Ubi Soft has announced the acquisition of a major German video game firm, Blue Byte Software. Blue Byte is behind two of the most popular series in the history of video games in Germany The Settlers Series and The Battle Isle Series. The Settlers Series is a well-known economic strategy simulation. Sales figures for the latest in the series, TheSettlers III, topped 700,000 in the German market alone. A total of 2.7 million units in the series has been sold worldwide. The next installment in the series, The Settlers IV, will be released on 15 February 2001. There are already a large number of pre-release orders, pointing to sales of 300,000 copies as soon as it comes out, in the German-speaking territories alone. The Battle Isle Series, which features futuristic combat strategy, has sold a total of 650,000 units worldwide. Blue Byte is also the creator of Great Courts, the first tennis simulation that can be played online and over the internet.
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The Value Gaming PC, which we will talk about today, has a budget of about $1500. While not the fastest gaming PC we can build, it's quick, agile, and has a can-do attitude. We design this PC to get the most out of every single dollar. Check out the latest edition of the Value Gaming PC Buyer's Guide!
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CDV Software Entertainment closed a deal with the Russian developing-house Nival Interactive. The Moscow-based developers, who already had successes such as Evil Islands and Rage of Mages, will develop a real time strategy game under the working title "Blitzkrieg". "Blitzkrieg" takes place in the Second World War. CDV Software fills its product pipeline and thus adds another very promising product to the line of already announced products.
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Russian-based YAV Games announced this month the release of its latest shareware game, Alive! Jigsaw. The game is a virtual jigsaw puzzle designed for gamers of all ages and features richly animated 3D images and the ability to customize the number of puzzle pieces from 9 to 160. Alive! Jigsaw puzzles offer striking, colorful animated illustrations based on the original artworks of Viktor Yegorov, the highly regarded European children's artist. For customized game play, players can use their own AVI movies and JPEG pictures to create animated and non-animated puzzles. Gamers can halt animation while assembling puzzles, or for greater challenge they can play on while the animation rolls - even while puzzle pieces are scattered haphazardly across the computer screen. The game sports ascending levels of difficulty and a wide variety of puzzle piece shapes that automatically snap together when closely aligned. Games can be saved, allowing for multiple sessions of game play. For those times when a player gets stuck the game offers help, including an auto-solve feature. Four animations come with the trial version of Alive! Jigsaw.
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Urban Mercenary is the world's only game that allows gamers to win other people's money in online tournaments! When you enter an Urban Mercenary tournament, you become a professional gamer - right from your home. Urban Mercenary is a fast paced, first person shooter that eliminates all elements of chance and lets you compete against other gamers for CASH. [Download: DemoNews]
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This week Ensemble Studios has released map #12 in their series of New Random Maps for Age of Empires II The Conquerors Expansion ES@ShipWreck. This week's map: "Only a few bruised villagers and their waterlogged sheep survived the raging storm and terrifying shipwreck to find themselves stranded on a desert island. Perhaps they could start a new colony, using the abundant trees and gold that they recovered, if only those horrible Byzantines, Franks, Aztecs and Celts hadn't all shipwrecked on the same island! So begins the battle for Ensemble Studios' newest Random Map."
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THQ Inc. and Nickelodeon have announced a massive expansion to their worldwide publishing partnership. THQ is now the exclusive videogame publisher for Nickelodeon's leading individual kids' television and movie properties targeting the 6-11 age demographic. The expansion includes interactive rights to "The Wild Thornberrys" and "Jimmy Neutron," Nickelodeon's highly anticipated holiday 2001 animated motion picture release, as well as PC rights to "Rugrats," "SpongeBob," "SquarePants" and "Rocket Power."
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