Pirates are a rare breed in modern games. However, Tri Synergy and Fireglow Games sent out plans to fill that void with Blackbeard’s Revenge, an upcoming arcade action game set on the high seas. The game will let players lead ships and pirates as they scour the seas for other ships to raid and loot.

The game will feature an island base that players will be use to store resources and use it to build better ships and weapons. Also, enemy ships’ design plans can be taken to build faster ships with better armor and weapons. There will be thirty-five single-player missions, four buildable ships, weather effects and multiplayer play via Internet and LAN.

Blackbeard’s Revenge is expected soon.

2004 saw a reimagining of Sid Meier’s Pirates! on the PC, as well as the Xbox. Now it seems the game is headed for another platform: the PSP. 2K Games and Firaxis Games have announced that the game will be released for the PSP on February 23, 2007.

In Sid Meier’s Pirates!, a strategy/adventure game, players take the role of a Pirate Captain in the 17th century Caribbean - amassing fortune and fame in an attempt to seize a rightful place as one of the most revered and feared pirates in history. Players test their skills as a sea captain exploring the high seas and dueling in land and sea battles in a richly detailed 3D world. Additional features for the PSP system include wireless Ad-Hoc multiplayer for up to four players, widescreen graphics, new treasure hunts and more.

With Triton shutting down, 2K Games has teamed up with Valve to bring a collection of its games to Steam, the latter’s broadband content delivery service.

Sid Meier’s Civilization IV, Civilization III, Shattered Union and Pirates! will be available initially, with more games in the pipeline.

Thanks to Gamasutra’s recent visit to China, the Xbox 360’s piracy situation has come to light. According to this article, the author discovered that game piracy for the next-gen console is “spreading notably” throughout the country, with at least one vendor offering a Xbox 360 game for $3.5 US.

The author tracks it back to a March 2006 event where hackers managed to flash changes to the firmware of the console’s DVD drive, allowing it to run unsigned code. Pirates in the region are basically exploiting this function, allowing for pirates copies of Xbox 360 games to be openly sold in stores. However, it is still low thanks to the high cost of the console, as compared to PS2 and Xbox, relative to average Chinese salaries.

Apparently, many individuals and stores are offering to flash the console’s BIOS to allow piracy. Large selections of pirated Xbox 360 games are also available, including Ninety-Nine Nights, Project Gotham Racing 3 and Fight Night Round 3, according to the article.