As we all know, events such as the Game Developers Conference are vital to improving the state of the video game in general. With that in mind, you may want to take a peek at the speakers featured by the Parisian GDC organizers. The event is scheduled to take place this June. More details after the jump!

Things are definitely taking shape with the upcoming Nordic Game conference 2008 which is set to happen in two months time in Malmö, Sweden. It's been revealed that producers of Lego Star Wars and Rock Band will be the Keynote speakers in this event. Find out the details after the jump!

Those who live in the UK may have been left out of the recent GDC 2008 action action, but there's one big event coming your way. Play.com Live will be held on UK's Wembley Stadium, where visitors can get first-hand experiences of new games such as LittleBigPlanet. More about this big event in the full article!

Ever wondered how today's game developers manage to squeeze in an engrossing story in games, even when the games themselves aren't RPGs? Then head on over to the full article as we get you acquainted with three of today's top executives in this industry and how they puled off that particular hat-trick. Read on at the full article.

Heads up! We got the latest news regarding the rumor spreading that Viacom's out to buy Take-Two Interactive. Apparently the media conglomerate is has not talked with the game developer about this so-called purchase.

Both companies have offered "no comment" regarding this matter. More information on this event in the full article.

After Activision and Vivendi's announcement of the Activision Blizzard merger, will other gaming companies follow suit? At the very least, EA is open to the acquisition of other development studios, since there's a lot of talent to tap into that's not within EA's in-house studios. Check out more details in the full article.

With the latest numbers from NPD finally in for the month of October, the console race is once again in full swing as it gets ready for its holiday storm of releases. Overall, last month was a very productive month for game publishers as revenues hit an astounding US$ 1.1 billion.

Check out the breakdown of the numbers right after the jump!

Through the years, Harmonix Music Systems) Independent Video Game Developer">Harmonix has established itself as one of the main proponents of the rhythm-based genre of today's video game titles. After conquering the next-gen consoles, one has to wonder what other things are up the company's sleeves.

Well, the published session list for Game Developers Conference 2008 might give us a clue. According to the official site of GDC 2008, Harmonix will hold a session titled "Your Music Is the Game: Designing the OTHER Project at Harmonix" with lead designer Chris Foster as the designated speaker.

Some interesting points of the planned session include:

• Their new title faced unique challenges: beats would not be authored by tech-savvy musicians, but would instead be algorithmically generated, and the game would lack the dedicated peripherals that were critical to the success of the Guitar Hero series
• Special attention is devoted to: the development of procedural gameplay algorithms; unique input mechanics; and triaging unexpected changes in scope and schedule.
  

We highlighted one of the above statements for a reason. We are not certain if you are aware of this, but Harmonix applied for a trademark back in 2002 for Beat Boy. Quite interestingly, the trademark had the description of "an electronic video game software for portable listening devices".

What do you think guys? This could fit well with the Sony PSP, Nintendo DS, and other "next-gen" mobile phones. We guess we'll never know for certain until GDC kicks off on February 18. We hope an official announcement will come after that.

When a gaming company manages to churn out a hit franchise, we'd most probably think that they hit paydirt, like what Activision did when they came up with the Guitar Hero series of games. However, the benefits of coming up with a great title may be a bit of a bane as well.

According to analyst Mike Hickey from Janco Partners, the emerging competition resulting from Activision's Guitar Hero and Tony Hawk franchises may prove to be "damaging for growth prospects".

Of course, when talking about Guitar Hero's and Tony Hawk's competition, it can only mean Harmonix' Rock Band (for the Xbox 360, PS3) and EA's Skate (also for the Xbox 360 and PS3). Hickey said that Rock Band may prove to be a compelling option in the console music gaming genre, which may eventually mean trouble for Activision itself.

Hickey said that analysts are expecting the Guitar Hero series to develop and evolve with the addition of new music peripherals in the near future, which will help the franchise in staying afloat in the midst of competition.

The Simpsons animated series has always been known for its parodies of everything from video games to movies to public figures, so of course this is reflected in Electronic Arts' upcoming The Simpsons video game (Xbox 360, Wii, PS2, PS3, PSP, DS).

The company has received some negative reactions from a few video game companies regarding the spoofs in The Simpsons, however. This was revealed by The Simpsons lead designer Greg Rizzer in a recent interview with CVG.

"We've definitely had some reactions - we've had to pull stuff from the game", said Rizzer. "But that's cool to me. It's cool to still know, I feel, that the industry's been waiting for a game like this to come along. It's been too long since we really had one, and of course [there's] The Simpsons being the perfect vehicle to poke fun at the games industry."

Not everybody had negative reactions to the game's various video game spoofs, though. "I don't know if you've seen Sitar Hero? We did Apu playing this 60-button controller and songs like Pour Some Curry On Me - we made this wonderful parody poster and the guys from Harmonix loved it and we sent them 20 copies of the poster," said Rizzer. "They just loved it so much."