These are some of the features we have coming your way in the second closed beta:

Gameplay Fixes
o New practice drills
o More details in tutorials
o New, intuitive controls for Through ball and Lob through ball
o Mouse lock to window for windowed mode
o Auto-Pause on Alt-Tab

Transfer Market
Buy and sell players to refine your squad with other gamers online. Set the price you want for your surplus squad members or search other clubs transfer lists to find that hidden gem or superstar to finish your team.

Player Growth
See your players grow in ability the more matches they play. Statistics grow your talent from diamonds in the rough to regular first team players.

Manager System
Slip on the old sheepskin coat and take control of your team. Man-manage your squad to get the best out of them. Select the the first 11, choose the formation and and make the key mid-match decisions that make the hallmarks of the next great club manager.

League Mode
Choose your favourite club and lead them to domestic league glory. Begin your campaign as the new manager with a mission to lead your club to greatness. Take on the challenge for turning around your team's fortunes by winning matches, earning In Game Currency and using the proceeds to sign new players improve your chances of winning future games.

Play offline against the CPU and measure your progress against friends. Showcase your football skills and management expertise and challenge friends to do better by earning Manager Experience Points (XP).

This broadcast will offer unique insight into the level design and of course show off some of the new features found in the expansion. Following the live gameplay demo, there will be an interactive chat session where your questions about Awakening will be answered.

We will also be giving away 10 PC copies of Dragon Age: Origins – Awakening and 10 copies of the Dragon Age novel The Stolen Throne signed by author David Gaider.

Minimum system configuration:
CPU: 2.8 GHz Intel® Pentium® 4 or AMD® Athlon™ 64 3000+ or higher
Operating System: Windows® XP (with Service Pack 3) or Windows Vista® (with Service Pack 2) or Windows® 7
RAM: 1 GB for XP / 2 GB for Vista and Win7
DVD-ROM: DVD-ROM speed 4x, dual-layer drive
Video Card: 128 MB DirectX® 9.0c-compliant video card (ATI® Radeon X1000/GeForce® 6 Series or better)
Sound Card: DirectX 9.0c-compliant sound card
DirectX Version: DirectX 9.0c (included on disc)

Recommended system configuration:
CPU: 3.5 GHz Intel® Pentium® D or AMD® Athlon™ 64 3500+ or higher
Operating System: Windows® XP (with Service Pack 3) or Windows Vista® (with Service Pack 2) or Windows® 7
RAM: 2 GB (XP / Vista / Win7)
DVD-ROM: DVD-ROM speed 4x, dual-layer drive
Video Card: 256 MB DirectX® 9.0c-compliant video card (ATI® Radeon X1900 series / GeForce® 7800 or better)
Sound Card: DirectX® 9.0c-compliant sound card
DirectX Version: DirectX 9.0c (included on disc)

“iPad is something completely new,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “We’re excited for customers to get their hands on this magical and revolutionary product and connect with their apps and content in a more intimate, intuitive and fun way than ever before.”

Starting at just $499, iPad lets users browse the web, read and send email, enjoy and share photos, watch videos, listen to music, play games, read ebooks and much more. iPad is just 0.5 inches thick and weighs just 1.5 pounds—thinner and lighter than any laptop or netbook—and delivers battery life of up to 10 hours.*

iPad’s revolutionary Multi-Touch™ interface makes surfing the web an entirely new experience, dramatically more interactive and intimate than on a computer. You can read and send email on iPad’s large screen and almost full-size “soft” keyboard or import photos from a Mac®, PC or digital camera, see them organized as albums, and enjoy and share them using iPad’s elegant slideshows. iPad makes it easy to watch movies, TV shows and YouTube, all in HD, or flip through the pages of an ebook you downloaded from Apple’s new iBookstore while listening to your music collection.

The App Store on iPad lets you wirelessly browse, buy and download new apps from the world's largest app store. iPad includes 12 new innovative apps designed especially for iPad and will run almost all of the more than 150,000 apps on the App Store, including apps already purchased for your iPhone® or iPod touch®. Developers are already creating exciting new apps designed for iPad that take advantage of its Multi-Touch interface, large screen and high-quality graphics.

The new iBooks app for iPad includes Apple’s new iBookstore, the best way to browse, buy and read books on a mobile product. The iBookstore will feature books from the New York Times Best Seller list from both major and independent publishers, including Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins Publishers, Macmillan Publishers, Penguin Group and Simon & Schuster.

The iTunes® Store gives iPad users access to the world’s most popular online music, TV and movie store with a catalog of over 12 million songs, over 55,000 TV episodes and over 8,500 films including over 2,500 in stunning high definition. All the apps and content you download on iPad from the App Store, iTunes Store and iBookstore will be automatically synced to your iTunes library the next time you connect with your computer.

Pricing & Availability

iPad will be available in Wi-Fi models on April 3 in the US for a suggested retail price of $499 for 16GB, $599 for 32GB, $699 for 64GB. The Wi-Fi + 3G models will be available in late April for a suggested retail price of $629 for 16GB, $729 for 32GB and $829 for 64GB. iPad will be sold in the US through the Apple Store® (www.apple.com), Apple’s retail stores and select Apple Authorized Resellers.

iPad will be available in both Wi-Fi and Wi-Fi + 3G models in late April in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain, Switzerland and the UK. International pricing will be announced in April. iPad will ship in additional countries later this year.

The iBooks app for iPad including Apple’s iBookstore will be available as a free download from the App Store in the US on April 3, with additional countries added later this year.

"We’re excited to be bringing such a truly original experience to market," said Richard Williams, Vice President of Global Brand Management, THQ. "Metro 2033 couples a deep and engaging story with incredibly atmospheric first person shooter gameplay, and the 4A Engine provides cutting edge technology behind the most impressive visuals seen on either PC or console to date."

Metro 2033 has already been acclaimed for its graphical prowess on both Xbox 360 and PC, with the latter benefiting from advanced DX11 features and NVIDIA PhysX implementation. In addition, gamers can enjoy Metro 2033 in 3D, powered by NVIDIA 3D Vision.

Who's going for this one?

“With Free Realms, we’ve been able to reflect the needs and wants of our players by keenly listening to their suggestions and feedback,” said John Smedley, president of SOE. “We believe the persistent exercise of capturing in-game research inside Free Realms has been a huge contributing factor as to why we’ve attracted over nine million players in less than a year. It truly helps us give our players a game where they can do and be whatever they want.”

Continuous development of new features and themed in-game events, as well as persistent marketing support, has drawn a constant influx of new players into the free-to-play virtual world. An example of a customer-requested feature recently introduced in Free Realms is Rides.

BioShock 2 has already shipped over three million units worldwide just four weeks after its release - cementing its place as one of 2010's blockbuster games. Additionally, the original BioShock has now sold more than four million units globally since its release in August 2007, bringing the total sales of the franchise to seven million units.

Sinclair Solutions Tester Pack, the first of several planned downloadable packages, contains a number of customization features that will allow players to further their character's development in BioShock 2's multiplayer modes and provide a deeper multiplayer experience. The pack includes:

• Rank increase to level 50 with Rank Rewards
• New playable characters - Louie McGraff and Oscar Calraca
• 20 new trials*
• A third weapon upgrade for each weapon
• Five additional masks*

*Some items are only available after a player achieves a rank of 41 or higher.

The demo is limited to just thirty minutes of game time per load, but you can extend that limit by completing in-game missions.

Here's Nvidia's official statement, along with an extra warning from Blizzard:

We are aware that some customers have reported fan speed issues with the latest 196.75 WHQL drivers on NVIDIA.com. Until we can verify and root cause this issue, we recommend that customers stay with, or return to 196.21 WHQL drivers. Release 196.75 drivers have been temporarily removed from our Web site in the meantime.

-Nvidia PR

We're getting reports where users are getting intermittent low FPS after installing these drivers. It seems that it is related to the fan control included in these drivers not working correctly and is causing the video card to overheat on 3D applications. This will affect Warcraft 3, World of Warcraft and StarCraft 2 Beta. Please uninstall the drivers and revert back to the older ones.

-Blizzard PR

Balance Changes:

Terran:

Engineering Bay:

• Infantry Armor: The time required for each upgrade has been reduced by 30 seconds, decreasing each upgrade time from 190/220/250 seconds to 160/190/220 seconds.
• Infantry Weapons: The time required for each upgrade has been reduced by 30 seconds, decreasing each upgrade time from 190/220/250 seconds to 160/190/220 seconds.

Armory:

• Vehicle Plating: The time required for each upgrade has been reduced by 30 seconds, decreasing each upgrade time from 190/220/250 seconds to 160/190/220 seconds.
• Vehicle Weapons: The time required for each upgrade has been reduced by 30 seconds, decreasing each upgrade time from 190/220/250 seconds to 160/190/220 seconds.
• Ship Plating: The time required for each upgrade has been reduced by 30 seconds, decreasing each upgrade time from 190/220/250 seconds to 160/190/220 seconds.
• Ship Weapons: The time required for each upgrade has been reduced by 30 seconds, decreasing each upgrade time from 190/220/250 seconds to 160/190/220 seconds.

Protoss:

Zealot:

• The maximum shield capacity of this unit has been decreased from 60 to 50.

Bug Fixes:

• Fixed a bug where the Infestor's Neural Parasite ability could cause Reapers to lose the ability to move.
• Fixed an issue that could use an incorrect HDR format on some ATI cards.
• Fixed a crash that could happen on some ATI cards.

^ Joke of the epic fail variety, never mind.

What are your weekend plans?

Fictoids

• 23% of all photocopier faults worldwide are caused by people sitting on them and photocopying their butts.
• 40% of women have hurled footwear at a man. (Hrmm, oddly enough I've done that)
• Club Direct, a travel insurance company in Britain, provides insurance plans for protection from falling coconuts.
• Each year, there are more than 40,000 toilet related injuries in the United States.
• Kampang School in northeastern Thailand is the first school to open a toilet for transvestite pupils.

Time for some video bacon, courtesy of our friend [SPAM]Enigma. You may be tempted to shut it off, but then you'd miss the cool baconic ending.

Unigine is an extremely favourable benchmark for tessellation, so don't expect the GTX 480 to perform as well in real-world tests.

The Blight has been defeated, or so everyone has heard. And yet the darkspawn still range across the north of Ferelden. By all accounts, these darkspawn are organized despite the death of the archdemon, following the lead of unknown commanders. No civilized person can say where these darkspawn commanders come from, but they think, speak, and act with purpose, which makes them dangerous indeed.