"Better than the Yanks" is the front page headline in MCV this week. The story pertains to the phenomenal success of Codemasters in the past couple of years. Indeed, MCV reveal that Codies' profits rose a quite outrageous 277 per cent to £27.2m in the year to April 30. Probably something to do with TOCA and Colin McRae Rally.

The other major front page news in MCV regards the Office of Fair Trading's decision not to investigate price-fixing of PlayStation games. The statement came after a story in The Express, headlined "Video Games Price Probe", which turned out to be an ill-judged, under-researched piece on the recent drop in the price of games. Essentially, the piece accused retailers of operating a cartel.

MCV also report that the PlayStation market dipped a tad last week after the decision that £29.99 was too cheap for a compact disc. Newies Syphon Filter and Silent Hill sold 14,200 and 12,500 respectively, while Driver earned £900,627 this week.

"I am not looking forward to PlayStation 2," Resident Evil and Dino Crisis supremo Shinji Mikami told MCV. He added: "While the PlayStation 2 has been proved to set the level of game much higher, it will offer little in the way of improvements when it comes to gameplay." Get him!

CTW lead with news of Blockbuster's decision to run a three month PC software rental experiment. You'll be able to rent out titles such as Tomb Raider lll, Actua Soccer 3 and Colin McRae Rally.

Another story regards Konami's PlayStation thriller Silent Hill. Labour MP Paul Goggins has written to the Home Secretary to ask what can be done to limit the sales of this kind of scary game. Funny name, Goggins, eh?

PlayStation 2 will lead the games market in 2003, according to a Datamonitor report in CTW. Datamonitor sent a man into the next century, and when he got back he told his bosses that PS2 was selling like hotcakes in Comet & Spencers. Facile drivel aside (no, really), the report estimates that Sony will continue to dominate the market, with Sega's Dreamcast falling by the wayside (wherever that is) due to "lack of brand loyalty and industry support". They don't pull their punches, this Datamonitor lot.