A Gamer's Week: December 5

This week has been dominated by the spirit of speed as embodied in the fast cars of Gran Turismo 5, the Polyphony Digital and Sony release which got a full review on Softpedia and a series of Game Diaries, and of Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit, the Criterion and Electronic Arts title which also got reviewed.

And between holding the racing line and smashing into other cars, we also found time to create a Weekend Reading piece talking about how the future of gaming and privacy might evolve and an EndWeekGame section about what we are enjoying this early December time off.

And, of course, we managed to select the best gaming news of the last seven days.

Monday was all about industry talk as the developers at BioWare, who have a series of high profile games in development, have said that publishers need to space out launches a little bit while a former Sony executive says the conditions on the market mean the PlayStation 3 will not have the same level of success as the PS2.

On Tuesday, the developers at Criterion unveiled a new video which could lead to the game getting three new cars, while Sony commented about the march of 3D, which will encompass the entire video game industry.

Wednesday was about Battlefield: Bad Company 2, which got its seventh map pack released, and about another first person shooter, the old Halo: Combat Evolved from Bungie, which is rumored to be getting a remake from Microsoft and 343 Industries.

On Thursday, we found out that the Chief Executive Officer of BioWare is a great admirer of the original System Shock title and that the developers of Need for Speed: Shift 2 Unleashed believe their game will be better than Gran Turismo 5 despite not having 1,000 cars.

Friday was about the cancellation of NBA Elite 11 by Electronic Arts and we found out that Apple could compete with Microsoft and Sony in the hardware arena.