Realtime Worlds today unveiled its plans to host a "full public beta of APB," its upcoming crime-based MMO due out on PC and Xbox 360. Helmed by Grand Theft Auto creator David Jones, the studio's first release was the open world title Crackdown (360).

The news and two new bits of character art were tucked away within the announcement of Chris 'Ulric' Dye as the game's community relations manager.

According to business manager Mario Rizzo, Dye's hiring "signals the start of a new phase for APB where we can interact more fluidly with both gaming sites, and our potential future player base. This is an important milestone for the game now that we are transitioning into Alpha and moving towards the full public beta of APB."

Alpha and beta tests are relatively common for massively mutliplayer online efforts, though they often occur within the confines of an closed, invite-only environment. No timeframe or platform details were provided for the public beta, though the game is expected to launch in 2009.

Via Shacknews

DISTRIBUTION RIGHTS TO GROUND-BREAKING ONLINE GAME APB FOLLOWING SECOND ROUND FUNDING

Realtime Worlds, Inc., a leading independent video game developer, today announced that it has regained the global distribution rights to All Points Bulletin (APB), the highly-anticipated urban-themed massively multiplayer online game (MMOG) under development in the company抯 Dundee studio.  The move follows Realtime Worlds?recent US$50 million second round funding and provides the company with the independence to push creative boundaries in the development of the game and to take a more active role in managing APB's global distribution strategy.

The second annual Virtual Worlds Conference will be held in New York City on April 3rd and 4th this year.

Game, toy, entertainment and media industries converge

Virtual Worlds Management has announced the program, speakers and exhibitors for the second annual Virtual Worlds Conference taking place from April 3 - 4 in New York City.

Speakers will include executives from Mattel, MTV, Google, Disney, IBM, Habbo, Gaia, crayon, Alloy Media, Electric Sheep Company, Epitome Pictures, G-Unit Records, Millions of Us, Cookie Jar Entertainment, Needham & Company and Zula USA, LLC.

"What began as technologies embraced by Internet sophisticates is now at the heart of revolution that is reshaping the media industry, toy industry, the entertainment business and technology companies," said Christopher Sherman, Virtual Worlds Conference executive director.

Get more details at the GamesIndustry.biz press release.

Massively reports that the Sims Online was shut down and is now known as EA-Land.

The Sims might have been a huge hit with casual gamers worldwide. The virtual world built on the same property, The Sims Online, was unfortunately rather less so. Last year, three employees led by Luc Barthelet convinced EA that the whole TSO concept could be revitalized under a new platform and model.

Development ensued, apace until on Thursday, February 21 the last of The Sims Online cities shut down, and were bundled off. Say hello to EA-Land. It appears that some or all of the downed cities have been merged into the new EA-Land mixed-pay model.

EA-Land is apparently following a model more like that of Second Life, with free players and paying subscribers, a planned currency exchange for Simoleons (TSO's world currency, and now EA-Land's), multiple avatars per account, custom content uploads, user-run stores, and web-services integration, facebook apps. It's the whole virtual world nine yards, it seems.

read more details at Massively

LOL, Guinness World Records are known to all

do you want to be a record breaker or do you want to be the first one in-game ?

http://gamers.guinnessworldrecords.com/book2008/preview.aspx 

Think you are the ultimate Guitar Hero? Join us on the 6th February for the Guinness World Record Guitar Hero Marathon Relay between the UK, US, Canada, Australia and France to celebrate the launch of the new Guinness World Record Gamers Edition!

You will have the chance to rock with Guitar Hero for one song before passing on to the next player for the most exciting record breaking event of the year! Those of you brave enough to dress as your favourite Guitar Hero are especially welcome!

To register to take part and to discover venue and time details please e-mail your respective country:

via Guinness World Records

In an SEC filing, Korean-based developer Gravity (Ragnarok Online) disclosed that in October, it received a notice that U.S.-based online game developer Perpetual, in which Gravity invests, would be liquidating all of its assets.

According to the filing, the notice said that a separate company called Perpetual LLC would "shall liquidate the Assets, wind down Perpetual, and distribute the net liquidation proceeds to creditors of Perpetual."

The date on which Gravity stated the notice was sent, October 10th, is the same day that Perpetual announced that its PC MMORPG Gods and Heroes: Rome Rising would be put on hold indefinitely.

Just prior to that announcement, the company announced it would lay off between 30 and 40 employees, as it did the first time that Gods and Heroes was delayed, reportedly due to the need for further beta testing.

Gravity stated that it does not expect to recover any of the $9 million investment it made in Perpetual in 2006, and that the loss will be reflected in its financial statement for 2007.

However, it is unclear whether this announcement also affects Star Trek Online, Perpetual's other MMO, which was still believed to be in development - or whet

During this year’s Gstar game show in Seoul, South Korea, Nexon has revealed to Gamasutra new details about Maple Story DS, as well as an Xbox 360 port of the company's Korea-only PC MMO Mabinogi, which was announced today.

The recent Mabinogi announcement, which came on the first day of the major Gstar show attended by Gamasutra in South Korea, was relatively unexpected. The game is a more traditional, cel-shaded MMORPG with an interesting class system, allowing players to level up in branching paths with individual attributes.

The game has already been out in Korea, but will be coming to the Xbox 360 soon – Nexon hoped to launch it this year in Korea, but is not certain it will meet the target.

“It’s been under development for about a year,” said Kang, who added that it’s a rather straight conversion of the original game. “It’s being developed internally – but there’s not much more we can say at this time,” he concluded.

Other details, such as possibility of Western release, are scarce, but common sense and anecdotal evidence suggests that the game will be released as a packaged product such as Final Fantasy XI or Phantasy Star Universe, with aims for release outside of Korea, giv