What is the next leap that is needed for gaming-oriented PCs? According to Dell's gaming PC subsidiary Alienware it's not a faster processor or graphics card but moving to a more powerful operating system. In a new News.com article Alienware's desktop product manager Marc Diana says the major PC hardware companies (Microsoft, Intel, NVIDIA, AMD) need to move collectively to fully support 64-bit based operating systems.

Ever since the release of Windows 95 13 years ago, most PC games have supported 32-bit based OSs with only a few that have fully supported 64-bit systems natively. In fact Diana admits Alienware doesn't even bother to offer 64-bit based PCs because the driver support for such a system isn't available, in their opinion. Yet going to a 64-bit OS would not only increase performance for PCs in theory it would also allow gaming PCs to have memory that can break the current 4GB limit that 32-bit OS have.

Diana said other factors could also help in making more powerful PCs in the future including moving to DDR3-based memory that use less power but are clocked higher than DDR2-based memory. At the moment DDR3-based memory is still much more expensive than the norm.

One of Valve's biggest benefits it gets from its Steam download service is finding out exactly what people have in their PC rigs via a voluntary survey. Today Valve released the latest results of their hardware survey (covering the period between Nov. 15, 2008 and May 15, 2008).

The results make for some fascinating reading and speculation. Among the highlights:

• Intel accounts for 58.48 percent of PC processors in the survey compared to AMD's 41.51 percent
• Video cards based on NVIDIA Geforce chips took up the top eight places on the survey list; the highest ATI based card was the Radeon 9600.
• Gamers still apparently have small monitors for the most part; the highest percentage is for 16 inch monitors with 25.8 percent. Only 6 71 percent of survey owners have monitors that are larger that 21 inches.
• 64.49 percent of PC owners in the Steam survey have microphones
• Windows XP still is installed in a whopping 80.92 percent of PCs in the survey; over a year after its launch Windows Vista is installed in only 17.61 percent of PCs (that includes the 64-bit version)
• 32.59 percent of PC owners in the Valve survey have hard drives that are higher than 250 GB.

Electronic Arts isn't a stranger to putting in-game ads in their games but for their latest PC expansion pack for The Sims 2 they went and made a deal to put the ads in the game's title as well. The Sims 2 IKEA Home Stuff, due out on June 23, lets the best selling Sims characters shop and use products from the home furnishings of the Swedish-based retailer.

Yes, now you can put in the trademark sofas, beds, tables and more furnishings from the iconic store into your Sims enviroment. You can bet this latest expansion will show up quickly in the top 10 best selling PC games list as most Sims expansion packs tend to do. The Sims 2 IKEA Home Stuff will be priced at $19.99.

Eidos' 2007 released WWII naval action-strategy game Battlestations: Midway was a surprise critical and sales success. Eidos is already preparing a sequel to the game, Battlestations: Pacific, but before that happens Macintosh owners will be able to play the original game in a direct port.

The Macintosh version is being handled by UK based Feral Interactive and is due for release June 27 worldwide with the US price coming in at $49.95. You can pre-order the game via Feral's online store. There's no word yet on any plans for a Mac demo for the game

When Telltale Games first revealed their plans to release a game based on the Strong Bad animated series at Homerunner.com we wondered how the game will actually look while running. Well, wonder no more as Telltale recently released the first gameplay video from Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People. As promised it looks like a true extension of the animated series so anyone who was worried about things being lost in translation won't have much to worry about.

We have some new screenshots of the game you can check out and if you want to see the game in motion all you have to do is download the video right here at Big Download

Download the Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People gameplay video from Big Download right now

Korean based MMO publisher NCsoft has revealed its latest financial results for the first quarter of 2008 and it's a bit of a mixed bag. Revenue for the quarter was $84.3 million, up 4 percent from the same period a year ago. However, the publisher's net profit was $7.7 billion which is down 43 percent from the same period a year ago.

In terms of the higher revenue NCsoft stated that one of the reasons was the continued high sales of its fantasy MMO Lineage II which had "record high sales" in the last quarter compared to its launch way back in 2003. Continued high sales of Guild Wars and City of Heroes and a reduction of costs like advertising also helped with the revenues. The company's lower profit was hit by a one time reduction of costs because of NCsoft's decision to break ties with Spacetime Studios and not publish their upcoming sci-fi MMO Blackstar (Spacetime recently announced it had reacquired the Blackstar IP from NCsoft and is continuing to develop the game).

NCsoft's major new release for 2008 seems to be the title Aion which is currently scheduled to be released in Korea later this year A line of casual titles is also in the works to be released this year as well. One interesting item of note is the breakdown of sales from individual NCsoft games. Lineage, Lineage II, City of Heroes/Villains, and Guild Wars were all but not Tabula Rasa which indicates that sales of that recently release game have yet to significantly impact the company's results.

If you have a gaming PC, you might need all you need is a powerful rig with a great graphics card, a big monitor, a super sound system and a gaming oriented mouse and keyboard. Oh, but 1Up.com says, "Wait a second, partner.". They have taken a look at some other types of technology that might (or might not) influence how we play games in the future.

Some of these devices are actually available right now such as the Novint Falcon controller that allows gamers to "feel" things like weight and textures inside the game. Other currently available "innovations" include the amBX sound and light system that allows supported games to extend beyond with new sounds and light and the TN Games Vest which allows the wearing to "feel" shots created by in-game shooting. One device that isn't out yet is the Emotiv Epoc headset which has sensors that in theory allow people to use their thoughts to control games. It's not due for release until this fall but the device had a fairly spectacular and fairly public failure during a press conference at GDC last February. In short; it just didn't work. The 1Up.com article also seems skeptical that the Epoc will gain again traction but who knows? Maybe next year at this time I will be playing Crysis with my mind.

One of the big selling points of getting a pre-order for an MMO is the possibility of getting early access to the game before the general public. Funcom promoted that with its pre-order offer for its fantasy title Age of Conan. If you paid in full for the game prior to its release on May 20, you could download the full client and play the game three days beforehand.

At least that was the theory. The cold reality came crashing hard on the game's official forums this week as Funcom has now said that it has now "sold out" of registrations for its early access time period. The developer tried to explain that this was something they had planned on doing all along. However, they added, "That the registrations would reach that set limit as fast as they did we didn't quite expect but that doesn't change the fact that the number was limited." On the one hand that means sales of the game prior to its release have been high. On the other hand, you have to think this doesn't make the game's customer service system look very good.

We've been following the list of exhibitors coming to this July's invite only E3 event and one interesting new entry just popped up on the (password protected) E3summit08.com web site. The name? Valve Software. Yep, the Half-Life, Team Fortress, Counter-Strike and Portal deveopers will have a separate meeting room at the LA Convention Center.

Of course, Valve does have a game coming out this year, the zombie co-op shooter Left 4 Dead that has been in development for some time at their recently acquired Turtle Rock Studios team. However do they have something else they plan to show at E3 this year? Let the guessing games begin . . .

Atari wants so much for their revival of the Alone in the Dark franchise to be successful; they are aiming for between 2 to 3 million copies to be sold when it is released in late June. The publisher recently released two new gameplay trailers that show off some of the creepy features in the Eden Studios developed title. And it just so happens that Big Download has some HD versions of those movies that you can download right now.

Download the Alone in the Dark Facade Sequence Video right now

Download the Alone in the Dark Parking Deck Video right now

Earlier today we reported that Microsoft is still keeping us guessing on the fate of Alan Wake, a game that was first announced back in 2005 at E3. Well believe it or not the wait has been even longer for Dragon Age, a fantasy RPG from developer BioWare. It announced the game and showed off a brief in-game demo behind closed doors at E3 in 2004. Yep, that's four years ago. Since then little info on the game has been revealed with one notable exception; it was a cover story for the first issue of the now shut down Games for Windows magazine in the fall of 2006 (1Up.com still has that story posted on their web site).

Well unlike Microsoft and Alan Wake it looks like we will be getting at least some info on Dragon Age in the near future. BioWare's new owner Electronic Arts has the game scheduled to be released in their 2009 fiscal year (which ends on March 31, 2009). And at at EA press event this week, BioWare co-founder Ray Muzyka was quoted by MTV's Multiplayer site as saying the game is "Looking really sweet." We hope to finally get a glimpse at this long awaited game at E3 in July; we have our fingers crossed.

In 2005 Remedy, the original developers of the first two Max Payne games, officially revealed and showed a live in-game demo for their next project Alan Wake. The title, which was described as a thriller type of title in the vein of The X-Files and Twin Peaks, then went into stealth mode. At E3 2006, Microsoft announced they would publish Alan Wake for both the PC and Xbox 360 and showed off a little more gameplay footage. Since then there has been little to no info on Alan Wake from either Remedy or Microsoft making the game even more mysterious.

We were hoping for some more info from Microsoft this week as they were holding a big Xbox 360 press event with a number of titles revealed to the media but alas Alan Wake was not among the games shown nor given a release date. Blog site Venture Beat chatted with Microsoft Games Studios head Shane Kim and asked him flat out, "Is Alan Wake scheduled for 2008?" Kim's reply was disappointing: "We haven't announced a firm date for Alan Wake . . " adding that they would announce such a date when they are ready to do so. So we are still in a holding pattern for the game...perhaps Microsoft will reveal more at E3 in July.

Ubisoft's decision to remove the DirectX10.1 effects from the PC port of Assassin's Creed has generated a ton of controversy and now the patch has finally gone live. The 1.02 patch is now available to download from us and deals with a number of issues that have cropped up since the release of the game about a month ago. Ubisoft states the patch has "fixed broken post-effects on DirectX 10.1 enabled cards" but that's only kind of true; as we have reported the publisher has removed the DirectX10.1 support entirely.

The full details on the 1.02 patch are after the jump

Download the new Assassin's Creed patch right now

Over a month ago Ubisoft announced they would soon provide over 40 of their catalog PC game titles via Valve's Steam service. At the time only a few games were available (Dark Messiah of Might and Magic, the original Far Cry and Splinter Cell and later Assassin's Creed and Rainbow Six Vegas 2) but it looks like a few more games are now available on the Steam service to purchase and download. Here's a list of the new games added to Steam: Beyond Good & Evil; Blazing Angels: Squadrons of WW II; Blazing Angels 2: Secret Missions of WW II
Brothers In Arms: Road to Hill 30; Chessmaster: Grandmaster Edition; Cold Fear ; Heroes of Might and Magic V; Pacific Fighters ; Rainbow Six: Lockdown

While other states in the US have tried to regulate the sales of certain PC games (only to have those same laws thrown out in court on First Amendment constitutional grounds) the state of Georgia's attitude towards games seems to be, "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em". Earlier this week Georgia's current governor Sonny Perdue signed into law a new tax incentive plan to draw in more entertainment companies, including the game industry.

According to the newly passed Entertainment Industry Investment Act, qualified game projects made in Georgie will get a 20 percent tax cut and they will get an addition 10 percent cut if they include some kind of animated Georgia state logo in their productions. As the press release announces the state is one of the few in the nation that gives video game productions the same tax breaks that are given to movie and TV shows that film in the state. Georgia has a number of game developers that might be helped by this move including Red Orchestra developers Tripwire Interactive along with High-Rez Studios, the makers of the upcoming MMO Global Agenda.

[Via GamePolitics]