The NPD which tracks game sales in the US has revealed that US online gaming subscriptions top $1 billion a year. The findings were based on data gathered between October 2007 and March 2008 and the NPD also revealed that 11 million people in the US subscribe to online games each month.

NPD analyst Anita Frazier told GamesIndustry.biz the following.

“Now that NPD can estimate the value of the subscription market, it’s clear that there is a sizable chunk of revenue being generated by PC gaming beyond what is reflected in retail sales,”

“The variety of content available to play games on the PC clearly can draw a diverse audience.”

This shows that those people claiming that PC gaming is dying are short sighted individuals who cannot see the true potential of the PC as a gaming machine. $1 billion is not a figure to be scoffed at and is a clear example the the online gaming industry for the PC is a massive business.

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Valve have announced that the Steamworks SDK has been made available for all developers wishing to use it.

Steamworks currently provides a suite of publishing and development tools for PC game developers and publishers providing them with many tools used by Valve themselves. These include product key authentication, copy protection, auto-updating and loads more.

The Steamworks SDK now includes a fully functional API for all the components available in Steamworks. The SDK also includes an multiplayer game example to show foff how to use many of the features available. The Steamworks partner website has also been updated with loads of information and options.

Obligatory press release statement:

“In working with developers on the pre-release SDK, our focus has been on making it as easy as possible for them to integrate Steamworks into their games,” said Jason Holtman, director of business development at Valve. “They get access to these tools and services in a proven, scalable, and simple to work with package that has already been deployed to millions of gamers worldwide.”

All hail Valve and Steamworks! All hail!

In an interview with PC Play CryTek boss Cevat Yerli has claimed that due to PC piracy the company behind Far Cry and Crysis won’t be making any new PC Exclusive titles.

We are suffering currently from the huge piracy that is encompassing Crysis. We seem to lead the charts in piracy by a large margin, a chart leading that is not desirable. I believe that’s the core problem of PC Gaming, piracy. To the degree PC Gamers that pirate games inherently destroy the platform. Similar games on consoles sell factors of 4-5 more. It was a big lesson for us and I believe we wont have PC exclusives as we did with Crysis in future. We are going to support PC, but not exclusive anymore.

Which is a sign that piracy really is having a big factor on the PC as a gaming platform. But I am not sure what CryTek expected from a game boasting pretty high system specs. I am not condoning piracy but I can see that many people are going to have pirated because they won’t be sure that it will run on their PC.

As ever the piracy issue leads back to at times to the PC being a confusing platform for gamers due to all the different hardware combinations. Time then for the developers to start making games which are playable on the majority of PCs!

UK retailer of all things electronic, Currys are planning to set up a new games rating system (according to CVG) in an attempt to make the classification system more family friendly.

Currys will establish a customer panel to rate games on a variety of factors including suitability and the challenge they pose.

“Video gaming is now a mainstream form of family entertainment and we’ve seen a huge surge in the number of non-core gamers purchasing consoles and games,” Amanda Clift, head of brand for Currys, told Sky News.

It will be interesting to see how this is actually used. It is starting as a pilot scheme in five areas before being rolled out nationwide. It is not clear right now how this will be implemented considering the Byron review claimed that game ratings are already too complex. Currys using their own system is due to lead to furthe confusion.

Update

A Currys PR representative has just gotten back to me with the full Press Release (which can be read after the jump)

The main highlights are that this move has been made in a response to the Byron review and that OAPs are going to be involved in generating their own rating system for games suitable for the over 60s.

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Codemasters are great at making racing games, we have seen series’ such as Colin McRae and TOCA emanate from them and soon we will see GRID appear. To add to their impressive resume of racing games and work they have acquired UK-based Sega Racing Studio, the team that was behind Sega Rally Revo and which was closed earlier in the month by Sega.

Rod Cousens, chief executive of Codemasters had this to say about the takeover to Next-Gen.biz

“In seizing this opportunity, we have created additional resources to escalate our plans in the racing segment,

“We hope to welcome more than 40 people to the company and we have enjoyed the full co-operation of our friends at Sega in making this happen. It is good business for Codemasters, an exciting prospect and there will be more to come as we are not content to stand still.”

Can we expect to see another racing game get put into development while GRID is finished off, or will this new team work on GRID? I myself wouldn’t be surprised if they started work on a new rally game in the same vein as Colin McRae DIRT.

One thing we can say though is that Codies sure do love to race!

So while I may fully applaud Valve and Steam at times I will be one of the first to admit that there are some serious issues with Steam. An article on cnet.au that has come to my attention (thanks Digi) has sparked me to write about the situation with Steam, various Publishers and games being charged different prices across the world, some not being available and other games not being localized properly.

First off lets take that cnet.au article and see what they say.

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In their yearly earnings press release Interplay have revealed their plans to get back to work on a Fallout Massively Multiplayer Online Game.

Interplay sold the rights to the Fallout name last year to Bethesda (working on Fallout 3) but retained control of a license to create and develop a Fallout MOG.

The company is also looking into bringing back franchises such as Earthworm Jim and Descent. Their statement also confirms they have restarted in-house game development and are currently recruiting development teams. A new company website is also set to be launched soon.

Full press release after the jump.

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This is great, after last weeks analysis of why British papers hate video games we get another piece of shite ‘journalism’ from The Times regarding the banning of Kane and Lynch ads here in the UK.

Advertisements for Kane & Lynch were accompanied by the claim that the game is “grittier and nastier . . . than anything you’ve seen before, the violence . . . visceral, brutal and very, very real”. The ruling yesterday by the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) comes after the report last month by Tanya Byron, the psychologist and television parenting guru, who proposed cigarette-style health warnings on video games to protect children from unsuitable material.

(my highlighting)

I really find this hilarious that The Times in continuing with their theory that the Byron Review was planning to impose cigarette-style health warnings even though anyone who reads the Byron Review knows this is an absolute lie.

Goodness, well fair enough that the ads got banned, they were for Kane and Lynch so I have no issues with it. Though the fact that it took…well quite a few months for this to take place is just a sign that the UK really is going down the shitter.

One last thing from The Times article. Julian Brazier the Conservative MP for Canterbury had this to say;

“This is one more example of the ASA showing leadership and cracking down on the glamorising of violence when the BBFC is dragging its feet and the Video Appeals Committee has failed completely.”

News to me that the BBFC and VAC are involved in managing and controlling what kind of adverts are allowed to be shown on TV and in magazines. I always thought that was the job that the ASA was meant to be doing anyway…

In a worrying sign for fans of the Madden NFL sports games from EA, and in fact fans of any EA Sports games the latest version of Madden has not been scheduled for a PC release.

What does EA Sports head honcho have to say about this, well according to his blog, Peter Moore says that the PC presents serious business challenges.

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The Senior Producer behind Battlefield Heroes the upcoming Play 4 Free game from DICE and EA has weighed in with his thoughts on the recent debate surrounding the PC and the grave. Ben Cousins has some strong feelings on this issue and he is adamant that the PC is not dying, in fact he is of the school of thought that thinks the PC is leading a new major stage of growth for video gaming.

“If you look at the amount of PCs that are out there, we’re talking hundreds and hundreds of millions; if you look at the amount of PS3s and 360s, we’re talking tens of millions, barely. So, absolutely, people think that the PC is dying, but that’s a crazy idea…

it really feels like, to me, that we’re on the cusp of another expansive period of growth, between the DS and the Wii audiences, and there’s also an opportunity on the PC now.

PCs are everywhere — there are hundreds of thousands of internet cafes in India, and this is a poor country that soon will have a completely global, online connected world, for which games will be completely different.”

Read his extremely detailed interview with Gamasutra right here.