Artist Rosemaria Fiore created a brilliant photo project, documenting her playing retro video games like Tempest, Gyuss and Quantum from Atari, Centuri and Taito. The photos are long exposure snaps, consisting of 1 second of gameplay per frame, resulting in excellent and complex patterns which normal players would never normally see. When I saw these photos for the first time, I instantly though “Geometry Wars”. My bad.

See more: Long exposure photos of gaming classics

Wow! That’s all I can say. Many think of me as a Sony-hater, but I’ll prove them wrong here by saying how amazing this looks, but oh, this is for he PS2! Granted, give the devs a few years and $30 or $40 million dollars and they could pump something even more beautiful out on the PS3, but, who can afford a PS3 plus games, plus accessories anyways?

Check the video after the jump..

Read more of “God of War 2 Pegasus gameplay video, who needs a PS3?“

Nearing a year after the closure of Rockstar Vienna, who was rumored to be developing Manhunt 2 for the PS2 before their sudden closure, Rockstar Games has announced Manhunt 2 for the PS2, PSP and (shock!) Wii! Not that anyone still cares about the Manhunt license or anything, the exciting news here is that Rockstar is making a go at a Nintendo Wii title! If anyone was doubting that the big N was trying to attract the 3rd parties, eat up a bit of that piping hot crow. Granted, I’d rather have a GTA Wii or Max Payne Wii, but who knows, if things work out well for Manhunt 2 Wii, guaranteed we’ll see more Rockstar titles appearing on the platform. Rockstar Games also went on to say that Rockstar London is developing the PS2 version, Rockstar Leeds the PSP and Rockstar Toronto the Wii version, with of course, Rockstar North overseeing all three. Look for all 3 versions appearing this Summer.

Read more: Manhunt 2 announced for PS2, PSP and Wii

Game designer / celebrity David Jaffe (God of War) recently live-blogged a focus testing session for Calling All Cars, the upcoming PS3 download title and there’s much to take away from it. It’s quite clear Jaffe cares deeply about his craft and it’s also pretty fucking clear that high quality focus testing groups are hard to find.

An amusing back and forth over IM between Jaffe and Adam (one of the designers):

adamorth (6:00:57 PM): GOD DAMMIOT!!!!!
spdrmn375 (6:01:06 PM): what?
adamorth (6:01:13 PM): not only is #4 stupid, but he’s a fucking asshole
spdrmn375 (6:01:18 PM): y?
adamorth (6:01:23 PM): jesus!
adamorth (6:01:27 PM): what a fucking snot
spdrmn375 (6:01:29 PM): what?!?
adamorth (6:01:39 PM): no swag!
spdrmn375 (6:01:49 PM): lame
adamorth (6:01:55 PM): he called me an idiot
spdrmn375 (6:02:01 PM): why?!?
adamorth (6:02:18 PM): becuase i told him not to keep pressing the buttons
spdrmn375 (6:02:24 PM): for what reason?
adamorth (6:02:46 PM): because he kept rushing through the menu to create game ahead of the host
spdrmn375 (6:03:07 PM): ah…sweet! BLOG TIME!!!

Read more: David Jaffe live blogs focus testing for Calling All Cars

JoWooD, 4Head and Deep Silver today announced the upcoming add-on for popular European life simulator The Guild. Titled “Pirates of the European Seas”, the upcoming add on bring players to Northern Europe, sailing the seas as a mid-evil pirate or tradesman. Including 3 new maps, 10 new hours of game play, and updated buildings, ships and professions, the The Guild 2 – Pirates of the European Seas is scheduled for release in the second quarter of 2007, which means sometime by Spring 2007, a fact that would be nice to know if only JoWooD’s marketing department had any sense of writing an engaging and clear press release which doesn’t sound like it was written for a pharmaceutical company.

Read more: JoWooD announces The Guild 2 – Pirates of the European Seas

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..

Read more of “Rumor: Eidos opening development studio in Montreal“

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