The B5media blog network has decided to shut down FPS Rantings, its blog about first-person shooter games. Here’s the announcement from B5media’s Matt Scott:

Well folks. Due to a lack of traffic and readership, the powers that be have decided to close the pages of FPS Rantings. It’s been fun and I hope you all enjoyed reading my thoughts and sarcasm regarding the genre of FPS games.

Is there no audience for FPS blogs? Part of the issue may have been the focus of FPS Rantings, which covered a broad range of FPS titles but seemed geared to everyday FPS gamers than competitive gamers. eSports sites such as GotFrag seem to have plenty of readers, as does TwitchGuru (which has the advantage of being part of the Tom’s Hardware Guide network). See our directory of gaming news sites for more reading.

The PC Gaming Blog over at 451 Press has  an item on Reducing Lag in Online Gaming, with 10 tips on ways you can improve your gaminge xperience. Many will be well known to experienced gamers, but the list covers a range of variables that involve hardware (Upgrade Your Computer, Check Your Network Cable, Increase System Cooling), configuration (Close Background Tasks, Reduce the Screen Resolution) and connectivity (Seclect Low-Pinged Servers, Get Better Bandwidth/A Better ISP). Sam also shares a tip from the Filefront Forums that may be new to many players: renaming the .exe can route around game detection functions in popular graphics cards that can imapct the performance of some games.

Online game hosting specialist Online Game Services Inc. (OGSI) has been acquired by long-term Global Netopotex Inc. (GNi) in a deal valued at more than $3 million, positioning GNi to provide “pay-as-you-grow” game hosting solutions to the fast-growing industry for massively multiplayer games. While OGSi specializes in MMO games, it also offers clan servers for games including Counter Strike, Doom3, Half Life 2 and Battlefield 1942.

“Acquiring OGSi is a natural progression,” said Derek Wise, GNi’s president and CEO. “By combining their expertise in the games space with ours in managed services, we achieve increased economies of scale and efficiency to better serve our customers.”

“Combining our two companies clearly strengthens our ability to serve the game industry with innovative hosting solutions,” said James Hursthouse, CEO of OGSi. “We’ll also be taking our ‘pay-as-you-grow’ model into new areas such as interactive TV, video and music services, and social community websites.”

OGSi currently has more than 1,000 blade servers packed into 12 cabinets in 365 Main’s San Francisco data center. OGSi has been developing its game service provider business model since 2004, hosting sites for Ping0 LLC and GoPets Ltd. with the new Hellgate London online game. With its acquisition by GNi, OGSi expects to have over 4,000 additional servers operational for games clients in 10 datacenters worldwide by the end of 2007.

“We’ll be building out these gaming dedicated hosting infrastructure in other data centers operated by 365 Main,” said Hursthouse. “Our goal is to provide the industry with every excuse not to build data center infrastructure in-house. It’s a drastic reduction in risk and cost.”

Gaming network service provider GameRail, has completed a direct connection to the Charter High Speed Internet service network, the company said Jan. 30. The new hookup provides Charter subscribers in Missouri, St. Louis, and St. Louis Metro East with lower ping times to online game servers.
“Access providers and game server hosts continue to jump on the rail in order to offer their customers the best online gaming experience possible” said Blake Ashby, GameRail’s President. GameRail directly connects game players to their favorite game hosts and vice versa, thereby eliminating game play degrading high latency hops on the Internet. GameRail has interconnection facilities in 7 major US markets including Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, New York, Seattle and St. Louis.

Online gamers with broadband Internet service from Charter now have the shortest and fastest path to performance game servers offering popular titles like America’s Army:Special Forces, Battlefield 2 Ranked and Unranked, Call of Duty, Counter Strike Source, Enemy Territory Fortress, Half Life: Condition Zero, Half Life/ Counter-Strike, Halo: Combat Evolved, Quake 4, Teamfortress Classic, Tribes Vengeance, Unreal Tournament 2004, Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory, as well as dedicated servers and TeamSpeak slot rental.
GameRail’s bypass network delivers a “direct-connect” from the game player to the game host and avoids the congestion and inefficient routing paths of the regular Internet. Once GameRail and the subscriber’s provider of Internet access are interconnected, the subscriber’s game play packets bypass the multi-hop, high latency Internet and hot route on a dedicated, national broadband network connected to the game host.

Jonathan “Fatal1ty” Wendel, probably the best-known professional gamer, says he’s not retiring but is teaming up with DirecTV to launch the Championship Gaming Series, a new international pro video gaming league. Wendel announced at CES 2007 that he will become a play-by-play commentator, advisor and official spokesperson for the Championship Gaming Series.

“I don’t plan on retiring anytime soon,” Fatal1ty told TwitchGuru. “But I do want to concentrate on making gaming into a mainstream sport.” Wendel didn’t say whether his commitment to the Championship GaminGS eries would affect his participation on other professional gaming leagues such as the Cyberathlete Professional League and World Cyber Games.

We’ve recently added some new sites to the Game Hosting Guide directory. These include Game Server Providers DefConServers, Next Generation Game Servers, Clan Base Live, TeanHost Game and Voice Servers UK and Hyperfrag and the LowPing.de Game Server Comminity in the Game Server Administration category. Take a minute and check them out!

Twitch Guru recently had an item titled 10 Things You Didn’t Know About Professional Gaming. One that was of interest to us was number 6, “Pro Gaming Has Its Own Sports Media”:

In addition to being broadcast on MTV, USA Network, and DirecTV, professional gaming has its own dedicated sports media that broadcasts the matches via the Web and reports box scores, stats, and news recaps. For example, GotFrag.com is a site dedicated to covering live competitions with online streaming video as well as news reports, stats and record keeping. There’s also Amped eSports , which covers a variety of professional gaming tournaments and organizations. In addition, Cohesion Productions is currently filming documentaries on the history of professional gaming. And just recently, Gotfrag partnered with Beckett Media to launch the first e-sports magazine, dubbed eSports. A number of other gaming and tech sites are following the trend and increasing their coverage of professional gaming. 

You can find a lot of these sites in the Game Hosting Guide under Game Blogs and Gaming News.

Microsoft has announced at the Consumer Electronics Show that gamers will be able to connect to Xbox Live through their PCs using the new Windows Vista operating system. The Xbox support is scheduled to kick off this spring with the release of Vista versions of two first-person shooter games: Halo 2 and Shadowrun. Here’s a description:

ShadowRun is an intense FPS experience created for both XBOX 360 and Windows Vista that rewards cleverness and split-second improvisation through a unique combination of modern weapons, ancient magic and advanced technology. Shadowrun will be the first game that uses LIVE to enable cross-platform gameplay. Enjoy text or voice messaging or send invitations to your friends playing Shadowrun on the Xbox 360 via Xbox Live, Team up with or against your friends, PC vs. XBOX 360 – for revolutionary multiplayer gaming.

Halo2 won’t support cross-platform play (players on Xbox 360s vs. players on Vista PC) as this apparently wasn’t envisioned when the game was coded. The guide and gamer profiles will be accessible via Vista, which will be able to use the Xbox 360 controller. The initial release will apparently be missing some features like voice chat and webcams, which will come later.

Microsoft has unveiled additional details for the upcoming Halo 3 Multiplayer Beta coming on Xbox Live this Spring. Last month, gamers were able to register on Halo3.com for a chance to participate in the Beta test. The window for registering on Halo3.com has come and gone but today two additional opportunities have been announced.

One way is by playing Halo 2 on Xbox Live. In order to qualify, you have to play a total of three hours of games on Xbox Live between 12:01 AM (EST) on February 1, 2007 through 11:59 PM (EST) on February 3rd, 2007. According to the press release, if you play three hours of games during this period, you then go register via http://www.halo3.com for a chance to become a beta participant. Specifically, you have to play those games and then be among the first 13,333 players to register at the site.

Then there’s the guaranteed route: Anyone who purchases the upcoming Xbox 360 game “Crackdown” will get automatic entry into the Halo 3 beta. If you have a Crackdown disc you’ll be able to activate and download the beta once it goes live next Spring.

“We realize this latest announcement will spur a lot of questions, most of which we simply don’t have the answers to,” Bungie said on its web site. “While Bungie is obviously involved in the development of the beta and game itself, we don’t make the decisions regarding when, where and how the game content ultimately ends up in your hands. It’s really cool that our fans have the opportunity to share in our game early and in some ways actually help us polish the final product but ultimately we’re just developers – the business and consumer side of things are left up to our partners at MGS. As we get additional info and answers to your questions we will pass them along in future updates.”

Progression Networks will use the meet-me room of the Bandwidth Exchange in St. Louis to enhance connectivity for GameRail, a high speed network that directly connects online game players to the servers that host the most popular and demanding titles. By using a network peering approach to ISPs, universities and game server providers (GSPs), GameRail plans to deliver superior performance to its subscribers. Low latency (”lag”) is crucial in multiplayer first-person shooter games like CounterStrike, where a slow connection can much up gameplay and/or leave a player at a competitive disadvantage. The service, which is free during its current beta period, eventually plans to charge $15 a month for subscribers.

“Because of the Peering opportunities with the Bandwidth Exchange Buildings’ existing clients, we are able to fast start our network and also provide superior performance for our peer’s online gaming subscribers,” said GameRail’s CEO Blake Ashby. “Turning up in a carrier hotel like the Bandwidth Exchange Buildings also give us rapid access to leading carriers to build a national network.”

GameRail describes itself as “is an evolution in the network model specifically designed to minimize latency and improve a computer gamer’s online experience.” GameRail allows gaming traffic to get on the private network in the gamer’s home city and then transit over the private network all the way to the site of the game server. GameRail can reduces network hops (and thus latency).

If you’re interested in learning more about the game hosting/GSP market, check out the Game Hosting Guide for a directory of providers and resources.