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With Intel's competitor (AMD) having snapped up ATI, would it make sense to buy the other major graphics vendor (Nvidia) to stay competitive ? I guess that would make sense as Intel has already lost market share and is likely eager to make up on it. So the market is now flushed with tons of rumours of this impending takeover.

Buying Nvidia won't be cheap as Nvidia's market capitalisation is almost $11bn, and it would be double that of what AMD paid for ATI ($5.4bn). And then Intel just recently pumped $10m in K-based graphics technology developer Imagination Technologies for a continued partnership. So does Intel have a big piggy bank ?

Intel to take over Nvidia ?

Xbox Live Arcade on Xbox 360 has made a lot of substantial money, both for Microsoft and for the third party publishers and developers releasing Live Arcade games. With cool titles such as Bizarre Creations' 2D shooter Geometry Wars and Capcom's Street Fighter II' Hyper Fighting, they've garnered a huge following. So its natural that they want to port this success over to the Windows Vista segment and Microsoft's Andre "Ozymandias" Vrignaud has on his blog, shed some light on the subject matter at hand.

Shacknews has learned from reputable sources who wish to remain nameless that Microsoft plans to introduce what seems to be a Windows gaming service called "Panorama."

Apparently, Panorama will be a part of Windows Vista and will act essentially as Xbox Live Arcade for Windows. PC gamers will be able to not only play Live Arcade games, but will also be able to engage in multiplayer gaming versus gamers playing on the Xbox 360 version of the service. It does not appear that Panorama emulates the Xbox 360 environment, which suggests that developers creating cross-platform compatible Live Arcade games may have to release two versions, one for each platform. However, Microsoft tools such as XNA should expedite this process.