Gamers can choose from nearly 100 designs for their machine

Iconic technology firm Commodore has chosen Cebit as the launch pad for a new subsidiary dedicated to PC gaming.From April, Commodore Gaming will start selling a line of PCs that cater for the high-end home gamer.

Crammed with high-end components, the machines will also sport distinctive artwork on the case.

The line of computers will be aimed at consumers who do not want to take on the task of building themselves a machine optimised for gaming.

Bala Keilman, chief executive of Commodore Gaming, said: “It feels like the right time to bring back the Commodore brand.”

Cebit, billed as the world’s largest hi-tech fair runs from 15-21 March.

Paint-job

Speaking at the show, Mr Keilman said the subsidiary was launched to fill a gap in the market.

He said currently any gamer going to a store to buy a PC would be faced with only black or beige boxes, none of which did a great job of meeting the computing demands of current PC games.

Consumers will also be able to buy the machines online via the Commodore Gaming website from April.

The first four PCs in the Commodore range sport Intel Core Duo or Quad processors, have up to 4GB of RAM, two video cards and hundreds of gigabytes of hard drive storage. All the machines run Windows Vista.

No prices have been announced yet but the range is expected to be between £1,000-£5,000 ($1,900-$9,500).

Commodore also has a library of almost 100 designs that consumers can have painted on the case of their machine. Eventually it hopes to encourage customers, artists and others to submit designs that can be painted on PCs.

A spokesman for the company said there would likely be limited edition machines to go with new launches of games.

He said the company has had a “huge” response to the re-launch of the brand as many people played their first computer games on the machines made almost 25 years ago by Commodore which included the Vic-20 and the Commodore 64.

Google has more than 40% of the search market

Privacy bodies have welcomed Google’s decision to anonymise personal data it receives from users’ web searches.The firm previously held information about searches for an indefinite period but will now anonymise it after 18 to 24 months.

“This is an extremely positive development,” said Ari Schwartz, deputy director of the Center for Democracy and Technology, a US-based watchdog.

“It’s the type of thing we have been advocating for a number of years.”

However, governments could still force Google to hold onto data or hand it over to authorities.

“By anonymising our server logs after 18 to 24 months, we think we’re striking the right balance between two goals: continuing to improve Google’s services for you, while providing more transparency and certainty about our retention practices,” a statement from the search giant said.

It added: “Unless we’re legally required to retain log data for longer, we will anonymise our server logs after a limited period of time.”

Peter Fleischer, Google’s privacy counsel for Europe, said the decision has been taken after consulting with privacy bodies in the US and Europe.

He said: “We believe that privacy is one of the cornerstones of trust. We will be retroactively going back into our log database and anonymising all the information there.”

Rolled out

Mr Fleischer said the firm was holding on to the information for up to 24 months in part to match data retention laws being rolled out across Europe.

European internet service providers (ISPs) and phone companies are in the process of implementing an EU directive which forces them to retain a variety of communication data for up to two years.

Google collects and stores data from each query. It holds information such as the search term itself, the unique address of the PC being used, known as the IP address, and details of how a user makes searches, such as the browser used and previous queries to Google.

That information can contain private data about a user, and could be used to build a detailed picture of the user’s habits or lifestyle.

Google says it was using this information to help improve its different services and to monitor how its search engine was functioning.

Online habits

Privacy groups are concerned about how the data collected by Google - and other web firms - could be used to monitor people’s online habits.

Richard Clayton, a researcher at Cambridge University specialising in web traceability, said Google’s announcement was positive but had not gone far enough.

“It’s a step forward but I would like to see them anonymising data in a much shorter period.

“There is no justification for holding on to the data for two years.”

Mr Clayton said the data Google collected was useful to the firm in improving its services only in the short term.

He said that Google was hiding behind the European directive in setting time limits on how long it should hold on to the data.

“There is no sense of whether this directive even applies to web search logs,” he said.

He said the real reason Google was holding on to the data was because of the cost involved in anonymising it.

He said he also had concerns about how the firm was ensuring that held data could not be traced back to individual users.

Google has said it will alter the data so that users’ searches cannot be traced back to an individual’s computer.

But Mr Clayton said the recent row over search data released by AOL showed that identification of users could still be made even without a machine’s unique IP address.

AOL released data to academics last year relating to millions of search queries carried out by its users. While there was no direct identifying data, there was enough information in the searches to build profiles of users.

It is not yet clear if other search engines will follow suit. No-one at Yahoo or MSN was available for comment at the time of writing.

Several years ago, Rockstar Games reached out to would-be DJs everywhere with Beaterator. Offered for free on its Web site, the flash-based application allowed users to create their own tracks using various drum loops and samples crafted by major club DJs such as Juan Atkins and King Britt.

Soon, gamers will be able to mix music on their PlayStation Portables. Today, Rockstar announced its Leeds studio, which developed the two Grand Theft Auto PSP games, is readying a version of Beaterator for Sony’s handheld. Set for release this summer, the game will feature new sounds created by famed hip-hop producer Timbaland, who has worked with such artists as Nas, Jay-Z, and Missy Elliot.

Though it contained effusive statements of excitement from Timbaland and Rockstar founder Sam Houser, the Beaterator announcement was short on details about the PSP title’s gameplay. All it said was that Beaterator is a “powerful music mixer with robust beatmaking features” and will sport an “addictive collection of original music and rhythm games and challenge modes.”

While EA’s Def Jam: Icon is the third installment in the publisher’s series of hip-hop hybrid fighting games, it represents a significant departure from its predecessors in terms of gameplay. Later this week, PlayStation 3 owners will get a chance to see if they like the change, as Sony today announced that it will release a free demo of the game on its PlayStation Store tomorrow.

Where Def Jam Vendetta and Def Jam: Fight for NY played like wrestling games, with an emphasis on brawling elements, Def Jam: Icon attempts to blend the music into the gameplay. Players can time their attacks to the beat of the music to dish out extra damage, and the music can also trigger explosions and create other interactive elements in the game’s levels.

The Def Jam demo isn’t the only piece of new content arriving on the PlayStation Store Thursday. Sony has also said it will release a free trailer and behind-the-scenes videos on Insomniac’s first-person shooter Resistance: Fall of Man, while movie buffs can download new looks at Disturbia (trailer), Premonition (trailer), and Shooter (trailer and behind-the-scenes video).

Plenty of great stories came out of Microsoft’s X06 event in Barcelona last year, but the most exciting news for many attendees was the announcement that Sensible World of Soccer is headed to Xbox Live Arcade this year. Little else was said about the game at the event, but that didn’t stop it from getting the loudest cheer of the day during a briefing that also included the announcements of Project Gotham Racing 4 and Halo Wars, as well as exclusive downloadable content for Grand Theft Auto IV. Codemasters has recently started releasing information on the game to the SWOS faithful via its official forums, and we’re so excited for this one that we decided it’d be rude not to share that info with you.

An early concept shot for the XBLA version of SWOS.

Although Sensible World of Soccer first graced the Amiga in 1994, the upcoming Xbox 360 and Windows Vista game will be based on the 96/97 version, which is generally considered to be the best game in the series. Like many Xbox Live Arcade games, SWOS will include two versions of the game–an emulation of the original Amiga source code and a reworked game with high-definition visuals, improved audio, and new gameplay features. Online play and leaderboards will be supported by both versions.

The 96/97 version of SWOS was played using only a single button, and this will still be the case if you opt to play the original game rather than the updated one. You’ll be able to use either the analog stick or the directional pad for player movement, and if you’re playing on a PC, you’ll also have the option to use keyboard controls, of course.

The Xbox Live Arcade version of Sensible World of Soccer is currently scheduled for release this summer, while the PC version for Vista-based machines will follow later in the year. We look forward to bringing you more information as soon as it becomes available

March 14, 2007 - We keep waiting for the fairy dust and pixies — that strange, unexplainable magic that transforms the extraordinary into perfection — to work its stuff on the Wii remote. The controller has flexed its muscles in games like Wii Sports and we’ve been wowed again and again by its speedy accuracy in, say, first-person shooters. Nowadays, we look at many traditionally-controlled games and fantasize about how much better the might play with Nintendo’s remote. But just as the pointer has showcased its strengths, so have its weaknesses become illuminated. Take, for example, a project like Wii Sports golf, whose simple presentation is complemented by equally simple controls — a configuration, we submit, that could only succeed on Nintendo’s new console. That is because the play mechanics which power this rendition of golf are so basic as to be ignored if not for an astonishingly refreshing control method — so pick-up-and-play accessible that you can grip it and rip it, as they say, alongside mom, dad, and maybe even grandma, too. Intuitive or not, though, Wii Sports golf lacked depth — you couldn’t add spin or hook to your shots, for example — and therefore die-hard simulation seekers looked to EA’s Tiger Woods franchise for the real deal. Now, the simulation-heavy golfer is here and with it a deeper golfing experience than previously available — no doubt about it. That noted, EA hasn’t stumbled into the fairy dust and the pixies are still nowhere to be found. The developer has made clever use of the Wii remote and in some ways it does indeed feel like an extension of a real-life golf club. And yet, some old issues persist, from lacking one-to-one maneuverability — Wii Sports has it beat, believe it or not — to some truly arbitrary control inaccuracies, which keep us from declaring this the ultimate videogame golfer.

Tiger Woods PGA Tour 07 for Wii is a good first effort and, if you’ve got to have a golf simulation right now, it’s also your very best choice. EA hasn’t skimped on features and as a result Wii Tiger includes a host of gameplay modes, character creation options, stat trackers, playable characters and courses. All things considered, the effort makes Wii Sports golf look like a college technical demo where depth and variety are concerned. The title has you covered regardless of whether you seek a traditional golf outing or a host of challenges that lean on the arcadey side. You can travel the world and compete against 18 pros in the Tiger Challenge or go ultra-realistic and take part in the official PGA Tour, which hustles you through a calendar of events as you climb your way from amateur to superstar. Your created character begins with limited skills, but as you advance you acquire more points, which can be used to enhance his or her abilities — always inspiring. However, there are also a series of quickly accessible games, from Battle Golf and Skills 18 to Target, where the object is simply to hit the ball at various targets placed around an environment. The selection of different play styles and modes is both varied and comprehensive. Frankly, there’s more than enough in place to keep you busy for weeks, especially if you add in the fact that all of the modes can be enjoyed by multiple players.There are some Wii notables that don’t relate to fundamentally changed control mechanics, but not many of them. For the most part, Woods 07 for Nintendo’s system looks like it does for, say, PlayStation 2, with a handful of differences. There is little doubt in our minds that the game was based on versions for the older generation of consoles. That being true, there are some visual improvements. For starters, Tiger runs in 480p and 16:9 widescreen on Wii, which we appreciate. But on top of that, EA has improved texture resolution so that the sky domes and greens are sharper than previous iterations. Tiger takes a more realistic approach to the sport of golf than Wii Sports does. Whereas Nintendo’s title features a vibrant, but very simple presentation, EA’s endeavors to replicate a realistic golfing environment - a much more difficult challenge. The courses are comprised of genuine greens that have a gritty, washed out look to them compared to those in Wii Sports, but the variety - from forest and desert backdrops to holes that stretch across beaches - is much more diverse. Tiger on Wii runs at 30 frames per second, but there are occasional fluidity dips, which shouldn’t be happening given that the title rarely utilizes the extra power that Nintendo’s new console affords studios over, say, PlayStation 2 and GameCube.

Enough about the presentation, though. The real question is whether or not the Wii remote perfectly simulates a golf club. The answer is no - there are still some issues, which we’ll outline, but it works well enough most of the time for us to recommend Tiger Woods, especially for die-hard golf fans. Tiger for Wii functions similarly to Wii Sports golf in that you simply pull back the Wii remote and then swing forward to send your balls soaring over the green. There are some big differences, though - a couple that make Tiger the better game and others that make it the worse one. Wii Sports golf offers near one-to-one control so that when you pull back on the Wii remote your golfer simulates your movement. Tiger doesn’t do that. Rather, you press the B button, pull back the Wii remote just the tiniest bit and your character winds up for a full power shot anyway. As soon as you swing forward, you rip the ball. This method works well when you need full power, but it’s less precise for those pro shots where less is more. It’s as though you have to cut off Tiger’s backswing animation and quickly swing forward in order to execute mid-swings. The advanced control setting seems to enable a bit more freedom, but it still falls well short of one-to-one accuracy, which is disappointing because such a method is ultimately preferable, as Wii Sports proves.

I wonder what he does when he wants the drumstick.

Sony insists that the PlayStation 2 has several years left in its lifecycle. However, it’s unlikely that the platform will see a game of the same stature of God of War II ever again. Already lauded by critics as one of the finest PS2 action games made, the first-party Sony game’s reign at retail was kicked off last night at a launch party in San Francisco.

Besides God of War, two other titles of note arrived on Sony platforms this week. Activision dispatched Call of Duty: Roads to Victory onto the PlayStation Portable while 2K Games shipped College Hoops 2K7 for the PlayStation 3.

Head down, elbows straight, and… another shank. So real!

The week’s other big sports game was for a Nintendo platform. Months after it hit most other consoles, Tiger Woods PGA Tour 07 finally arrives on the Wii today, letting players slice and putt with real movements. The Wii will also receive three blasts from the past in the form of the Virtual Console titles Double Dungeons, Sonic Spinball, and Tecmo Bowl.

The sole Xbox 360 release for the week is Wednesday’s Xbox Live Arcade game, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. The DS gets several minor titles, including Wiffle Ball Advance and QuickSpot. Meanwhile, IL-2 Sturmovik: 1946, Great Invasions, and Top Spin 2 bounce onto the PC.

This week’s new releases are listed below (list taken from retailer information–actual dates may vary).

MARCH 12, 2007
Carol Vorderman’s Sudoku (PC)
Double Dungeons (Wii via Virtual Console)
Runaway: The Dream of the Turtle (PC)
Sonic Spinball (Wii via Virtual Console)
Tecmo Bowl (Wii via Virtual Console)
Top Spin 2 (PC)
Tortuga - Two Treasures (DS)
Wiffle Ball Advance (DS)

MARCH 13, 2007
Call of Duty: Roads to Victory (PSP)
College Hoops 2K7 (PS3)
God of War II (PS2)
Great Invasions (PC)
Hans Christian Andersen: The Ugly Prince Duckling (PC)
Mind Quiz: Your Brain Coach (DS)
Model Train 3D (PC)
IL-2 Sturmovik: 1946 (PC)
QuickSpot (DS)
Tiger Woods PGA Tour 07 (Wii)

MARCH 14, 2007
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (X360 via Xbox Live Arcade)

MARCH 15, 2007
Disney’s Herbie Rescue Rally (DS)

Somnus suggests we check out the latest issue of MIT’s Technology Review, where researchers describe how they can dramatically boost engine output and efficiency by preventing pre-ignition, or “knock.” How they do it: “Both turbocharging and direct injection are preexisting technologies, and neither looks particularly impressive… by combining them, and augmenting them with a novel way to use a small amount of ethanol, Cohn and his colleagues have created a design that they believe could triple the power of a test engine.”

“Despite the good news out of GDC last week, it still seems like Sony’s new console has some image management to do. CNET says that the PlayStation 3 is ‘the most unwanted console in recent memory’ and asks ‘why is the PS3 so undesirable?’ They specifically question the company’s wisdom in emphasizing the power of the console. Their impression is that this invites developers to neglect gameplay, in favour of investing in graphics. Likewise, Gamespot is running a piece suggesting ten ways to make the PS3 worth buying. A lower price is just one of the suggestions with exclusives, and the need for online standardization, following close behind. Looks like Sony still has its work cut out.”

The recently-announced CAT-iq standard doesn’t exactly have the greatest name recognition just yet, but Hong Kong-based Binatone looks to be doing its part to help get it off the ground, announcing its first CAT-iq compliant phone at CeBIT. CAT-iq, for those not up to speed, is a new standard for VoIP cordless phones developed by the DECT Forum, which promises to deliver “high definition” sound quality in addition to an array of Internet-based services. Binatone’s phone looks to bring all those newly-standardized options into the conference room, with a cordless handset complimented by a wireless, full-duplex speakerphone. When not chatting it up, you’ll also be able to use the handset to check news, stocks, weather, and other information, as well as listen to Internet radio stations with “stunning sound quality.” Unfortunately, there’s no word on what it’ll cost, although it looks like it’ll be available sometime in the third quarter of this year.