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EA might've hit some slow sales with newer IP's in the past year but they're reaching for great things with The Sims 3. Will Wright's signature franchise has earned them oodles and you'd think that getting the best possible boxed version in everyone's hands to re-energize another wave of expansion sales would be priority one. After all, it worked wonders for The Sims 2.

Building a great PC game doesn't seem to be enough for them. You'd think it would. I mean really, what PC game doesn't show up broken in some nontrivial way? Busted online, crippled authentication, schizophrenic DRM that decides one day you're the owner that deserves to install it and the next you're persona non grata that can't install the game any longer -- all of these things give PC gaming a black eye day in, day out. So EA is not just building a game, but they're building an online store to sell chunks of additional content.

The game will ship with 1000 points to spend in a store, and additional bunches of 1000 are available for USD$10 plus whatever taxes might be involved. Never mind that it's trying to pull one over on the consumer by hiding the actual price of content, forcing them to buy points, and it's reaching towards a nickel-and-diming, microtransaction model, which means we'll see the tiniest things going for small bits of points. It's also going to cut retail out of the add-on pack situation and will probably also make it less likely you'll be able to buy bigger expansions at retail.

Could this also take a bite out of piracy? Perhaps, but I don't expect tighter DRM restrictions to be taken lying down by the kids of the mom and pop gamers that made The Sims such a big hit over the years.

Seen on Shacknews.

Grand Theft Auto IV is looking mighty fine with two new services revealed last week ahead of its April 29th launch, but beware of preorders. Rainbow Six Vegas 2 was supposed to be a shoo-in on the PS3 after its very strong predecessor but it has launched with online multiplayer problems, teaching early adopters a bit of a lesson in either crowd expectations or patience. Sony reveals that they've been toying with online services for about 11 years now, dating back to the PS1, and several high-profile games have been patched on the PS3 bringing them up to snuff.

In other news the PC is still going strong with Steam signing up Epic's slate of games and The Sims 3 announced for delivery next year. This and more in this week's Gaming News Roundup after the jump Read more »