BioWare and Electronic Arts has announced that Dragon Age: Origins (PS3, PC, Xbox 360) has officially gone gold and is now currently in manufacturing ready for the November 3 launch date across North America.

Who said what? We heard that Rob Taylor, NVIDIA's vice president in charge of content relations, let loose some brash words that would cleave a PC gamer's heart in two. Well, at least we think it would have, if we already didn't consider the idea that game developers need to make money, too. We know that NVIDIA is one of the major players of the PC Gaming Alliance, so why drive the knife to the hilt? Read more to find out what point the rather outspoken VP is trying to drive at.

Hot in the industry today is news that two technological companies have joined forces to package both animations and physics to developer companies. NaturalMotion, responsible for the motion synthesis technology in Grand Theft Auto IV, announced together with NVIDIA, new proud owners of PhysX technology, that they will offer "highly-integrated" solutions for developing games on all current generation gaming platforms, including the PC. Find out how at the full story.

One topic that this year's Nordic Game conference aims to discuss is regarding game development. To this end, Nordic's organizers have unveiled their initial line-up of professional programmers who will be giving talks at the event grounds. Details are available in the full article.

If you're conscious about in-game dynamics, namely the physics behind games, then this update is definitely good news. Nvidia, a visual computing technologies company, has just signed an agreement to acquire Ageia Technologies, Inc., a company known for the PhysX software that is widely adopted by games spanning different platforms. Details in the full article.

NVIDIA is most commonly known for its high-quality graphics cards, but they're entering a new arena in 2008: Game development. Employing teams from Germany at the onset, Polish devs Metropolis have now been added to the mix. NVIDIA says that by 2009, they'll have the best-looking FPS in the industry. Head to the full article for more details.

Around a month ago, Bethesda announced a Fallout 3 (Xbox 360, PS3, PC) perk making contest, and 17,000 entries made their way into the Bethesda gaming vaults, hoping to become the next Fallout perk. Well, Bethesda has announced the winner of its Fallout 3 perk making contest, and we can certainly tell you right now... it's not us!

Find out who won after the jump!

Ouch. Biggest news in the techies' Utopia is Epic Games' Mark Rein expounding his predictions that technology on PCs would be throttled, after a showcase of Unreal Engine 3 titles on consoles haven't even come close to pushing the DirectX 10 envelope.

 

After PC gaming (at least in the North American side) had drifted off to a steady decline, game companies have steered their focus into development for the next-generation platforms, such as the Xenon-powered Xbox 360 and the CELL-powered PlayStation 3. But with their physical limitations, consoles can only power so much in a game before plateauing at a certain performance level.

Epic Games' vice president Mark Rein told CVG that the game industry has to "dumb the games down for the consoles," so it's highly unlikely that gamers on PC will see anything pushing the graphical or technological envelope in the near future. In fact, Rein thinks that it most likely that no game would even tap DirectX 10 until the next iteration of consoles.

While Banzai Runners the world over could be "facepalming" in unison, this doesn't present more of a threat to "geeked up" gamers than to, say FutureMark or NVIDIA, whose businesses has been at the brunt of graphical technology advancement since the late 1990s. Sneaking around the Web's most reputable tech forums, we've found that majority of the reactions aren't even concerned with Rein's statements.

It is true that the opinion is worrisome to an extent (essentially, while unproven, it is potentially viable), but it appears that more concern has been emphasized toward creativity, variety and (gasp!) quality games for the PC, rather than always push the frontlines of graphics with first-person shooters, dungeon crawlers or real-time strategy games. Is a revolution at hand? If so, this blogger wants X-COM back (please?).

And as for PC gaming technology being throttled, however, some people believe that Germany, banded together with computer companies worldwide, may have something different to say altogether.

This might not be news to some of you guys, but this is pretty official. According to the Nvidia Developer Blog, Epic Games' Mark Rein has finally given the go signal to Nvidia to announce that Unreal Tournament 3 (PC, PS3, Xbox 360) will be Direct X 10 optimized and in "The Way It's Meant To Be Played" (TWIMTBP) program for launch.

The TWIMTBP program is a kind of promotion campaign for Nvidia. Apart from a TWIMTBP splash screen and in-game branding, it also helps game developers optimize and incorporate exclusive features in their games and applications exclusively for Nvidia's graphics cards.

The same dev blog entry also noted that more news on development from the Epic Games team will be coming soon, so keep checking here for updates.

 

Set in Greece, Theseis features the exploits of Andronicos and Pheve as they try to uncover the truth behind the disappearance of their stepfather. The game combines the realms of the natural and supernatural as brother and sister join forces to put to rest the struggle between good and evil that his disappearance brings about.

We recently had the chance to chat with Track 7's Demetris Papadopoulos, product manager for Theseis, about their upcoming game. In the interview, we were given a peek as to what to expect for the PC version, as well as some hints as to what gamers might see in the future 360 version. More importantly, he gave us a glimpse of Greece, past and present, and that's something many adventurers, perhaps even Andronicos and Pheve's father, would have been willing to give their lives for.

   

The Full Interview after the jump!