Another week full of lawsuits. Poor, beleaguered company Midway came under fire once again, and this time it was from a very unlikely direction: the guy behind the Mortal Kombat movies is suing them in order to "protect his IP rights", which is a better way of saying that he wants to keep milking the MK franchise for as long as possible. Square Enix also got served with a class-action lawsuit for "deceiving" Final Fantasy XI patrons regarding fees. Not everything was bad, though. Read all about 'em after the jump in this week's Warrior recap.

With the GDC riding off into the sunset, the gaming scene is left with a seriously hyped-up trail filled with bits of info on this year's hottest titles. Couple that with the new info that Famitsu's so darn good at getting, and you have a very noisy news week to recap. For starters, Square Enix revealed more info for their much-awaited games, plus the Wii homebrew devs seemed to have really hit their stride, releasing their heavy artillery for the scene. For this edition of the Nintendo Weekend Warrior for the DS and Wii, there's gonna be some rumor-busting, some Squeenix quizzing, and Wii brewing!

NPD Group has released the market performance results for May 2008, and already the PR armies at Nintendo, Microsoft, and Sony have began to churn out their reformatted versions of the results. Of course, each one talks only about what they've achieved so far in the fifth month of the Year of the Rat, but what happens when we put them all together? Yes, we get the full NPD May story.

In a few days, Nintendo will be launching WiiWare games in the US and in Europe. Does the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3 have anything to worry about now that there's one more player that delivers downloadable casual games? Read the full article to find out more about WiiWare and some of the games you can look forward to downloading from the service.

It's never too early to speculate about what games we'll be having this year, and if you're among those who want to play Nostradamus, the latest trademarks gaming giants like Square Enix and Namco Bandai secured may catch your interest. Find out what titles have been stamped at the full article.

It's an endless debate when talking about girls playing the same video games guys play. They say girls only like MMORPGs, then follow up with "there are no girls on internet." Others believe female gamers stick to casual games, but Mario and Pokemon titles have more fanboys than fangirls.

No matter what your stand is, here's a list of non-girly games that aren't Barbie, Bratz, or any of those glamorous stuff.

Everything makes sense now as to why HP was intent in acquiring Voodoo PCs in the last quarter of 2006. It's on its way to embarking on a big quest to eat a portion of the online gaming pie.

Boldly, the company most recognized for its work with printers and laptops announced that its "Game On" project will go head to head with the console giants - Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo.

Analysts are skeptical as to how HP will pull it off, pointing to the fact that the console market grew by a third last year as compared to only 1 percent in growth for PC gaming.

HP's gameplan is to invest on Voodoo and use next-gen PC gaming software and hardware resources to gain a competitive edge. HP says that in the era of the broadband connections, people can easily jump online and enjoy the games there.

That's not to say HP has no prior experience with game development. HP Labs has shown a bit of what it can do by bundling demos of small games with HP and Compaq laptops in the recent years.

So, will the masters of printing ever dominate the PC gaming online community? That we don't know, but the more the merrier, right?

It's a one-two hit combo for Western Australia as the Asia Pacific region celebrates gaming over at Perth. The GO3 Electronic Entertainment Expo, or GO3 Expo for short, was launched by the Minister for Industry and Enterprise Francis Logan at the Perth Convention Exhibition Center, as detailed from an official press release.

 

With the Asian, Europe, and Oceanic game industry's gaming icons to participate in the event as guest speakers, the three day affair will showcase the industry's games, game hobbyists' leisurely activities, network communication and computer technology. So from March 30 to April 1, expect attendees to be able to try out games from the promotional demonstrations sported by game developers.

Not just focusing on computers, consoles will also be making a scheduled arrival at the event, with Xbox 360, Wii and PlayStation 3 demo booths to be available to excited Aussie gamers. So you could expect their little handheld cousins aren't far behind either. The region's industry celebrities, government officials, and high profile media, including but not limited to MTV and Famitsu, will be joining gaming giants in making this uniquely positioned event a great success. Guest speakers include:

• Hideo Kojima (Metal Gear Solid)
• Tetsuya Mizuguchi (Sega Rally Championship and Rez)
• Masaya Matsuura (Parappa the Rapper)
• Goichi Suda (Killer 7)
• Feargus Carroll (LucasArts)
• Nicklas "Cece" Cederström (World in Conflict)

Aside from the Fury MMORPG PvP showcase, guests can also expect other events to tiptoe their way in the busy weekend. First up is the Electronic Sports World Cup (ESWC) 2007 qualifiers showcase, who will be representing Aussies from the world over in the Grand Finals at Paris later this year.

The GO3 LAN Party will also take place at the event. For 30 hours, over 600 attendees can relive the glory LAN party days and boast their talent against their seatmates' hand-and-eye-coordination skills. This is probably one of the largest network gaming setups ever attempted in Australia.

Also making a peep show is the GO3 Cos-Play Competition just to showcase the huge subculture phenomenon in the Asian region. The competition will allow the best game-character to win an all-expense paid trip to the 2007 Tokyo Game Show. Next up is the Nullarbor Game Development Competition, where budding game dev enthusiasts and serious students around Australia can present their work to a large crowd.

Visitors interested will be able to demo the games and vote for their favorite ones, allowing the best ones to bring home cash and prizes. And last but not least is the Dance Dance Revolution Competition, where Australia's best footwork masters duel it out to win more cash and prizes, plus get immortalized as the GO3 "DDR Champion 2007."

In the aftermath of GDC, it was revealed that flOw was very close to becoming a Wii release, but in the end, Sony won the battle and the game will be a PS3 exclusive for now.

Ars Technica was able to get comments coming from Kellee Santiago of That Game Company, and Santiago was open to some interesting details. It was revealed that Sony was more supportive of the project than Nintendo, helping the developer set up the studio and get things going.

While talks with Nintendo were generally amicable, the Wii maker did not seem as aggressive as its rival in providing assistance to That Game Company. Santiago described choosing between the two console giants as "the hardest decision" that his company had to make, but expressed happiness in teaming up with Sony to work on the PS3. That Game Company did not rule out possible projects on the Wii platform in the future.

Ars Technica's report went on to discuss the advantages and disadvantages of each platform regarding how the game will play, saying that the SIXAXIS may not be as easy to wield as the Wii controller but it does rise to the occasion. They also emphasized that HD graphics should be good for the game, as well as any out there.

Follow the read URL to get the nitty-gritty on the write-up.

This next article is about prestige games. While we were quite sure already what point we would like to drive at, we wanted to be sure. So we went to our mini library, picked up a Webster's and looked up the meaning of the word.

Prestige: reputation or influence arising from success, achievement, rank, or other favorable attributes; distinction or reputation attaching to a person or thing and thus possessing a cachet for others or for the public.

Before we proceed, pardon us first this bit of explanation: In the movie industry, prestige films are those that are not expected to do blockbuster numbers but brings pride to those who are part of it. They are funded by various studios and actors are asked to accept lower rates. Book publishers likewise, also support books that are award-worthy but not necessarily top sellers. Both of these art forms gained prestige, so to speak, because of their favorable attributes (read: content).

Now, here comes the serious question: Why are there no prestige titles? The problem, unfortunately, lies in the big companies' metric of success. For them, a game is successful whenever it brings high revenues.

Reviews are important only before and during a game's first weeks in the market. In the event that sales wouldn't pick up, they abandon the title. Abandon, in the sense that they try to distance themselves from it. You don't believe us? Look at these:

• Capcom dissolves Clover Studios because of disappointing sales for their last project. The latter's last project happened to be Okami, a title that received high reviews and commendations across the industry.
• Last year, Microsoft dropped Psychonauts because of being unpopular. The game was then picked up by a much smaller company, Majesco.
• UbiSoft released Beyond Good and Evil. It was supposed to be a series. But because of disappointing sales, the planned series was dropped all together.

These are just the recent things that readily comes to mind. Given the time, we are sure we'll be able to find a lot of other similar cases out there. A good number of excellent titles but because of economic reasons, are lying at the bottom of the heap, dusty and forgotten.

The solution, as easy and as naive as it sounds, lies in inner values. Until the day publishers and developers take pride in content rather than revenues, things wouldn't change. And until the day the triumvirate (giants Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft ) takes the industry into this direction, it would remain an unpaved and crooked road for prestige titles.