Famous for creating beloved videogame software like Earthworm Jim, MDK and Messiah, designer, David Perry now busies himself with offloading seemingly arbitrary diatribes and opinions about the state of videogames. All this in between farting out the occasional crappy, free to play MMO, and carefully combing that immaculately coiffed do of his.

But... he does think EA's upcoming free to play online shooter, Battlefield Heroes is going to be a "phenomenon". Read on to find out why.

Been saving up for an upgrade? You might not have much time to penny-pinch, because we're told that the new Intel "Bloomfield" processors will be shipping a lot earlier than scheduled. Now we're at a crossroads, ladies and gentlemen: do we sally forth to the new Bloomfield CPU line and it's accompanying X58 chipset, or shall we hope that the release will force last generation's CPU retail tags to lower considerably? We'll tell you what: if you course through the new story, you'll find the choice gets even more complicated.

Coming up on the PC menu today is an update from Advanced Micro Devices for the Catalyst driver set. You lucky folks who've managed to nab a Radeon HD 4850 or a 4870 recently would be happy to hear this, because the driver engineers at ATI have really squeezed more performance from your boards via optimizations. Check out what the hardware enthusiasts have after updating their video drivers.

Remember Mark Rein's concern that not all PCs are capable of playing today's bleeding edge games? The PC Gaming Alliance was formed to relaunch the PC as the ultimate gaming platform, and but that hasn't helped much. Luckily, Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) came up with a great idea: the Germany-based semiconductor giant has released AMD GAME! - a label akin to Game for Windows that would set standards for identifying game-capable hardware. More details in the full article.

As projected yesterday by Stardock and Ironclad Games, patch 1.04 of the Sins of a Solar Empire is already out this week. What are the new improvements for the latest build? More details over at the full article.

Battlefield Heroes was the first of surprises in the PC gaming scene in 2008, after the World War II, third-person strategy shooter's recent unveiling caught the attention of thousands of gamers around the globe. And we were no exception - Digital Illusions CE (DICE) pulled an awesome three-hit combo: the cartoonish art style, online multiplayer game concept, and - gasp! - a free-to-play business model. But how exactly will all this work for DICE? Get the answer at the full story.

David Hecq, a certified gamer who writes reviews and does other things video game journalists have on their to-do lists, is running for mayor of a small town in France. He's the president of AFRS (Française de Revendeurs Spécialisés, an association of video game retailers), runs a gaming website, yet still has time to play politics.

Check out the full article for more details!

Electronic Arts, the same micro-transaction advocates who love going multiplatform, also sponsored the recent Women in Games Conference that is being held this April. Electronic Arts' VP of Europe Online, Sharon Knight, said in that same conference that ignoring the female gaming audience is "a great waste." And before you get any bright ideas, she's addressing that to all the game publishers out there, and not you, bub.

Considering Electronic Arts had realized the potential growth of the female gaming bracket last year, this new comment by an EA exec is a big step up from saying that the games industry was "failing women." But consistent with their views, Knight's stand on game development was similar to COO David Gardner's: make games that cater to both men and women.

Now we've said it's all about catering games to gamers, and just not males in general. So it's fair to say that catering games to women only is also a definite no-no. Creating "pink" games still leaves the concept of female gamers open to stereotyping and that's not healthy. Knight reiterated Electronic Arts' stand on the matter:

If you look at how other media forms have tapped into women, for example, you don't see movies and music being exclusive to men. Women enjoy all forms of entertainment. We [at EA] want to avoid making 'pink games.' Women enjoy many of the same features in gameplay as men do. The way EA sees it is there's a lot of untapped potential out there.

Take for example, The Sims: Sims creator Will Wright never developed The Sims with women in mind. In fact, it was supposed to cater to the "core" of gamers at the time: males. But when it came out, look who ate up all your afternoon gaming pleasure. Women are slowly crawling in to gaming, and not just on the casual side.

EA seems to be advocating that developers should contribute to the growing trend, introducing new ways of getting girl gamers hooked to the concept of gaming. Soon enough, they'll make great deathmatch opponents, RTS allies, MMO guild mates and a fresh breath of air in gaming-related conversations.

Start making small ripples, and soon enough, all those tiny ripples will make bigger waves. Make enough waves, you brew up a storm. So it's not a surprise that Nintendo's broader market crusader, the Wii, gets another special mention. Knight commented:

The Wii levels the playing field. You don't embarrass yourself--you can grab it and right away start having fun. ... [Wii games] don't require the same investment to learn and to master how to pick up and play [as other consoles' games].