The trade association which represents the games industry in the United Kingdom, TIGA, explained today that it welcomed some news that Don Foster, The Liberal Democrat’s Shadow Secretary of State for Culture and many of his colleagues were “Sympathetic” to TIGA’s proposed Games Tax Relief.

Comments were made by Don Foster in a gameindstustry.biz interview on 17th of March, 2010. He stated in the interview that he personally will be delighted if Games Tax Relief was introduced in the Budget on 24th of March, and that he will be doing everything he can to make sure nobody in his party proposes stripping it out again.

The core service is gamesbrief.com which is a highly respected blog about the business of games. GAMESbrief helps game developers to become publishers. The blog was written by industry commentator Nicholas Lovell. It can help game developers and publishers to understand the changing market and the impact of new technology on it. They can also learn how to build audiences and revenues in a world of networks.

GAMESbrief also provided strategic and operational advices to big companies like Atari, Channel 4, Firefly, nDreams and Rebellion.

The trade association which represents the United Kingdom games industry said that the United Kingdom should aim to increase the proportion of Gross Domestic Product invested in higher education in two ways. The first way includes maintaining in real terms public expenditure on tertiary education at 2009 levels and then increasing it as the Government’s deficit is brought under control. The second one includes eliminating the cap on tuition fees. Tuition fees for students studying mathematics and computer science degrees should be set a competitive rate in comparison to other tuition fees in order to incentivize the study of these subjects. TIGA’s comments are responses to the Lord Browne of Madingley’s review of Higher Education Funding and Student Finance.

The trade association that is representing the United Kingdom Games Industry, TIGA, announced today that Kempt is its newest member.

Specialized in the conception, production and promotion of Advergames, Kempt is a flash games developer and a leading agency in this rapidly growing form of brand communications.

Kempt are also the people behind some of the biggest Advergame campaigns ever to be released including kingofdefenders.com, which has received 70 million visits worldwide.

Valve announced that it will be bringing its gaming service and gaming engine, Steam and Source, to the Mac platform.

Valve’s catalog of games including Left 4 Dead 2, Team Fortress 2, Counter-Strike, Portal, and the Half-Life franchise plus Steam will be available in April.

President of Valve, Gabe Newell, explained that customers and developers need open, high-quality Internet clients, as they transition from entertainment as a product to entertainment as a service. He also said that the Mac is a great platform for entertainment services.

Jenkins Software has released today a new free data mining and visualization utility designed for game development titled Echo Chamber.

The Developer of RakNet, Jenkins Software, released today a free data mining tool used to visualize game session metrics. The name of the software is Echo Chamber.

The Supported usage includes Video playback with frame rate and memory usage reports as the session progresses and Heat map of the player and opponent activity overlaid on the level map plus combined multiplayer session recording.

Blizzard Entertainment reported today that several StarCraft II beta testers are having serious problems with their PCs and video-cards. Some players have even reported that their PC or Video-Cards have died after installing the latest nVidia 196.75 drivers.

This large amount of reports from the users have made Blizzard Entertainment warn by issuing an official statement on the technical support forums after identifying the source of this gruesome problem.

Some of the StarCraft II beta testers have been throwing the blame on the StarCraft II Beta client’s latest patch, but the Blizzard Technical Support representative quickly explained that this issue is caused by the latest nVidia 196.75 drivers.

The developers of FMOD Ex API and FMOD Designer 2010, Firelight Technologies, announced a partnership with the leading provider of digital entertainment technology, DTS Inc. Firelight Technologies has worked with DTS Inc. to integrate 7.1 DTS Neural Surround Sound support for the popular Microsoft Xbox 360 Console. The 7.1 DTS Neural Surround Support for the Xbox 360 will be integrated into the widely used and respected FMOD Ex API.

Brett Paterson stated that with the continual growth of 7.1 systems in homes, they are excited to partner with a company with the heritage of DTS.

Virtuos today announced that they have reached five hundred employees across their Shanghai and Chengdu development centers. Virtuos also announced that they have become the first independent company in China to develop a retail title for all new-generation video game consoles.

Virtuos is developing an unannounced yet game that will be the latest installment of a series from one of the world’s leading publishers for the Sony PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, Nintendo Wii, Nintendo DS and Sony PlayStation Portable platforms.

This week expects the launch of the new and larger Nintendo DSi named the Nintendo DSi XL. Nintendo DSi XL features bigger screens and a wider viewing angle, which allow players to be able to experience their favorite games like never before when the Nintendo DSi XL launches across Europe on 5th March 2010. The Nintendo DSi XL has already been enjoyed by many people in Japan.

The new screens are 93 percent larger than those of the Nintendo DS Lite model. The wider viewing angled screen enables players to share their game play with their friends or family.

Activision Publishing Inc. announced their new strategic plans for one of the best-selling video game franchises of all time, the Call of Duty series.

Their plans include a formation of a dedicated business unit that is expected to bring together its various new brand initiatives with dedicated resources worldwide. Activision Publishing Inc. plans to expand the Call of Duty brand with the same focus seen in its Blizzard Entertainment business unit. This means that a focus on high-margin digital online content will be included, as well as furthering the brand as the leading action entertainment franchise in new geographies, genres and digital business models.

Independent worldwide publisher of entertainment software, Playlogic Entertainment, announced today that it has signed a worldwide digital distribution agreement with GameStreamer Inc. online distribution platform.

Playlogic’s entire back catalog will be available through GameStreamer’s extensive digital network.

Marketing Director at Playlogic, Adam McGowan, explained that they are continuously looking for established distribution platforms to partner with, and that this agreement with GameStreamer is another significant step in the growth of Playlogic.