour-long retrospective documenting its two decades in the video game business now live on Bungie.net, community manager Eric Osborne sat down with Eurogamer to discuss leaving the lucrative bosom of one of the most successful game franchises of all time in favour of new, uncharted territory.

None of those guys ever thought it would get as big and as grandiose as it did, but of course as game-makers and storytellers they want to have as big an audience as possible, so that's always a goal that they had in their heads. At certain points throughout the project they'll say, while they never expected it to get this big, they kind of knew they had something really great. There's these moments that call out -going into first person, getting in the warthog and driving around - where it just started to cement.

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So I ran this guy over. I guess I didn't like the look of him. He gets up twice, but I pop him back down again until he runs out of getting up juice. This causes the police to arrive, two of them. They screech to a halt nearby, get out of the car and then stand still. One stands in front of his police car, which proves a mistake when a van crashes into the back of it, causing the policeman to be run over by his own abandoned vehicle. The other cop reacts by sprinting off down the road, remembering himself, then turning around and running back, colliding with the bonnet of another van and running madly on the spot. The previously squished cop gets up, charges off down the road, and starts shooting his gun at a passing taxi.

So the cab driver gets out, shoots the cop dead then runs toward me, firing. I shoot him, for my own protection, causing two more cops to instantaneously arrive and kill me on the spot.

Welcome to Driv3r. A game that almost equals Soldner for levels of mad-faced brokenness. And that's not a compliment I hand out lightly.

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Halo 3: ODST and Halo: Reach both lacked one vital ingredient: "Playing Master Chief," said Microsoft Game Studios boss Phil Spencer to OXM.

"We kind of lost our way a little bit, I'll say. And that's why I wanted to make sure that at the unveiling of Halo 4, you knew you were playing Master Chief, that John was back - because Master Chief is the John Wayne character of that universe, and that's who you want to play."

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Crytek UK, which formed from the ashes of Timesplitters creator Free Radical Design, said that despite the team having ideas good to go, it was felt the psychic-powered Second Sight "didn't have any momentum".

"Overall it didn't generate sufficient interest for us to feel it was worth making a sequel," Crytek UK boss Karl Hilton told Destructoid.

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343 Industries' Frank O'Connor revealed in a NeoGAF post that his team is "trying to get some OG Dukes rebuilt with 360 guts for Halo Fest."

He added that 343 hopes to have "about" six custom pads made "by people who have been doing the same thing for years."

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In comparison, it's selling for $39.99 in the US, which translates to around £24.60.

Due out on 15th November, 343 Industries' game lets you play through the original Halo: Combat Evolved either in its original Xbox state or with new current-gen visuals.

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Majesco's rights to the psychic powered platformer have lapsed, according to a tweet by Double Fine programmer Anna Kipnis:

"Omg Double Fine is now the sole publisher of Psychonauts!! If you buy it now (on Steam, for instance), the proceeds go to us!"

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The US game making legend blamed the Xbox exclusive's lack of sales on EA's failure to put enough money behind marketing.

"Stranger was a major achievement," Lanning told Eurogamer at the GameCityNights event in Nottingham.

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As reported by Game Informer, YouTube user ProtonX3 discovered the code, labelled Sonic Extreme, on an Xbox development unit.

There's no indication as to why the game never saw the light of day, but you can take a look at the footage below and find out what you missed out on.

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According to its composer, the monk chant was originally designed to accompany the Halo tech demo shown by Apple's Steve Jobs in 1999 - and nothing else.

"We didn't have much time," Bungie composer Marty O'Donnell reminisced to IndustryGamers, "so I thought if I was going to do something epic and ancient maybe I could start with some monks chanting.

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"We began our tenure on Red Dead Redemption (known as RDR2 from here) at the beginning of 2008 after we had finished work on Manhunt 2 and Bully: Scholarship Edition," wrote Matt Kazan on his online portfolio, spotted by Superannuation.

"Our primary task at Rockstar Toronto was to redo much of San Diego's earlier artwork on RDR2, mostly props. RDR2 had began as a Sixth Generation era game, and much of the content we were redoing was artwork geared toward the PlayStation 2/Xbox.

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Eurogamer cooed at Ragnar Tornquist and Funcom's creation back in 2000, awarding a massive 9/10. A less memorable 2006 sequel, Dreamfall: The Longest Journey, scored 5/10.

Now, not only has Ragnar Tornquist told Eurogamer that a continuation of The Longest Journey is possible, he's said he actively "tinkers" with it.

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The review aggregation site blamed poorly detailed credits for the decision.

"We have no plans to bring it back. Right now we just want to see if we can build the database, take a shot at it, see what we can do," co-founder and games editor Marc Doyle told GamesIndustry.biz.

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Due out in the Autumn for unconfirmed platforms, Edge of Time sees you taking control of both the classic Amazing Spider-Man and Spider-Man 2099. In a story by Marvel veteran Peter David, it seems that in one version of the future Peter Parker has got himself killed, so you'll need straddle time and space to put things rights.

A new "cause-and-effect" mechanic will let you see how your immediate actions as one version of Spider-Man impacts the timeline of the other.

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Yesterday reports emerged that Metacritic had begun collecting the score distribution of developers and working out an average career score.

It determined whether a game developer played a part in the creation of a game by having a gander at the credits entered on GameFAQs, which, like Metacritic, is owned by CBS.

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It collects the score distribution of developers and works out an average career score.

Industry legend Shigeru Miyamoto, creator of the Super Mario, The Legend of Zelda and Donkey Kong series, has a career score of 80.

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"Through this last transition to the PS3 era... for a whole bunch of reasons that aren't worth getting into in a short answer, I think it's fair to say we dropped the ball," CEO John Riccitiello said at the Goldman Sachs Technology and Internet Conference, reported by Gamasutra.

"Our IP deteriorated, our costs went up, and we didn't really have an answer for the rise in digital."

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StarCraft Ghost was to be an action spin-off for PS2 and Xbox (and GameCube, once upon a time). You'd play as nimble super-spy woman Nova and mission through an experience not a million miles away from Splinter Cell or Metal Gear Solid.

Announced in 2002, StarCraft Ghost changed development hands twice before being "indefinitely postponed" by renowned perfectionist Blizzard in 2006. The reason? So all attention could be focused on the new flock of consoles - the PS3, Xbox 360 and Wii. Ha!

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Contrary to previous reports, the game is not being made with the Halo: Reach engine, Joystiq claims.

It will, however, feature a full visual overhaul, with new art assets. The audio "will likely remain unaltered" and the controls will allow for more recent Halo configurations.

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There's nothing like a comment thread filled with hate to plant a seed of doubt in the mind of a reviewer. Or vitriolic emails from grumpy elder gamers (and even some olden-times paper letters sent in actual envelopes), telling me the 90 per cent I'd just awarded Doom 3 in PC Zone was a clear sign I was corrupt, clueless or both.

For a while I thought they were probably right. I'd spent 48 hours in a dark room in a hotel in Slough, sat in a clammy funk of fellow reviewers, encountering Doom 3's gold code. Perhaps that happy splurge of imp-death, darkness and bonking pinkies on the nose with a torch had indeed confused me?

Outwardly I entered a deep, dark cycle of self-justification. Everyone from friends to impatient bus drivers got the same spiel about how the 'torch OR weapon' mechanic was actually a great idea.

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In an interview with Official Nintendo Magazine, Sonic Colours producer Takashi Iizuka explained, "After Sonic Adventure, we had two studios, in the US and Japan.

"The Japanese Studio was to develop a Sonic game in the standard style, and the US studio was to develop something different which could contribute to the Sonic franchise."

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Michael "Shagg" Washington claims Rockstar modelled Carl "CJ" Johnson on his image after the developer met with him to chat about life on the mean streetz.

"The plaintiff, who had led a troubled life in his youth, responded to their questions and related details of his life," reads the complaint filed to the Los Angeles Superior Court (spotted by IGN).

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"Right now our focus is on supporting Halo: Reach," a Microsoft spokesperson told Eurogamer this morning. "We have nothing to announce at this time."

Yesterday Games Master magazine cited "industry chatter" as suggesting the Halo remake is being built using the Reach engine at internal studio 343 Industries.

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In this new series of opinion pieces, some of Eurogamer's favourite writers reveal how they really feel about some of the world's most renowned, or most reviled, videogames.

To kick us off, Will Porter explains why he hates Bungie's blockbuster shooters - and why he can't stop playing them. (NB: If you're still working your way through the series, beware of spoilers.)

Hate is a strong word. I can't hate a series when I've played all of its games and, moment to moment, enjoyed myself. I love that tank level they always do. The bit where you're going around in a Warthog or stealing those purple Ghost things is amazing on grass, snow or even in an oddly sterile futuro-city.

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That doesn't mean it's happening, of course, but it's a start.

"Shenmue has the image of grand scale," Suzuki told Famitsu.com (translated by Andriasang).

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While Konami issued a no comment on the story to Eurogamer this morning, it did point out that it is yet to slap a release window of any kind on the game.

Rising was announced in the summer of 2009. Players assume the role of Raiden, the divisive cyborg samurai star of Metal Gear Solid 2, and slice stuff up – including human enemies – with a deadly sword.

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"They made the best initial offer," Fries revealed to Develop, "and Rare looked at both of us and, from the way I saw it, was more interested in partnering with Activision. It's because they wanted to be third-party, independent of all platforms."

There were rumours in 2002 that Rare had put pen to paper and signed along Bobby Kotick's dotted line.

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Last week the internet bulged with a rumour that a HD remake of Bungie's Halo: Combat Evolved was in the works.

That now looks doubtful.

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The figures, which were obtained by CVG from analyst Cowen & Company, represent a serious decline for the series.

Guitar Hero 5 managed 499,000 sales in its first month in 2009, Guitar Hero: World Tour topped 500,000 in its first week in 2008 and Guitar Hero III managed 1.4 million units in five days the year before.

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Jonathan Jacques-Belletête, now art director on Eidos' Deus Ex: Human Revolution, told CVG, "[Ubisoft] wanted a spin off for Prince of Persia. We had some awesome ideas with that too... in contemporary time."

"So I had this little team, and [the game] was actually in the contemporary world," he continued. "Think a bit Day After Tomorrow, but replace the snow with sand and everything. It was really wicked. But it got cancelled, and then we did all the Far Crys."

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"The Kinect and Move remain critical products that could drive growth and excitement among the casual and mainstream consumer base," said analyst Jess Divnich (as overheard by Industry Gamers).

"The Kinect and Move's success or failure this holiday season will be the primary catalyst for overall industry growth or decline this holiday season."

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Ubisoft's platform game occupied a top 40 spot for an outrageous 261 weeks, according to Chart-Track data provided to Eurogamer this afternoon. That's more than five years.

Team17's Worms wasn't far off that with a massive 239-week stint.

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I'm trying to think of more hoary old subjects to discuss than comedy in games. Let me see. How about DRM? I could be trying to talk to you about digital restrictions management. Or whether girls play games? Come on, that's more overdone, right? What about whether the PS3 is better than the 360? Okay, so in this context, everyone's now happy that we're talking about comedy in games, right?

Right. Armed & Dangerous was released in 2003 to rapturous celebrations of its amazing sense of humour. Even the most critical reviews raised just how funny it was. In stitches they were.

Sit down, hold onto something solid, and cross your legs. Armed & Dangerous isn't all that funny.

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Pricing evidently has absolutely no bearing on the quality of download games right now. Some are happy to take a punt at retail prices with quite dismal offerings, while others are practically giving away their hard work despite being obviously brilliant.

This week, we've been treated to indie gems like Apple Jack and Numba, both the recipients of exceptional scores, and both available for the price of an tasty break-time snack. Yet, it's often punishing to witness how awful some of the titles punted onto, say, PSN are (Planet Minigolf and Death Race: Resurrection to name and shame) - and at prices that leave you shaking your head, if not your fist.

Should we go back to some sort of old-fashioned official quality control to save people from such detritus, or is the will of the free market a better means of separating the wheat from the chaff? Let us know.

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"At the time, Microsoft marketing thought Halo was not a good name for a videogame brand," designer Jaime Griesemer told Edge magazine in a feature on the making of the 2001 classic (via CVG). "It wasn't descriptive like all the military games we were competing with.

"We told them Halo was the name. The compromise was they could add a subtitle. Everyone at Bungie hated it," Greisemer said.

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Ubisoft threw down the leafy gauntlet in April by announcing the removal of paper manuals from retail game boxes. This comparatively pioneering step will be demonstrated this autumn by Shaun White Snowboarding. The game will use a digital in-game manual instead.

Ubisoft also plans to use DVD cases made only from recycled plastic. The boxes housing Splinter Cell: Conviction were the first examples of this.

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"In the 451 weeks that I have been here, I have adopted many new habits. It has taken tremendous effort to prevent those habits from atrophying into bad ones," explained Hocking on his blog.

"Pride burns into hubris. Willingness wilts into desperation. Confidence slows to stubbornness. Passion boils into anger. Each of these faults and others - without care and constant self-examination - risk becoming habits.

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As detailed on the Bungie forum, a die-hard group of around 20 people simply didn't turn their Xboxes off at zero hour and have been able to continue killing one another while sobbing uncontrollably ever since.

Unfortunately they have started dropping out now due to overheating and net connection problems, but those who remain have vowed not to stop until Microsoft boots them or they die or whatever.

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The service was due to be switched off at midnight PDT, i.e. about 20 minutes ago.

As a result you can no longer play Xbox 1 games online in any way - not using an original Xbox, nor by playing a backwards-compatible title on Xbox 360, or even by downloading an Xbox Originals effort.

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"It was the most brutal development effort we've gone through," multiplayer designer Chris Carney told Eurogamer when we sat the developer down recently for a look back in time.

"We're so much more organised and focused now - mainly because some of us think back to that experience, the lack of daylight, the poor hygiene... These are things we just don't want to happen again!"

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"The graphics engine that we showed at E3 2003, driving around the Earth city... That entire graphics engine had to be thrown away, because you could never ship a game on the Xbox with it," said Chris Butcher, engineering lead on Halo 2.

"Through putting ourselves through hell, we were able to do a five-minute demo of it, but after we came back from E3 we had to admit that this graphics engine was never going to work - it was never going to support the kind of environments that are really important for a Halo game."

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On April 14th, the Xbox Live service for the original Xbox shuts down for the final time. It takes with it the multiplayer support for Halo 2 - the game which showed the world how console multiplayer should be done, and proceeded to dominate the Xbox Live stats for years. Eurogamer took the opportunity to speak to the team behind the game, and discover the tortured development process behind a modern classic.

It's hard to remember that there was a time when Halo wasn't a colossus of the games industry. These days, updates to Bungie's epic science fiction franchise punctuate the release schedule for the Xbox 360 like exclamation points - it's a pillar of the platform, the game series that brought credibility to both the Xbox itself and to the Xbox Live service. Its hero, the Master Chief, is an iconic figure in pop culture, and the series is one of the most popular online games in history - with Halo 3 still being played by huge numbers of people every night, despite the meteoric success of games like Modern Warfare.

It was not always thus. Today, Halo: Combat Evolved is remembered as being the tentpole that supported the whole Xbox launch, the cornerstone around which Microsoft built its entire console business - but Jaime Griesemer, who was a design lead on Halo 2, says that at the time, things weren't so certain.

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The best gift is an invite to the Halo: Reach multiplayer beta, which begins 3rd May. Previously, only Halo 3: ODST owners had been asked to participate.

Halo 2 loyalists will also be given three free months of Xbox Live Gold membership and a lump sum of 400 Microsoft Points (£3.40/€4.65), according to a copy of an email sent by Microsoft posted on the Bungie forums.

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"As background information, the games scheduled for shutdown in March and April 2010 represent less than 0.3 per cent of all peak online players across all EA titles," reads a statement on the company's website.

"Despite some people's perception, there is a lot of behind-the-scenes work involved with keeping these older games up and running. We would rather our hard-working engineering and IT staff focus on keeping a positive experience for the other 99.7 per cent of customers playing our more popular games."

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In order to access the various map packs in time for the FPS game's grand send-off in two months' time, just fire up Halo 2, make sure you're on Xbox Live, and find the Content Download option through the menus.

This news item clearly isn't long enough, so here's a gratuitous link to our Halo 2 gamepage, where you can read the original review and find lots of other relics of Xbox Live's first huge success story.

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"We are aware that Xbox v1 users are currently unable to access downloadable content via Xbox Live, both for the original console and Xbox Originals on Xbox 360," the company told Joystiq.

"The team is actively working on resolving this issue so that the Xbox v1 community can continue downloading content until April 15."

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On 14th April, those of you with all of the Halo 2 maps released so far will be treated to "one last hoorah".

"We're all saddened at the realisation that an era is coming to an end but looking back, we're incredibly fortunate to have had such a great run and such strong support from our fans," a statement on Bungie's website read.

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This not only applies to the old consoles, but also to Xbox games that are compatible with Xbox 360 and Xbox Originals.

"I want to start by saying this isn't a decision we made lightly, but after careful consideration, it is clear this will provide the greatest benefit to the Xbox Live community," Microsoft's Marc Whitten wrote in an open letter announcing the change.

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The peripheral maker had been commissioned to make a sister Xbox version, but paid $300,000 to abandon the deal after Konami's legal team came sniffing.

"Guitar Hero was a game that we were actually involved with early on and pulled out because of a lawsuit with Konami," Mad Catz boss Darren Richardson told Kotaku.

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Videogames have always had the capacity to spark anger, fear and joy in me, and although I've never been so enraged as to damage a controller by hurling it, I have felt the exhilaration of an epic Street Fighter win and the agony of a crushing boss defeat. But one thing games have never made me do is cry. Aeris' death made me feel a slither of remorse, but nothing game-related has ever persuaded me to secrete anything from my lacrimal gland. With one notable exception.

A long time ago - two years prior to the very first Guitar Hero, in fact - there was a peripheral-driven game that managed to bring me to a profound state of hysteria, and that game was Steel Battalion. When it was first announced for global release, it seemed like Capcom was taking a substantial risk. Although Japan's obsession with mecha guaranteed its success in the East, quality mech sims like Heavy Gear and Armored Core had only secured a niche following in these parts. The only obvious difference with Steel Battalion was the bundled cockpit. The, uh, whu...

Even before playing it there was no denying that the behemoth controller was the star of the show. It made the comparatively feeble Virtual On twin sticks look like designer amateur hour, bristling with buttons, joysticks, switches and peddles. Who could forget the first time they went through the lengthy start-up sequence, involving no less than three buttons and five switches, before shifting into first, grabbing both sticks and then edging shakily out of the hanger to take down their first Vitzh Vertical Tank (VT). It was the first tear of gaming ecstasy I ever shed.

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The publisher announced today that the six titles in the series have combined to sell over 55 million units around the world.

Activision boss Bobby Kotick said this data - based on NPD, GfK Chart-Track and international data - has made Call of Duty one of the "greatest entertainment franchises of all time".

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According to The Movie Blog, it will be titled BloodRayne 3: Warhammer. There's no explanation as to how the Warhammer thing comes into it and no details of the plot have been revealed. However, word is that Kristanna Loken will return as the titular heroine.

While you're eagerly awaiting more news, why not take a trip down memory lane with our review of the original BloodRayne game or our interview with Uwe Boll? Those were the days.

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The queues this morning for the Old Billingsgate building were clearly visible from London Bridge, except by editor Tom, who forgot his glasses and barely knew which way he was going.

One attendee, Luca Calabrese, was dressed as none other than Bill from Left 4 Dead. "Bill's kind of a badass to be fair," he said, in-between posing for pictures.

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David Tweedle, 29, from Widnes, even admitted giving other people a chance to lead the line. He only arrived two hours early today.

"One day isn't enough to see everything," explained Tweedle, who was given 4200 Microsoft Points (£35.70/€48.85) by Eurogamer for his dedication/to get lost. "It's best over two days to see all the dev talks and games."

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Comparatively, black people, old people, women and children rarely ever take the limelight.

The study, finished in 2006 but only just published, had gamers play 150 best-selling games for 30 minutes. Researchers filmed and then picked apart the evidence, according to NewScientist.

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"Ah, SSX," Tascan sighed wistfully to GamesIndustry.biz. "We have a big catalogue and we were talking about what people like. I think this is something we will look at in the future to see if it makes sense to revive the franchise.

"It's a little bit early to talk about it, but I feel... I know internally it is a franchise that people love because it was successful and good, and it reminds me of when we were young, and I feel if the market is there and is ready for a new one then we'll consider it."

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Penny Arcade Expo attendees visiting The Old Republic stand were offered a copy for free, but everybody else will need to pay £6.99 for the privilege.

Released in 2003 on Xbox (and later PC), Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic combined D&D role-playing with George Lucas' iconic universe.

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Under the proposed settlement, Take-Two will pay $4,915,000 and its insurance firms $15,200,000 to satisfy class members, and Take-Two has agreed to extend changes already made in its corporate governance policies and practices.

In a brief statement, Take-Two chairman Strauss Zelnick said the publisher was "pleased to have reached this settlement, which represents another important step forward for the Company".

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(A warning: Spoilers tend to go with the territory in retrospectives, but I'm going to reveal Stranger's Wrath's greatest twist early on in what follows. If you're planning on playing through this game for the pleasure of watching the plot unfold - and this is one of the few games where that wouldn't be an entirely self-destructive objective - you might want to do that before reading any more.)

Pluck a favourite game from the air, and picture yourself playing it. Who are you? If it's an FPS, you may well be a grizzled super-soldier, armour-clad and shaven-headed, despatching fiery justice and grim witticisms as you avenge some manner of contrived atrocity. If it's a cartoon platformer, you're probably a wise-cracking furry of some description, or a lovable robot whose arms keep falling offat the least appropriate time .

If it's fantasy, things get even easier to predict: are you a sexy lady spellcaster with sickly skin and a complex magical necklace, a grouchy dwarf weighed down under rusty armour, or a chirpy elf with glistening eyes and shafts of spiky hair? And, whatever the game, it's likely that you're an amnesiac of some kind - a real pandemic in the realms of digital adventuring - your slowly-returning memories meshing perfectly with your escalating move-set.

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"I expected we'll see a PlayStation 3.5 before we see a PlayStation 4 and an Xbox 560 before we see an Xbox 720," Hilleman told VentureBeat.

His words are arguably reflected in Sony's move to make a PS3 Slim and Microsoft's decision to do Project Natal, which was conceived to effectively relaunch the Xbox 360 sometime next autumn.

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The report (as spotted by Kokugamer) states: "IESB has learned exclusively (believe me this is solid and I’ve confirmed it three times over with studio executives and our close ties to CAA) that one of the biggest producers in Hollywood history is currently in active negotiations to develop the feature film adaptation."

Jerry Bruckheimer? Peter Jackson? Uwe Boll? No: "It’s the man behind Jaws, E.T., Indiana Jones and Transformers, Mr Steven Spielberg."

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Jordan Weisman recently founded his own company, Smith & Tinker, but he can't help remembering the good old days. "Most of my time is invested in [Smith & Tinker], but in the wee hours of the night, I spend time thinking about the older properties," he told Gamespot.

"I think Crimson Skies is something we'd love to get some energy around, and we have some devious plans - we'll see if those materialise."

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