Five years is virtually an eternity in gaming years, but that hasn't stopped analyst Michael Cai at Parks Associates from looking that far into the future and predicting that online-enabled consoles like the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and Wii will generate $8 billion in revenue in 2013, as relayed by Gamasutra.

Cai sees growth in digital distribution services for games and videos as well as "avatar-based microtransactions" for services like Xbox Live avatars, PlayStation Home, and subscription fees for Xbox Live and console MMO games.

Underpinning all that growth will be an ever-increasing user base with broadband internet connections. The report notes that Microsoft currently leads the online market with the successful Xbox Live Marketplace, but Sony and Nintendo may catch up in the near future with their respective marketplaces PlayStation Store and Wii Shop Channel.

Online sales on consoles are currently in the hundreds of millions but rapidly expanding. Microsoft, for example, made $180 million in the last year. Counting digital sales on PCs, Electronic Arts earned $90 million in just three months. Meanwhile, across the entire PC market, digital distribution was worth nearly $2 billion last year.

It's crazy, TV shows are starting to show up again and the NBA season is on the horizon. I may actually watch TV again soon! Too bad the NBA Live 09 demo was quite ho-hum.

• Your name attracts spam
• eBay loves the planet
• File sharing lawsuits at crossroads

As for the the videogame news around these parts:

• New Max Payne movie trailer
• Resident Evil CG movie this year?
• Ninja Blade screenshots
• StarCraft 2 screenshots
• Call of Duty: World at War launches November 11th
• Dead Space release date pushed up
• BioWare Sonic RPG videos
• Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown by January 31st
• Grand Theft Auto: Wii
• Diablo 3 screenshots
• Piracy is overblown
• Midnight Club: LA delayed and trailer
• Skate 2 trailer
• Red Faction: Guerrilla trailer

Lastly, please excuse a bit more of a mess late tonight as I'm going to be attempting to clean up a few loose ends around here.

THQ sends along this new Red Faction: Guerilla (PC, PS3, X360) trailer, showing how the ability to destroy buildings and other environmental objects can be used to take out enemies.

Please install Flash to view this Shackvideo

Shackvideo users can use the HD Stream.

In development at Volition, Red Faction: Guerilla will be released early 2009.

Another trailer for EA Black Box's skateboarding sequel Skate 2 (PS3, 360) has arrived, which puts amateur skateboarding and set construction action to the tune of Public Enemy's "Harder Than You Think."

Please install Flash to view this Shackvideo

Shackvideo users can use the HD Stream.

Rockstar San Diego's oft-postponed racer Midnight Club: Los Angeles (PS3, 360) has suffered yet another delay, publisher Take-Two Interactive announced today.

Once slated to arrive on October 7, the game's release has now been pushed until October 21. In a conference call today, Take-Two CFO Lainie Goldstein explained that the delay was due to marketing reasons.

In related news, a new trailer for the latest Midnight Club game was released today as well, meant to highlight the man customization options available to virtual gearheads.

Please install Flash to view this Shackvideo

Shackvideo users can use the HD Stream.

Piracy is said to be public enemy number one in the games industry, if certain game studios are to be believed. It's been declared responsible for bad reviews, poor sales of PC ports of popular console games, and even shifts in business models. However, one strong voice of dissent has emerged.

"Rampant piracy is no longer the catch-all excuse it's often employed as," rebutts Penumbra (PC) game writer Tom Jubert in a blog for Edge.

Cevat Yerli, CEO of Crysis developer Crytek (PC), recently intensified the spotlight on the issue by claiming there were 20 pirated copies of Crysis for every one legitimate player.

The actual ratio, Jubert argues, is no worse than 5:1 in the Western world. To back up this claim, Jubert cites figures from GameShadow Metrics--a online service that automatically patches games and can detect altered .exe files--which show 5 pirated copies of Crysis for every one legitimate copy in the US and a 7:3 ratio in the UK.

"Of course, that's not to say that Yerli is wrong," concedes Jubert, "[it's] only that 1:15 is a potentially misleading statistic." He adds that it's difficult to measure the actual number of high-end gaming PCs in use, so claims like "consoles sell factors of 4-5 more" are equally unfounded.

As promised last week, Sony has delivered another weekly update to the PlayStation Store with new games, demos, videos, and more.

The PlayStation Blog has the details, which we've reproduced here.

Qore Digital Magazine

Qore Episode 04: September, 2008 ($2.99 Issue, $24.99 Annual Subscription)
Episode 04 of Qore: Presented by the PLAYSTATION Network explores a number of upcoming games, including LittleBigPlanet, MotorStorm: Pacific Rift and Prince of Persia, it also includes 30-day exclusive access to the MotorStorm:... Read more

Blizzard has let loose four new screenshots from its hellish hack-and-slasher Diablo III. Included are a number of characters leaping through the air and hitting things.

The new PC RPG, boasting new-and-improved Battle.net functionality, is "heavily in development" and will see release when it's done.

While Rockstar's renowned Grand Theft Auto series will appear on the Nintendo DS this winter, publisher Take-Two Interactive is continuing to remain quiet on the possibility of a Grand Theft Auto entry on Wii.

When asked today about a possible Grand Theft Auto game for Wii, Take-Two CEO Ben Feder refused to specifically comment on the potential project, thought he stressed that Take-Two plans to keep growing its "relationship" with Nintendo.

"We've spent an enormous amount of time and effort working with Nintendo. We're very proud of the partnership," he noted. "GTA: Chinatown Wars is an important step [in that partnership]...and we intend to continue to grow that relationship."

Feder's response marks a curious shift in tone from an earlier comment last December, in which the company apparently denied a GTA entry on the Wii.

"No disrespect," a Take-Two representative said at the time, "[but] I think there are other titles better suited for the [Wii] than Grand Theft Auto 4."

Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars, the Nintendo DS entry in Rockstar's infamous action series, will arrive in retailers between November 1, 2008 and January 31, 2009, publisher Take-Two Interactive revealed today.

Take-Two CEO Ben Feder briefly mentioned the release window, which represents the first quarter of the company's 2009 fiscal year, during a conference call today. At the time of the title's announcement, Take-Two noted that the game would arrive this winter, but did not provide any further details.

Rockstar Leeds, the company behind previous handheld GTA games Liberty City Stories and Vice City Stories, will handle the effort. The company also plans to use the Nintendo DS console's unique features, such as its touch screen, to aid players in their hijacking hijinks.

With BioWare's DS role-playing take on Sonic the Hedgehog slated to hit September 30, the developer has provided new trailers focusing the game's many features.

Please install Flash to view this Shackvideo

Read on for the other two trailers... Read more

EA Redwood Shores' sci-fi survival horror effort Dead Space will arrive in North America even earlier than was once expected, with the game now slated to hit PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 on October 14, followed by a PC release on October 20.

Created in part by Iron Man and X-Men writer Warren Ellis, Dead Space was originally scheduled to hit in late October. However, the game was finished early, prompting EA to reschedule the console versions for an October 24 release in Europe.

It had been speculated that the game would arrive earlier in North America as well, though EA had offered no official word on the subject until today.

2K Games producer and Shack family member Jason Bergman dropped by our forums to announce that the classic 90s tactical series X-COM is now available for purchase on Valve's Steam digital distribution service.

Four games from the series, listed below, have been added to the service:

• X-COM: UFO Defense (1993)
• X-COM: Apocalypse (1997)
• X-COM: Interceptor (1998)
• X-COM: Enforcer (2001)

Each game is for sale for $4.99, or the whole set of four can be bought for $15. Following Steam tradition, there is a ten percent discount in the first week of sales. The games are compatible with Windows Vista, according to Bergman.

While the X-COM series has laid dormant for 7 years, there have been persistent rumors of a new entry from BioShock creator Ken Levine and the 2K Boston crew.

King of Fighters '98, the arcade and Neo Geo brawler with a cult following, is coming to the Xbox 360 via the online Xbox Live Arcade service.

The game was recently re-released in Japan as King of Fighters '98: Ultimate Match on the PlayStation 2, and that version will be the one headed to XBLA, according to SiliconEra. The newest version of the game sports extra characters and balance changes for competitive players.

The SNK Playmore-developed remake does not have a release date, but it will appear at the Tokyo Game Show in October.

Death Tank, once a mini-game in Lobotomy Software's PowerSlave for the Sega Saturn, is coming to Xbox 360's Xbox Live Arcade, as was hinted by Germany's software ratings board.

Now developed by Snowblind Studios, the game is a two-dimensional multiplayer shooter a la Worms, but made real-time instead of turn-based. Lobotomy staffer Ezra Dreisbach, who is credited with the development of Death Tank, now works at Snowblind.

The digitally-downloadable revival will support four players on the same console and up to eight players online. A release date and price have not yet been announced, but the game's first screenshots were released by the studio today.

Rock Band developer has Harmonix has followed up on its previous announcement regarding the ability to import songs from the first Rock Band disc and play them in the sequel, due September 14 on Xbox 360 and later this season for PlayStation 3.

Only three of the tracks from the first Rock Band will not be playable in the sequel, the studio revealed on its official forum. As was previously estimated, the ability to export songs from the RB1 disc onto the hard drive and play them in RB2 will cost 400 Microsoft Points ($5) due to licensing fees.

That fee only applies to songs from the original Rock Band, with all previously released Rock Band downloadable content already compatible at no extra charge.

The ability to purchase the license and export songs from Rock Band is now available within the Xbox 360 version of the original, following an automatic that was released today. The following Rock Band disc tracks are not available for export:

• "Paranoid" as made famous by Black Sabbath (Cover)
• "Run to the Hills" as made famous by Iron Maiden (Cover)
• "Enter Sandman" by Metallica

As a result, the following 55 are all exportable under that $5 transaction:

Main Set List (covers denoted by asterisk)

• Rolling Stones, "Gimme Shelter"
• Mountain, "Mississippi Queen" *
• Deep Purple, "Highway Star"
• The Who, "Won't Get Fooled Again"... Read more

Activision announced today that Call of Duty: World at War will arrive in stores on November 11. The Treyarch-developed first-person shooter will be released for PC, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, PS2, and Wii on the same day alongside the DS edition developed by n-Space.

It was also announced that pre-order customers for the Xbox 360 and PC versions will be granted access to a multiplayer beta of the game in October.

"We are excited to share a sneak peak of Call of Duty: World at War multiplayer with the community," said Treyarch head Mark Lamia. He added, "The team has worked hard to build upon the great history and foundation of Call of Duty multiplayer and we can't wait to go online to ramp up for our November launch."

Three new screenshots from Blizzard's real-time strategy sequel StarCraft 2 have trickled in, depicting various battle scenarios between Protoss and Zerg forces. And lasers, or as Shacknews editor Chris Faylor identifies them, "pew pew."

StarCraft 2 was recently pegged as the debut point for an enhanced version of Blizzard's online Battle.net matchmaking system, featuring friends lists, in-game chat, and achievements.

A release date is far from certain, but studio owner Activision Blizzard recently said the highly-anticipated PC game "should" arrive next year.

With the long-rumored Ninja Blade now officially unveiled, publisher Microsoft has provided new screenshots and higher resolution takes of older shots from the game.

An Xbox 360 exclusive set in a realistic recreation of Tokyo, the From Software-developed action title will see players defending humanity from "a horrific, genetically mutating disease," according to Microsoft, when it arrives next year.

Sony today confirmed a North American release and $50 price point for the official PlayStation 3 wireless headset that was revealed earlier this week.

The very same headset included in the $60 retail edition of Slant Six's multiplayer shooter SOCOM: U.S. Navy SEALs Confrontation (PS3)--due October 14--the Bluetooth device interfaces with the PlayStation 3 to show battery charge and volume details on-screen.

An exact date for the standalone release of the device itself was not provided, though a PlayStation.Blog post by product manger Anand Agarwal promised a fall debut.