French Minister of Culture and Communication, Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres knighted Ubisoft's Michel Ancel, creator of Rayman, Beyond Good & Evil and King Kong, along with director and general manager of Nintendo EAD, Shigeru Miyamoto and author Frederick Raynal as knights of arts and literature for their outstanding achievement in video games. France's Order of Arts and Letters recognizes eminent artists and writers who have contributed significantly to furthering the arts in France and throughout the world.

Valve's SteamPowered website has been updated with details regarding the latest update to Steam client, Source Engine, Half-Life 1 engine and Counter-Strike Source. This update allows you to join the Friends Beta, fixes a Counter-Strike exploit, reveals results of the hardware survey, improved HL2 filesystem addressing stuttering, and a few other Steam client fixes. Just restart Steam for the effects to take place.

Rogue Trooper is a mix of intense 3rd person action and next generation stealth elements, with complex line-of-sight AI, multiple game paths, full tactical use of your bio-chip operated equipment and both single- and multiplayer online gameplay.

Last week US District Judge Claudia Wilken threw out Sony's appeal of a 2005 ruling that ordered it to pay Immersion $90 mill. due to patent infringement allegedly incorporated into Sony's controller, including its Dual Shock. This decision hits hard as the upcoming PlayStation 3 also features said technology in its controllers. A spokesperson said it had already appealed to a US Court of Appeals and procedures there are under way, denying out-of-court settlement talks are being held.

Is this where it all starts? The past few days rumors have been abound, initiated by Koei's President Kiyoshi Komatsu, but today Sony has confirmed that on March 15th, at 3PM Tokyo time, it will kick off PS Business Briefing. Open to the press and industry specialist, this conference may very well be the first actual showcasing of Sony's PlayStation 3, and additional rumors even mention a major PS2 announcement, including a possible price drop. We'll have more details when the conference starts...

RedOctane announced today that the English PAL version of Guitar Hero has gone gold and is ready to ship to outlets across UK, Scandinavia and Benelux on April 7th. Finally, gamers will have the chance to fulfill their dreams of being a rock god on stage, minus the stage and actual god status – unless, of course, they master the tricky Expert difficulty level.

Wizards of the Coast today announced it would make available PayPal as a new payment option for Magic Online, its multiplayer online collectable digital objects game experience. The new payment option will be available as of today.

NCsoft and Massive Incorporated today announced a strategic partnership to integrate dynamic in-game advertising. Explore a post-apocalyptic future in customizable cars, motorcycles, semis and even tanks, battle other players both in arenas and in epic race vs. race wars for control of the regions in a devastated Earth.

Another day, another batch of game trailers was released. Instead of giving them all their own posts, we grouped them, and so far there are trailers for:

• Gekido [PSP] - Trailer
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  We will update this throughout the day when new trailers become available. Read more for download links ...

Starting at 12:01am on Tuesday March 14th, EA will host the "Burnout Revenge 21 Days of Carnage Sweepstakes," an online contest with one winner, every hour, every day for 21 days. Hourly winners will be entered into a grand prize drawing with prizes from Monster Cable, Alienware, Dolby, Logitech, Alpine, Plantronics, Dragon, Nixon, Etnies and EA.

In Tomb Raider: Legend, Lara comes alive with intricately animated expressions, moves and abilities. An arsenal of modern equipment, such as a magnetic grappling device, binoculars, frag grenades, personal lighting device and communications equipment.

Mindscape today introduced the next puzzle craze to hit a PC desktop near you, Mindscape Kakuro. If you do Sudoku. Sometimes called "Cross-sums" or "Kakro", Kakuro is often referred to as Sudoku's bigger (and tougher) brother. The game operates along the same nine number principles as its forebear, only now a new dimension of complexity awaits puzzle fans looking for a fresh challenge.

Auto Assault combines vehicular combat with role-playing elements. Players explore a post-apocalyptic future in customizable cars, motorcycles, semis and even tanks. Players battle other players both in arenas and in epic race vs. race wars for control of the regions in a devastated Earth.

Project-Zero has released a small hotfix patch for its recently released Soldner: Secret Wars v33670 patch addressing some minor issues people might be experiencing installing the main patch while also fixing some keyboard/mouse problems.

Techland officially confirmed that it’s working on a sequel to 2003’s sci-fi tactical FPS game Chrome. The yet unnamed game will be based on the latest version of Chrome Engine, presumably ver.2007. Rumors and speculation about Chrome sequel have roamed around since last year’s Chrome SpecForce stand-alone mission pack release.

Today SEGA announced that its Condemned: Criminal Origins has gone gold for the PC. In Condemned: Criminal Origins, gamers play Agent Thomas, an investigator in the FBI's Serial Crimes Unit (SCU), whose pursuit of relentless serial killers leads him through urban environments filled with sociopaths lurking in the shadows, waiting to destroy him.

Aspyr Media today confirmed that its epic role-playing game Gothic III will land on North American store shelves this fall. The announcement comes on the heels of news from worldwide publisher JoWooD that the title will be available in its territories in September.

Oblivion is a single-player game that takes place in Tamriel's capital province, Cyrodiil. You are given the task of finding the hidden heir to a throne that sits empty, the previous emperor having been killed by an unknown assassin.

Bold Games label and Tripwire Interactive announce today that the highly-anticipated World War II first-person shooter for PC, Red Orchestra: Ostfront 41-45, is shipping today and will be available in retail stores across North America by the end of this week.

Another strike against Starforce, as Bluesnews received the following, "Aspyr Media is responsible for publishing the North American release of Spellforce 2. We wanted everyone to know that Starforce will *not* be included in the retail release of this game. Starforce is being used in the demo in cooperation with the European publishers of the title, JoWood. We apologize for any inconveniences Starforce may have caused and would again like to reassure everyone that we have chosen alternative copy protection software for our final release product."