As part of Activision's "Ratings Are Not a Game," a sponsored survey concluded that parents overwhelmingly agree that the ESRB rating system is a highly effective and influential tool for determining what videogames are appropriate for their children to play.

SOE and Sigil Games announced the Vanguard: Saga of Heroes pre-order program, available through select retailers. If you preorder, you get three days of early access prior to launch; a special account key that will grant you a unique exclusive in-game scroll, allowing your character to sprint for longer periods of time due to an endurance buff (one per account); a beta invitation; Guild Mail, a fun recruitment tool to help you build your guild before launch; and a king’s ransom of assets, including videos, wallpapers and screenshots.

American Civil War: Our Hearts were touched with Fire, from the creators of Birth of America, is a historically accurate, realistic and fun turn-based grand operational strategy game of the American Civil War (1861-1865).

CivCity: Rome is a new city building strategy game inspired by the world of Sid Meier's Civilization, allowing you to recreate the glory of Rome by building a small settlement into a mighty imperial city. Take 2 has released the first patch, bringing your retail game to v1.1, addressing game play issues, optimizing the map editor and fixes an graphical issue at 1024x768 or higher resolutions.

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:

• Star Trek: Legacy (PC)
• Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin (NDS)
• Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops (PSP)
• Fight Night Round 3 (PS3)
• Pimp My Ride (PS2/X360)
• Ice Age 2: The Meltdown (Wii)
• 
  
  We will update this throughout the day when new announcements become available. Read more for details ...

KOEI announced that its PS2 exclusive strategy game Romance of the Three Kingdoms XI is coming to North America, on February 6, 2007.

Sandvine's broadband network solution observed an 80% increase in the number of Xbox Live users across a sampling of North American-based broadband service providers' networks during the first week following the release of six new Xbox games, mainly due to the release of Gears of War.

The only Final Fantasy never localized will finally reach Europe, Spring 2007! Using the features of the NDS to their fullest, Final Fantasy III features graphics that have been reworked and remodeled in 3D, while maintaining the mythical Final Fantasy look and feel.

Blizzard has released a small update for its MMORPG World of Warcraft. This massive v2.0.1 update revamps the honor system, adds arena skirmishes, and the usual slew of balance tweaks, bug and crash fixes...

Pacific Storm: Allies the allies of the main factions, American and Japanese, come into conflict. Powerful Germany will join Japan forces to fight against England, Australia and USSR. New units to construct, new historical locations to visit and a brand new version of the engine that brings better graphics than ever.