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.