Europa Universalis III delves deeply into the areas of exploration, trade, warfare and diplomacy and is an epic strategy game where players take control of a nation and guide it through the ages to become a great global empire.

Another day, another batch of games shipped to stores. Instead of giving them all their own posts, we grouped them, and so far there are announcements for:

• Metal Combat (PC)
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  We will update this throughout the day when new announcements become available. Read more for details ...

Virtua Tennis 3 gives gamers the opportunity to experience new levels of realism never thought possible on a home console system with enhanced photo-realistic graphics and advanced player animations that perfectly match the behaviour and mannerisms of individual professional players.

EA announced that Madden NFL 07 has sold more than five million copies on a total of ten game platforms. Based on internal data as well as industry sources, that across all game platforms, Madden NFL 07 will finish as North America's most popular game of 2006.

After two years of development Climax's Warhammer Online was cancelled after which Games Workshop granted its license to Mythic Entertainment. Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning is an MMO game for PC and console set in the fantasy world of Warhammer.

Resistance: Fall Of Man is a gripping first-person action game set in a frightening, alternate 20th century reality, delivering a thoroughly believable world that blends epic military action and unnerving horror. Insomniac Games has released a first patch addressing some bugs, voice chat issues, but mainly fixing various multiplayer problems ...

Lost Planet is a sci-fi action shooter set within the merciless frozen tundra of a hostile planet, humans struggle for survival as conflicts arise between man, the surrounding indigenous creatures and the monstrous beings that have invaded.

According to an unidentified MGM insider source, plans for a possible resurrection of the ill-fated Stargate SG 1: The Alliance singleplayer game from JoWood/Perception have been canned alltogether and MGM, as license holder, has shifted its focus and resources to Stargate Worlds, the MMORPG under development at Cheyenne Mountain.

In Crysis, shooter fans will face a new kind of gameplay challenge requiring adaptive tactics and customization of weapons and armor in dynamic, hostile environments as mankind struggles to survive in the face of a horrific alien invasion.

Blizzard announced that recent hardware upgrades and retrofits might allow them to begin testing the ability to go longer than a week between maintenance periods. Instead regular maintenance tasks will run during off-peak with realms live, starting Dec. 26. Off-peak rolling restarts might be needed if necessary; however the downtime for each realm would be less than 10 minutes if it was required.