Now 1UP is in on the action.

Though 3D Realms has now got to take some of the blame for this continuing, because George “The Decider” Broussard himself can’t even be bothered to know for sure what the deal is. Or maybe he really does, and the plan is to let this story ride until even Take-Two starts thinking that they owe 3D Realms $4.25 million when Duke ships. Naw, that’s too clever, or at least too not-cribbed-from-a-Bruce-Campbell-or-other-iconic-gamer-movie.

F13 received word from a source with the trust-inspiring codename “Shiznitz” that Vivendi, owners of Blizzard, gave a presentation to Wall Street. In this presentation, it was supposedly said that thanks to World of Warcraft, Vivendi has a cunning plan that will allow them to produce MMOGs of similar quality for $50 million and a three-year dev cycle.

And they’re going to do it with all Blizzard franchises. Which really means Starcraft and Diablo.

Blizzard, on the other hand, denies vehemently that they are working on any such project.

Analysis: If you want to work on World of Starcraft, send your application to Vivendi.

Courtesy of dumb “adult” game Frank’s Adventure 4, this is one conversational contingency plan with a wide range of utility:

Try it out now:

“Sir, if I could have a moment of your time…”

“Wowee, I don’t know anybody at this party!”

“Hottiepally whispers, ‘u want to do 5 man scholo?’”

“We have no problem with you airing our errors to the world (we do the same by keeping our updates public), but I’d like to think you’d simultaneously alert us to them as a professional courtesy.”

This is great news, because as soon as it’s confirmed that he’s not lying or being crazy again (you have to wonder, since the interview this news comes from also mentions his vision of a “cyberworld”), that’ll be the day Xbox Live becomes free.

I think somebody ought to tell Ken that, though. I’m not so sure it’s a good idea to fight a war of revenue attrition with Microsoft.

I’m all for better physics, because the sooner it gets here, the sooner developers will have smoke and running water, which will create a small chance that they’ll give up on the ridiculous floating rubber rag doll corpse physics.

Maybe not.

But regardless, what ATI and Havok are working on— doing physics simulation acceleration through an extra graphics card in SLI with the main card— is a way better idea than doing it through a physics-only card, because then games that aren’t based on wiggly cadavers and exploding crate mountains can use the second video card as, well, a second video card.

The most interesting part of the interview says that this SLI solution is more capable than even unloading physics onto a dual-CPU machine, even when the CPUs are in turn dual-core. We’ll see if that’s marketing fast-talk or not.

Read – Havok FX/ATI Interview [Firing Squad]

Somehow Sony felt like a survival horror game about eerily calm psychopathic pre-pubescent proto-lesbian schoolgirls wouldn’t have the same appeal in North America as it would in Japan. I don’t know why— if Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles could adjective its way to millions, surely this could?

Anyway, Sony is publishing Rule of Rose in Japan, but declined to do so here as well. Luckily for all you “loli” pervs, Atlus decided to pick up the hot, hot slack.

Read – Press Release [Atlus]

GameSpot digs deeper:

[Editor's note: GameSpot originally misreported the figure 3D Realms would be paid upon completion of Duke Nukem Forever. It has since been corrected. We regret the error.]

Keep regretting, fellas, because the amount 3D Realms is getting paid is zero.

It’s the new Highlander Style Fact-Checking Method: when you are notified of an inaccuracy in an article, stop as soon as you find and correct it, as there can be only one.

Joystiq has also fixed the erroneous $4,250 dollar figure, and also still have that money as going to 3D Realms. Can these almost assiduous all-stars pull off another screw-up or will they get it right the next time? And what about sites like Next Generation that haven’t made any corrections yet? Will they just crib from GameSpot again and stay wrong, like Ponyboy stays gold? Did Robert Frost ever write a poem about being wrong that makes fictional greasers a little gay for each other?

Joystiq’s update, with ironic jab at GameSpot’s acumen *UPDATE 6/13* …is now completely fixed (I think, it’s 90% unreadable now)

Attentive reader and danaplatologist Andrew sent in this link to a video a manly man (from the unmanly-named site GameChew) made of his perfect score in Night Trap.

In case you didn’t know, Night Trap is a Sega CD game that had full motion video of girls in their pajamas. That scandalous motif and Mortal Kombat’s spine-ripping and immolation were hot topics in Congress, and are thought of as the impetus behind the creation of the ESRB, allowing us to have titty oracles and off-screen threesomes in God Of War. Thank you, Night Trap.

I should amend: the big video is an almost perfect run, and there’s a link to the end of a truly perfect run, if you manage to trap all the vampires without also trapping the elite anti-vampire trooper from S.C.A.T. (guten tag to all our visitors from German search engines) in the run-up to the climactic boss battle trapping. And seeing the 100% end makes you realize that the people who made it did in fact have some sense of decency. Oh no, that means the ESRB is a sham!

Look – Night Trap Take 2 [GameChew]