Well, it is official, folks. FASA Studios, the team behind, as of late, Shadowrun, has officially announced that they are now defunct. There is a post on the official forums wishing the employees who have not yet moved on to other MS positions the best of luck, and we wish them luck as well. Shadowrun is a great game, and we really hope the SR universe does not disappear again for 10 years along with FASA.

Shadowrun and Halo 2, both PC games that were supposed to work only on Windows Vista, the new MS OS, have been cracked to work on XP. Each game has an unofficial patch available for campatibility with the older XP. Microsoft originally claimed that DirectX 10 would not be fully functional on XP. Then, only a month ago, Falling Leaf Systems revealed that it planns to offer software to allow DX10 play on XP. Apparently the software pirates did not feel like waiting.

Microsoft has now made available both the Shadowrun mutiplayer demo, and the Tenchu Z single player demo. Shadowrun weighs in at a whopping 1.1GB, while ZTenchu is monre reasoable at 650MB. Grab them both now before the servers get bogged down.

Shadowrun, the first game to utilize the cross-platform live play on both PC and Xbox360, has gone gold. The game will hit retail shelves on May 29, 2007. Click read more for the official info.

PRESS RELEASE

LONDON 9th May, 2007 – Microsoft® Game Studios today announced the eagerly awaited release date of the thrilling cross platform game, Shadowrun, which will shoot into stores on Friday 1st June, 2007.

For those of you who did not get into the Shadowrun beta test, do not fear. According to Darking, there will be a demo of the game available soon, before the fast approacing release date even.

Microsoft is hosting a Shadowrun playtest event at the Redmond Campus this Saturday. If you are interested in playtesting the new Shadowrun game, and you live in the Redmond area, then check the link for the details on how to provide MS with your services!

According to a post over on the Shadowrun official forums, the split-scren mutiplayer mode of Shadowrun has been cancelled. That's right folks, no local multiplayer. This is a very alarming trend that we see emerging. We need to let devs know that this no local multiplayer bs is not acceptable ASAP. Let your voices be heard!

At the end of the recent Shadowrun trailer, 1UP found something very interesting. It seems that MS is planning to launch an Xbox Live Gold type service for PC users, similar to the Gold service us Xbox users have. Of course, the Gold account, which is the one required for Xbox/PC cross platform play, will be pay. How MS is going to get PC users to pay to play games online is truly a mystery to us. Especially since they will be paying to play against Xbox360 pad users, which on the whole, will not be much of a challenge for a good mouse/KB user. Very clever (and greedy) of you MS! The statement at the end of the trailer says:

Cross platform play requires Xbox LIVE Gold account and hard drive [on xbox 360], or Games For Windows - LIVE Gold account (on Windows).

Definitely keep an eye on this story, folks.

Shacknews has a new Shadowrun preview posted. They get their hands on an early copy of the game, and give us the lowdown. Of course, the game is still jsut an FPS, but is it worth buyingt? Find out.

Gamespot has a new interview posted with Mitch Gitelman, the studio manager of FASA Studios. FASA, as you know, is the team behind the brand new Shadowrun game, the first game set in the SR universe in a very long time. The article covers, among other things, the Magical Races, Abilities, and Technology from the game. Check it out.