Five stories occupy space on this week's CTW cover. The main one concerns Sony's new licensee model for third-party publishers that could see drastically cheaper PlayStation games arriving in the shops in the near future. Imagine, brand-new games for a mere £9.99. Makes you drool, doesn't it? Unless they're crap, of course. The paper's second main story concerns veteran UK developers Software Creations heading for the stock market next year. Their third and fourth cover stories are also financial and cover Sci's move to the main list of the Stock Market (the company was originally floated on the Alternative Investment Market, AIM, in 1996) and developers Argonaut Software, who are looking to float on the Stock Exchange later this month. The fifth cover story concerns Planet Distribution taking over the games business of Startle Distribution. Our fave bit of news this week is the story that starts off, "Wild Things are to pass cheaper manufacturing costs onto retailers this week, resulting in a 15 per cent drop in the cost to retailers on KickBack 2, their PlayStation double impact feedback gamepad." Groovy stuff.

Four stories occupy the front of this week's MCV, the main one being the new licensee model for third-party publishers from Sony. The news that Take 2 have signed the first game from new UK developers Lost Toys also takes front page space, as do the stories that Virgin have tempted marketing guru Sean Ratcliffe (who he? - Ed) away from Electronic Arts and that Sega are about to announce losses to the tune of $411 million for the financial year to March. Apparently Dreamcast hasn't sold as well as they'd hoped in Japan, but European and US sales are looking good.