Our German contributor and approver Oliver Jahn just became the 5th man in MobyGames' history to reach such a sweet mark of 50,000 points. Congratulations Oliver!

This is not another hoax! After more than 6 years since the last video, Duke Nukem Forever has another glimpse of what the long-delayed game can be (when it's done...). As announced by George Broussard itself:

(...)Tomorrow, Wednesday the 19th, around noon CST, we will release the first teaser trailer from Duke Nukem Forever. To tide you over until then, here is a screen shot taken from the teaser.

Thank you for being fans of the game and for your continued patience.

The 1-minute long video put the developers servers on their knees, but they managed to publish it on a lot of mirrors and it's easier now to watch it or download it. More details on the 3D Realms website.

Bad news everyone,

The brilliant author of Discworld saga, and many other books Terry Pratchett, has written an open letter in the web of Paul Kidby declaring he is been diagnosed with "a very rare form of Alzheimer". He is still optimistic and, apart from expressing his intention to release at least two other books, he declares that "I am not dead".

Still Life, developed by Microids and released in 2005, was an adventure game about the FBI agent Victoria McPherson, who was investigating a serial murder. The case had eerily much in common with a case her grandfather Gus, a private investigator of Post Mortem fame, had been investigating. The case was never properly solved, but through a series of mergers and take-overs, it became ever more unlikely that Microids would ever release a sequel.

Today, however, they have announced that a sequel has been in the works since June and will be ready in November 2008. In the sequel, Victoria investigates a new murder in Maine that bears strong resemblances to the original murders. Although the murderer seems to have removed all clues, a journalist claims she has found a lead and wants to speak to Victoria. Because the journalist has previously written very critical articles about Victoria, she does not feel like meeting Paloma, who then gets kidnapped by the killer. The player controls both characters in turn.

In an announcement that will shake the industry, publishing powerhouse Activision Publishing, Inc. and Vivendi Games announce a merger to form the world's most profitable games business. The most important asset of Vivendi is development giant Blizzard Entertainment. The new business will be called Activision Blizzard and its chief executive will be Activision's current CEO Bobby Kotick. Vivendi will be the biggest shareholder in the group.

For years Electronic Arts has been considered the largest powerhouse around, but this will definitely shuffle the deck. If we paid more attention to Call of Duty 4, we would have known it was coming.

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Recent events involving the fiasco with Eidos and one unnamed reviewer at Gamespot provided the world with interesting insights how mainstream gaming media works.

At least, that's what this article at Kotaku indicates.

We've heard an unsettling rumor today from an anonymous tipster that longtime game reviewer Jeff Gerstmann from Gamespot has been let go. That wouldn't necessarily be newsworthy, but the conditions under which he was allegedly dismissed were. According to the source, Gerstmann was fired "on the spot" due to advertiser pressure for his review of Eidos' Kane & Lynch: Dead Men. A visit to Gamespot shows that the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 game has taken over the site very prominently, with backgrounds and multiple banner ads all pitching Kane & Lynch. Allegedly, publisher Eidos "took issue with the review and threatened to pull its ad campaign."

Jeff's review was certainly less than glowing. He assigned the game a 6.0, otherwise known as "Fair" on the Gamespot scale. The game is currently enjoying a Metacritic score in the 65 to 69 range, which the site describes as "mixed or average reviews." According to our tipster, it wasn't necessarily the score that was reason for Gerstmann's rumored axing, but the "tone" of the review.

How does this make you feel? Is all the opinions of mainstream gaming journalism of past and present now tainted by these facts? Was it all a lie? Who should we trust? Were all the "greatest games evah!!!" really great games or was it an illusion conjured by masterful bribes and hypes? Opinions and feelings are waited.

After a hiatus at #1 in September due to the release of Halo 3, in which Xbox 360 beat Wii by some 25,000 units, Nintendo is back on top in October 2007 by a substantial margin. Wii sold 520,000 for the month, followed by Nintendo DS at 460,000. Xbox 360 fell to 370,000. PSP, PS2 and PS3 rounded out the rankings for the month.

1. Wii - 519,000
2. Nintendo DS - 458,000
3. Xbox 360 - 366,000
4. PSP - 286,000
5. PS2 - 184,000
6. PS3 - 121,000

On the software side, it was all Guitar Hero. Activision noted in a press release that due to the release of Guitar Hero III they managed a market share of 28.7% for the month. In addition, it was the top selling game on each platform for which it was released (PS2, PS3, Wii and Xbox 360). No third party game has ever ranked #1 on Wii.

1. Halo 3 (Xbox 360) - 434,000
2. Guitar Hero III w/ guitar (Xbox 360) - 383,000
3. Guitar Hero III w/ guitar (Wii) - 286,000
4. Guitar Hero III w/ guitar (PS2) - 271,000
5. Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass (DS) - 263,000
6. Wii Play (Wii) - 240,000
7. The Orange Box (Xbox 360) - 238,000
8. Guitar Hero III (PS2) - 232,000
9. FIFA Soccer 08 (PS2) - 130,000
10. Brain Age 2 (DS) - 117,000

Now that the Christmas "rush season" is upon us, it will be interesting to see what Santa's most popular choices will be.