For a while Saints Row for PS3 was considered nothing but a listing on EB Games and Gamestop. However, THQ has issued an official press release announcing Saints row for PS3. They will release it sometime this Spring, with no mention of whether or not there will be extra features. However, the PS3 version will have all the online features of the Xbox360 version (minus Xbox Live, of course), as well as some "minor transactions".

The Unreal 3 engine by Epic has been getting a ton of good press, seeing as it has been included in very successful games such as Gears of War. Epic Games has confirmed two things about it's own use of Unreal 3. The first is that Unreal Tournament 2007 will be renamed Unreal Tournament 3. It is unclear as to why, considering that Unreal Tournament 2004 was technically the fourth release in the Unreal Tournament series. The second thing that Epic confirmed was that Xbox360 will also see a version of Unreal Tournament 2007.

Company of Heroes, one of the best RTS games of 2006, may be the first game to be patched to use DirectX10. The patch, which can be expected sometime in March, will redo a lot of the textures. It will also add several new features, streamline the graphics engine, and generally make things look prettier. The DX10 version of Company of Heroes will actually run faster than the DX9 version, however once you add in all the additional gameplay features THQ plans on adding, the two versions of Company of Heroes will perform about the same.

The first details about EA's next expansion to the Battlefield series are beginning to leak, with the booster pack expected to be named Battlefield 2142 - Northern Strike. The most notable changes are three new European maps, two new vehicles, ten new rewards, ten new unlocks, the new Epic Titan mode for two maps and improved use of pods. The new content is generally intended to focus on infantry battles instead of using vehicles for extreme force, with the new maps tweaked to create choke-points. There isn't any word on pricing yet, although rumours that the in-game advertising could lead to free add-on packs haven't been mentioned by EA.

The people who designed Half Life must have figured that they should not call the version of Half Life going onto consoles just "Half Life: Episode Two", especially when it ccomes with so much more than that. And so, Valve will release a bundle of Half-Life 2, Episodes One and Two, Team Fortress, and Portal as one big "Half Life: Orange". It should come to at least the Xbox360 and PC, but may also come to the PS3.

The German ratings board has refused to issue a rating for "Crackdown", the Xbox360 game that will come with a free Halo 3 beta invitation. Crackdown was probably banned in Germany for being too violent. A game without a rating in Germany isn't "illegal", however it cannot be sold to a minor, advertised, or displayed in a public store. All sales of the game have to be person-to-person. Two other Xbos360 games that have been deemed unrated in Germany are Gears of War and Dead Rising.

When Bioshock was announced at X06 as the successor to the "System Shock" series, it was originally planned as an Xbox360 exclusive. Irrational games has decided that it would release it for both the PC and Xbox360. Hopefully, it will not be ported onto the PC like Rainbow Six: Vegas was.

Daniel Pohl, an aspiring programmer in Germany, is doing some things that are simply stunning the gaming community. Daniel has taken the Quake 4 engine and effectively modified it with ray tracing effects.

Ray-tracing is a method of modeling and rendering the path of the light as it interacts with the models in a 3D scene. Overall, results in Daniel's projects show extremly good levels of shadows, enabling life-like immersion into the 3D scene.

Daniel is looking for a sponsor so he can become a game developer. If he helps design games, and ray tracing becomes mass implemented, we could see a new age of realism in games. You can see a sample of his work below, and his project website here.