Here’s a roundup of today’s news found elsewhere on the internet:

Hendrix: Rock Band rumor is just that – a rumor, says Harmonix (vg247) - Rumors floating about the net earlier in the day had Harmonix working on a Hendrix-centric Rock Band title.

Turns out, that is not the case.

It all started thanks to a comment Hendrix’s stepsister, Janie Hendrix, made to the LA Times.

In the article, she states that a inked deal with Sony would make his music “available through every type of media” which included a new edition of Rock Band slated before the end of this year.

When contacted, Harmonix denied it, leading one to believe there was either an apparent miscommunication somewhere down the line.

“While we have not made any official announcements regarding Jimi Hendrix and Rock Band, but we are excited to say that we are in discussions to bring more of his music to our platform. Stay tuned,” the spokesperson told IGN.

This means that Hendrix music could land in the form of DLC or on Rock Band 3, which Dhani Harrison is reportedly helping with.

Either way, it looks like “new” music from Hendrix is in our future one way or another – a new album of “long-buried recordings” called Valleys of Neptune is to be released March 9.

Atkinson: My family is at risk from angry gamers (gamesindustry.biz) - South Australian Attorney-General Michael Atkinson, an outspoken opponent of violent videogames, has said that his family have been threatened more frequently by angry gamers than by disgruntled bikers - another group of people he has riled with his political views.

"I feel that my family and I are more at risk from gamers than we are from the outlaw motorcycle gangs who also hate me and are running a candidate against me," Atkinson told ABC TV's Good Game, as reported by news.com.au.

"The outlaw motorcycle gangs haven't been hanging around my doorstop at 2am. A gamer has," he added.

According to Atkinson, a "threatening note from a gamer" was placed under his door one morning.
The debate over whether an 18+ age rating should be introduced for videogames has picked up pace in recent months as the Australian industry lobbies for such a law to be passed.

Currently, Australia is the only Western country to disallow the release of games that do not adhere to the requirements of a 15 certificate. Even though there is an 18 rating for films.

According to recent polls carried out in the country, between 91 and 97 per cent of people think that 18 rated games should be made available.

However, Atkinson has been clear in the past on his own personal views on violent games, although he has also said that his opinion on them is unimportant.

Talking about his constituents in a letter to The Advertiser last year, Atkinson wrote:

"Their vote is hardly likely to hinge on the 'right' to score gamer points on the computer screen by running down and killing pedestrians on the pavement, raping a mother and her two daughters, blowing oneself up in a market, cutting people in half with large calibre shells, injecting drugs to win an athletics event or killing a prostitute to recover the fee one just paid her. (Welcome to the world of R18+ computer games)."

Assassin's Creed II PC's DRM Sounds As Pleasant As A Stab In The Neck (Kotaku) - We've known for sometime that Ubisoft's plans to curb piracy on the PC will include a required internet connection to play the publisher's games, including the upcoming release of Assassin's Creed II. But we didn't know it was this unsavory.

We've known that there is no "off-line" option, as clearly specified in Ubisoft's online services Q&A and that, should your internet connection be interrupted at any time while playing, it's unplayable until that connection is restored. But PC Gamer's hands-on experience with Assassin's Creed II and Settlers VII sounds worse than we'd expected.

"If you get disconnected while playing, you're booted out of the game," PC Gamer's Tom Francis writes. "All your progress since the last checkpoint or savegame is lost, and your only options are to quit to Windows or wait until you're reconnected."

And if you have a rock solid, up 24/7 connection? There's still potential bad news, as "any time Ubisoft's 'Master servers' are down for any reason, everyone playing a current Ubisoft game is kicked out of it and loses their progress."

To be clear, that's PC Gamer's experience with the PC version of Assassin's Creed II, not ours. We've reached out to Ubisoft reps to get comment on the report. They initially directed us to the online services Q&A linked earlier and promised a forthcoming statement. We'll update when that happens.

Garriott returns to games with new social company Portalarium (gamesindustry.biz) - Ultima Online designer Richard Garriott has announced his return to the games business with a new social media company Portalarium.

The new venture will release online games applications, with the intention to expand into content as far reaching as open learning, health, science and environmental services, all contained in a virtual world and online social space.

"The Portalarium mission is exactly what I want to be doing next in games," said Garriott.

"This really takes me back to my roots in the game business – small development teams, low barriers to entry, affordable budgets for quality projects, and unlimited new interactive frontiers to explore together with our customers."

Joining Garriott will be Dallas Snell and Fred Schmidt, both of whom worked with him at ORIGIN Systems, Electronic Arts and NCsoft. Completing the team is Stephen Nichols, a 17-year veteran who most recently worked on Dungeon Runners for NCsoft.

The first product from the company is the Portalarium Player, a plug-in that permits games built on a variety of engines, including Flash, to run inside social networks such as Facebook.

The company's first game, Sweet @$! Poker, is already running on the service, with the plug-in being developed to work on MySpace, iPhone and Android devices.

Garriott has had a number of years off from the games business, after falling out with employer NCsoft after the failure of MMO Tabula Rasa. He is currently suing the company for $24 million.