We’re now all used to the necessity of a very fast Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) to speed up our games, but increasingly it’s not the graphics engine that is slowing the game down.  Instead it’s the physics engine.  So one company has announced a Physics Processing Unit (PPU) to go with your GPU and a library to hardware-accellerate game physics. This could do some very interesting things to the gaming industry.

Various places are reporting that nVidia have released the first 64bit Windows drivers to be certified by the Windows Hardware Quality Lab team.
I’m not entirely sure exactly what the WHQL certification means aside from being able to just install the driver without having to put up with the nagging dialogue asking you if you really wanted to install it - nVidia probably get to put a sticker on their products proclaiming them to be 64bit compatable too.

Of course, being stuck with an ATi graphics card, I cannot report on how these drivers perform, but I certainly hope that certified nForce drivers are next off the line.

Now Ubisoft is getting into the act.

My feeling on this is simple. More competition can only be a good thing. Ubisoft is the second big-money competitor to make a serious run at EA, and Ubi has quite a history of making good games. Unfortunately they are inheriting Microsoft’s XSN Sports teams, whose games, with the exception of Top Spin, have been mediocre at best.

Things just got interesting.

World of Warcraft sells 800,000 copies in first three months.

îIn less than three months Ö. [WoW] sold over 800,000 copies in North America. With a subscriber base of more than 750,000 players and peak concurrency of over 250,000 users, World of Warcraft is now the biggest online game in North America.î

Prediction: If Blizzard can lick the lag problems, WoW will become the first-ever, million-subscriber MMOG in North America. Thatís the magical, imaginary line at which experts agree weíll have our first-ever ìMass Market MMOGî (soon to be abbreviated to MMMMOG) in North America.

Wow. Just Wow. (Sorry, I mean WoW.)

It’s no real surprise the game is so successful. It’s an extremely accessible, motivating and, above all, fun MMOG. It recognizes that we aren’t paying $15/mo for endless drudgery or to live some ‘alternate life’. We’re paying $15/mo to be entertained, first and foremost, and WoW’s particular brand of entertainment is easy to pick up and even easier to get hooked on.

Even so, seeing numbers like this being done by a MMOG on the PC just boggles the mind. Even Everquest at the height of its popularity barely broke 600,000 subscribers.

Just amazing, and hats off to Blizzard Entertainment on a truly remarkable game.

The Mac version of the hit PC first person shooter, Doom 3 has gone gold and is due to start shipping on March the 14th. Though think again before you start buying as only the iMac G5, Power Book G4 and Power Mac G5’s will run it as it requires at least a 1.5GHz G4. For more info check out Aspyr’s website