You can't talk about PC gaming without giving a nod in John Carmack's direction, the man behind the legendary FPS games Doom and Quake. In a recent interview about the newly launched id Mobile, he mentions the current state of PC gaming and the enormous role Blizzard's World of Warcraft plays on the gaming platform.

Read more about what John Carmack had to say after the jump!

Tomorrow may be a big moment on the history of gaming as broadcast giant CBS formally becomes the first network of its class to show a video game tournament as a regular sporting event like other athletic spectacles such as the Masters and March Madness.

"There are an enormous amount of people of all ages who play video games these days, so we’re going to try to see if video games’ popularity can translate into a viable television audience," says CBS Sports Vice-President Rob Correa as he explores the possibility of people looking at this moment as a poignant event after a decade or so.

The tournament concerned is the World Series of Video Games which will be held in Louisville, Kentucky. Edited footage from the event will show highlights of face-offs between players in games such as Fight Night Round 3, Guitar Hero and other non-violent titles. First-person shootouts in Halo and Quake will sadly not make it on air because of the nature of the content.

The idea of the tournament and the coverage by CBS is pegged on the South Korean model which has an entire nation embracing gaming and making it a part of pop culture. A full-time coverage in the manner that ESPN covers sports isn't possible for video games just yet but for now, this is the biggest step game broadcasting can take in the US.

The CBS coverage is also a pilot test of sorts on how game programming in cable TV initiated by G4 and Gameplay HD can work in a bigger scale. The response of viewers will determine future plans on the coverage of electronic gaming as a sport on the network.

 

It looks like the World Series of Video Games (WSVG) is moving northward in the upcoming days. Its organizers have just announced that as part of its competitive circuit, the next bout will be taking place at Fan Expo Canada. The WSVG event proper is expected churn out more than US$ 75,000 in cash prizes, and will involve competitions for games like World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade (Blizzard), Guitar Hero II (Activision), and Quake 4 (Activision; Xbox 360, PC).

Outside the expected WSVG contests, Fan Expo Canada will host several other events for its expected 50,000-plus visitors: the Canadian National Comic Book Expo, CNAnime, SFX Science Fiction Expo, Festival of Fear Horror Expo and GX-the Canadian National Gaming Expo. Also to be expected at the event will be several noted celebirties: Hayden Christensen ("Star Wars"), Adam West ("Batman"), Hayden Panettiere ("Heroes"), Jonathan Frakes ("Star Trek") and the Red vs. Blue creative team. As WSVG commissioner Matthew Ringel commented regarding the upcoming event:

After we announced an October event at Los Angeles eForAll, we very much wanted to schedule an event in late summer hitting the eastern region of North America. We are delighted that our inaugural event in Canada will be among the biggest on our video game circuit and, indeed, in all competitive gaming this year.

Canada's Fan Expo will be taking place from August 24 to 26 at the Metro Toronto Convention Center.

This week it's another new stretch for the World Series of Video Games tour, as the WSVG 2007 hits Dallas, Texas for another round up for Counter-Strike, World of Warcraft, Guitar Hero II, Call of Duty 2, Gears of War, Quake 4 and Fight Night Round 3 competitive players.

Prizes totalling up to US$ 90,000 will be given away at the event, starting July 5, Thursday up to July 8, Sunday. The highlight of Dallas is the inclusion of Xbox 360 titles Gears of War from Epic Games and Guitar Hero II from Red Octane, so the event might be worth checking out for the Xbox 360 gamer.

And if you can shrug off the US$ 10 admission fee, you might want to pick up a few tips from James ‘2GD’ Harding on dominating with your trusty Quake 4 railgun. Listen carefully, and see tips being put to practice on the grand arena floors.

Cheer for your select team or players and get your face plastered all over CBS Sports news, while demoing some of the industry's latest games and winning some free swag. But first things first: you'd have to figure out how to get to the Gaylord Texan Resort on time.

China's World Series of Video Games event has risen for an early start on Day Two, and managed to put a few photos shy of a hundred in their online gallery this early in the second day. While we await the results of the game brackets and details of the main events that took place, let's take a breather and soak in these life stills for a sec.

Being officially sponsored by Intel, it appears even consumer and business computing solutions giant Dell made a grand showing at the 2007 WSVG in China. They've got keyboards to monitors and even laptops touting the Dell brand all over the competition floor.

And...wait a second. Do you see what we see? It's World of Warcraft! Funny how the laptop keyboard wasn't good enough for the contestant, eh? And look, there's Team Pandemic's Power Trip! If these pictures weren't enough to get you tingly all over, budding pro-gamers in North America might want to know that the WSVG is coming to Dallas soon, with an additional game to their lineup of game brackets.

And because the majority of WSVG patrons have spoken, Gears of War for the Xbox 360 is now an official game event. It will be included into the official Dallas lineup that includes Activision's Call of Duty 2, EA's EA Sports Fight Night Round 3, Activision's Guitar Hero 2, id Software's Quake 4 and Blizzard's World of Warcraft.

Day One

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Yes folks, in the other side of the world its already May 1 and the first day of the 2007 World Series of Video Games has already kicked off to a huge start - with pretty fanfare and all. The 2007 WSVG in Wuhan, China is a two-day affair to bring together the world's best in Counter-Strike 1.6, Quake 4, World of Warcraft PvP and Warcraft 3: The Reign of Chaos for a chance to win approximately US$ 750,000-worth in prizes.

The U.S. realms' very own Power Trip, sponsored by the veritable Team Pandemic of WCG fame, will be doing battle against Asia's best in World of Warcraft competitive PvP 3v3 Arena series to be held within the two days of heavy gaming battle. We've oriented you on the inventory, the rules and the prizes before. Now you can keep up to date on the news as well, with WSVG's very own Videos on Demand (VODs) providing in-depth coverage of the entire event.

In league with this, the WSVG 2007 season is also rocketing off to Dallas, Texas with the 2007 WSVG in Dallas. Registrations are now open for participants who want to show their professional gaming skills at the Gaylord Resort in Dallas on July 8 - 9, 2007. The event will sport six games plus one game that has been voted as the Gamer's Choice at the WSCG polls on their website.

So what are you waiting for? Get that mouse moving and navigate your way to the WSVG official site now. We'll keep tabs on the latest developments and especially on the World of Warcraft PvP bracket. So keep your eyes peeled, readers!

This was probably the reason why the Killer NIC network card from Bigfoot Networks was included in those custom-built-for-WoW PCs. While numbers are scientifically accurate in depicting the performance of any given product, there's no substitute for real-world tests by real-world gamers, so [H]Enthusiast set out to see if this card lives up to its promise of improving frames-per-second and decreasing lag and latency.

[H]Enthusiast used CounterStrike, Quake 4, FEAR, and yes, World of Warcraft (and their related gamers) as their test subjects. The test involved the gamers playing their game on their preferred PC setup - but each setup had both the PC's built-in network card and the Killer NIC which [H]Enthusiast could switch between at any point in the game. The gamers were asked to observe any changes in frame rates and latency.

The verdict? For Quake and CS, the gamers didn't notice much of a difference between using the Killer NIC and the regular network interface card. In FEAR the gamer noticed that with the Killer NIC, his PC was "ahead of what was on the server," with less lags than the regular network card, or the NIC in his own PC at home.

It was in World of Warcraft where the Killer NIC really shone. Not only was the gamer's overall gameplay smoother, with less lags and latency, he also "felt like the Killer was keeping the server from 'spiking and lagging.'" Fluid animation, steady gameplay where he didn't have to worry about killer lags, the Killer NIC turned out to be the killer card for WoW.

So how much does it cost if you're a WoW player? A whopping US$ 280.00, a price point that generated enough industry buzz in itself. Now that's what you call a killer card. Excuse us while we take our budget to the emergency room.