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Wii Sports Resort has helped the UK games market's value jump 16%, following a sales slump during July.

Sony pull offending commercialThe amount of time WipEout HD players have to wait during the loading of races is being adversely effected by in-game advertisements, IndustryGamers report.The in-game ads can add about 10 seconds to the load-time prior to races, as tested by users comparing level load-times with and without the commercials in place.The adverts are confined to load-screens at present, but this news has sparked conjecture that the Double Fusion-provided ads for WipEout HD might be getting extra exposure through the longer loading times.The dynamic ad deal, only confirmed by Sony yesterday, covers other games beyond WipEout HD, but Sony have already canned the offending ad in question.'The ad has been removed from WipEout HD and we are investigating the situation to ensure that any in-game advertising does not affect gameplay,' word in from Sony assures.

No traditional leveling in new Square Enix MMOFinal Fantasy XIII may not yet be with us, but Square Enix have already started teasing us over their next title, the Final Fantasy XIV MMO revealed back at E3 in June.According to those working on the new online game, the RPG won't be based on a traditional experience or leveling system, a big change from previous MMO releases.'This time, there will be no experience points or level system,' producer Hiromichi Tanaka told Famitsu. 'It will be a different system altogether.' The developers hope to make a game that will appeal to those who've never ventured online in an MMO before - quests growing 'naturally' from a player's experience. Making character development enjoyable is apparently the firm's main aim.'We believe the main factor behind Final Fantasy XI's lasting appeal is the job system,' explains FFXIV director Nobuaki Komoto. 'However, the system will become something completely different. The focus here will be on weapons. Your weap

New game from Braid creator spiedBraid creator Jonathan Blow has started to tease players about his next project, which is apparently set for multiple platforms in 2011. The new game is said to be called The Witness.Blow wouldn't go into specifics, but says the title will be released 'whatever makes sense in late 2011, when the game will hopefully be finished'. A teaser site for the game is online now, and Blow says the title will be a highly 'visual' experience - according to a new blog post.A puzzle-exploration game set on an uninhabited island is billed. This from the teaser site:'Something amorphous and consummate existed before Heaven and Earth. Solitude! Vast! Standing alone, unaltering. Going everywhere, yet unthreatened. It can be considered the Mother of the World. I don't know its name, so I designate it, 'Tao'. Compelled to consider it, name it 'the Great'.'

RadioFluxx: "Guitar Hero 5 has a U.S. release of September 1st, but we can't wait until then to talk about the exciting track list of this game. Guitar Hero has always prided itself on offering an eclectic mix of rock, alternative, punk, metal, and indie titles, but this new version has clearly outdone itself."

Majesco Entertainment Company, Twentieth Century Fox Licensing & Merchandising (Fox Licensing) and Bagdasarian Productions, today announced Alvin and The Chipmunks: The Squeakquel for Wii and Nintendo DS. Featuring everyone's favourite marsupial musical group - Alvin and The Chipmunks and their girl group rivals The Chipettes making their videogame debut - this Rhythm Action game challenges players' timing and musical skills as they perform in a variety of concert locations.

jhoger writes 'Matthew Crippen was arrested yesterday for hacking game consoles (for profit) in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. He was released on a $5,000 bond, but faces up to 10 years in prison. This is terribly disturbing to me; a man could lose 10 years of his freedom for providing the service of altering hardware. He could well lose much of his freedom for providing a modicum of it to others. There is no piracy going on, necessarily — the games a modified console could run may simply not be signed by the vendor. It's much like jailbreaking an iPhone. But it seems because he is disabling a 'circumvention device' it is a criminal issue. Guess it's time to kick a few dollars over to the EFF.' of this story at Slashdot.

European gamers looking forward to TimeGate Studios' upcoming UE3-powered multiplayer -centric FPS, Section 8, now have a date to mark on their calendars. Publisher SouthPeak has recently revealed the game's Euro release date.Section 8 will launch simultaneously on Xbox 360 and PC come September 4. Before that, though, the European beta will kick off this month. So far, only the PC beta has been dated -- August 10. The Xbox 360 beta still has to be dated by Microsoft, but it will happen later this month.Related articles:TimeGate: Players will be able to create dedicated servers for Section 8's Xbox 360 version

The nintendo wii has been suffering a sales decline of late. Most recently, Nintendo has posted a decline in quarterly operating outfit of more than 60 . Hardware sales went down from 5.17 million from last year to 2.23 million units, while software sales dropped down by almost 10 million units to 31.07 million.Despite these numbers, don't expect the Wii to get a price cut anytime soon. Nintendo president Satoru Iwata said at a recent Nintendo investors meeting that 'Right now, there aren't a lot of discussions going on about what exactly to do about hardware pricing.'Instead, Iwata believes that the slowdown in sales is due to the lack of big titles released for their home console at the moment, and they're going to remedy that by putting out some big ones. Here's what he said at the same investors meeting:It's not the case of the quality of hardware moved, the feeling of missing strong competitive power, lacking its luster or poor sales. Consistently, big time titles will be released

GameStop today announced that it will host Madden NFL 10 video game tournaments at more than 2,900 of its U.S. locations on Saturday, Aug. 22, 2009.