Activision announced today that it has signed an agreement with Spider-Man Merchandising to extend its exclusive worldwide publishing rights to the Spider-Man motion pictures through 2017, granting Activision the right to publish games based on subsequent Spider-Man movie sequels or new television series.

DropTeam is a truly Sci-Fi multiplayer tactical simulation of mechanized ground combat using a new groundbreaking and powerful 3D engine. DropTeam is all about fun, fast and furious tactical action – but not at the expense of realistic physics and a credible combat experience, and now with even better graphics due to advanced lighting and postprocessing effects including High Dynamic Range rendering and full-scene glow.

UFO: Aftershock follows directly from one of the endings of UFO: Aftermath, where the player agrees to hand over the Earth to the Alien scientists, who are trying to change the planet into a giant living organism. Cenega has released the first patch bringing your retail game to v1.1 and addressing some localization issues, but mainly fixes for bugs & crashes and balance tweaking (thanks Patches-Scrolls). Read more for detailed fix list and download links ...

Th3 Plan introduces an entirely unique style of gameplay. The first single player multiplayer game enables gamers to control up to three characters at once. The innovative split screen gameplay offers new ways for characters to work in precise coordination, from setting up clever deceptions to distract security guards to timing anti-security measures down to the split second.

Sony has released yet another new update for its PSP firmware, bringing it to v2.60 for the Japanese, North American and European PSP editions. The new v2.60 update adds Windows Media Audio (WMA) audio support, RSS Channel has been added as a feature under Network, copyright-protected video data can now be downloaded directly to a Memory Stick Duo, and volume adjustment has been added.

Usually we do not cover mobile phones but VNUNet seems to have a new interesting story that Nokia is stepping away from its N-Gage phone/handheld gaming device. "N-Gage is still being sold but it was not a success in the sense of developing a new category," said Antti Vasara, Nokia's vice president for corporate strategy. "We learnt that people want to play games on all devices. As such we are integrating the gaming software into Series 60 phones." N-Gage devices will still be produced by primarily for the Chinese and Indian markets.

Challenge yourself with four levels of difficultly from easy to fiendish. Relax with a quiet Sudoku challenge or experience the first ever multiplayer Sudoku competitions. Complete with animated background themes, time goals, music and sound, this is the game that introduces PSP to serious Sudoku players - on the Go!

German publisher Frogster announced that the Stalin Subway has gone gold and will be in stores December 8, 2005. The Stalin Subway is a realistic first-person shooter which is set in Stalin's Moscow of fall 1952. Iosif Stalin, the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of USSR is now 72 years old, and a group of military officials of high rank decides that the Generalissimo is weak and the power can be taken away from him.

The U.S. Air Force has engaged Stottler Henke Associates to develop a software toolkit called WarCon that for the first time will enable instructors, rather than programmers, to create content for computer-based war games.

THQ has now released the full v1.41 patch for Relic's 3D RTS Dawn Of War/Winter Assault, adding unit balancing, interface enhancements, some optimizations and bug fixes. This version does NOT require the previous v1.40 patch to be installed (thanks Relicnews). Read more for detailed fix list and download links...