Hit the jump for the up to the minute live blog action! Boosh!

Will's obsession with the movie sounds hardcore, as he talks about his hunt for a lenticular version of the 2001 movie poster. He finally came across one, a poster that he ultimately had Gary Lockwood aka Frank Poole from 2001, sign.

Will's now moving into other topics — his obsession with aliens, the acceptance of video games as an art form, and the evolution of the book, among other topics — moving at a mile a minute.

Will's discussing the power of the printed book, bringing knowledge, religion and fiction to the masses, before sprinting into a discussion about Alexander Graham Bell's invention of the telephone and immediately thereafter into the informative power of the television. On the topic of the computer, Will talks about how it has adapted to meet the user's needs, ultimately resulting in something the creator likely didn't expect — namely, the shooting of Hitler in Wolfenstein 3D.

The internet, he says, developed by DARPA, probably wasn't originally intended to catalog one's Pokemon card collection or download internet porn.

Will's talking about archetypes in popular culture, citing Gilligan's Island, whose seven inhabitants represent the seven deadly sins. Say, that's news to me! Thanks, Will. He makes a Neil Gaiman's Sandman joke that flies over my head and emits a boom of laughter from the crowd. Comic-Con loves it some Will Wright!

He's moving on to video game settings, archetypes and gameplay types. "Storytelling," he says "is something you kind of have to be taught." But "play" is separate.

"I wonder," he says "who would win in a fight with a Cylon cruiser, an Imperial Star Destroyer or a Borg cube." The stuff of internet debates is something we can resolve in a video game simulation.

You should see this man's PowerPoint presentation, not only is he blistering through his speech, he's throwing slides at the crowd at a lightning pace. He's talking about the deconstruction of story, bouncing from subjects like Thunderbirds, pulp comics and Stanley Kubrick. Slow down, Will!!

Will's talking about the Powers of Ten movie that helps to explain some of the zoomed out evolution from single-cell organism to the formations of galaxies, essentially the core mechanic behind Spore. If you haven't seen Powers of Ten, I suggest you watch it (after the liveblog).

Will is talking about creativity, how kindergarten age children are confident in their abilities to draw, dance, sing, but that the same question asked of University students results in fewer raised hands. Wright says that the educational system essentially teaches students that they're not good at anything. That confidence in creativity, he notes, comes through in games like The Sims and Spore.

He talks about the reaction to the Spore Creature Creator, saying that the team expected to fill the creature database with 100,000 creations within a few months. They reached 1 million in 22 hours. He touches on the "Spore fans = 38% God" statistic, noting that the 2 million creatures currently in the database have outpaced God's creation of the world in seven days.

Wright is cycling through some of the more interesting creations users have made, from robots to near-humans to inanimate objects like chairs and Portal's Companion Cube.

"One of our aspirations with Spore" he says, "was to make players feel more like George Lucas or JRR Tolkein" and not so much like Luke Skywalker or Gandalf.

Spore, he says, is loaded with pop culture references, saying that it will be fun to watch players discover allusions to science fiction and fantasy.

Will's firing up a working copy of Spore right now, showing us the later, Galaxy-view stages of the game.

We're looking at the Civilization Stage right now, a simplified combination of SimCity and Civilization. We're zooming in and out of cities, the camera orbiting around the planet. This planet's natural resource, known as "spice" (Dune loving crowd laughs), is spewing forth from a geyser.

Will cuts to this game's History view, showing the evolution from simple low level creature to civilization level. This timeline emits a "Whoa...." from the crowd, as it shows dozens and dozens of milestones, from what his little slugman ate at genesis to what alliances he's formed with other alien civilizations.

This particular civilization is a religious one. Will flies a blaring airship over one religious institution, converting its denizens to materialism, wowing them with bright lights and the promise of mass consumption. Awesome. Just like real life!

We're now browsing through a library of "religious vehicles." Some look like tanks, some like simple non-war machines.

He shows off Spore's procedural music generator, designed by Brian Eno, giving his city a randomly generated theme song. The crowd likes this. They also like the holographic religious figureheads that try to convince the populace to convert (or stick to) their religion of choice.

Now on to the Space Stage of Spore.

The crimson lifeforms of this particular planet discover the ability to launch a rocket into orbit, moving them to the next level of civilization. Will's building a spaceship via the game's vehicle editor, adding "blinky things", showcasing the depth of the editors parts, decals and warping tools. Will makes one that looks a heck of a lot like an Enterprise-style ship (the most recent, Scott Bakula captained ship, that is). It's skin is based on one of the pre-built template styles, making the creation of a unique ship even faster.

As we move around the galaxy, Will zooms in and out smoothly, heading toward distant stars — "This one's a T-1" — and beginning the terraforming process on one of the star's planets. He establishes a colony, adding to their happiness with a newly built Happiness Booster. It's one of those long rubber tube-men that whips about outside car dealerships thanks to a jet of air. Again, crowd laughs.

A spacefarer passing by initiates a trade discussion with Will's race. Wright drops diplomacy in favor of blowing the living bejeezus out of their home planet with a massive bomb. The bomb was so intense, it even blew up the moon orbiting it. Will is mean!

"One of the things I wanted to accomplish in Spore, was to give players a sense of what a galaxy is like, what a galaxy is really made of," Wright says. That's why the team used real world types of heavenly bodies — stars, black holes, wormholes. We're now traveling through a wormhole, taking Will's alien species across the galaxy, hundreds of lightyears from their home planet.

Back to planet colonization, Will says players will have to be concerned with not just terraforming the planet's surface, but with managing a planet's atmosphere. He creates a volcano, one that "thickens" the atmosphere and warms the air. "It's very easy to overshoot on these things," he warns. Pushing things over the edge on the atmosphere side can lead to in-game global warming.

Obviously, Will overdoes it, turning the planet into "a living hell." This planet is about to go magma, becoming a nasty sulfur spewing rock, filled with spires and volcanoes. Oh, and the surface is pure lava. Lovely!

Will's about to wrap up. He asks the audience if they want a Q&A or a Russian Space Minute. Cowering in fear of Will's intellect, the crowd opts for the Russian Space Minute.

Wright pulls a bait and switch, renaming it the German Space Minute. One of Wright's other otaku obsession, he admits, is space travel history. He's talking about Germany space rocket prototypes developed in 1941 and the Nazi's space experiments, focusing on Wernher von Braun a German rocket physicist. One slave factory, named Mittelbau, produced some 3000 V-2 bombers, resulting in 7,250 dead targets. Some 20,000 factory workers, however, died during manufacturing.

Some of the former Nazi scientists later went to work for the U.S. government, working on rocket science programs in Huntsville, Alabama. Von Braun, Will says, later met Walt Disney and became the face of the space program. You know, we'd much rather refer you to his Wikipedia entry than try to capture Will's retelling of history.

Von Braun later met John F. Kennedy, another influence on the sceientist's life. Will talks about the A12 multistage rocket, designed with the intention to bomb New York, ultimately became the basis for the Saturn 5 rocket. And that's my horrible recreation of Will Wright's German Space Minute. Visit your local library to learn more.

Will wraps it up and the Comic-Con masses swarm. Off to the Activision panel. See you next panel!

Currently waiting for things to get started. The event, part of GA Tech's GVU Center Brown Bag Lecture series. GVU stands for Graphics, Visualization and Usability.

YAY! Administrative announcements. Turn off your cell phones, clean up your trash. etc.

Blair, the man introducing Carl comes out waving around a Gizmondo. He's been using it for research for two years. He invited Carl to the school upon hearing about the rebirth of the handheld.

Carl takes the podium, looking fit! Starts with a survey. "How many of you have Googled Carl Freer? " Laughter. "How many of you believe what you read?" Bigger laughter.

"Gizmodo is, in my opinion, the first multi-function handheld device." Um, okay! Adding gaming to the system was originally simply a way to drive sales of the device.

"From my point of view the product didn't fail - the company failed."

He calls himself a living example of what you shouldn't do. Really? Never!

Question from the audience - Will the Gizmondo change from the original version?

"We decided that we wanted to get the product out on the market quickly, and the spec of the current Gizmondo is good enough."

They'd like to incorporate new tech, but the time to market would be extended by a year.

Gizmondo will be the same except for an upgrade to the NVIDIA graphics chip.

Next year they are working with NVIDIA to completely restructure the PCB. Development is already started.

"We could never compete with Sony or Nintendo in content."

Freer is going over the benefits of the product being open source.

Freer's sons are here. His 12-year-old asked to come watch his dad make a fool of himself. Oh those kids.

Part of the strategy of Gizmondo is creating a platform that people can use to create their own games.

They want to create centers of development throughout technical university campus, offering hardware and such for free in order to foster creativity and growth.

They'll be hitting the blogs and forums pretty hard with the information about developing as the Gizmondo. Oh yay!

One of the reasons the company failed he said is long lead times for components. Retailers won't prepay, so they couldn't keep up financially with manufacturing.

They have a new manufacturing with a Chinese company that will let them pay as they receive the product, allowing them to get paid for the units immediately.

We're going to start selling the Gizmondo online before retail.

They've been talking to companies like Barnes & Nobles about carrying the product for use as a book reading device for young children.

They're not going to be spending $10-$15 million on EA to secure their new titles. He says he spent way too much on securing games. He spent $15 million on three EA games, not including development costs. Damn!

They will be focusing on areas of development that are less competitive. He mentions the PSP. "We feel that the Gizmondo...can be used in areas the PSP cannot."

"I'm taking a step back. I'm putting the product out there and letting you guys handle development."

The SDK will be completely free. Hail SDK!

He claims keeping the original Gizmondo closed source was a fatal mistake.

He says the Gizmondo started as an anti-theft device for cars. Freer was a car dealer at one point...go figure...who had a bunch of cars stolen. The device was a GPS / GSM tracker. Then, due to a series of child abductions in England the focus shifted to being a child tracker.

In 1997 Freer was named the Swedish entrepreneur of the year. "The press forgot about that." Whoops.

Now he's moved on to the main talk, tips about getting your own ideas into the open market.

"I think it's key to find and understand your limitations."

His first point - Empower your audience - make sure they can understand what you are creating. Have a hook that grabs their attention.

Create compelling experiences. Slowly sinking into the less interesting bits of his talk.

Now he's showing a CGI ad for the Gizmondo to illustrate creating a compelling experience. The good old bumblebee video.

They tried to make Gizmondo look bigger than they actually where. Sometimes you have to embelish things, but being ethical and honest is very important.

Again, the man said, "Being ethical and honest is very important."

Now he's showing a video for his streaming mobile video company, featuring music by The Cardigans.

Look at the market. "If you feel like it's half-done, it's probably 75% done."

"I've had 13 startups, 9 have been alright, the rest have not. I've learned more from the failure."

Blowfish Works...a mobile video player you download to your phone..is launching next month. Over 1.2 million people have signed up for the service before launch. They'll be launching on Facebook a week before the main launch. Exciting. Gaming important? Nope. Moving on.

Could the Gizmondo integrate a phone? Version one will not.
Version 2 will have the ability to process sound and voice telephony.
"I would be very happy if the Gizmondo remains an entertainment device."
He doesn't want to deal with the VOIP issues.

The current Gizmondo will have a lifespan of 3 years.

"If we do well our roadmap entails expanding the hardware and supporting full telephony."

When the company went bankrupt Freer was hit with a gag order, not allowed to talk to the press. The fact that he couldn't defend Stefan Eriksson . "You can take the gangster out of the ghetto but can't take the ghetto out of the gangster." Ouch.

The facts of the failure. Yes there were high salaries - "Which by the way were market rate..."
Carl himself didn't draw a salary.

Apparently they had talks with some big companies about acquisitions.

He couldn't defend himself. On Eriksson's famous car accident - "I was sleeping, but I felt like I was sitting on the front end of the car when it happened."

Freer learned the lesson of guilt by association in regards to working with Erikkson. "When you're in the public light you have to find alternatives."

The definitive reasons the Gizmondo failed - We were public too early so we were victims of day trading. The second failing was not opening the device to open source. The third was spending big bucks for EA. The fourth was a far too rich renumeration policy. Make sure you have the money before hand - don't expect you'll gather capital as you go along.

Now he's talking about marketing, and just like when I went to college, I am starting to doze off. What a lovely, nostalgic feeling!

And now it's done! There you have it folks. The Gizmondo marches on with Freer banking on it's varied functionality and open-source nature to get it into consumer's hands, with another version already in the works. Good luck, Carl!

11:08 AM : Play that Funky Music White Boy is playing on the PA, and a small crowd has gathered for the Q&A that was supposed to start 8 minutes ago. Oh, here we go! Jamil and Perry take the stage!

Jamil is talking about how awesome Dave Perry is. I tend to agree. We are pleased an honored! Applause!

First question...are you the tallest developer in the industry? Yes, yes he is. Even taller than Phil Harrison. He gets the same thing I did in high school. Everyone wanted him for sports. I feel his pain.

Perry is talking about the gaming scene in Northern Ireland in the 80's. Programming in basic, self-publishing, creating booklets. Games in plastic bags on a cassette tape. Those were the days.

He programmed on a Sinclair ZX81. You needed imagination to play games back then. The industry was revolutionized when the 16k memory module came out. He's showing picture of old games. I'll show you those a bit later.

Jamil's next question: Was there a peer group you could work with?

They would have little meets. Perry got his start handing out stickers dressed up like a creepy cartoon character at trade shows.

Haha! Early tries at photorealism. Taking photos, scanning them and editing them.

What games and developers inspired you? Ooo, good question.

He looked up to Peter Molyneux, Chris and Tim Stamford from Rare.

What could you earn during the early days of game development?

Early jobs paid nearly nothing. Starting at nothing, but once a game succeeded your salary would quickly increase.

He wrote a platformer for the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles for the PC, Commodore and AMiga in a week back then.

He moved to the US when Virgin Games needed him to make a McDonald's game called Mick & Mack's Global Gladiators for the Genesis. LOL. McDonald's hated it at first. It won game of the year, but the company was mad that you couldn't buy burgers in the game.

Talking about the Richard Branson parachuting manuever into the press conference for Disney's Aladdin game, one of the best Disney games ever incidentally.

Jamil: How did you get into a position that you could create your own games within a big company like Virgin?

Once you hit a few out of the park they'll pretty much do anything you ask them to.

On Messiah: "We expected hardcore gamers to buy a game with a crying baby on the box."

Yay Earthworm Jim! Proof that you don't have to be big to get a lot done. Toys, cartoons, Taco Bell toys, No fire extinguishers though.

Hello Kitty is a good place to go for merchandising ideas.

While pitching Earthworm Jim to MGM Universal, studio head Sid Sheinberg came into the room yelling at people, and then told Perry to pitch. Halfway through the pitch Sheinberg interrupted. "This is confidential.Pigs. Pigs are gonna be big. There's been dogs, there's been cats. Pigs. Continue." He went on to create Babe. A visionary!

How do you get a cartoon for Earthworm Jim without a toy line in place, and vice versa?

He invited the head of the toy company and cartoon company out to dinner, where they looked eachother in the eye and said, "I'll do it if you do it."

"Food is the key to everything."

MDK. The publisher didn't see it. It was the first no they got from a publisher. They had built their whole pitch on the innovative sniper helmet the game featured.

They took the same storyboards they used for the initial pitched and created a video. They loved it so much they wanted a toy line and a tv SHOW.

"If you have a great game idea don't write about it...show it"

On the Matrix. Jamil is asking him why there was no game for the first film.They were working on sacrifice. He met with the Wachowskis and all they had to demonstrate bullet time was a burning barrel. They passed on it.

The ESRB wasn't going to give Enter the Matrix a teen rating due to the kiss between two female characters. Shiny's response?

"It's not two women kissing, it's two computer programs kissing."

The ESRB bought it. Hilarious.

Now they are discussing the Top Secret MMO racing game project. How the community took over. They created forums, a wiki, and just basically took over the whole process. It's exciting because he never knows what they are going to do next.

They've come up with very original ideas. Commentator mode, where one player acts as a color commentary during the races for instance. People would fight for a chance to MC the big races. The idea was nothing a traditional game development team would have come up with.

The design stage is done, and the development phase is beginning. "I don't expect them to go kick Tim Sweeny's ass." I am sure Tim is relieved.

Announcing a deal with Mod Center to deliver free development tools to the Top Secret community. Acclaim will pay for any game engine in the world for whoever wins the Top Secret competition. Wow.

The winner gets an industry standard publishing deal and $100,000 cash as their first royalty. They are giving young developers a chance.

The project will also be an iinteresting viral marketing test, as the community will be telling their friends and so on and so on.

The game will ultimately be free to play. Perry went to the biggest publisher in China to explore the microtransaction / play for free model. Showing slides of his trip.

"The old game model we used to use is archaic." The microtransaction model brings in much more money than the standard $49.99 he used to charge for PC games. "The free to play model works fantastic in the US, even better than China." Combined with in-game advertising it is a really good model for the states.

If a Kojima-level personality from China comes to the US and starts delivering games of that quality from China it will have an amazing impact on the gaming industry here. Disruptive innovation, like the digital camera changing Polaroid's business.

The Wiimote is truly disruptive. Nintendo has disrupted our industry. None of Perry's favorite games or games he is looking for are on the Wii. When the great games come out for the 360 and PS3, people aren't going to be content bowling with their Wiimote.

He is talking about the game Plague that he wanted to make, that would have taken $17 million to create. It made him start to worry about how games are created and sold.In China he found free fully-funded MMO teams. He is developing 6 MMOs now, three of which are unannounced.

Until the PS3 is everywhere he can't see himself creating a big budget game.

Added some pics to the bottom here.

Awww, we are out of time. That was much more entertaining than I thought it would be. Thanks for sticking with me on this, my very first liveblog!

I'm sitting down on the faux plastic grass of Sony's mammoth, and quite cool, GC booth. They've got wood chairs set up facing a large screen that reads "Welcome to the Scee Press Conference."

Hey! Phil Harrison just stopped by to say hi. Nice guy. I ran my best guesses for the conference by him to see if I could get a reaction:

PSP Video Download Service announced: Stone faced.
FIFA tournament announced: Stone faced.
FIFA president to take the stage: Stone faced.
Any my personal favorite wild rumor: PS3 Rumble controller announced: Stone faced.

Hit the jump to follow along the press conference.

The show's starting. They're showing a cool video montage showing off some of their past, present and future greats including Ratchet and Clank,. God of War, SingStar and of course their library of hardware from PS One to the PS3.

David Reeves, president of SCEE, is on the stage to share with us some "key announcements" for the PS3 European market.

"Games Convention and more important this year, in particular since the E3 has moved to a more regional show."

Before the big announcements, which includes some "new game announcements", Reeves wants to talk about growing the gaming market. He says the market for TV based consoles have risen 65 percent in PAL market in the past ten years.

PS3 sell through saw a 240 percent increase in Germany in the first week after the introduction of the new bundle there.

"The growth of social growth has been a key component of our strategy."

More than 645,000 European PS3 owners have registered for the Playstation Network, which is about a 50 percent install base. The best selling titles on the PSN are Tekken 5, Flow, Super Rub a Dub and Calling all Cars. Tekken 5 had 103,000 downloads.

Now on from stats to new software and such. The Playstation 3 is first.

Early in the new year will be introducing Play TV, it turns your Playstation 3 into a DVR. Play TV will use a small device that can record a channel while you watch another channel.

To use you connect your television to the device and then to your PS3 and it supported high def video. Oh man, it looks amazing. And! It can stream video live or recorded to your PSP. HOTNESS. Though he didn't mention North America specifically he did say it would be coming to "other" regions. So keep your fingers crossed

OK going through some of the stuff we know now about some exciting PS3 games. Hey, Hideo is in the audience. He just got a little name drop. But, alas, nothing new on Metal Gear Solid 4 at this presser.

It looks like Buzz, that little game show trivia game for the PS2 is coming to the PS3, they had a sorta annoying announcement by the game's announcer.

Now they're showing a new Gran Turismo video. The video shows inside the car during the video looks, as always, very impressive.

GT5 Prologue will hit in Europe before the end of the year.

Now on to the Playstation Portable. Reeves is talking a bit now about Echochrome, that sexy brain teaser we saw at E3.

Ah, he didn't really say anything. Onto a montage video.

They're talking about the new slimmer PSP now. The PSP Slim and Light is coming to Europe in September. It will come here in the normal colors as well as in special Simpsons and Spiderman versions.

Now they're talking about Go! Messenger, a service that will allow you to chat with users around the world using your PSP. It will also support the PSP cam and allow you to do video chat. It's scheduled for launch in January of 08.
.
On to Go! Explore, which is a satellite navigation tool for the PS3 which supports both vehicle and pedestrian maps. It will allow you to plan your route in advance and follow it in three dimensions.

They're showing a demo now. The device plugs into the back of your PSP and sticks up about twice as high as the camera, though I suspect that's the antenna, which I'd guess can fold out of the way when not in use.

Oh that's neat, it creates a little 3D map that actually displays some famous buildings along your route, so it's not just float roads.

Ah! That screen looks familiar. It's the PSP Video Download Service slide I saw this morning. The video download service is exclusive to the PSP.

The video download service will launch with a "rich selection of high quality entertainment." It will include Sky content (their partner) in addition to some third party content owners. Latest movies and high-profile sporting events will be available on a pay-per-view basis. You will have a choice of payment options. Either you can take out a subscription or just by per a piece of content.

Showing some "possible content." Like movies such as Spider-Man and Ghost Rider. Television shows and sports,

This service is due out in the UK and Ireland in early 2008. He said they are also active in discussions in France and will be working on Spain and Germany next. Hey, what about the US?

Ah, on to the FIFA news I overheard. I believe.

PS3 is teaming with EA for the FIFA Interactive World Cup 2008. The tournament this year will support players from around the world on the PS3.

They've just brought the FIFA higher-up Chuck Blazer to the stage to discuss the tourney. Registration for the online element is now underway at www.fifa.com/fiwc. Andrew Wilson, executive producer of FIFA for EA, took the stage to show off the new FIFA game.

Stop the presses FIFA 08 announced... burn.

They're showing off the game on the PS3. How bout that, this EA game runs at 60 frames per a second on the PS3. It looks pretty good, though they're not showing it on the big screen, so it's hard to see.

OK, they've introduced the head of Sony Computer Entertainment Germany to the stage to wrap things up.

It looks like he will be talking about the German market.

Hmmm, they're showing a video of a German rock band, Toten Hosen, now. Not sure why, but they're apparently known for their "barn storming" performances.

They're showing them playing SingStar ah, it looks like they're taking the stage now. To sing live.

Reeves is back up on stage after a bit of Toten Hosen. He's wrapping up just how massive the upcoming months for the PSP and PS3 will be.

I think the biggest news is the DVR TV Anywhere news. I sure hope it comes to the US. That's it. We'll circle back in a bit with the official press releases, images and vids.

Sitting in an office at NetDevil where they're about to walk us through what is going with all of their projects.

First up: Warmonger, then LEGO Universe and Jumpgate Evolution. Hit the jump to follow along. Brian Crecente

Warmonger, for those of you who haven't been paying attention, is a PC first-person shooter that uses the Agea PhysX engine.

NetDevil went to the company and said they wanted to make a game for them that would feature totally, really totally destructible environments. The game is pretty far along, they actually have an 8-player tourney running right now.

The game lets you do things like blow up stairs, while people are walking up them, take down walls, destroy entire buildings.

Initially the game allowed you to literally destroy everything, but they soon discovered that after you destroy everything you're essentially playing on a pool table.

So they had to temper their design to balance the level of destruction with gameplay. You can, for instance, blow a hole in a wall and then go through it to surprise someone. It's really different, they, because it's dynamic and procedural, so it's different every time.

Next up, LEGO Universe.

Ryan Seabury, the game's producer, is about to show us something its a power point presentation called Everything you want to know about the LEGO Universe... will be revealed someday.

"This is the first MMOG professionally developed or LEGO fans and supported by community members from around the world."

It is a full-featured MMOG. It isn't just an online world, a social experience, there will be feature full game features. It will be child safe. It will allow you to customize your mini-figure. "We want you to express your identity through the mini-figure." The game will be "for kids of all ages."

"A good game is also a good game for all ages."

If you are a fan, NetDevil wants you to go to www.legouniverse.com to try and get involved in the process by sending in your ideas.

Now, they're showing off a short little trailer...oh, it's the one you've all seen, if you've been reading the site. Sweet, we got it up before it was presented at the unveiling.

The video got HUGE reaction, especially the Darkling Battle at the end. Poor mini-fig.

Ah, they're showing one more trailer. It shows a basic waterfall made of bricks, though the water looks incredibly realistic. It's a nice blending of LEGO and high-res graphics.

Now they're showing off the art process. They're showing the different stages of concept art, how they turn something that might be in any game, into something that has been LEGO-ized and then finally into something that appears to be made of in-game art. Pretty amazing end result.

"This is going to be the best MMOG ever," Seabury said, to laughter... "I'm not kidding. I think this is going to be something that makes a big dent in... my intention is that this is a game that will make a big impact on global pop culture."

And that's it for LEGO Universe, on to JumpGate.

Jumpgate was NetDevil's first ever game, ten years ago. It was a space fight MMO. And now they're reinventing it and man it looks amazing.

They just announced that they've gone live on their website with a beta sign-up for Jumpgate Evolution. The site literally just went up now.

Hermann, producer of the Jumpgate project is up now.

The game has a team of eight working on it and they've been developing for about ten months so far.

The first thing we're looking at is the station where you start the game. It's also where you can buy things, repair and upgrade your ship. The ship just launched into space. Amazing. The game's version of space is a beautiful, multi-hued thing, a far cry from the black space of the original game.

AI can control other ships, which don't just appear, they actually launch out of station tubes like you do. The game also has transports. In the original game there was a living, breathing economy, the remake will have one too, but the AI will play a role in keeping the economy moving.

OOOOOH, you can be a space pirate.

The game includes these really cool looking Jumpgates. They sort of looklike floating balls of water. As you come out of the gate, it looks like you're looking up through water.

The game has these floating asteroids which you can mine for minerals. They asteroids can actually be mined out, but over time they will rebuild. You can also find these special asteroids which have really hard to find resources.

There are also rare hidden artifacts hidden throughout the universe. The game will also support player-owned stations which you can customize by attaching modules.

The game has an amazing sense of scale, planets, moons, asteroids, stars all loom or hover in the distance. The ship looks very zippy, but not too zippy. The stations themselves are incredibly detailed, you can see little hull lights.

Hermann said the game won't require a high-end system. You won't even need a shader card to play the game.

The game is currently being played in third-person, but there is also a first-person view, but no cockpit view... yet. It will also support both mouse/keyboard and joystick controls.

No ship date yet. Oh, if you want to sign up for the beta head to: www.netdevil.com.

That's it, time to go get my ass handed to me in Warmonger.

We're just about to get started. Join us!