Impulse announces the availability of a new hotfix for version 1.1 of Demigod, the action/strategy game from Gas Powered Games:

Stardock Entertainment and Gas Powered Games have released a hotfix for version 1.1 of their action/strategy game, Demigod today. Available now via Impulse to all registered customers, the hotfix resolves: a crash bug while purchasing skills/items while dead, a fix for choosing the Random demigod option in multiplayer games, and a fix for favor items not being saved between matches.

As noted on the S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky Website, new patches are now available to update GSC Game World's irradiated shooter prequel to version 1.5.10. There are a multitude of patches, depending on the language of your copy of the game, and whether it is the boxed retail edition or a digitally distributed edition. The patches are located in their downloads area, and are mirrored on The Patches Scrolls, who found this news, as well as on AtomicGamer.

Ubisoft planning Toronto studio has news that Ubisoft is planning to take off, to the great white north, take off, it's a beauty way to go (thanks Dave). Here's word on the incentives involved:

TORONTO -- French interactive game maker Ubisoft on Monday unveiled plans to open a Toronto development studio, with the Ontario provincial government pitching in $226 million over 10 years to create 800 jobs.

The move follows the Ontario provincial government in May announcing it will invest $20.5 million into the Starz Animation Toronto 3D cartoon studio over the next five years to create and retain high-tech jobs locally.

In its latest digital industry investment, Ontario will help Ubisoft open its fourth Canadian studio in Toronto, alongside existing facilities in Montreal and Quebec City, where the game maker employs about 2,000 people, and another in Vancouver opened this year.

As part of its agreement with the Ontario government, Ubisoft will invest another $500 million in the new Toronto studio over the next decade, after the facility opens its doors in late 2009. Ubisoft Toronto will be overseen by Yannis Mallat, CEO of Ubisoft Montreal, the game maker's flagship development studio.

BioWare: Mature industry can drop violence from games is a quote from this morning's BioWare interview. It seems they are not talking about hardcore gamers here, it sounds more like they are talking about expanding to a more casual audience. Specifically Dr. Greg says: "I think once we've got the breadth of audience available to us, there could be really good opportunities created by different people coming to games that are story-driven."

A new movie from Section 8 is now available, offering a bunch of gameplay from TimeGate's upcoming first-person shooter. Mechs, jetpacks, and things going boom are all the order of the day, and the clip showing them off is available on ActionTrip, AtomicGamer, and Gamer's Hell.

The Operation Flashpoint.: Dragon Rising Website now features a new movie from the upcoming military shooter sequel. The clip is called "fear and anticipation," in which we "Witness the ruthless precision of the US Special Forces and feel the fear of impending battle."

• Metro 2033 on SKOAR. Thanks Mike Martinez.

Thanks Mike Martinez.

• MAG BETA Invading North America & Europe.
• Black Inc. announces Ion Assault for Xbox LIVE Arcade.
• Battle Fantasia Mystifies PlayStation Network This Fall.
• XSEED Games Announces The Sky Crawlers- Innocent Aces for Wii.
• BIT.TRIP CORE Brings WiiWare Library to 100 Games and Counting.
• Demon's Souls Playstation 3 Pre-Order Details.
• Best Buy's 80GB PS3 to be bundled with MGS4 and Killzone 2.
• Ben Heck's latest portable Xbox 360 adds sleek white finish, Jasper motherboard.
• See what Mario Galaxy looks like in HD.

• Beyond Atom- Exploring Performance ITX Solutions on HotHardware.
• Dell's online price error troubles worsen in Taiwan.
• Years Til Downloads Match Blu-ray Quality. Thanks Ant.
• World's oldest Christian Bible digitized.

• Video Game Engagement, Used Sales at All-Time High, says Nielsen…
• Sony: Cross-platform The Agency still ‘up in the air’. Or just reread the last story on this…
• 10 Business Lessons I Learned from Playing Dungeons & Dragons. Thanks Mike Martinez and Slashdot…
• Steam now offers BrainPipe and say Wallace and Gromit Episode 4: The Bogey Man is coming this month…

Link of the Evening: Saving Private Remi. Thanks Morris.

R.I.P.: Robert McNamara Dies. Thanks Mike Martinez.

LucasArts has made the big announcement they promised, revealing plans to re-release some of their classic adventure games via digital distribution on Steam. The first batch of games is to be released on Wednesday; here's word:

In this first round of releases, ten fan-favorite LucasArts PC games will be made available Wednesday, July 8 on Steam®, Valve Corporation's delivery and management platform for the PC. Scheduled for release are classic adventure titles like LOOM and The Dig and hit action games including Star Wars Battlefront II and Star Wars Republic Commando.

The complete list of games to be released on July 8 via Steam includes:

Armed and Dangerous™
Indiana Jones® and the Fate of Atlantis
Indiana Jones® and the Last Crusade: The Graphic Adventure
LEGO® Indiana Jones: The Original Adventure
LOOM™
Star Wars Battlefront® II
Star Wars Republic Commando®
Star Wars Starfighter™
The Dig®
Thrillville®: Off the Rails™

“This effort is going to make it possible to introduce a whole new generation of gamers to LucasArts’ classic games,” said Darrell Rodriguez, president of LucasArts. “It also gives more people a chance to play our games by making them available long after they’ve disappeared from store shelves. We hope our fans are as excited as we are about our plans and we can’t wait to share what’s coming next. This is just the beginning.”

This series of launches continues LucasArts’ new mission to revitalize its deep portfolio of beloved gaming franchises.

Codemasters announces the Games For Windows LIVE edition of Colin McRae: DiRT 2 is delayed until December 2009, explaining the game will support DirectX 11 out of the box. Word is:

With the introduction of Microsoft Windows 7, DirectX 11 will be made available both as part of the operating system and as a downloadable update to Windows Vista. Codemasters intends to immediately take advantage of DirectX 11 features that add to the realism of the racing environment. Hardware tessellation will further improve the appearance of water and other surfaces as well as crowd animations.

The shader performance of Shader Model 5.0 (SM 5.0) will aid in creating an even richer 3D experience, enhancing key image quality parameters such as depth of field, ambient occlusion and shadows. These DirectX 11 features, and many others, will add the horsepower needed to improve performance.

This Football Manager Live Website offers a limited number of free playable trials of Football Manager Live, the MMO sports game. There are currently about 2200 copies left, so if you're interested, you should hurry. Thanks VG247.

A report we missed last week on Official Xbox 360 Magazine indicates the release of Left 4 Dead 2 in November will be preceded by a playable demo (thanks Kotaku). "With Left 4 Dead in particular we've found that word of mouth really is the strongest thing," is how they quote Valve's Doug Lombardi. "With Left 4 Dead 2 we plan to do a demo before the game comes out that'll have multiplayer in it. And hopefully we can continue the free weekends with the full game post-launch." According to Joystiq, Lombardi tells them there will be advance access to the demo for customers who preorder the multiplayer zombie game through participating retailers or Steam.

Blizzard's Tom Chilton on the future of WoW on VideoGamer.com discusses the future of World of Warcraft (thanks Joystiq). They ask about the business model for Blizzard's MMORPG, and Tom does not rule out the possibility that the game could eventually evolve to use a subscription-free model with microtransaction support, though this would be way down the road:

I certainly think it's possible that we could do some kind of micro-transaction stuff. Whether or not World of Warcraft ever goes the direction of, I guess like Anarchy Online has gone the direction of going free-to-play with micro-transactions. Whether we ever shift to a free-to-play model is really too hard to say at this point. Anything I say now could easily five years from now end up seeming like, oh my gosh, that was an incredibly dumb thing to say, how naive!

Doctors On Call on GamesIndustry.biz talks with doctors Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk about the state of the game industry and what's up at BioWare. Here's a bit on what they see doing with Project Natal: "It could, yeah. I think it applies very much to an emotionally-engaging narrative and a story-driven game. Fulfilling characterisation more completely in games is I guess a way to achieve that. So it's something we'd be interested in exploring. We haven't made any announcements or anything, but it's an intriguing technology that I think we'd want to see more of and see what we could do with it."

• StarCraft II on StarcraftWire.net. Zerg StarCraft II Alpha Evolution.

• Folding@Home for Stephanie to Beat Cancer Contest on Bjorn3d.com.

• Sony to release new 80GB PS3 bundle - report.
• Six Flags Expands Partnership With Nintendo. Thanks Ant.
• Fight Night remains UK number one.
• 1 vs. 100 to launch in the UK this Friday News.
• Deal of the Week- N+ - Xbox Live's Major Nelson.

• AMD Phenom II 955 Black Edition hits 7 GHz!
• FCC offers antennas to help digital TV switch. Thanks Ant.
• Slashdot Ask Slashdot Story - RAID Trust Issues — Windows Or a Cheap Controller?

Thanks Ant.

• Testing 3G Networks Across the US.
• Nintendo DS glucose reader plugin for kids with diabetes.
• Taking flight: why the iPhone still beats Pre for air travel.
• Slashdot Hardware Story - Why Amazon's Kindle Should Use Open Standards.
• Fan Favorite YETISPORTS Launches on Mobile Devices in North America.

Thanks Ant.

• Since March, Internet Explorer Lost 11.4 Percent Share To Firefox, Safari, And Chrome. Thanks Digg.
• 55 bugs in new Firefox 3.5: users are posting complaints.
• Decoding the HTML 5 video codec debate.
• Wife blows MI6 chief’s cover on Facebook. Thanks Neutronbeam. M outed online!

Thanks Ant.

• McAfee false-positive glitch fells PCs worldwide.
• Latin Best Buy surfers sprayed by drive-by download malware.
• System Restore Tip - Norton Internet Security.Norton AntiVirus.
• Slashdot Technology Story - A Look At Google's Email Spam Prevention.

• Anno 1404/Dawn of Discovery on 2404 and Eurogamer.

• AMD Athlon II X2 250 CPU on ITREVIEWED.
• ASUS Crosshair III Formula Motherboard on Overclockers Club.
• Auzentech X-Fi Forte Low Profile 7.1 PCI-E Sound Card on Overclock3D.Net.
• Corsair P256 2.5-inch Solid State Disk on TweakTown.
• EVERCOOL Transformer 4 CPU Cooler on PCShopTalk Forum.
• Gelid Solutions GC-2 Thermal Compound on eTeknix.
• GIGABYTE MA770T-UD3P AMD 770 AM3 Motherboard on PC Perspective.
• Hercules XPS 2.1 50 2.1 Speakers on ThinkComputers.org.
• Lian Li PC-A05N Case on [Phoronix].
• MSI 790FX-GD70 AM3 790FX Motherboard on Futurelooks.
• OCZ Gladiator Max CPU Cooler on Verdis Reviews.
• OCZ Vertex 120GB SSD on Hardware Canucks.
• Pure Digital Flip UltraHD Camcorder on The TechZone.
• QNAP TS-809 Pro 8-Bay SATA NAS on Benchmark Reviews.
• Razer Carcharias Headset on RBMODS.COM.
• SanDisk Ultra Backup USB Flash Drive on Everything USB.
• Sapphire Radeon HD 4890 ATOMIC Graphics Card on TweakTown.
• Wacom Intuos4 Tablet on t-break.
• X-Trac Logic Mouse Pads on Bjorn3D.com.

• Blatant TF2 Knock-Off Game. Thanks Ant…
• Diablo III: The First Year in Review, Part I on Diii.net…
• Steve Harris hints at the future of the reborn EGM…

Your Out of the Blue entertainment will be ready, right after a brief Loading Screen (thanks Ant).

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Play:	Scramball 2. Thanks UserFriendly.
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Images:	Wiener designs. Thanks Neatorama. The home theatre surround sound system.
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