184w ago - While most companies are in the business of combating software piracy these days, RedLynx CEO Tero Virtala admitted that his company leaked a version of the PC motorcycle game Trials 2 on the same day that the game was commercially available.

However, the 'leaked' version did not include the online leaderboards which they believe is key to the title... so the plan was to get people hooked on the game, and then buy the full version with leaderboards included.

To quote: "Piracy is here, so how can we take advantage of that? What we did actually, on day one, we put that game immediately on all the torrent networks ourselves," revealed Virtala, during a panel discussion at Develop Liverpool yesterday.

"That game relies really heavily on the server side - the leaderboards are the soul of the game. I don't know if it's helped, I'd assume so because even though the version that we put on the torrent networks wasn't the full version, it's the version of the game without the actual soul, without the leaderboards to play against other players."

219w ago - Sony's senior VP and MD for UK, Ireland and the Nordic region Ray Maguire admitted that the PSP has been 'slightly under supported' because a lot of the energy was going into projects they were doing for the PS3.

He also revealed that there was an additional complication as the UMD model wasn't suited for third parties.

To quote: "It was slightly under-supported, mainly because a lot of the energy was going into stuff we're doing for PlayStation 3," he explained to GamesIndustry.biz. "There was an added complication in that the UMD model wasn't brilliant for third parties, either.

"But I think as the installed base has grown - we're now at 50 million globally - the PSP has become one of the best-selling formats ever, and I think people are seeing that they need to get back into it. I think we had a bit of a barren year last year, and this year we seem to have a bumper crop.

"I think it's one of those formats which has just, almost silently, grown and grown and grown. Now people are looking at 3 million installed base in the UK, and seeing it's a healthy number - that they can sell product against that.

248w ago - Software king of the world Microsoft has defended its ad-targeting practices, claiming that it is a lot more responsible than others.

In a document for a House committee Microsoft has more or less admitted collecting data on its web users. Redmond said that it began collecting data outside its own Web sites in 2006, when it launched a third-party ad network, and that activity accelerated after the acquisition of aQuantive in 2007.

Microsoft said that while it started by offering an "opt-out" option on all pages on which it serves ads starting in the Spring. Users were falling over themselves to sign up to give their data to Microsoft. Only 1,800 users had said no.

Although apparently finding the opt-out option on Microsoft's page is just as easy as hunting the Snark or finding the Holy Grail.

Microsoft says it's getting caned in the online ad business and the committee should look at Yahoo and Google if they want to see who the bad guys are.

254w ago - Command & Conquer 3 developer EA Los Angeles has admitted that it has had a "chronic issue [with product support] for more than four years," and is forming a dedicated support team to try and address the issue.

"I am not as proud of our record in supporting our games after launch. In fact, I'm downright unhappy with that aspect of our business," EALA general manager Mike Verdu wrote on the official C&C site.

The admission stemmed from a long-delayed patch for the PC edition of the C&C3 expansion pack Kane's Wrath. Verdu noted that EALA tends to release a "limited number of patches for our products and in many cases those patches take longer than they should," attributing the issues to "tension between developing new products and supporting our older products."

However, he was clear the the problems "are not a matter of being greedy." In fact, Verdu claimed the time and "seven figure sums" invested in support for past EALA releases, including C&C Generals and the Battle for Middle-earth games, "could have built an entire new product."

The new team will be charged with supporting EALA's RTS efforts post-release along with a goal to " protect and serve" the Command & Conquer games, universe, and...

256w ago - The process for developing on the PS3 can be quite arduous... Sony have at last faced the awful truth that we have all known from the outset, that has given us a library of uninspired ports, frame rate issues and uninspired unique IP's: The difficulty in developing for the PS3 has driven away developers.

Sony themselves develop 30% of the consoles titles, leaving the rest to third party developers who had begun developing a year earlier for the Xbox 360. With the ease of working with the 360 and the exorbitant costs associated with the PS3, this left most AAA titles merely being ports rather than taking advantage of the superior hardware buried deep inside.

In a manner very unlike Sony, Shuhei Yoshida, president of Sony Worldwide has come out and admitted to the problem and attempted to address it with the community.

Mr Yoshida said: "Sometimes we struggle to convince them (third-party publishers) to put more resources into the PS3."

He added: "We know there's a lot more that we can do, and with the massive growth of the industry we understand that third party publishers have so many choices, many more than they have resources."

Mr Yoshida told GamesIndustry.biz: "Because the 360 hardware was out earlier, the games were built based on 360 architecture. But...