Sunage, a PC RTS under development for the past 10 years in Vienna, Austria, has released a new set of screenshots as well as announced another delay in development until May 2007. The title, being developed by indie startup Vertex4 to be published by Lighthouse Interactive, has seen massive delays, which as many know could either mean good or bad. The story for Sunage takes place in a distant future Earth which is dying as mankind retreats into sealed cities, leading to chaos as factions begin to battle one another over a gateway to a paradise planet. All of the classic RTS gameplay features are present, including single player and multiplayer modes as well as squad commands and alternate modes for the different units of all factions.

See more: Sunage | 10 New Sunage screenshots

Lots of Wii news coming from the latest Nintendo Power, which everything-Wii blog Codename Revolution has happily provided to the rest of world. Among some of the exciting announcements, such as Medal of Honor Wii screens, information on The Looney Tunes (“Warner Bros. Meets Smash Bros.”) and the new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles title (Ubisoft is using the Jade engine!) is the announcement that Super Paper Mario will be coming to the Wii in April of 2007! Now where are all the skeptics poo-pooing that no good Wii titles are coming until the end of the year? Originally headed for the Gamecube, the game has been switched over to the Wii and supposedly will feature a unique controller scheme with the player holding the Wiimote sideways (old school style). There is reportedly improved graphics over the version which was shown at E3 2006, which is a great thing since I don’t believe anyone has taken the Wii to town yet with it’s graphical abilities.

Read more: Super Paper Mario coming for Wii in April

After 2 long weeks, Linden Labs has finally open-sourced the client for Second Life, the popular virtual world online “game” which has been a hot topic among the mainstream press. After the announcement several weeks ago a lot of excitement has grown around this daring move by Linden Labs, which may prove to be a huge boost for the case of open sourcing online game clients which benefit from community development and modding. There are currently quite a bit of project involved with Second Life already in the works, including a Solaris x64 port, a PowerPC port, packages for Mandrive and Debian, as well as an Ubuntu package.

Second Life client finally GPL’d

Though the UMPC seems to have dropped off the face of the planet, it still seems that some people are actually still making them, as well as using them! Not the type to ever miss out on a chance to carry games around, avid gamers were once mighty excited about the new UMPCs from Microsoft, with thoughts of high-end mobile gaming becoming a reality. Excitement which eventually turned into mild interest and then eventually nothing but a distant memory as the reality of an extremely high price, unfriendly controls and presumed lack of power sank in. Well paint us blue in the face, because one avid gamer shows us we should be eating crow by sticking F.E.A.R. onto the Samsung Q1 UMPC and posting a video for all in the world to drool over. The Samsung Q1 will set you back around $1400 USD and sports a 900MHz Celeron M processor, an Intel 915GMS video chip set, 512MB DDR2 SDRAM and a 40gb HDD using an integrated 802.11b/g Wi-Fi card, plus Bluetooth 2.0 to network. Not an ideal portable gaming machine by any means, but, running F.E.A.R. things can’t really be all that bad!

Watch F.E.A.R. running on a Samsung Q1 UMPC after the jump..

Read more of “F.E.A.R. running on a Samsung Q1 UMPC“

In what can not be considered a good thing, the Playstation 3 has posted it’s worst week of sales since it’s launch in Japan. The Media Create sales numbers for the week ending January 14th show an overall slump in sales all around, yet still paint an unflattering picture for the Playstation 3, showing sales at 25,531 units, not a particularly strong showing for console so recently launched. Nintendo Wii sales were also down, posting it’s second-worst week of sales since it’s launch, with 93,708 units sold, though it’s unclear if anyone can consider selling almost 100,000 units a week a bad thing. Media Create takes sales data from around 3,000 retail stores across Japan, extrapolating them into national sales estimates.

See the Japanese software sales charts for the week ending January 14th after the jump..

Read more of “Playstation 3 has worst sales week in Japan so far“

Via the latest issue of Famitsu, the only gaming magazine that matters in Japan, Square Enix has confirmed they are developing Final Fantasy Anniversary Edition, containing remakes of Final Fantasy I and Final Fantasy II. Both editions will see the addition of new content, such as new dungeons, a monster database and an Amano gallery mode, though no word yes on if there will be any graphical updates. The title will be out sometime in 2007 for the Sony PSP, followed by the usual porting time which all Western Final Fantasy fans are used to by now, before reaching stateside.

Read more: Final Fantasy anniversary editions confirmed

Europe’s game industry trade outfit, the ELSPA, have announced a program aimed at reorganizing the body, resulting in some job losses, mostly in the body’s software forensics division. The outfit, funded by games publishers based in Europe, is seeking a greater role for London in the games industry and culture, though why London would be a good choice is beyond me, considering the extremely high costs of living, the large number of European developers and publishers through ought mainland Europe, the relative dreariness of the environment and the hyper-inflated British Pound insuring costs would stay quite high. The group’s 5 year plan focuses on piracy, as well as emerging technologies.

Read more: ELSPA wants London to be ‘global games capital’

One of the few exciting things about the Wii Internet Channel is the freedom it’s allowing home brew experimentalists in the creation of their web applications, specifically geared to the Wii Opera browsing experience. One such application is SofaTube, a new web application allowing Wii surfers the ability to stream YouTube and Revver videos using an interface which has been optimized for widescreen televisions and longer viewing distances. Featuring large, easy to drag and drop elements, SofaTube is PERFECT for those Wii couch surfers looking for an easy way to watch someone setting themselves on fire while replying to Lonelygirl15.

See more: SofaTube

With HD-DVD currently under fire from modders who have recently began “backing up” their HD-DVD movies, rumors are starting to pour in that an early exploit has been discovered for the PS3. HDTV Blogger reveals that multiple independent sources are reporting that an exploit has been found via the PS3 which reveals title and volume keys for Blu-ray disks via the PS3. The procedure requires some minor modding of the boot process and Linux. We’ll post more information as it becomes available, *if* this rumor (did I mention it’s just a rumor so far?) develops.

Read more: Rumored Blu-ray exploit via PS3 discovered

7 months after the closure of Rockstar Vienna by Take-two, former founders Hannes Seifert and Niki Laber have announced the formation of their new company, Games That Matter. Working together with Jürgen Goeldner, founder of Funsoft, later acquired by THQ and mobile developer Mobile Scope, later acquired by IN-FUSIO, their team will present a “visionary game production business model” to the industry. What that visionary model will be or why exactly it’s visionary in the first place hasn’t been announced yet, but founder Hannes Seifert has held talks in Vienna discussing the shift towards “movie industry style” production methods in the past. One would assume that would involve a small core team focusing on production and design aspects, while outsourcing whenever and wherever possible for content, development and testing. The official press conference for Games That Matter takes place on the 25th of January where more information will be presented to the gaming press, possibly including information on their first title.

Read more: Games That Matter | Rockstar Vienna entry @ Wikipedia