He's been at it for 25 years, and he's still going strong. We're referring to Sid Meier, Firaxis head and game designer of such notable PC titles as Civilization 4. This industry veteran is obviously far from tired, as he can still talk animatedly about the upcoming Civilization Revolution and the MMORPG genre. Find out more in the full article after the jump.

Take-Two Interactive is planning to hit the Game Convention 2007 hard this year as it announces its line-up for the event. Taking center stage are Borderlands, Civilization Revolution and NBA 2l8 along with a host of other hot prospects.

Slated for the Microsoft Xbox 360, Sony PlayStation 3, Nintendo Wii, and Nintendo DS next year, Civilization Revolution takes the veteran RTS franchise out of the PC realm and into consoles. New gameplay mechanics have been devised to suit each system, so expect the Firaxis team to take advantage of what your console has to offer. Real-time voice chat and interaction between leaders as well as other deep features are trumpeted to captivate strategy buffs everywhere.

NBA 2K8 is also lacing up its shoes and getting ready for the next season this fall with brand new moves. Emphasis has been placed this year on new defensive and off-ball controls to better simulate the hoop experience. The franchise mode has also been deepened and new game modes have been added to raise this baller's replay value.

Gearbox Software, working under the Take-Two banner, is still a year away from completing its genre-bending action game Borderlands, but we'll get an early peek of it come GC 2007. Customizable characters and randomly generated items have been marked as the title's strong points so far. Will the graphics and gameplay hold up? We'll get an idea soon.

Tennis sim Top Spin 3, which 2K Sports calls "the most realistic tennis simulation today," will also be making an appearance at the GC 2007. The developers claim 20 of the top ranked smashers from around the world have been licensed for this title, and that can only spell more fun to those who like the sport.

Lastly, we've got NHL 2K8, which continues its run of excellence with its trademark ProStick feature that allows you to handle the puck with ease. More mayhem with hard checks and brutal breakaways should leave our collective teeth chattering in the ice long after we've won the Stanley Cup.

If you still have some savings after purchasing the final installment in the Harry Potter book series last July 21, you might want to check up on this week's game releases. It's quite a big library to stir into your gaming cauldrons. In this week's On Shelves lineup, we find Square Enix's Final Fantasy II: Anniversary Edition for the PSP. That game's got a story epic enough to match the events at Hogwarts.

Console gamers can live on the fast lane this week with NASCAR 08 on the the PS3 and Xbox 360, while Wii owners get the thrills and horrors found in Escape from Bug Island - you might want to take some tips from Hagrid first though.

Those who want to go casual can pick up handheld games the likes of Ultimate Puzzle Games: Sudoku Edition and Chameleon: To Dye For! on the Nintendo DS. PSP owners though, who want to do an Ellen Ripley impersonation ("Get away from her, you b*tch!"), might want to opt for Alien Syndrome.

PC gamers could either take the high road or the low road, with intense action in the latest Combat Mission installment or a baseball game with Charlie Brown.

Get your checklists done; we're heading off to Diagon Alley for some shopping this week!

Final Fantasy II Anniversary Edition. Decades since its original release, this PSP remake clocks the 20th Anniversary of the FF franchise. With improved graphics and CG cinematics from the FF Origins release, this iteration of the much re-released classic will revisit the story of orphaned Firion, Maria, Guy, and Leon in their quest to overthrow the power-hungry emperor. FF fun-fact #18274: FFII is the first FF title to introduce the staple "Cid" character and the recurring chocobos.

• PSP - July 24
• US$ 29.99
• ESRB T (Teen)
• Square Enix

Check out this week's "On Shelves" list by clicking on the Full Article link below!

Buy: [Final Fantasy II Anniversary Edition (PSP)]
Buy: [Alien Syndrome (Wii)]
Buy: [Alien Syndrome (PSP)]

 For the gamers out there who have a penchant for buying collector's editions (limited editions, and other editions other than the standard one), here's another title for you to watch out for. It's Sid Meier’s Civilization IV: Gold Edition.

2K Games and Firaxis Games' strategy video game allows players to literally take over the world. The Gold Edition for this empire building video game will include Sid Meier’s Civilization IV and the first expansion, Civilization IV: Warlords. As with all special editions, this release will also pack a number of additional stuff:

• Exclusive fantasy-style poster from world-famous artist Greg Hildebrandt (illustrator of the original "Star Wars", fantasy-themed "Clash of the Titans" movie poster, "Lord of the Rings" calendars and posters and other seminal artwork)
• Behind-the-scenes DVD with developer interviews, insight into the Civilization IV development process and a short feature on Sid Meier’s video game history
• Tech-tree poster featuring the paths to researching and discovering all of the technologies needed to advance in Civilization IV
• Civilization IV Game Manual

Christoph Hartmann, President of 2K had this to say about the Gold Edition's release:

Sid Meier's Civilization IV: Gold Edition is a great way to get into the award-winning Civilization IV series. Gamers will now have the chance to change the course of world history and relive battles from every era of the past with both Civilization IV games in one box – in stores just in advance of the highly anticipated second Civ IV expansion pack, Beyond the Sword.

Interested? You won't have to wait long for the Gold Edition as its release is only a few winks away (July 17).

A publishing label of Take-Two interactive, 2k Games, has recently announced Sid Meier's Civilization IV: Beyond the Sword, the second expansion pack for Civilization IV (The first being Civilization IV: Warlords). Beyond the Sword is said to be "the largest amount of expansion content in the history of the Civilization franchise".

The expansion will focus on the late-game time periods, starting after the development of gunpowder. It will introduce 12 new scenarios designed by Firaxis Games and certain members of the Civilization Fan community. In addition to this, 16 new leaders (this includes the leaders for the new civilizations and additional leaders for existing leaders), 10 new civilizations (including Portugal, Babylon, and Netherlands), and new units will be available in the game.

Sid Meier's Civilization IV: Beyond the Sword is set to be released in 2007. You will need the full version of Sid Meier's Civilization IV to play it though. Check out some of the concept art and see if the expansion is shaping up to your liking.

The full list of this expansion's features come right after the Jump!

In a panel discussion at the 2007 Games Developer Conference aptly called "PC Gaming in an Age of Connected Consoles," Obsidian Entertainment's Chris Avellone, Epic Games' Michael Capps, Electronic Arts' Richard Hilleman and Firaxis Games' Soren Johnson came to the conclusion that PC gaming has been a consistent losing streak, with approximately US$ 500 million in revenue lost every year.

Face it. This is the age of the next-generation consoles. Even with DirectX 10 features and Vista's Gaming for Windows initiative, the PC is standing at a crossroads as far as gaming is concerned.

Rampant piracy, the pricey hardware, and the inability of the industry to adapt measures to making great games rather than just visually great games, could spell the PC gaming industry's inevitable doom.

Since 2001, the annual revenues of the PC games industry keeps dropping by half a billion dollars. But that doesn't include the MMO games industry and the casual gaming industry. Will the PC market be a viable option for gaming in the near future? Well that depends. The PC may be pricier than a next-gen console and console FPS revenue may be folds more profitable than the PC, but the PC is capable of everything the console is capable of, plus a whole lot more.

Control: it's one bane of the PC gaming industry. There is no control over piracy, but the lack of control also grants a blessing for the longevity of the PC game. Games with communities will always generate custom user content. Consoles establish control in their closed gaming networks so that custom user content don't go overboard or cause controversy. It's no surprise that the panel suggest taking advantage of this issue, to encourage more user content keep gamers interested in the games.

Cross-platform multiplayer, as set out by Microsoft, is also a mixed bag of goodies. Although Microsoft offered certification measures to ensure the games will work over Xbox Live, PC games will always be more power hungry than their Xbox 360 counterparts. Newer video cards keep coming out all the time, which makes for the peace pipe session between the PC and the console a thing for dreams.

Analyst Michael Pachter of Wedbush Morgan Securities believes that even Grand Theft Auto IV can't carry Take-Two Interactive into the happy land of rolling in dinero, reports GamesIndustry. The GTA series is Take-Two's best performer in the company's portfolio, but the fourth console title in the series will have to contend with another powerhouse when it launches later this year, Pachter warns: Halo 3.

"In our view, Xbox 360 owners who choose to buy only one of the two games at launch will opt to buy Halo 3 first, because of its well-developed online gameplay and fiercely loyal fan base," he says.

Neither does Wedbush Morgan believe that Take-Two's other titles and studios, including its sports lineup (2K Sports), and Sid Meier's little outfit, Firaxis Games (responsible for Pirates! and Civilization, among others), can help pad the company's bottom line. "We think that the company's strategy over the last two years has been unsound, as it appears to us to have chased revenues from any source without regard to the profit potential of the game."

Then there are those corporate investigations. Uh-oh. Pachter's advice to investors: SELL. People with money won't be too happy to fund future Take-Two projects at this rate. Take-Two won't be happy to hear this, either.

Firaxis Games Designer/Lead Programmer Soren Johnson was a former EA designer. His game credits include Knockout Kings 2000 and 2001; Sid Meier's Civilization III; Sid Meier's Civilization III: Play the World, Sid Meier's Civilization III: Conquests; Sid Meier's Pirates!; Sid Meier's Pirates! for Xbox; and Sid Meier's Civilization IV.

In an interview with CVG, Johnson shares his views on Nintendo, PC gaming, and more.

Biggest Success Story of the Year: Nintendo
"The one-two punch of the DS and the Wii is making Microsoft and Sony look like dinosaurs. "

Biggest Challenge to PC Gaming: Consoles
"PC game developmentt has suffered because most publishers are putting their energy and money into console development...the industry's best studios are primarily focusing on consoles...the quality of console games will go up while the quantity of good PC games will go down."

Biggest PC Gaming Hype: DirectX 10
"I suppose the better graphics are nice, but it's not going to be changing the way PC games are played at this point."

Most Important Change To PC Gaming Industry: Digital Distribution and Flexible Pricing
"The PC games industry needs to embrace digital distribution and learn to be flexible on cost. Owning a game via Steam is very attractive to me...I can play it on any computer in the world without my CD. There should be a wide variety of fun games available online for all sorts of prices: $5, $10, $20, $30, $40, etc."

Biggest Expectation for 2007: Third party developers for Wii
"I'm looking forward to seeing third-party games blossom on the Wii like they have on the DS. Every week, a major publisher seems to be opening a new Wii-focused studio."

The Perfect Videogame: Shh!
"I'm working on that game right now. I can't talk about it, of course!"

You can read the full interview via the Read link.

The PC scene and strategy fans will be intimately familiar with Sid Meier. The mind behind such legendary games as the Civilization series and the open-world classic Pirates! bares that mind to Gamespot in an interview that asks him to look to the future - his future.

And dang if that future ain't reasonably bright, if the dev he co-founded, Firaxis Games, was purchased by Take-Two Interactive earlier. Yeah, it means a loss of some degree of independence, Meier admits. He's positive about this though.

If you take the time to build strong relationships with decision makers in the parent company, then you become part of the team of people making business decisions, and that will ultimately lead to good things.

One consequence of the Take-Two purchase was that Take-Two thought it wise to release the Civilization Chronicles, a compilation of ALL the Meier-sanctioned Civs (main games AND expansions) in one box, the DVD making of Civ IV, a book featuring the history of the Civ series, AND a Civ tabletop card game. Big as it is, that's still looking to the past. Civ V?

Well, we just released Warlords, the first expansion pack for Civ IV, and fans have been pretty happy with it. Our view has always been that if fans of the game want more Civ then we'll give them more Civ. Civ fans are very vocal and we like to listen--as long as they keep asking for more we'll deliver.

Next question: could the team also deliver to the next-gen consoles? "I think the latest consoles have the processing power to deliver fun experiences with the bigger strategy games." Seems like no definite plans, though, but Meier says he'll keep his fans updated. A console Civ, hmm... (Go for it, Sid!)

But let's not think that the portables are going to miss out on the action. The update of Pirates!, after all, will be yo-ho-hoing the waters of the PSP (another consequence of Take-Two). And the DS? "Our goal is to deliver Civilization on any game platform that makes sense. If we can deliver a fun experience to the players on the DS, then we'll do it."