Hot in the industry today is news that two technological companies have joined forces to package both animations and physics to developer companies. NaturalMotion, responsible for the motion synthesis technology in Grand Theft Auto IV, announced together with NVIDIA, new proud owners of PhysX technology, that they will offer "highly-integrated" solutions for developing games on all current generation gaming platforms, including the PC. Find out how at the full story.

One topic that this year's Nordic Game conference aims to discuss is regarding game development. To this end, Nordic's organizers have unveiled their initial line-up of professional programmers who will be giving talks at the event grounds. Details are available in the full article.

If you're conscious about in-game dynamics, namely the physics behind games, then this update is definitely good news. Nvidia, a visual computing technologies company, has just signed an agreement to acquire Ageia Technologies, Inc., a company known for the PhysX software that is widely adopted by games spanning different platforms. Details in the full article.

Nintendo's white-hot commercial success console, the Wii, has been called a lot of things. The most prominent description  is "underpowered." Microsoft Xbox division Robbie Bach took a swipe at the innovative game system recently, saying that even the original Xbox can pull off better visuals.

That may be a foregone conclusion as Nintendo itself was recently quoted admitting that the processor for the GameCube and the Wii are very similar except for a few minor details. Anonymous third-party developers say that the layout of the system is not very flexible and may pose gridlocks to developers.

The sources said that the processing power of the Wii when it comes to shadow and lighting generation is very close to last-gen Nvidia GeForce 2 3D accelerators. "The Wii's GPU has fixed functions for vertex, lighting, and pixel operations... The Wii is an older fixed function design where you have lots of operations but the pipelines are not programmable in the sense of downloading shader code to run," says a developer.

What distinguishes the Wii from its earlier-generation brother in terms of graphics is the fact that it has significantly more memory that allows better pixel generation and other important feats. The memory was raised from 162MB to 243MB, freeing up operations to allow better lighting and rendering effects as well.

Nintendo, however, doesn't seem to mind the criticism, and rightfully so. The strategy has never been to compete with sheer muscle. Rather, it chose to expand the market and outfox the competition with innovation and friendliness. The results are outstanding. With its relatively low price and massive appeal, it has been dominating from Japan to the USA.

If you want to know the whole technical comparison of the Wii to the GameCube, you can follow the read URL. See if you think Robbie was able to "Bach up" his assertions.

Business and consumer computer solutions provider Hewlett-Packard, graphics industry contender NVIDIA, Microsoft's PC advocate Games for Windows initiative and even broadband game publisher Trion World Network released a whoosh of hostile air against the next-gen consoles.

They were probably outraged as many other hardcore PC fans were at the 2007 Game Developers Conference's "PC Gaming in an Age of Connected Consoles" panel discussion. Instead, the PC industry leaders formed their own panel, bringing in Microsoft's Games for Windows initiative's boss Rich Wickham and Trion World Network's founder Lars Butler, among other representatives of leading PC industry entities.

Lars was also quick to comment, "I believe the days of the console are numbered. There is one more generation of gaming consoles and that is it."

Backing Butler, NVIDIA's VP Roy Taylor upped the PC's ante by stating, "Our advantage as developers is we know what is coming. And what is coming is far ahead of the console. You will see a huge difference between what you can get on a PC and a console."

In line with this, Hewlett-Packard plans to enter the hardcore gaming market by rolling out a new line of gaming-related hardware, possibly even hobbyist PCs, within the year. It's even claimed that they plan to even provide a curved computer monitor for not only widescreen effect, but for full FPS immersion.

Whether or not the PC industry giants can deliver, we cannot tell, but with PC enthusiasts who know exactly how to make full use of their PC's power and console piracy looming over the horizon, consoles may never be able to say "the PC is dead" ever again.

Graphics processor specialist Nvidia has announced that it has signed up to be a primary sponsor for next month's Nordic Game Conference in Malmö, Sweden. The Nordic Game Conference will take place on May 15 and 16 at the said venue.

"Having Nvidia on board as a Primary Sponsor is a great privilege for us and a recognition of our conference and its rising status as one of the key industry events in Europe," commented Tom Felices, project manager for Nordic Game 2007.

"With the latest round of 'next gen' consoles already a familiar fixture in the marketplace, it's up to the PC as usual to provide the next 'next generation' gaming experience," said Darryl Still, NVIDIA Director of Content Management, EMEAI. Still added that Nvidia is "working closely with games studios to realise this ambition," and that Nvidia's search for "the most exciting, innovative talent" keeps leading the company back to the rapidly growing games industry in Nordic territories.

"That's why we're delighted to be a primary sponsor of the Nordic Game event," he said. "We're looking forward to sharing our time in Malmö with many of the most inspirational and creative people in the games industry."

More than two weeks would still have to pass before the Market for Home Computing & Video Games Industry Excellence Awards (MCV Awards) happens, but the event has already sold out. To be attended by over 600 industry executives from all aspects of the gaming industry, the prestigious awards honors excellence across 15 categories.

The event will be held at the London's Brewery venue in Chiswell Street on Thursday April 19th. It will start with pre-event drinks at The King's Head, Chiswell Street from 5 pm, care of Sennheiser and Gem Distribution. At 6pm, a champagne reception sponsored by IGA Worlwide will follow, and then the awards proper happens.

Sounds like a lot of boozing, huh? Well, the event is a celebration, as the industry itself chooses the winners of the awards. MCV Awards recognizes effort, innovation and commercial success. Every major company will be attending the event. Pub landlord at the London's Brewery Al Murray will even be performing, so you can expect more to be there because of them.

There are 17 coveted awards to be competed for by the finalists. The categories include awards for Star Store, Games Publisher, Marketing Team, Sales Team and Game Campaign. The event is sponsored by Xbox 360, Nintendo, Nvidia, Kiss FM, System 3, Mice Domino and GamerTV.

The whole videogame industry is currently in the middle of the transition to high-definition next gen visuals with the introduction of DirectX 10, and to make the transition an easier process, here comes Nvidia with the "definitive" game development platform, Nvidia SDK 10.

The core of Nvidia's new platform is the new NVIDIA Developer Toolkit. It promises to "save developers time and money in creating games that deliver almost lifelike graphics and physics realism." The platform consists of Nvidia GeForce(R) 8 Series graphics cards, Nvidia nForce(R) 680 motherboards, and DirectX 10.

The new NVIDIA Developer Toolkit also includes instructive code samples, advanced shaders, performance tuning, and more, all in a bid to make the creation of Microsoft DirectX 10-compatible games easier.

The Nvidia Developer Toolkit also includes the following:

• SDK 10: all-new DirectX 10, OpenGL, and CUDA code samples for the latest GPUs
• Texture Tools: Powerful libraries and plug-ins for working with textures - now with DirectX 10 support and approximately 10x faster due to GPU acceleration via CUDA
• PerfKit 5: powerful tools for debugging and profiling GPU applications for Windows Vista and DirectX 10 -- now with shader edit-and-continue, render state modification, customizable graphs and counters, and more
• ShaderPerf 2: detailed shader performance information with support for new drivers
• FX Composer 2: a world-class development environment for cross-platform shader authoring; DirectX and OpenGL support with HLSL, Cg, and COLLADA FX
• Shader Library: the world's largest collection of GPU shaders featuring more than 100 different shader effects and support for external submissions

Nvidia is currently demonstrating the entire development platform and distributing some of its components free of charge at the Game Developers Conference (GDC).

Who else is dropping by at the much-coveted GDC this year? Guess no more, 'cause we have the updated list right here. As of the current press time, there are now 35 speakers confirmed to show up to share their expertise. Here's the new list of the who's whos:

• Kevin Bjorke - Art & Technology Evangelist for the NVIDIA Corporation
• Ramon Axelrod - CTO for AIseek
• Bart House - Development Lead - Windows Server Performance Team for Microsoft
• Robert Mitchell - Senior Programmer for Sony Online Entertainment
• Mike Goslin - Vice President, Virtual Reality Studio for Disney Online
• Scott Brown - President and CEO of NetDevil
• Joseph Ybarra - Vice President of Product Development Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment

If you're interested to go, but still has not registered for it, then you'd be glad to know that you still have time to do so. In fact, this may be your last chance to get it at a deal as this is their final week of offering over 40% off on-site registration rates. Hurry, 'cause March 1 marks the price hike from US$ 195 to US$ 345.

While nVidia's VP has stated that good graphics are one key component to good gaming, Introversion Software's Mark Morris thinks otherwise.

In a recent interview, Introversion's director said that his company was unlikely to produce a photo-realistic title in the near future - a trend which he observed was becoming commonplace among other developers.

What I think happens too often is that [developers] sort of go, 'We’re going to show you the best graphics you’ve ever seen and then we might pack a bit of gameplay or a little bit of entertaining fun on at the end," he said, noting that he thought it was "a very bad thing to do.

Detailing his stance, Morris did say that he thought that good graphics are still an essential part of a game in the way they draw players in. The problem, according to him, was that developers became so focused on developing high calibre graphics that the race was beginning to resemble a similar gaming trend back in the 1980s. "I think they’re stuck in the ‘80s when graphics in games were so rubbish, that every time a new game came out, the graphics would improve slightly and that would be really so important."

And taking a cue from Taylor's previous quip about lack of graphics being like watching "24" in black-and-white on a 7-inch screen, Morris pointed out that "24"'s forte was its story-telling style on TV -  each episode happened in real time.

[It’s] nothing that you can get from any other medium other than television. So when [Taylor] says it’s like watching 24 on a small screen, I think it’s nonsense… If I owned a cinema, I could go and run 24 on my cinema screen and it would get slightly better. But the real joy of 24 is that it maximizes the particular medium of television like nothing has ever done before. So I think when he uses that quote he picked a bit of a bad example.

This interview comes in light of the more highly anticipated visuals-heavy titles some of the fans here may be waiting up for, such as Halo 3, Lair, or Final Fantasy XIII. It will also be noted that Introversion is most famous for titles like DEFCON and Darwinia. Kudos to ssj3fox for this hot tip.