Some industry insiders have long suspected that LucasArts may be in the process of restructuring itself. It's all official now as layoffs have been confirmed after the release of Lego Indiana Jones (Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, PC,  PlayStation 2, PlayStation Portable, Wii, DS). Details after the jump.

With the arrival of next generation consoles in the gaming market, players have been feasting their senses on high quality graphics, surround sound, and engaging gameplay.

On the other hand, developers just grit their teeth and labor on as inflation sends costs of next-gen game production costs sky rocketing. More details regarding this after the jump.

Alexander Fernandez, founding member and CEO of Streamline Studios, has been named as the keynote speaker in the Asian Games Convention. The convention will be held on September 6 and 7 at the Suntec Singapore International Convention & Exhibition Center.

Under Fernandez's directive, Streamline was able to deliver critically-acclaimed video games such as Gears of War, Saints Row, and Ghost Recon 2.

Fernandez's speech will be titled The Rising Value of Content Capital and will tackle the issues surrounding the importance of content-driven games and how outsourcing can help develop the industry.

"We view GC Asia as a key forum for addressing both the opportunities and challenges of the emerging content creation sector in Asia," said the Streamline Chief. "With game development ever more a global phenomenon, it's the perfect time to address the implications for all parties involved: creators and publishers alike."

GC Asia is the regional counterpart of the recently-concluded GC 2007 in Leipzig, Germany where talks about the industry as well as exhibits of the biggest gaming projects today were held. The event covers all forms of gaming from consoles, PCs, handhelds, and even mobile phones.

If you're interested in GC Asia and would like to participate, you can go to www.GC-asia.sg to find more information.

In line with the success Midway Games has been receiving with hits like Mortal Kombat: Armageddon, the company receives another batch of good news by way of Matt Booty.

Midway's worldwide studios senior VP was happy to announce they will now be centralizing all their outsourcing work to the Central Outsourcing Group (COG), of which Midway's Austin studio would be taking the helm.

“Consolidating all product development outsourcing initiatives into a centralized group will allow Midway to focus on creating AAA next-generation content,” Matt said in light of the move. Going into detail, he explained that COG "will provide expertise in outsourcing management and development pipelines across all of our internal studios.” This announcement also comes in light of their recent financial reports, which also details on a new MK game in the works.

The triumvirate of next-generation consoles are all out. The war is now on. And IBM Corporation is sitting comfortably on its fortune at the backstage. As all of you might be aware, it was this company who developed the Power chip that powers Xbox 360 and Wii, as well as the Cell chip found inside the PlayStation 3.

The videogame deals earned IBM up to US$ 2.9 billion last year and US$ 2.5 billion in 2004. At the end of 2006, which by the way is just few days away, the company is expected to see about US$ 3.7 billion in sales of chips and associated design services. Aside from the actual sales, IBM has formed a new "technology collaboration solutions" unit that is expected to post US$ 4 billion in revenue this year.

This is actually a glaring contrast to status of the company before the deals. Prior to 2004, IBM was struggling to attract enough outside chip-making work to cover the enormous cost of manufacturing. As a result, their hardware division suffered a lost of US$ 252 million in 2003. The head of the said division, William Zeitler, couldn't hide his astonishment:

I think of this at the same stage of development that outsourcing was in the early '90s. There were a lot of people skeptical and now it represents a large part of IBM's portfolio. We had exactly the right proposition at exactly the right time. Ten years ago it would have been inconceivable that all the game processors would have used IBM product. Nobody would have thought of it because all we had was standard things.

Now that they've conquered the videogame market, IBM is looking on new prospects. They reported that possible future application of the chip includes computers for medical imaging, defense and complex simulations. Currently, IBM is expecting to ink a deal with companies like Mercury Computing Systems and Toshiba.

Ask any military tactician (or your local RTS buff), and they'll tell you that one major factor any fighting force needs is a good communications link - and lack of it will leave any group, no matter how well armed or well trained, dead in the water.

The same can be said for a strong company, and with that in mind, we're happy to report that Atari won the 2006 InfoWorld 100 Award, given to companies that make use of the latest in computer 'tech to expand their business goals.

Atari's bid for this awards is their IT outsourcing project, which improved total cost of ownership by outsourcing their Linux infrastructure. What's that mean?

Atari had allocated most of their key systems to Rackspace Managed Hosting, a global provider of managed hosting services, the electronics equivalent of a secretary/housekeeper...or media manager (for the PSP buffs asking).

By doing this, and building much of their in-house systems on the open-sourced Linux OS, Atari achieved much in the way of simplifying their overall spending and human resources - the space freed up by streamlining their system allowed their in-house IT teams to focus on more important tasks like game development.  

"We realized that hosting our backend applications internally was not strategic to our core business," said Jim O'Keefe, head of IT for Atari. "With Rackspace handling our entire IT infrastructure, we have now implemented systems that are more cost efficient."

It seems that China's videogame industry is more revved up than ever, thanks to videogame outsourcing. According to a report done by Niko Partners, a market reserach and consulting firm for the Chinese videogame industry, outsourcing games to China gives costs savings of around 40-60% (compared to games solely done in the US or Europe). As such, more and more developers and publishers seek China for artwork-related projects to save money.

And saving money is something developers and publishers would want, as manufacturing a game means high production costs. Thus, outsourcing is quite a feasible option for game developers. According to Lisa Cosmas Hanson of Niko partners, "Chinese developers continue to improve their skills across all game platforms, the country has become the primary center for outsourced game development globally."

Moreover, the said report includes tips on selecting a studio, the perks of outsourcing to China as compared to other country markets, costs and risks associated with outsourcing game development in China, measures to secure intellectual property within studios, and a directory of 25 premiere studios handling outsourced game development.