Valve Software and Epic Games have inked an agreement to include Valve's Steamworks suite of tools and services to all licensees of Epic's Unreal Engine 3 middleware, free of charge.

"Epic’s technology is one of the most widely used engines in the industry and has powered many of the best games created in the past 10 years, on multiple platforms," said Gabe Newell, co-founder and president of Valve.

"It’s an honour to have Steamworks included in the technology offered to all Unreal Engine 3 licensees. It’s hard to think of a larger, better targeted group of developers who could derive more benefit from the Steamworks services."

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New bestseller Battlefield: Bad Company 2 makes a strong impression, but it can’t knock Modern Warfare 2 off the top of the buzz chart.

Modern Warfare 2 retained the buzz chart lead its held almost every week since releasing in November last year, with Brandwatch registering 17,200 mentions, down just slightly from last week’s 17,874.

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Leading facial animation technology firm Image Metrics has announced the closure of an $8 million round of financing, which it intends to use to increase the scope of its sales and marketing efforts for software products such as Faceware.

The company is also intending to expand its business into online markets such as virtual worlds and social networks, although no specific partners have been announced as yet.

At the same time the company has also agreed to become a wholly owned subsidiary of International Cellular Accessories (ICLA), with Image Metrics exchanging all of its outstanding shares and becoming a publicly traded company as a result.

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Warren Spector believes that attempts to appeal to the mass market with new devices like motion controllers are a threat to traditional gaming.

The motion control bandwagon runs the risk of "throwing away our entire history", the veteran designer warned at a GDC event attended by Gamasutra.

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Four new titles placed in the top ten on the Japanese software chart during the week ended March 7.

Pokemon Ranger: Tracks Of Light for DS took the top spot, while .hack//Link for PSP and Dragon Quest IX: Sentinels Of The Starry Skies for DS took second and third respectively.

The week’s other new top ten entry was Nobunaga’s Ambition: Tendou for PS3 at number seven.

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Sony has said that its newly named PS3 motion controller will “bridge the gap” between core and casual gamers.

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Sony Computer Entertainment America CEO Jack Tretton has said that “realism” is the key element that differentiates PlayStation Move form its rivals’ motion control offerings.

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Sony has revealed that 36 third party developers have signed on to support its newly named motion controller, PlayStation Move.

The platform holder also said that it will release 20 first party titles that are either dedicated to or supported with the PlayStation Move platform during fiscal 2010. Move itself will launch this autumn.

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