Midway has taken further efforts to reduce costs and minimise losses today with the closure of its Austin studio and the cancellation of all its projects that were projected for a 2010 or 2011 release date, all of which were unannounced.

Midway has announced redundancies across all territories also, losing staff in San Diego, Austin and Chicago according to GamesIndustry.biz. The move sees the total workforce of the company being decimated with more than 25 percent of the publishers total employees being terminated.

Electronic Arts may finally be taking advantage of the Valve's Steam platform it seems, with rumours that Spore is set for release starting to circulate after the EULA for the title is spotted on the Steam storefront.

While not immediately shocking to many, if Spore does see a Steam release then it'll be the first time that Electronic Arts has even tried to release a game on Steam.

Electronic Arts and Valve currently work together on many other projects, with EA publishing retail copies of

Cyan Worlds has announced that the Myst-based MMO, Uru Live, will be going totally open source in the future in order to avoid closing totally.

Uru Live has led a troubled existence, much to the frustration of players, having been cancelled twice and recently closed before being driven to open source in and effort to stay online.

Cyan Worlds had previously tried to keep the game afloat after closure through a Myst Online Restoration Experiment (MORE), but that too has gone under according to RockPaperShotgun, forcing the game to go open source as a last resort. You certainly can't fault Cyan Worlds for trying again and again though - the team apparently just can't afford to carry on working on the project.

The Best Gaming Moments of 2008The end of the year is always a dangerous time for tech journalists because it’s the time when we have to start putting together our ‘Best Of’ lists. Not only does that lead to plenty of in-office arguments but it also means that we get swamped with (hate-)mail no matter what games we include or leave out.

So, we’re doing things a bit differently now. From now on you get to choose the best games of the year, leaving us to find other ways to vent our own thoughts on the matter, safely.

A Vampyre StoryPublisher:Crimson Cow
Platform:PC Exclusive
UK Price (as reviewed):£14.99 (inc. VAT)
US Price as reviewed:$35.47 (inc. Tax)

At bit-tech, we have a well-known love of adventure games and the old LucasArts adventure games especially being especially important items in our gaming histories, but the sad reality is that the age of the adventure game is considered by many to be deader than the main character of

Grand Theft Auto IV PCPublisher:Rockstar
Platform:PC
UK Price (as reviewed):£24.99 (inc. VAT)
US Price (as reviewed):$49.99 (incl. Tax)

There are obviously going to be problems with reviewing Grand Theft Auto IV on the PC, but we expected most of them to be raised by the fact that we’re essentially re-reviewing the same game again. We didn’t expect them to be a result of simply trying to get the game running.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear SkyPlatform: PC Exclusive
Publisher:Deep Silver
UK Price (as reviewed):£17.99 (inc. VAT)
US Price (as reviewed):$32.99 (inc. Tax)

Maybe the stress of Christmas shopping is finally getting to us, but something about this article seems awful familiar. I swear I’ve done this before, though last time it didn’t seem as easy.

And, of course, we have. This is the second time we’ve put our critical little hats on and sat down at the keyboard to play

Vote for your Game of the YearIt's that time of year again, when we look back at all the games that were released in the last twelve months and try to arrange them into some crazy sort of order. It's just human nature - we want to know what the very best game was.This year though we're doing things a little bit differently.

In the past we've presented our own selection of the top ten games after much arguing and careful deliberation. This year however we're opening up the voting and letting

Prince of PersiaPlatform:Xbox 360, PlayStation 3
Publisher:Ubisoft
UK price (as reviewed):£39.99 (inc. VAT)
US Price (as reviewed):$59.99 (inc. Tax)

This is something wholly new for the Prince of Persia franchise, using the title of the original game but telling a brand new story utterly detached from any of the other previous games.

In other words, this is the start of a new Prince of Persia

Trackmania DSPublisher:Focus Home Interactive
Platform:DS Exclusive
UK Price (as reviewed):£17.99 (inc. VAT)
US Price (as reviewed):$29.99 Pre-order

Games like Trackmania shouldn’t really belong on the Nintendo DS. Super fast, ultra-precise racers with decent graphics and an emphasis on multiplayer challenges and huge environments? That’s just not something that sits well with the DS’ limited hardware and D-pad.

Finally. Electronic Arts has stepped up and said that it will publish Brütal Legend, the latest game from Tim Schafer's Double Fine Studios, on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.

The heavy-metal inspired game first fell into difficulty when Activision-Blizzard discarded a bunch of in-development titles after their merger. Games like Ghostbusters, 50 Cent: Blood on the Sand and Brütal Legend suddenly found themselves without a publisher, though all have now found new homes.

With Gears of War 2 recently released and already a firm contender for bit-tech's Game of The Year, it would only make sense that Epic would want to get to work on the next game in the hit series, right?

Wrong.

In fact, according to Epic's Mark Rein the company hasn't even started thinking about making Gears of War 3 yet, officially. Rein went so far as to tell Eurogamer that any rumours about the title were total nonsense.

RadioShack will put an Acer Aspire One 3G Netbook on sale Sunday for $99. But there's a catch. You also have to buy a two-year AT&T DataConnect contract.

The Acer Aspire One grabbed 38.3 percent of Netbook market share in the third quarter, propelling it past industry pioneer Asus and its Eee PC 4G.

Acer's Aspire One normally sells for about $300.

The RadioShack-AT&T offer, as previously reported, is valid through December 20. The 2.44-pound, 9.8-inch by 6.7-inch Netbook includes:

Self-healing coatings developed by researchers at the University of Illinois can protect materials from the effects of environmental exposure.

Applications range from automotive paints and marine varnishes to the thick, rubbery coatings on patio furniture and park benches.

Paul Braun, a professor of materials science and engineering, said: 'Starting from our earlier work on self-healing materials, we have now created self-healing coatings that automatically repair themselves and prevent corrosion of the underlying substrate.'

A StrathclydeUniversity researcher has won the Thales Scottish Technology Prize for laser technology and applications for his work on rendering cheap industrial lasers eye-safe.

Dr Walter Lubeigt, from Strathclyde’s Institute of Photonics, won an individual prize of £2,500 plus £40,000 for the university for his work on eye-safe neodymium (Nd) diamond Raman lasers.

It was presented by David Lockwood, managing director of Thales’s optronics facility in Glasgow.

Researchers at the University of Nevada-Reno claim that waste coffee grounds can provide a cheap, abundant, and environmentally-friendly source of biodiesel fuel for cars and trucks.

The major barrier to wider use of biodiesel fuel is lack of a low-cost, high-quality source, or feedstock.

Spent coffee grounds contain between 11 and 20 per cent oil by weight - about as much as traditional biodiesel feedstocks such as rapeseed, palm, and soya bean oil.

Sonic UnleashedPlatforms:Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Wii, DS, PS2
Publisher:Sega
UK Price (as reviewed):£39.99 (inc. VAT)
US Price (as reviewed):$46.99 (inc. Tax)

This is a written review and not one of those fancy video reviews, so you’ll have to just imagine my disapproving tone when I ask: ‘Sega, Sega, Sega – what have you done to Sonic?'

There was a time, long ago, when Sonic the Hedgehog

Castlevania: Order of EcclesiaPlatform: Nintendo DS
Publisher:Konami
UK Price (as reviewed):£24.99 (inc. VAT)
US Price (as reviewed):$27.99 (inc. Tax)

There are few games that are as long-running and widely respected as the Castlevania games. Ever since the first instalment, the weird clash of RPG and platforming mechanics has made the series instantly recognisable and massively appreciated.

And the latest title,

Enterprising hackers have succeeded in booting a copy of Linux on Apple's iPhone – although it's a long way from being a usable alternative to OS X.

According to Hack a Day, the iPhone-Dev team have created a bootloader – dubbed openiboot – which has successfully loaded a copy of the Linux kernel alongside the Busybox toolkit on a jailbroken iPhone. By running the bootloader code and supplying it with a copy Linux compiled specifically for the ARM processor used within the iPhone, the software was able to communicate with a USB-to-serial device and be used as a very limited Linux console.

Motorola on Thursday has announced the latest additions to its digital cordless home phones, the D10 and D11. The handsets are optimized to use as little energy as possible and are made with at least 20 percent of recycled materials. An eco mode will automatically adjust the wireless reception strength and therefore draw less power based on how far a phone is from its base station