The winners of the most prestigious awards in the European interactive entertainment industry were announced in London today at ECTS, Europe's premier trade show for the interactive entertainment industry. The ECTS 2003 Awards, hosted by Kate Russell, are the ninth in a long line of successful ceremonies and were attended by over 1000 leading industry figures in the trade hall of ECTS itself. Kate is a journalist, presenter and self-confessed technophile and has appeared on Gamer.tv, Sky TV, LWT and the BBC as a technology reporter, as well as having contributed to a number of leading computing and technology magazines. The ECTS 2003 Awards categories are divided between 'Best of Year' and 'Best of Show'.. Read more for the awards!

QuakeNet, tonight consolidated it's position as the world's largest chat network, with more than 200,000 people connected concurrently. The actual user peak eventually reached 201,401 users, 1401 users more than the 200,000 user mark.

If you get excited about the idea of sailing uncharted waters, searching the fog for rival ships, and maneuvering into the perfect position to lay iron unto your enemy before he can do the same to you, then you've come to the right place. Battlefield: Pirates is a mod for EA's Battlefield 1942 (updated for the coming bf1942 v1.45 patch). Can you hold the center long enough to win? A new v0.21 Alpha version has been released with lots of balancing done to direct and splash damage, reworking of Scurvy_Cove, and a new "preview" map, similar to Komodo_Island. Read more for download links ...

The official Motor City Online site from EA features a last goodbye message.. Here is the full message:

We at Electronic Arts and MCO Staff both past and present would like to say thank you for being a part of a great online racing game experience. Motor City Online service ends today, but it will live on forever in the hearts of the racers who loved the game.

Thank you for all your enthusiasm for Motor City Online and making it such a great place to play.

Regards,
MCO Staff

Team 17 recently updated their Worms 3D site with the words.. "The work on the gameplay continues, due to requests to get the demo size down, the frontend has gone and so has the tutorial. So now it's a 2 player deathmatch with a limited weapons set. But it's just a demo, right?".. Read more below for all details!

Worms 3 will utilise the full power afforded by next-generation platforms, featuring ground-breaking fully deformable landscape technology, and will continue the wild humor and intensive, addictive fun that gamers expect from the Worms franchise. Worms 3 will showcase a raft of new gameplay features, while retaining all the familiar chaos of the original titles, complete with bizarre power-ups, loopy weaponry, and crazy cartoon graphics -- in both single and multi-player modes.

This year you have the chance to create and build the ultimate golfer to take on the TOUR and dominate the world. Whether you play the prestigious PGA TOUR courses or the original design characters, there is something for every golf fan in this game. EA SPORTS, continuing its exclusive partnership with the PGA TOUR and the world's best and most famous golfer, Tiger Woods, delivers the most realistic golf simulation for fans of console golf. Check the new batch of Gamecube and GBA screens...

SSX 3 allows gamers to go anywhere gravity will take them. Players will discover a colossal mountain where they can immerse themselves in a free-roaming snow paradise. The ultimate all-mountain experience, SSX 3 features all-new events and courses, awe-inspiring tricks, and a cast of cool, customizable characters. Discover the open terrain, explore its hidden crevices, and conquer its peaks. Some new screens ...

This year Nintendo of America Inc. celebrates the fifth anniversary of the Pokemon franchise by bouncing off the bumpers in Pokemon Pinball: Ruby and Sapphire for Game Boy Advance, the sequel to the million-selling Pokemon Pinball for Game Boy Color. Pokemon Pinball: Ruby and Sapphire is the newest installment in the video game franchise that already has sold a staggering 38 million games in North America and 110 million games worldwide.

You alone must pilot the fearsome Battle Engine Aquila, a behemoth war machine and the single most destructive unit on the battlefield, capable of patrolling from the ground or attacking from the air. One-on-one you can destroy most individual enemy units, but you cant take them all out single-handed - there are simply too many of them!

Empire Interactive on Friday announced that Ghost Master is now available on retail shelves for a fright fest gamers will enjoy. Developed by Sick Puppies and distributed by Vivendi Universal Games, Ghost Master is retailed at the suggested price of $39.99 for the PC. Ghost Master has an ESRB rating of "T" (Teen).

Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time takes place within an exotic, mysterious world representing Persian architecture, animals and attire. After his father invades the palace of the Maharajah, the Prince, tricked by a treacherous vizier, uses a magic dagger to release the dangerous Sands of Time from an ornate hourglass. With the aid of a beautiful, mysterious, and potentially untrustworthy ally, players embody the Prince to recapture the Sands of Time and restore peace to the land. Check out the new screens ...

Arx Fatalis is a first-person RPG, which plunges players into an amazingly complex fantasy-world of trolls, goblins and 'Snake-women'. Creating weapons, solving puzzles and completing amazing quests, gamers become heroes as they battle in an evil world. Players will also need to master a unique real-time magic system to cast more than 50 different spells based on 20 different runes... Read more for a few screens!

The official site for the upcoming RPG, Bard's Legacy: Devil Whiskey, now states that they slipping the release date of the demo by one week. It will be available, simultaneously for Windows and Linux, on Sunday, September 7th! They also posted some new screenshots and updated the FAQ.

Devil Whiskey is a party-based, turn-based, grid-mapped, 3D role playing and adventure game, based on the interactive play styles of the popular role-playing games of the late 1980s.

From the far corners of Middle-earth, new adventures come forth to face the growing evil in the East. The forces of Mordor are mobilizing as the Nazgül hunt for the One Ring. The land itself is in peril and its fate lies in the hands of those who possess it. Adventuring alone or in groups, join thousands of players online in the massive world that is Middle-earth. Support the forces of good in an epic struggle to drive back the forces of Sauron. This is Middle-Earth Online, your home in the world of Tolkien. Read more to check some screens ...

Painkiller is a nickname of a pretty unusual mercenary, who is dealing with supernatural. There are places on Earth where demons and other evil creatures have their nests: abandoned prisons, private castles, deep caves in the mountains. "Cleaning" those places is good money, and our hero needs a lot of it, since he loves living the life to its fullest. One day he gets what seems to be a pretty simple job: to retrieve a religious artifact from one of the nests. When after a furious battle he realizes he might have been tricked into the war between two competing clans of the undead, he tries to play his own cards. If you haven't yet, check our Painkiller preview or read more to check out the new screens ...

In this chapter of Thief, you once again take on the role of Garrett, a master thief who is rarely seen, never caught and capable of breaking into the most ingeniously secured places. Garrett steals from the wealthy and gives to himself, making his living in the dark and foreboding City. Although Garrett would prefer to be left alone to ply his trade, the prophecies of an impending Dark Age dictate a different plan for the thief. In his efforts to prevent the Dark Age, Garrett has inadvertently roused an ancient, hidden evil. He finds himself without allies, standing alone between the City and the forces that would crush it.

While we already announced a few weeks ago that the demo was coming in September, the Electronic Arts Medal of Honor website has more details of what exactly we can expect. The demo will include two new multiplayer maps based on the Allied Italian operations of WWII, Anzio and Palermo and is scheduled for September 10th (although Gamespot is reporting Sept. 9th). Of course we'll have the puppy right here on the Worthplaying servers, so stay tuned!

Take command of a wide range of military units in some of WWII's most significant battles in this groundbreaking Tactical RTS. The game's epic visual style redefines the standard for real-time strategy titles; whilst the outcome of the player's commands are experienced through depth of detail and stunning cutting edge graphics. An incredibly detailed game, Battlefield Command, will cover WWII's major European battles from the invasion of Poland and France in 1939-40, through the war on the Eastern front, and the fall of Germany in 1945. You got to check these sweet screens!

VE3D posted up some news (available here) from Epic Games, including links to a GDC video and the $1,000,000 NVIDIA Make Something Unreal Contest.. Here is a clip:

The video is a direct screen capture of a Matinee sequence we put together to show off what our engine could do circa GDC, 2002. This sequence captured in this video was shown behind closed doors running real-time in the Unreal Engine at our GDC booth in March 2002. It had not been publicly released prior to now. Matinee is a tool for making real-time cinematic sequences within the Unreal Editor. Matinee and other tools you can use to create sequences like this come with the PC version of Unreal Tournament 2003.

The purpose of releasing the video now is to provide a little inspiration for the real-time non-interactive movie (i.e. Machinima) category of the $1,000,000 NVIDIA Make Something Unreal Contest

The Nokia N-Gage game deck is an innovative mobile device that is creating an entirely new market for the games industry. Built for active and hardcore gamers, the Nokia N-Gage is the first mobile and connected game deck to feature online high-quality 3D multiplayer gameplay over Bluetooth and GPRS... Today we have some new screens from following titles:

• Tony Hawk's Pro Skater
• Red Faction
• MotoGP
• Marcel Desailly ProSoccer
• Rayman 3
• Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell
• Virtua Tennis
• MLB Slam!