This is an experimental round-up of a few bits of news that I want to put up but are a bit too vague or widely reported elsewhere for me to bother formatting each of them its own entry. Rather of like a mixture between the Sunday Papers and Bubble & Squeak.

Plok, Wetrix and Naked War developers the Pickford brothers report that the downloadable console game (most likely headed for XBLA) they had been commissioned to design and prototype has been canned by the prospective publisher client who would have ported their PC prototype to console. All is not lost however, as the deal leaves them with ownership of the completed prototype, which according to Ste Pickford's blog, is more polished than was required as they had continued to improve the game even after the contracted work was done.

The plan now is to optimise and polish the game up to a finished state on PC and release it on their Zee-3 digital publishing site, which has so far only released the pay-per-play game Naked War (the game client is free, you buy points with which to challenge people to matches), and two DRM-free albums by the musician who did the Naked War title music.

Very little has been said openly about the game itself, other than it being a casual multiplayer game, developed for HD resolutions and the 360 controller, possibly with some sort of Victorian-era theme judging by a piece of accompanying art which Ste posted on his blog a while ago. But it's the Pickfords, so it's bound to be a nice challenging distraction with some pleasing depth.

As you have likely read elsewhere, the Blizzard North-derived developer behind tepidly-received post-apocalyptic bondage witch-infested 1st person Diablo-like pseudo-MMO Hellgate: London has gone into financial meltdown and sacked most of its staff. This is sad as their separate studio had been beavering away Ion Storm Austin-style on the very promising looking Mythos, another Diablo-like MMO, only this time free to play and less hideous. Hellgate's subscription online component has gone offline, as has the prolonged Mythos beta.

The future is now rather uncertain for both games, particularly Mythos. Both Flagship and its former Korean partner company who have been adapting Hellgate for the Asian market are claiming ownership of both games. Blame is being passed around, litigation is imminent.

Today news comes from a Microsoft event that Xbox Live's inbred PC adaptation will no longer require a Gold XBL/GFWL subscription for full access to its various features. This whole endeavour is really a lose-all situation for Microsoft. PC folks were never going to pay for the marginal benefits, and now that it is free it brings the justification of charging for Xbox Live at all under question. It's a difficult conflict of ideals, as although Xbox Live's subscription fee is looking increasingly cynical, and paying for it on a PC seems rather ridiculous, I can't imagine it would be anywhere near as well developed as it is now on console, and it still is so far ahead of the free competition. I almost get the impression that Microsoft have been poised to drop the charge as soon as the competition makes a big step forward, but that big step never comes and so the punters keep on subscribing, and so there is no need.