Obsidian Entertainment's Alpha Protocol was removed from Valve's Steam store back in 2019, due to an expiration of music rights. The Irvine, California-headquartered developer has worked quietly on a re-release of their third-person sci-fi espionage ARPG (originally launched back in 2010) alongside Sega and GOG. A DRM-free version is now available to purchase on CD Projekt's digital distribution platform—in upgraded form; involved parties have sought to improve performance on modern PCs. An achievements system has been added, along with support for all sorts of present day controller inputs (PlayStation, Switch, and Xbox). A cloud save feature has been implemented as well, but more goodies could be on the way—as teased in Raycevick's featurette (viewable below).

The team at GOG has admitted (to PC Gamer) that it took longer than expected to get Alpha Protocol relaunched—the "very long release" is the product of half a year of work. Zuzanna Rybacka—Communication Specialist at GOG/Projekt—stated that the game's relaunch is part of their initiative of: "going back to our core, to bringing back classics…basically, our point (is) to not let all those games that would go to perish, and make them accessible for younger generations." The store's main message/vibe of "Good Old Games" has been diluted in recent years, due to a platforming of very modern titles—GOG started to pivot back to that core philosophy two years ago, with a "return to its roots." The reappearance of Alpha Protocol is only one example of their fortified campaign to bring back classic games.

Today marks the North American release of Thief, the second AAA game title touted to support Mantle, AMD's ambitious Direct3D alternative. We have also seen some heavy marketing for how TrueAudio will make the game more awesome. Unfortunately it isn't launching with out of the box support for either technology. Eidos has Mantle and TrueAudio support "scheduled for March".

Thief is part of AMD's Gaming Evolved ecosystem, which puts it in AMD's inner circle of developer support. The only other studio and game that boasts of the same, which is in the market, are DICE and Battlefield 4. Based on a heavily modified Unreal Engine 3, Thief will run DirectX 11 out of the box.

Capcom unveiled the third installment to the Lost Planet third-person shooter franchise. Lost Planet 3 is technically a prequel to the other two games, which sees the protagonist Jim arrive on the planet Edn III to explore T-ENG (thermal energy), an elusive energy resource, with hopes that it would get him some cash for his family back home. Lost Planet 3 is a return to the extreme environments found in the first installment. Capcom posted a cinematic trailer, and several in-game screenshots.Details of the game, and the cinematic trailer follow.

NVIDIA stunned reporters at its GeForce Kepler press-event, by smoothly-running running Epic Games' Unreal Engine 3 "Samaritan" tech-demo on a single GeForce Kepler GPU, when the demo needed up to three previous-generation GPUs. However, Samaritan isn't Kepler's official tech-demo. It is reportedly called "New Dawn", and is a retake on the "Dawn" tech-demo, which baffled the industry, nearly a decade ago. "Dawn" displayed its central character, a fairy by its name, in stunning detail (at the time).

While Dawn was incredibly detailed, its environment was pretty-much just a textured sky-box. "New Dawn" could bring Dawn back into action, focusing on environmental elements such as realistic physics simulation, improved hair animation, and greater detail. NVIDIA has a wealth of new elements to play with, such as a level of tessellation that could be impossible to render smoothly on the competitor's GPU (even if one could run it). NVIDIA could distribute this demo on its websites (NVIDIA.com, GeForce.com), soon. NVIDIA, and rival AMD, release tech-demos with each new GPU architecture, which demonstrate the capabilities of their new flagship GPUs. Pictured below is a frame from the 2003 demo.A "sneak-peek" video of the demo follows.

One year after its debut, Epic Games' Samaritan Tech Demo is back at the GDC (Game Developers Conference) and it's there to tease the power of NVIDIA's Kepler 28 nm GPU. At last year's GDC Samaritan, which is based on Unreal Engine 3, was running in real-time on three GeForce GTX 580 cards set in SLI. This year Epic is showing off the demo running on a single NVIDIA Kepler graphics card.

Epic Games, Inc. announces its participation in the Game Developers Conference (GDC) to be held March 5-9, 2012 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. Epic will host press sessions and meet with developers and partners of its award-winning Unreal Engine technology in Business Suite 800, West Hall, at GDC 2012. In addition, Epic Games Design Director Cliff Bleszinski is set to host the Game Developer Choice Awards, and a dozen senior members of Epic's staff are scheduled to speak at the conference.

NVIDIA today announced the latest consumer GPU based on the NVIDIA Fermi architecture, the GeForce GTX 580, which has been reengineered from the transistor-level up to deliver increased power efficiency and performance over previous generation products.

The GeForce GTX 580 GPU delivers the world's fastest performance for DirectX 11 (DX11) games, and support for NVIDIA 3D Vision, Surround, PhysX, SLI and CUDA technologies, further entrenching GeForce-based PCs as the most robust gaming platforms in the world. The combination of an innovative vapor chamber thermal solution and new architectural enhancements make the GTX 580 the fastest and quietest GPU in its class, delivering an increase of up to 35 percent in performance per watti, and performance that is up to 30 percent faster than the original GeForce GTX 480.

NVIDIA reported revenue of $1.0 billion for the first quarter of fiscal 2011 ended May 2, 2010, up 2 percent from the prior quarter and up 51 percent from $664.2 million in the same period a year earlier. On a GAAP basis, the company recorded net income of $137.6 million, or $0.23 per diluted share, for the first quarter of fiscal 2011. That compares with $131.1 million, or $0.23 per diluted share, in the previous quarter and a net loss of $201.3 million, or $0.37 per share, in the same period a year earlier.

Gross margin increased to 45.6 percent for the first quarter fiscal 2011 from 44.7 percent in the previous quarter and 28.6 percent in the same period a year earlier.

• Revenue grew 2 percent quarter-on-quarter to $1.0 billion
• GAAP net income increased to $137.6 million, or $0.23 per diluted share
• GAAP gross margin improved to 45.6 percent

Epic Games, the award-winning developer of multimillion-selling games and the world's leading game engine, Unreal Engine 3, today announced plans to follow up the original "$1 Million Make Something Unreal Contest" with an all new competition to include esteemed sponsor, Intel Corporation. Winnings exceed $1 million in value, and consist of one coveted Unreal Engine 3 license as a grand prize and other cash awards and prizes, including Intel Software Development Products and Velocity Micro PCs based on the Intel Dual Socket Extreme Desktop Platform with two Intel Core 2 Extreme quad-core processors. The 2008 "$1 Million Intel Make Something Unreal Contest" will be judged in four preliminary phases and a grand final. Judging will begin in June 2008 and will conclude, with the grand final prizes being awarded, in fall 2009.

Gears of War was among the first games to make use of the Unreal Engine 3, so Epic Games has decided to show-off how much the engine has been improved since then. At a recent press conference the company used Gears of War 2 to demonstrate various improvements such as better lighting, improved efficiency, more realistic water effects, soft body physics and destructible environments. If you want to take a look at the video, which is just over six minutes long, head over to Shacknews.

All Unreal Tournament 3 players will be flattered to know that new patch 1.2 of the game is in final stage of testing and should be up for downloads some time next week. The full list of changes is included under the "Read full story" marker.

When Epic Studios made Unreal Engine 3, they had PCs and high-definition consoles in mind. When asked if Epic was going to bring Unreal Engine 3 to the Wii, Vice President Mark Rein stated "It's not in our plans to bring Unreal Engine 3 to the Wii. It's really designed for next-gen, high-definition [platforms]." However, it seems like a completely independent (and anonymous) studio is working on getting Unreal Engine 3 to work on the Wii. Rein's opinion of working with the Wii remains unchanged. "There's so many things we can do and are already doing, to improve our engine, on the platforms we're aiming it at, that going back and working on that [for the Wii] just doesn't make sense."