After a rather lukewarm reception for Auran's MMORPG Fury, CEO Tony Hilliam confirmed the sixty-man retrenchment of the original development team in favor of outsourcing any future work to China. The decision was linked to the rather slow start the MMORPG received upon its release last October.

Read more in the full article after the jump!

Although NCSoft's Guild Wars may not have World of Warcraft like numbers to back it up, the game, it's community, and it's no subscription fee model works. With over 3 million copies sold, two expansions and an upcoming sequel, the game is definitely creating a place for itself in the MMORPG saturated world of PC gaming.

The big question now is if NCSoft is willing to move their unique take on MMO gaming, and bring it to the console realm, especially now that Microsoft and Sony are in heavy competition when it comes to providing online experiences to their gamers.

When Ben Miller, a Game Designer at ArenaNet, was interviewed by Eurogamer, and asked if they're considering moving into the console space much in the same way that Square-Enix has with Final Fantasy XI, Miller responded: "We are focused on PCs right now. I think consoles remain an interesting opportunity for Guild Wars in the future, but that's not something we've announced any plans for at this time."

As Ben Miller described their model during the interview, "You buy the game once, you can play it for as long as you want. And the new content we introduce in the future you can choose to buy or not to buy..." some of us here at QJ feel that the said distribution plan would fit perfectly with the way the PlayStation Network or the Xbox Live Marketplace works.

Given that the developers have gone through great lengths in order to differentiate their game from other MMOs out there - by making it have gameplay aspects that are unique to it - and more importantly differentiate themselves from games like World of Warcraft, a move to console space is definitely opportune.

For the complete interview, and a whole lot of talk about Guild Wars and Guild Wars 2 feel free to head to it via our "read" link below.

Joel Durnham of extremetech.com informs that in a panel discussion at the Game Developer's Conference 2007, the idea of PC game viability was discussed by a quintet of industry folks that include: Xbox Live Arcade's David Edery, Electronic Arts' Richard Hilleman, Firaxis' Soren Johnson, Epic Games' Michael Capps, and Obsidian Entertainment's Chris Avallone.

As well as the usual PC gaming competing with console gaming debate that's been ongoing for years now, the effect of piracy on the PC gaming market was discussed. Capps in particular notes that PC Gaming is really falling apart and even though it "killed" them to make Unreal Tournament 3 cross-platform, Epic had to do it.

The reason for going multiplatform, of course, is piracy. Big AAA titles usually get stolen and, as Capps says, the market that would buy a US$ 600 video card also knows how BitTorrent works.

The future of gaming on the PC so far looks like it is set to be dominated by "casual" games and MMOs. Of course there's nothing casual about most casual games since the average Chuzzle/Zuma addict plays for 24 hours a week. MMOs are notable since they can't be pirated - unless of course you steal the source code and run your own illegal server. However, those things are easier to monitor than burned CDs.

They also covered the fact that user-generated game content could be big for the PC since console manufacturers try to wield more control over their products.

They end the discussion by noting that even though things look grim, AAA titles might never die on the PC, and that trends are ultimately hard to predict.

Oh well, so much for the good old days.

When Vivendi Games dismissed rumors about the existence of a Battlestar Galactica MMO, fans were like "Come on, we want that game!" We know exactly how you feel so this bit of news should cheer you up.

Vivendi is in fact doing a game inspired by the hit TV series and it is coming out on Xbox Live Arcade as well as Windows PC. After a lot of guessing on the part of the fans, Ed Zobrist, President of Sierra Online (a division of Vivendi Games), finally made it official:

We're huge fans of "Battlestar Galactica"and are thrilled to have the opportunity to create a game inspired by the TV series. NBC Universal is working closely with us so that players will be able immerse themselves in the "Battlestar Galactica" universe and re-live their favorite missions from the TV series.

While Battlestar Galactica won't come out before Fall of 2007, fans can now have a glimpse of the game by downloading Gamer Pics and Themepacks at the Marketplace. Lastly, details about the game are still scarce as of now, but Sierra mentioned that developer Auran Games implemented both single and multiplayer modes.

Also, players can take part in intense space battles as a pilot for either the humans or Cyclons. We also heard that legendary ships from the television show will be featured on the game as well. Legendary, eh? Which ships would those be?

That is, if some new programs by a lesser-known company become the industry standard for making games. At the Games Developers Conference (GDC) of the London Games Festival, the company known as Allegorithmic claimed that it could reduce the texture file sizes in games by up to 70 percent.

The two programs, known as ProFX and MaP Zone 2, should potentially lessen the file sizes of textures even while the files keep the same quality as current texture files today. A show of their programs' capabilities came in the form of a demo for RoboBlitz, which is coming out for Xbox Live Arcade. With a 50 MB cap on the file size for these game, file sizes did have to be lessened, and according to the report, the game ran well on its Unreal 3 engine with only a 280kb size for the overall texture files.

What does this mean to us? First, that can potentially mean more content, should it become and industry standard. Since file sizes for those textures could be reduced from 1GB of textures to 300MB, hypothetically speaking, that could mean additional missions or quests or at least more places to explore for new games. Of course, not every game uses that many textures, which leads to the second, more impressive point. Smaller file sizes means a faster download for certain games, and that's definitely a plus.

Of course, now we have to wait and see what the industry will do with this interesting development.

Thanks to Badam for the tip!