Edge Online is reprinting an article from last month's issue of the British gaming magazine. In the article, Bug Hunt, they look at the role of the modern QA tester. While once a good way to make yourself known to the company's HR staff, it's more and more simply a summer gig between classes for college students. They also discuss the hard working conditions, soul-crushing scheduling, and the public misconception that what a QA tester does involves the word 'play'. From the article: "Anyone with any experience of the QA process will deny the slightest resemblance between testing a game and playing one for pleasure: finding bugs is unmistakably work, and, by common consensus, very dull and repetitive work at that. On top of this, pay is often poor, job security frail, working conditions extreme and recognition hard to come by. So why do it?"

Ars Technica has an interview up with Matt Lee, a software developer in Microsoft's Xbox division. He's got a lot to say on the subject of the future of MGS gaming. He touches briefly on Xbox Live, Games for Windows, and the powerhouse that is the 360. From the article: "The tessellator in the Xbox 360 GPU is indeed a very powerful piece of hardware, and you're right--most games have yet to take advantage of this. I think you'll see more titles use it in the future. As for procedurally generated worlds, I believe the biggest obstacle to overcome is how to design and build the content for such a system--it can be quite a departure from today's art pipelines. Game studios will figure it out though--it's crucial to generating and delivering ever larger worlds without having to exponentially grow the size of the art team."

Section_Ei8ht writes to mention a Washington Post article about a new joint initiative between the U.S. government and the entertainment industry. The government will now be aiding efforts abroad to stop copyright infringement. They cite the recent Pirate Bay fiasco, as well as the problems Russia is having with the WTO as a result of their thriving IP black market. From the article: "The intellectual property industry and law enforcement officials estimate U.S. companies lose as much as $250 billion per year to Internet pirates, who swap digital copies of 'The DaVinci Code,' Chamillionaire's new album and the latest Grand Theft Auto video game for free."

pacopico writes to mention the sorry state of the well-known Los Alamos National Laboratory. Sixty years ago, it was at the forefront of the race for the Atomic bomb. Nowadays, "smugness can breed complacency, and complacency carelessness. In recent years the laboratory has been in the news not for its successes but its failures.The result is a change of management, which the story goes on to discuss in great detail. It begs the question - can Los Alamos hang on as a prestigious place or is it too late for the supercomputing powerhouse and weapons lab?"

1up reports that the ESRB has laid out what publishers can expect if they step out of line regarding game content. From the article: "Vance says the ESRB has the power to enforce up to $1 million in monetary fines for the 'most egregious offenses,' and could potentially suspend publisher's access to the ratings system. Most retailers will not carry games without a rating. Further corrective actions could include pulling advertising until content's corrected, stickered packaging, product recalls and 'other steps the publisher must take.'"

In light of the popularity of the Guitar Hero game, Next Generation reports that it is very likely RedOctane will be publishing several more 'Hero' series games. From the article: "The next logical step within this category is to make other music instrument-based games. What most people have been asking for and would want next are products that we're likely already working on."

Geoffreyerffoeg writes "According to Microsoft PressPass, Bill Gates will be leaving his role at Microsoft in July 2008. He'll be staying with the company, but is also moving to a more fulltime position with the Gates Foundation. 'Microsoft Corp. today announced that effective July 2008 Bill Gates, chairman, will transition out of a day-to-day role in the company to spend more time on his global health and education work at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The company announced a two-year transition process to ensure that there is a smooth and orderly transfer of Gates' daily responsibilities, and said that after July 2008 Gates would continue to serve as the company's chairman and an adviser on key development projects.' CTO Ray Ozzie will assume Gates' role of Chief Software Architect, and CTO Craig Mundie will also take on more leadership responsibility."

Yahoo! Games is running a piece comparing the PS3 and 360. They look at the hardware, software, and HD offerings for Sony and Microsoft's next-gen consoles. From the article: "Unlike the last generation, where Sony clearly held a commanding lead, the next generation of gaming is going to be a much closer race between the behemoths of Microsoft and Sony. Though there were many skeptics last fall, the past eight months have shown the Xbox 360 to be a very capable system and more than powerful enough to challenge the PlayStation 3. Microsoft also believes it will have 10 million units in the global marketplace before Sony even leaves the gate. So the question becomes: Which system do you buy?"

mrraven writes "According to an article in the Washington Post the government is increasingly using consumer databases for surveillance purposes. " From the article: "It is difficult to pinpoint the number of such contracts because many of them are classified, experts said. At the federal level, 52 government agencies had launched, or planned to begin, at least 199 data-mining projects as far back as 2004, according to a Government Accountability Office study."

Via Kotaku, an interview at Evil Avatar about the bad end of the Thief series. They discuss the game series with designer Randy Smith, who details the fine points of the early games and the ignoble end for the trilogy of games. From the article: "I view Thief 3's more action-inclined gameplay as being more than necessary for a mass-market acceptance. The problems with Thief 3 were the same as the problems that plagued Deus Ex: Invisible War - it was the tech. The team scaled back the freeform design, incorporated loading zones, not to mention the unstable frame rate and other misc. issues derived from the technology. The gameplay was relatively solid by comparison."

TrdrJoe writes to mention a Reuters article about a group of cell companies joining up to develop an open-source Linux-based OS for many of the market's phones. From the article: "Linux software currently occupies only a tiny proportion of the mobile market, mainly in China, while market leaders Symbian and Microsoft dominate the space. The attraction of Linux for handset makers is that as the code is not owned by any one company competition is likely to be fierce between firms supplying ready-to-use embedded Linux versions for phones, driving down fees, whereas Symbian and Microsoft can keep prices higher."

Eurogamer has the news that both Blizzard and Square/Enix have banned another batch of players for farming. The number of accounts, and the amount of money removed from the economy, is astonishing. From the article: "According to the World of Warcraft website, some 30,000 accounts were banned last month - and, as a result, more than 30 million gold were removed from the economy across all realms ... Based on the results of this investigation, more than 250 [FFXI] accounts among those found to be involved in large-scale RMT operations have been terminated... Thanks to these measures, more than 250 billion gil has been removed from circulation."

twofish writes "The long running patent spat between Apple and the struggling Creative Technology took another turn today. Creative is claiming that the US International Trade Commission (ITC) has now launched a probe into the possibility that the iPod infringes on Creative's patents. Creative has asked the ITC to issue an order stopping Apple from marketing, selling or importing iPods into the US."

evileyetmc writes "It seems that the EU has taken the next big step in promoting the concept of Internet for All, by attempting to 'ensure that the most Web-disadvantaged groups can get online.'" From the article: "The EC has now pledged to increase broadband coverage across the continent to 90 percent by 2010. Rural areas are still underserved, according to the Commission, with about 60 percent penetration. Urban areas fare better and are already at the 90 percent mark. The EC has also committed to putting new measures in place to halve exclusion rates in skills and digital literacy by 2010. "

kukyfrope writes "According to the data trackers at Media Create, for the week of May 29th through June 4th the DS Lite sold 135,614 units in Japan, easily beating out the PSP (24,595 units), PS2 (18,513 units) and Xbox 360 (just 1,245 units). New Super Mario Bros. for DS also sold 334,208 units, putting total sales at about 1.2 million, in just 2 weeks. 'From the end of last year up until right now the sales of DS and DS Lite in Japan have been simply explosive. It was unprecedented in the Japanese game [industry] history for there to be that kind of incredible demand for one platform,' said Nintendo President Satoru Iwata."