Features// SPOnG's Review of 2008: August

Out in the wider world, there was a victory for the little man; one little man in particular. World of Warcraft player Zhou Xujun – who went all the way to court to get his game account re-activated following an accusation of gold farming.

Then Leipzig Games Convention rolled around. With Sony being the only platform-holder deeming fit to hold a press conference there, most of the noteworthy news to spume forth from Germany was PlayStation-related. There was talk of free music videos streamed direct to the PS3. There was the announcement of the 160GB PS3 to follow the 80GB model already on the way and there was the revelation of the PSP 3000.

While the lack of a press conference might have meant not a lot of news from Microsoft we did, at least, get news of a re-tooled PES pad by way of the Konami booth.

While all that had been boiling away, SPOnG had been chattering away with the industry in lieu of much by way of new games to play. Rare senior programmer Nick Burton imagined the Xbox 720 when he spoke to us. We talked trophies in Uncharted, spoke about just about everything with industry leader and former SCEE president Chris Deering, we discussed the future of the industry with David 'the Elite guy' Braben, mulled the UK industry over with Splash Damage founder Paul Wedgewood, discussed Mercenaries 2 with Pandemic senior producer Jonathan Zamkoff and had a natter about Too Human with Denis Dyack.

While August was a bit dry for games, there were a few odds and sods to put our mitts on. SoulCalibur IV for one. The aforementioned (and ever-controversial) Too Human, for two. SPOnG did have to do a spot of peeking into the future, though. We looked at Fallout 3, Tomb Raider: Underworld and Aion: Tower of Eternity. And bloody Martin Olsen wouldn't stop banging on about Rhythm Tengoku Gold from the other hemisphere. Fine if you're in Japan, but what about us?