I’ve become used to Nvidia and AMD rocking up with new graphics cards on a consistently quick schedule: since 2008 and beginning with the GeForce 9000-series, Nvidia has released six generations of GPUs, and AMD has replied with three of its own, starting with the Radeon HD 4000-series.

Both firms put the finishing touches on their current ranges in the spring, and the trail’s gone quiet since. Nvidia has confirmed that it won’t release any new cards before 2012, and AMD hasn’t mentioned any potential release dates for its new Radeon HD 7000-series — presumably taking extra time to further tweak and perfect the new chips.

I can understand why Nvidia and AMD aren’t in any hurry to unveil new silicon — after all, evidence suggests that few games, and fewer gamers, will make use of the levels of power available from new cards: 2007’s Crysis is still one of the most demanding games around and, outside of Battlefield 3, few forthcoming games look like they’ll tax even last year’s graphics cards — after all, most are now ported from consoles.

Take a look at the Steam Hardware Survey from July 2011. The most popular ten graphics cards are, with no exceptions, old: top of the pile is the Nvidia GeForce 9800 GT, and it’s followed up by venerable old warhorses like the GeForce 8800 GT, Radeon HD 4870 and even the GeForce 8600 GT. The most popular current-generation chip, the GeForce GTX 560, is 25th on the list.

To find something truly high-end, keep on travelling down the list — the GTX 570 is the 31st most popular card and is used by a whopping 0.78% of Steam’s users, and the AMD Radeon HD 6950 is favoured by just 0.68%.

That’s the biggest PC gaming platform in the world and proof that, while AMD and Nvidia have spent the fast few years trying to beat each other with benchmarks, most users haven’t taken any notice. Instead, they’re too busy playing games on cards that are older and perfectly capable.

Perhaps the big guns have realised that this pixelated arms race is virtually pointless. Almost all users either aren’t bothered or can’t afford the latest chips, and the lack of big-name PC exclusives means that even a modest card will run rings around the latest games. Enthusiasts might enjoy the yearly releases, but board partners constantly tweak, overclock and improve chips to eke more performance out of older cores — and, if they’d like to run games across several screens, there’s always CrossFireX and SLI.

It looks like we won’t see any major graphics card releases until 2012 but, after several years of frenzied, benchmark-driven battling, I’m happy to wait — and it looks like most users are, too.

The Championship Manager series has long been the poor relation of Sports Interactive’s Football Manager on the PC – but within the limited scope of the iPhone, CM still delivers an enjoyable commuter-sized romp. It wisely dispenses with the complexity of its PC brethren: there are no in-depth training routines, pan-European scouting missions, or pages of player stats to pore over. You largely pick your team (only two subs, remember), tweak your formation and do your best to persuade Newcastle to sell you a youthful Paul Gascoigne.

Match sequences are blissfully short – only two or three minutes per game – although the 2D overhead match engine is erratic. Players seem to dribble into goal-scoring positions, only to deliver a suicidal 50-yard pass back into their own box, for example, and the frequency of long-range banana shots is a lot higher than we recall witnessing on The Match with Elton Welsby.

But let none of this temper the sheer, unalloyed joy of managing the Cottee/McAvennie partnership; of recreating the legendary Arsenal back-four by plucking Winterburn, Dixon et al from the near-obscurity of Wimbledon and Stoke; of harking back to an era when Kerry Dixon was considered lethal.

Eidos further ramps up the nostalgia by interspersing authentic news reel of Prince Andrew’s wedding or the news of A-ha splitting up into the game. In short, it’s a wonderful blast of old-school football, delivered at a price (£1.79) cheaper than  a Commodore 64 bargain bucket title. And for those who like their football with a longer vintage, there’s a 1970s version too.

Want more iPhone apps? Try our 73 best iPhone Apps feature or our previous iPhone Apps of the Week.

I know this not through some astonishing psychic abilities, but because I spent two hours this morning at a Sony briefing. There, Sony confirmed it would be filming 25 matches in 1080p 3D, but don’t expect these to be broadcast on Sky: Sony is using the footage to create “promotional trailers” which you’ll be able to watch at its retail stores.

I also had a quick blast on a 3D game, “enjoyed” a 3D music video, and was distinctly underwhelmed by watching a few minutes of Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs.

Of all those, only the game came anything close to persuading me that 3D TVs have a future in the home. The trouble with films is the limited size of the TVs: even a 40in or 50in TV leaves you with too much peripheral vision, so objects can’t properly envelop you. As soon as they reach the edge of the screen, where they disappear, the 3D “magic” is lost.

Rather more disturbing is the idea that Sony is delving into its back catalogue and 3D-ising classic performances from the likes of Jimi Hendrix. This reminds me of the “colourising” of black and white movies when colour TVs first appeared (not that I was actually alive then, naturally). Once the novelty wore off, most right-thinking people decided the original was better.

This isn’t to say I’m anti-3D. There are some clear benefits to the technology… it’s just that the areas where it excels tend to be in a niche. For example, earlier this year I saw an impressive demo of a 3D projector – the interactive dissection of a frog when viewed in 3D rather than 2D makes a whole lot more sense, and according to a teacher I interviewed made a real difference to the children’s interest.

Likewise, cinema is an obvious candidate for 3D. With one proviso: that it’s done well. I thoroughly enjoyed watching Avatar, which was designed to appear in 3D from conception, but the thought of studios jumping on the 3D bandwagon and 3D-ising the film after it’s been shot is a clear signal (so far as I’m concerned) to do one thing only: not go and see that film.

Games, too, can benefit from being created in 3D. It makes sense in anything where 3D over 2D gives you greater clues to what’s happening, with obvious candidates being shoot ‘em ups and driving games.

But 3D-ready TVs in the home? Sony quoted “industry experts” Future Source Consulting, who predict that, by 2014, 40% of new TVs sold in the UK will offer 3D capabilities.

Sony hopes that march begins tomorrow, with its own range of TVs, Blu-ray players and home cinema systems all going on sale. PS3 owners will also be able to apply a firmware update to allow their systems to support 3D, and four games (WipEout HD, SuperStardust HD, PAIN and Motorstorm Pacific Rift Demo) will take advantage. Note these are only free to people who buy a Sony 3D TV.

Later this year, Sony promises, it will also be producing laptops capable of 3D playback, joining existing offerings such as Acer’s Aspire 5738DZG and Asus’ G51J. But does anyone really care?

I’ve been wrong about new technologies before, and it’s always dangerous to base predictions based on early implementations. Sony says it’s already learned plenty of lessons about how to film sporting events in 3D, and if 3D does take off in the way it’s predicting then the cost will come down as the size and quality of the TVs increase.

But even in this vision of the future, we’ll all have to wear those glasses when we want to watch a 3D film or football match. While early adopters may be willing to suffer this annoyance, until the viewing experience becomes an awful lot better, you’ll have to use negotiation skills worthy of Nobel Peace Prize winners to persuade the rest of your family to don them too.

Here’s the sight that greets your eyes if you head to www.justcause.com. You see, to protect our youngsters from looking at the violent images contained within, Eidos has installed the chocolate-fireguard defence known as asking people for their date of birth before accessing the site.

This has long been pointless, but now Eidos isn’t even bothering to explain why you need to enter a month, day and year. It’s just chucking up the dropdown boxes in the knowledge that no-one cares. “Even” ten-year-olds (and I say “even” in quote marks because most children seem to be at their most savvy when they’re about ten) will just put in a false date.

And if someone misunderstands and enter today’s date – it’s surely the most logical action on seeing such a prompt – they’ll be shown a message saying “Sorry, you are not eligible to view the content on this site.” From that point on, or at least until they clear out their cookies, Eidos will believe they’re under 18 and only allow them to see child-friendly content.

It’s possibly the most stupid thing I’ve seen all year.

But, for the first time in its short lifetime, I am genuinely considering opting against Football Manager. Actually, that’s a barefaced lie – i fully intend to buy FM2010, but this year I’m also going to buy its big rival, Championship Manager.

Not because I think it will have improved to a level at which it genuinely competes with Sports Interactive’s record-smashing masterpiece – although early reports suggest it’s giving it a hell of a go – but because Eidos is doing something a bit different with the CM2010 launch.

You see, not only is CM2010 being released more than a month earlier in an attempt to snag managers’ attentions sufficiently to prevent them feeding their Football Manager habit, but the makers are also letting you pay pretty much whatever you like. Yes, Eidos is doing a Radiohead.

Technically, the minimum is £2.51, as you have to pay at least a penny and there’s a £2.50 transaction fee, but it’s a move that will surely tempt FM fans curious as to how the lesser rival is faring up. The hope is that enough of them will be surprised by what they find, and may not make the move back across when FM2010 hits the shops in October.

But will this actually work on gamers? And, in an industry being pummelled to pieces by software piracy, how many will choose to pay anything more than the bare minimum?

I’m not entirely convinced by Radiohead’s claims that most people paid decent money for their In Rainbows album, but I’m even less convinced when the question is shifted to games. This is a game which will retail at around £24.99 in stores and, even though this offer only applies to pre-orders of the download version before the September 11th launch, that’s a huge difference from the £8 or £9 most new albums sell for.

I could see myself feasibly being generous and paying a fiver for an album on this type of offer, but there’s not a chance in Hell that I’d voluntarily stump up anything close to £25 for a game if I didn’t have to.

I know this is purely a publicity stunt, and it’s one that Eidos really needs to work if it’s going to break Sports Interactive’s stranglehold on the football management genre, but does an ‘honesty box’ sales model have any long-term merit in the games market? Leave your thoughts in the comments below.

The era of the low-budget game pretty much died with the Commodore 64, Spectrum and Amstrad era. Before long the Amiga and the Atari ST had raised the budget bar to £9.99 – not so much an impulse purchase, as a couple of weeks pocket money at the very least.

Yet, that was nothing compared to the inflation of the console era. New PlayStation titles routinely cost £30. Today, a brand new Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3 title can set you back £50. I sympathise with the parents I see dragging their disappointed offspring away from the game aisles in Tesco, explaining they simply can’t afford the latest releases. For my mum it was a couple quid on top of her copy of the Daily Mail and Woman’s Weekly; for today’s mums it’s almost as much as the weekly shopping bill.

However, one recent breakthrough has renewed hope of a return to the “golden age of gaming” – and it comes in the unlikely form of the iPhone. The iPhone Apps store is selling low-budget games by the bucketload, many of them far cheaper than the £2.99 bargains I was plucking out of Smiths in 1985. The Guardian’s superb games reviewer Nick Gillett picked his top 10 iPhone games at the weekend, and no fewer than four of them cost only 59p. The most expensive on his list is Beatmaker at £11.99, but that’s the only one more expensive than £2.99.

I don’t own an iPhone, but my brother-in-law does. Every time we see him, my four-year-old daughter sidles up to him and asks if she can have a go on Flight Control, a ridiculously addictive game where you take on the role of an air-traffic controller, bringing planes in to land and sending them on their merry way again. It’s about a million times better than I make it sound.

Yes, I know the iPhone hardware’s expensive, but so was the Commodore 64 (my dad paid £399 for ours).  And given the choice of forking out 59p to keep my daughter entertained with a new game every week, instead of £40 or £50 on the Wii or Xbox 360, I know which one I’ll be going for.

You see, Daggerfall wasn’t coded so much as assembled out of dark matter. That 150MB contains a huge landscape filled with thousands of towns, dungeons and happenings. It’s randomly generated meaning that after a few hours you’ll inevitably find yourself wandering down the same section of corridor for the eighth time, but it’s still quite an incredible sight when you first clap eyes on that immense game map.

I remember playing Daggerfall obsessively for about a month when it came out, and to this day it stands out as one of my happiest gaming experiences. Up until that point, the games I’d played had held my hand and gently shooed me towards a destination. Admittedly there was probably some face-eating zombie fiend at the end of that outstretched finger, but they were still gentle in comparison to Daggerfall. This was a game that kicked your out on your arse 10 seconds after you’d completed the Character Generation process, leaving you to work it out for yourself.

And there was a lot to work out. Crafting your own spells, buying houses, riding horses, joining competing guilds, trading, becoming a vampire, werewolf or rather splendid wereboar were among the millions of things you could run off and do. Well, supposedly. I reckon that around 57% of the game worked. The rest was buggier than a tramp’s beard. It didn’t matter, the sheer ambition of the thing was dizzying; which as any avid gamer will tell you is often enough of an apology within itself.

So here it is, Oblivion’s sire, available for free. The graphics are terrible, the sound sucks, and much of it is broke. It’s also massive, ridiculously ambitious, and it’ll run on your watch. It’s also free. Go play.

It’s the biggest show of the year, where Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo deliver keynote presentations, and, even though it’s easy to get caught up in Project Natal and the PSP Go, plenty of exciting PC news has emerged from E3.

Here, we’ve sifted through the dodgy RTS titles and lazy console ports to pick out the most important PC gaming stories to emerge from the three-day conference, so take a look at our top stories and let us know what you think.

The Return of Monkey Island – it’s been off the radar since “Escape From…” was released at the turn of the Millennium, but Tales of Monkey Island has been announced as a five-part episodic release in a similar vein to the last couple of Sam & Max titles.

Original Monkey Island impresario Ron Gilbert was only involved in the initial conceptual stages, but the project is headed up by Dave Grossman, who helped write and program the first two titles, and several other key team members – including composer Michael Land – are working on the project. And, unlike several ‘release TBA’ games from the conference, the first episode is set to be released on 7 July.

Oh, and did we mention that The Secret of Monkey Island is also being re-released, with revamped graphics, re-recorded music and new voice-overs? Superb.

Crysis 2 announced – the original is still one of the most demanding titles that a PC can face, with the majority of machines in the PC Pro Labs unable to run the game on its highest settings.

Crysis 2 looks to be just as technically challenging. It’s the first game to use the CryEngine 3, which Crytek has promised will work with both a broader range of PC hardware as well as PS3 and Xbox 360. As of yet, there’s no release date so, by the time it eventually emerges, the ATI 6000-series – or whatever the latest GPU is then – might be able to cope.

Mass Effect 2 – the first Mass Effect was a revelation: fantastic sci-fi storytelling mixed with action-packed combat and production levels that put plenty of movies to shame.

The sequel promises all this and more, with a world crammed with more detail and better graphics: Alan Shepard had 20 cover animations in the first game, we’re now assured he has around 200. Overkill? Perhaps. We’ll have to wait until spring 2010, though, for this hugely anticipated sequel.

Indie Innovation – Indiecade is a roving organisation that celebrates independent development, and its booth at E3 is ‘the de facto lounge for indie developers’ according to Celia Pearce, Indiecade’s E3 Festival Chair. The last two years’ E3 finalists have included Braid, And Yet It Moves, Machinarium and Everyday Shooter, so there’s plenty for this year’s contenders to live up to.

They might have a good chance of that, too: Blueberry Garden has already won an award at 2009’s Independent Games Festival and indie star And Yet It Moves is now being ported to the Nintendo Wii. The 2009 winners are announced in October, so keep an eye out.

Aliens vs Predator – the last PC AvP game was 2002’s woeful Primal Hunt. Sega’s reboot of the franchise, though, has fans excited – not least because it’s being developed by Rebellion, the studio behind the classic 1999 release of the same name. Once again, spring 2010 is listed as the release date, so you’ve got some time to stock up on  fresh underwear before taking to those dark corridors once again.

Left 4 Dead 2 – making its unexpected debut at E3 was Left 4 Dead 2, the sequel to Valve’s tense, action-packed and zombie-fuelled shooter. Gabe Newell’s groundbreaking studio has promised more sophistication this time around, including AI that learns your strengths and weakness, alongside new classes and weapons.

However, keen players of the original have lambasted Valve for neglecting the original title in favour of its sequel, even calling for a boycott of the game. Nevertheless, it’s looking superb – wade into the zombie apocalypse from 17 November.

Star Wars: The Old Republic – Star Wars games have a chequered history: for every TIE Fighter there’s a Rebel Assault 2. Luckily, The Old Republic is a sequel to the two Knights of the Old Republic titles, developed by Bioware (of Mass Effect, Neverwinter Knights and Baulders’ Gate fame) and taking place 3,700 years before the movies.

While previous games have been single player, this new title is an MMORPG, with your character siding with either the Galactic Republic or Sith Empire. So, just to recap, it’s an MMO set in the Star Wars universe and developed by masters of the RPG art. A World of Warcraft beater? It’s a big ask but, surely, no other franchise has as much potential as this. It’s just a shame that no firm release date has been confirmed.

Franchise Players – While plenty of original titles were announced at the expo, plenty of established franchises have seen new titles introduced, too. Just Cause 2 promises bigger guns, better bad guys and more action movie madness, and DIRT 2 will include a better world tour mode and new stadium events.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 is the sequel to Call of Duty 4 and details are scarce at the moment: we know that at least some of the game is set in Russia, Afghanistan and Brazil. Two more highly-anticipated sequels, Supreme Commander 2 and the online-only Final Fantasy XIV, are both slated for release next year.

Brink – Splash Damage began life as mod-makers in 2001, making highly-popular mods for Quake 3 and custom maps for LAN parties and TV shows. Its map-making prowess was recognised by id Software, who tasked it with creating successful multiplayer titles Return to Castle Wolfenstein and Enemy Territory: Quake Wars.

Brink is Splash Damage’s first original IP and first title since partnering with Fallout 3 publisher Bethesda. Little is known about the new FPS, which has been described by Bethesda MD Sean Brennan as being a ‘killer app’, a ‘genre breaker’ and ‘along the same lines as Fallout 3’ for quality and scope. Potentially revolutionary.

Delay of OnLive in Europe – OnLive made a huge, incredulous splash when its creators announced a system for streaming any game to a PC or Mac, no matter what its specification. In theory, it could mean Crysis on a nettop, and it’s been backed by Warner Bros and other big games – Tom Clancy’s HAWX, Race Driver GRID and Crysis Warhead are already listed by OnLive’s site.

However, for no news to emerge during E3 seems fishy – and has done little to dissipate the gaming community’s assumption that OnLive is far, far too good to be true. It’ll debut in America before the end of the year but there’s no European release data yet, so the days of upgrading graphics cards might not be quite so numbered after all.

So, those are our ten top stories to have emerged from three frantic days of launches, press conferences and schmoozing – but what do you think? Which games are you looking forward to and which do you reckon will crash and burn? Let us know your E3 thoughts in the comments below.

Not too long ago now, I found myself sitting in a wheelchair parked in the corner of an A&E department in Staffordshire. It wasn’t the Saturday afternoon I’d been hoping for.

My bicycle and I had parted ways at a crucial moment in the day’s riding. It had selfishly decided that it didn’t want to accompany me all the way to the bottom of the hill, and its decision saw me hurtle skyward, soar head-first over a sizeable mound of earth, and come to rest abruptly against a tree stump lurking on the other side. 

It’s been five weeks since the tree-hugging incident, and I’m now the proud owner of a fetching blue felt sling, a newly reconstructed collarbone, and a right arm I can’t do a hell of a lot with. I’ll readily admit that, at first, the thought of recovering at home proved alluring. I imagined myself making music on my PC, playing games for hours on end and watching movies until I fell asleep. Breaking bones didn’t seem so bad after all.  

Then, it dawned on me. Sling-bound as it was, my right hand wasn’t actually going to be much use. Being right-handed, that meant I couldn’t effectively pilot a crayon, let alone a mouse, and suddenly every game or application that required precise mouse control was out the window. The delightful, motion-sensing cleverness of Nintendo’s Wii proved unworkable too: every shake and flourish of the controller, however gentle, sent ripples of pain throbbing through my shoulder.

Books and movies were going to be sufficient to allay some of the boredom, but my gaming options were running out, and fast. The mouse felt awkward and unfamiliar in my left-hand, and sitting at a desk proved uncomfortable. I needed to find games which I could play on a laptop, whilst sitting on the sofa, and ideally with one hand, too.

Bugger.

I haven’t spent the last five weeks sprawled in front of daytime TV, gawking at those that evolution forgot on the Jeremy Kyle show, however. Old favourites such as Trackmania Nations Forever and World of Goo have gamely stepped in to fill the gaming void, and the delightfully brain-teasing platformer, Braid, has sapped many hours of my house arrest.  The arrows on my cursor keys have already begun to look a little worn, but my sanity is, unlike my creaky and ever-painful collarbone, intact.

But the one problem online retailers have is capturing the browsing shopper. With only a home page to compete with the highly visible displays in most shop windows, it’s not easy to simply wander around an online store and spot something you may not have been looking for.

Step forward Amazon WindowShop.

Like Apple’s Cover Flow after a couple of Pro Plus and six cans of Red Bull, it’s basically a huge grid of the latest and best offerings from Amazon, easily navigated with the cursor keys. Flick through the bestselling DVDs of the week, the artists Amazon thinks you should hear and editors picks of the latest novels.

It’s all very slick, but all seems a little pointless – until you actually see what Amazon is offering you. Press Space to zoom in on an item and the appeal becomes clear: audio extracts from books and CDs, video clips and trailers for DVDs and games, including extras or interviews and anything else that may accompany a particular product. And if that’s not hypnotic enough, you can buy anything you like right there and then.

Our only real concern is in the name – WindowShop. Could it be that, as with most branches of Borders and Waterstones these days, it just further narrows most people’s taste range to the few heavily-marketed products that are waved before their eyes as they walk through the door?

I’d like to believe it heralds a new generation of web shops, but I can’t help thinking it’ll simply be used to sell more copies of High School Musical to people who really should be buying The Wire.