'Oh dear, Viacom... ' is trade paper MCV's fine headline this week. The story is about how Viacom (the US media giants who own Blockbuster) spent $15 million offloading Virgin in last year's management buyout, and now Titus have bought Virgin in a deal which values the latter at $50 million. Nice work if you can get it. We can't. MCV Editor Stuart Dinsey points out how quickly fortunes can change in the videogames industry, naming Virgin, Take 2 and Sega as examples of companies who were in the doldrums this time last year.

Another front page story in MCV relates to a surprise return to publishing for erstwhile System 3 boss Mark Cale. System 3 were a successful outfit in the 1980s and early 1990s, but closed due to financial problems. Now operating under the name Studio 3, Cale has lined up a slew of titles for release next year, the first of which is to be International Karate for Game Boy Color.

NovaLogic are bringing their PC military sims to the next generation of consoles, according to MCV. "Up to now, consoles just haven't been powerful enough to do our games justice, particularly because of the technologies we use, such as voxels," said Novalogic's wonderfully-named Georgina Worsley-Winteringham.

Computer Trade Weekly (CTW) lead on the Virgin sale and Dreamcast's launch success. On the latter, Sega boss JF Cecillion is quoted as saying, "I could not be happier. We're at the end of the race and then we get five minutes to sit down, have a quick drink, before the second marathon starts after that." Take a week off, JF, eh?

Konami have more than doubled their financial projections for 1999/2000 after floating on the London stock exchange, according to CTW. Profits of £85 million are projected (a 300 per cent increase on last year). That's a lot of ISS Pro's they're going to have to shift...