Another week gone by, another week begun and that means, you guessed it, another week of News Pop!. We're going to start this week off in a similar fashion to last week, with a store stock check. Nintendo DS Lites have disappeared from store shelves. Seriously, we haven't been able to find a single place that has received a new shipment in the past week. All Playstation hardware can be found easily at any major chain, and if you didn't have a reason to get a PS3 before, you've got one now because of Folding@home. If you still can't afford a PS3, don't feel bad we can't either, then you can also download the Folding@home program for PCs at the project's website. The only difference, of course, is that the PS3 is a heck of a lot faster. Xbox 360 hardware can be found pretty much everywhere, and we're still seeing some Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter packs in some places, so if you wanted that you might have to go looking, but it's available. Even original Xbox, and we're talking unopened box, can still be found in a lot of places, even though most, if not all, companies have discontinued it.

And now we get to the Wiis. Anybody who has gone into any store in Canada in the past week or so to look for one has probably been disappointed. Well, we've got good news, for those of you that are patient anyway. Some of you may recall our little quip last week about Toys'R'Us being a repeat offender in holding Wiis for bi-weekly flyers. Guess what. This week is a flyer week for that store, so if EB Games, Best Buy or Future Shop, etc. don't have any, we can guarantee, with an extremely low chance of error (at least in Canada), that Toys'R'Us stores across the country will have Wiis when they open their doors this Saturday morning. If you aren't patient, though, who knows, maybe if you're really friendly with your local EB Games employee, he/she will give you a really good approximation of when the next shipment will be coming in. And now, back to our regularly scheduled announcements.

EA and Nettwerk create music label

We've got to admit, we really didn't see this one coming. Electronic Arts announced the beginning of a joint venture with Nettwerk today, called “Artwerk”. The project will essentially be a full blown music label, merging Nettwerk's management, publishing and digital delivery know-how with EA's promotion power from its in-game music marketing. The label has even signed one artist already, Junkie XL, whose work has already been featured in some of EA's games. EA will even be using EA Trax to take submissions from unknown artists who want to make a name for themselves. To check out EA Trax or find out how to submit a demo, check out www.ea.com/eatrax.

EA shipment news

It seems we don't really have much else to talk about today other than EA. The company began shipping Medal of Honor Vanguard and Command and Conquer 3 Tiberium Wars today. Vanguard will be available for Playstation 2 and Wii and, of course, the Wii version will take full advantage of the motion sensitive controls, really bringing the FPS genre to a much higher plane (much like the other FPS games currently available for Wii). And Command and Conquer is finally back with Tiberium Wars, only for PC. The new game will feature an entirely new single player campaign, as well as full blown online battles, next-gen graphics and voice acting from the likes of Michael Ironside (Sam Fisher – Splinter Cell), Billy Dee Williams (Lando Calrissian – Star Wars movies and games). Both games should arrive on store shelves either tomorrow or Wednesday.