On Wednesday (Sept 26), Telewest Blueyonder herded a bunch of journalists and suits into Covent Garden’s glitzy Nutopia, an all-white dungeon populated by tropical fish and broadband-connected computers.

Plying us with champagne and increasingly bizarre and occasionally appetising morsels of food, the cableco. unveiled its new broadband entertainment portal, which will launch to the public shortly. The portal itself is made up of several distinct sections, with music, games and films featuring prominently.

Shortly after midnight, Wednesday, the "Blueyonder multiplayer gaming" was officially launched to the public. You can find it at
http://gaming.blueyonder.co.uk. Telewest Blueyonder customers will get the most from the service, which allows you to purchase 'credits' to dynamically book and launch servers, but anybody can take advantage of features like the server and community areas.

Veterans of the Wireplay forums will no doubt find all their old friends here, and included into the bargain are an advanced web-based IRC chat client (aimed at newcomers, but worth marvelling at even if you are an mIRC diehard), and an instant messenger service which allows you to chat with your friends while you browse the Blueyonder multiplayer gaming website and forums.

The service also features up to date gaming content straight from EuroGamer.

Although the gaming service caters to the hardcore more than anything at the moment, when the main blueyonder site relaunches, casual gamers will be able to take advantage of all manner of web-based games including Pool, crazy golf (mini golf to our friends from foreign lands) and more.

Tom Cotter, head of games strategy, Telewest said: "This is an unparalleled combination of services and support that individual and multiplayer gamers have been demanding from the market for some time. It has been developed by gamers, for gamers and will enable people to enjoy games the way they were always meant to be played - fast, stable, low latency, sociable and easy to set up."

© Eurogamer.net