According to French-language news channel Canoe, Eidos / SCi Entertainment have chosen Montreal as the location for a new Canadian development studio. The rumor, learned through job postings, is saying that Eidos will announce a decision on the studio formation next week, followed by a round of hirings which will no doubt displease Ubisoft, EA and A2M who are also located in Montreal. Eidos spokespeople have gone on record as being unable to confirm or deny the rumor.

Horrible Babelfish French to English translation after the jump..

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Crytek recently released a new DirectX 10 trailer for their upcoming FPS, Crysis, showing the world how things is done. What these folks are doing with their technology is beyond belief, but then again, with massive backers pumping lots and lots of money into them I’m not surprised what can be done.

Peep the future of high-budget AAA game development for Windows Vista after the jump..

Read more of ”Crysis DX10 trailer, minds are blown“

We’re such a sucker for Wii web-browsing, so naturally we’d be all over this. Clusty, the web browser from Vivisimo which performs a monster metaquery of your search term from the top search engines, combines the results and then generates an ordered list based on comparative ranking. Blah blah blah, we know, we know. Basically, all you need to know is that it’s optimized for the Wii Opera browser with hot web 2.0 bells and whistles and that it’s approach to searching the web puts your best results at the top and pushes many spam results wayyyy down to the bottom. Expect the Playthrough Wii-optimized version, coming soon-ish.

Search more: Clusty for the Wii | Clusty for boring ole computers

I haven’t seen an “it prints money!” .gif for the Wii yet, but if I had, now would be a perfect moment to post it. With the Nintendo Wii capturing the hearts of gamers young and old and demand FAR out-pacing supply, Nintendo has announced they will be ramping up production of their new console to 1 million units per month starting in April (about 23 units per minute!). Looking forward, Nintendo know their extremely strong upcoming lineup which includes the likes of Wii Fitness, Mario Galaxy, Animal Crossing (!) and Smash Bros. Brawl (!) will be key to pushing those 1 million monthly units into homes over the coming year. Also key to Nintendo’s success over the coming quarters will be the amount of 3rd party commitment, which shouldn’t be all that difficult to achieve now that Wii sales are burning the barn and Ubi Soft is reporting a jump in profit thanks to strong Wii sales.

Read more: Nintendo to up Wii production to 1 million per month

At a press conference hosted yesterday afternoon in Vienna, Austria by the founders of Games That Matter, Ex-directors of Rockstar Vienna, Hannes Seifert and Niki Laber, along with partner Jürgen Goeldner, presented their business model and goals for the newly formed independent games production company.

With the intention of purchasing, developing and licensing game concepts internally, Games That Matter plans to offer publishers and potential investors the ability to, according to Managing Director Niki Laber, “participate in the actual IP without being forced to bear operative costs of a studio beyond the project.” Games That Matter’s small team, consisting primarily of ex-Rockstar Vienna staff, will be performing all aspects of the initial production for their titles, from scheduling and design to branding and vision, with content creation and development responsibilities being outsourced to strategic partners around the World.

The “visionary” business model behind Games That Matter closely mirrors that of the movie industry, with every project being spun off into its own individual corporation, allowing for a wide-range of investment opportunities with little risk for both Games That Matter and potential investors by keeping team sizes and potential overhead as low as possible. Games That Matter then sells or licenses the finished titles directly to publisher or distributors.

“In my 20 years in this crazy industry I worked on original IP as well as licensed properties,” said Hannes Seifert, managing director and executive producer of Games That Matter. “With our new approach to game production we bring together ideas, investors and developers and help companies of all sizes to work with us on breathtaking titles without forcing them to grow to death.” Explaining further, Seifert adds “We will be able to offer publishers a finished game at a specific point in time without the risk of financing. And we offer investors a high return and long life cycle of their investment. We do not see investors as necessary evil, but as vital partners in production. And as such partners they deserve a fair share of a game’s success.”

No announcements regarding projects or publishing partners have been made, though it was revealed that the team is currently working on one “AAA console and PC” project and discussions with major investors and publishers are on-going.

Read more: Games That Matter

Funcom and Eidos announced today that a new release date for the much-hyped MMO Age of Conan has been delayed until October 30th, 2007, allowing developers to “further hone the qualities of the game”. Perhaps a smart move considering that any MMO released at this point in time would risk being lost in the noise that is currently being generated by the release of World of Warcraft’s expansion. The title it currently undergoing a closed beta test with an open beta being announced soon.

Read more: Age of Conan delayed | Age of Conan

Amid more threats of NASDAQ de-listing, Take Two, the publisher behind Rockstar Games and the Grand Theft Auto line of games, has disclosed their discovery that founder and former CEO Ryan Brant backdated multiple stock options over a six year period while head of the gaming giant. TTWO is no stranger to financial difficulties of course, but, this could mean even more problems for a company who was slowly rebounding from the destruction the infamous Hot Coffee incident reaped. Brant served as chairmen of Take Two up until 2004, and there appears to be proof of backdated options from 1997 through 2003. Take Two has not disclosed any restatements or accounting adjustments, but, we’d expect some news very shortly.

Read more: Take Two discloses CEO backdating

Rupture, the social network for World of Warcraft players run by Napter-founder Shawn Fanning has gone live, allowing users to meet with real life people who play the most popular MMO in the universe. Rupture allows you to automatically publish your character and guild profiles to your profile page, as well as share pictures, chat with friends and recruit new people into your fold.

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Midway’s newest football (American-style that is) title Blitz: The League, has been refused classification by Australia’s hyper-strict ratings board, rendering the game practically impossible to sell in the country. Australia’s OFLC (Office of Film and Literature Classification) took exception with the game allowing players to buy and take performance enhancing drugs, even going so far as allowing players to fake in-game urine tests. Australia’s wacky ratings standards effectively banning a title is nothing new, but the irony in this is somewhat amusing. Midway’s title is refused rating due to the ability for players to ingest illegal substances and fake urine results in-game, which comes from a publisher whose drug-screening policy for potential new hires is well-known throughout the industry. No comment from Midway yet, but, we’re interested in hearing how they’ll handle the ratings refusal.

Read more: Midway’s Blitz banned in Australia

Don’t have a games console and can’t stand up from your computer long enough to pick up that plastic guitar? Then Piano Hero might be for you! Piano Hero is an open source (MIT license) quasi-instructional software which allows users to learn how to play any kind of music, from your favorite video game themes, to classical and holiday music, via your computer keyboard. Piano Hero supports any MIDI file, let’s you slow down songs while learning various parts and is naturally only for Windows 2000 and XP for now, but let us hope that an OS X port is on it’s way.

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