Following in the footsteps of Microsoft, hardware manufacturer AMD has announced its plans to simplify the process of determining PC gaming system requirements for mainstream consumers. Dubbed AMD Game!, the program will allow consumers to purchase hardware that meets a certain set of minimum requirements. New processors, graphics cards and other parts will be labeled with AMD Game or AMD Game Ultra badges, meaning that the machine will be able to play “today’s games”.

The company hopes to update the specifications every six months to keep in line with industry advancements. Quite a few other companies have jumped on the initiative, including Microsoft, Alienware and Acer. Select retailers have already begun selling AMD Game hardware in North America. Below are the speficiations.

AMD Game!

Minimum 30FPS performance at 1280 x 1024 for tested games.

Min Specs:

-AMD Athlon X2 process 5600+

-ATI Radeon HD 3650

-AMD 770 chipset or Nvidia nForce 500 series chipset

-2GB DDR2

AMD Game! Ultra

Minimum 30FPS at 1600 x 1200 for tested games.

Min Specs:

-AMD Phenom X4 9650

-ATI Radeon HD 3870

-AMD 770 chipset

-2GB DDR2

If you’re a big gadget fan or have a problem with enthusiastic cats grabbing at dangling Wiimote cords during gaming sessions, a wireless nunchuck is finally available. Made by Nyko, the ‘Kama’, as it is called, the wireless nunchuck interfaces with the Wiimote via a dongle that plugs into the usual spot.

It features full motion-sensing capabilities and is compatible with any game that uses the standard nunchuck. The wireless connection between the two is supposed to work up to three meters, so unless you’ve got a friend who’s a wookie there shouldn’t be a problem. Unfortunately most people already have nunchucks and with a suggested price of $34.99 it might feel a little too steep of a price to replace something that still works.

Sony has announced that the new DualShock 3 controller will be available in April, MSRP $55. The new controller has been available in Japan for quite a while now, and is the most popular accessory for Japanese PS3 owners. Sony hasn’t mentioned about anything about a European release, but don’t expect it to be out on the EU market a few months after the US release.

Nvidia has started its next generation graphics chips with the launch of the 9600 GT, a mid-range graphics card in the next generation of chips, but it’s considered rather high-end at the moment. The card, which is available now for under $200, is equipped with 65 stream processors and has a clock speed of 650MHz. Initial reviews and benchmarks of the card show that performance is just under the 8800 GT, despite having almost half as many stream processors. As the 9600GT is considered “mid-range” in the 9000-series, the upcoming 9800 GT and 9800 GTX — expected in retail late March — can be expected to be considerable faster than any current generation graphics cards out there, while still keeping the same price-point.

Nvidia has announced the acquisition of Ageia, makers of the PhysX cards. So far Ageia hasn’t had neither the commercial, nor technological success with their cards and technology, but it has been proven that it might just work, which is exactly why Nvidia has acquired the company. So far Ageia’s PhysX is present in over 100 games, and have recently released a notebook version of the card.

Physics have been a key part in gaming over the past few years, a fact proven when Intel acquired software physics maker Havok last year.

Sony is looking to attract more developers for its portable platform, and the best way to do that is to lower the price of the dev tools. Sony has announced that the price on the PSP dev kit has been cut in half, and now costs a mere $10,250. With the announcement was also mentioned that new and updated tools are ready for developers. Last year Sony halved the cost for the PS3 dev kits as well, which resulted in more interested from smaller studios.

AMD’s recently released HD 3870 X2 graphics card is about to get a run for it’s money, big time, as Nvidia is looking to release the 9800 GX2 card - consisting of two 8800GT chips on tow circuit boards, but still one graphics card.

Yes, a bit confusing, but perhaps these leaked pics can help. Some more shots here at Tom’s Hardware. The card is expected in retail in about a month, for around $500.

AMD released the HD 3870 and 3850 a few months ago, the first successful graphics card release from the company in years. They have now crammed two 3870 chips on one board, calling it the HD 3870 X2. The two chips have over 1.3 billion transistors in total, 640 stream processors (320×2) and 1 GB of memory. Not only that, but the chips and memory are running at higher clock frequencies than the single chip 3870 cards. Check out the first reviews at PC Perspective and Hot Hardware. The card is in retail now for $450.

NerfHaven user Forsaken_angel shows off his Gears of War lancer mod, a gun he constructed with simple off the shelf toys and bits and pieces. Check out the full walkthrough with a ton of pictures.

Semi-Indie film festival at Sundance is the place to go if you want to see films that aren’t exactly Hollywood, but now you don’t have to go to Sundance and freeze your ass of, as you can get all the short films - 45 of them - on Xbox Live Marketplace. The films will be available this Friday, and will cost 160 MS points each, or $1.99. The movies will also be available on the iTunes store.

Nvidia’s top selling 8800 GT card is by far the best value-for-money graphics card in years, and ever since its release back in November, it has been in shortages all over the world. That hasn’t stopped several manufacturers from creating high-end versions with 1 GB of memory. Palit is one of them, and at CES they announced a 1 GB 8800 GT which will be available next month, at only $20-$30 more than the 512 MB version.

In December, Asus announced a 1 GB version, as did Sparkle and Club 3D. However, very few, in some cases none, have been spotted in retail stores.

One of Nintendo’s most ambitious Wii games — if you can call it that — has sold over one million units in Japan. Wii Fit, which includes the balance board and software (demoed at E3 last year), was released on December 1 in Japan, and has been on top of the best seller lists each week. Wii Fit will be released in Q1 2008 in Europe and North America. Digg this article!

Microsoft is currently supporting HD-DVD in the format wars, but lately, things haven’t been looking good in the HD-DVD camp, as Warner Bros. went Blu-ray exclusive, with Paramount probably doing the same soon. Microsoft has said that if Blu-ray is to win the format wars, they’ll “consider” the situation and might release a Blu-Ray add-on for the Xbox 360, if the consumers want it.

It’s looking bad for HD-DVD these days, as Universal remains the only major studio to go HD-DVD exclusive.

ATI has used the event at CES to unveil their latest graphics chips, this time for the noteboook sector. The new ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3000 is based on the recently released HD 3800 series for the desktop, meaning they’re based on the 55nm manufacturing process, something very important for notebooks, as the chips are energy efficient and still deliver a lot of performance.There are two products at the moment, HD 3400 and HD 3600, both supporting DirectX 10.1 and PCI Express 2.0. There are no further technical details, and no word on availability, but expect major notebook manufacturers — including mighty Apple — to ship with the new chips very soon.

Thousands of gadgets are displayed right now at CES in Las Vegas, a lot of them are gaming related, like the newly announced PSP keyboard. There have been several third party keyboards for the PSP (like the one pictured above), but this is the first time Sony will be making an official keyboard for the handheld console. However, the keyboard won’t arrive until mid-2009. Sony also announced that the GPS and camera units for the PSP will be coming to North America later this year, after being released last year in Europe and Japan.

It was more or less confirmed, but Sony used the CES 08 event to officially announce that Skype VoIP is coming to the PSP. The new feature will be available via the usual firmware update, scheduled for release later this month. However, only the newer, Slim PSP, will be able to take advantage of the Skype feature.

Skype is the biggest VoIP service in the world, with over 250 million registered users in 30 countries.

Nvidia’s upcoming 9800 GX 2 graphics card is a few months away from official announcement, but the first details and pictures have already leaked. As you can see above, it’s one massive card, sporting two 8800 GT chips on one board, 1 GB memory, and 256 stream processors. The source claims that the card will be at least 30% faster the the current fastest graphics card available, the 8800 Ultra. It sure looks possible, if Nvidia can provide decent drivers for it.

High-caliber business magazine Forbes has picked graphics cards maker Nvidia as the Company of The Year in 2007. Nvidia has a solid lineup of graphics cards this year in the 8000-series, and coupled with the ATI X2900 disaster, Nvidia had a vast majority of the graphics card market in 2007. Overall share of the market rose from 57% in ‘06 to 62% in ‘07, while revenue and profits were up 33% and 50%, respectively. In 2008 however, with the arrival of ATI’s 3700 series cards, it is going to be a bit tougher for Nvidia to get the same domination it had last year.

Nintendo has stopped shipping of the wireless GameCube controller — known as Wavebird — to retailers. The Wavebird was one of the first true RF based wireless controllers, where now virtually all controllers are wireless on the current generation of consoles. Nintendo has said that the Wavebird will still be available on their online store, but didn’t mention for how long it’ll be available, or when, as it’s not listed online.

Valve has released the soundtrack of the Orange Box, including tracks from HL2: Episode One & Two, Team Fortress 2 and Portal, in total 19 tracks. It costs $9.95 and is available on Steam now.