Archived News:
Amazon now offers preorders of World of Warcraft: Cataclysm for North America and the UK. The NA listing carries no release date while the UK version shows a September 3, 2010 release date, which is probably just a guess, as no release date for the expansion has been announced. Thanks IncGamers, where they have listed their extensive efforts at calculating when Cataclysm might be released by analyzing the historical trends of WoW preorder dates compared with release dates.
There's a State of the Game Report on the Star Trek Online Website where Cryptic discusses progress on beta testing Star Trek Online, the upcoming MMORPG. They discuss stability and performance, plans to tweak alpha strikes, tweaking Klingons, new bridge officers, exploration improvements, plans to remove the level cap, and more.
In anticipation of the Paradox Interactive Convention 2010, Paradox Interactive announces details about a pair of upcoming games. There's a brief word on Vainglory of Nations, saying this historical wargame is still scheduled for release towards the end of 2010. They also offer details on Rise of Prussia, the strategy game they picked up when they acquired AGEOD. They say Rise of Prussia will be available Q1/Q2 2010, and the new feature list follows. Continue here to read the full story.
Steam News announces the release of a new Steam client. Here's the change list. Continue here to read the full story.
Ubisoft is planning on reducing its investment in licensed properties, reports MCV, where they quote Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot telling investors: "The goal is to reduce the investment in licenses, and put more emphasis on making our brands bigger and to release them more often, with very high quality." This follows the same theme as another recent Avatar postmortem that contrasted the game's failures with the movie's successes. According to Guillemot: "It doesn't mean we will stop, but we are going to spend less on licenses in the future."
Computer and Video Games has an excerpt from the latest issue of PC Zone magazine where 2K Marin discusses the multiplayer support in BioShock 2, the submerged shooter sequel. Apparently they think folks are saying multiplayer support is being "just shoved on" to the sequel., because they want to defend against that charge. "Multiplayer is a big part of Bioshock 2 and it certainly wasn't something where we thought: 'Oh, let's just shove a multiplayer mode on,'" says 2K Marin senior producer Melissa Miller. "We went to a lot of trouble [to ensure] that it was something that would fit properly into the Rapture universe and gameplay-wise."
Valve's Robin Walker is the subject of a new Team Fortress 2 interview on CommunityFortress discussing the teamplay shooter sequel. Specific topics include the recent Demoman/Soldier war, their schedule (or lack thereof) for updating their blog, how they still have "multiple updates" planned, how they buy community maps, adapting the L4D2 matchmaking system to Team Fortress 2, plans to tweak drop rates, and more.
- Age of Conan: Rise of the Godslayer on Massively. With a video previewing the Chosain Province.
- Aliens vs. Predator on IGN. The Ten Commandments of Aliens vs. Predator.
- Star Trek Online on GameSpot.
- Jumpgate Evolution on MMORPG.com. That title rings a bell.
A new Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 patch is now available automatically through Steam offering some tweaks and fixes for Infinity Ward's military shooter sequel, as outlined in the patch notes below. Continue here to read the full story.
Steam News announces the availability of a new automatic update for Zero Gear, the kart racing and combat simulation. The change list follows. Continue here to read the full story.
Two more DLC packs for Railworks are available on Steam, the TEA Bogie Tank Wagon Pack Add-on and the Mk1 Coach Pack Add-on. These are the 24th and 25th add-ons for the transport simulator.
There's a new N7 diary video with a look at the N7 side research missions in Mass Effect 2, describing how these optional missions impact the single player campaign. This also includes a look at how Commander Shepard can be customized in BioWare's upcoming RPG sequel. There's also an update to the Arsenal/Armor Page outlining the N7 special issue combat armor for Systems Alliance military, offering some details and screenshots. The diary video is embedded below. Continue here to read the full story.
"Not Just Another Hero" is a video trailer from Brink with a preview of character customization in Splash Damage's upcoming first-person shooter. The clip is narrated by Paul Westwood who shows off his tats and radical haircut as well as different body archetypes, describing how they impact gameplay. Other aesthetic choices are shown, including clothing options, color choices, hair and skin customization, and more. The clip is posted on VG247.
The ESRB has rating information for Lost Planet 2 indicating a Windows edition of the third-person shooter sequel is in the works, something that was hinted back in April 2009 (thanks Big Download). The ESRB lists Lost Planet 2 for Windows PC, PlayStation 3, and Xbox 360, and offers a description of the game, jiggling breasts, exposed buttocks, and all. Continue here to read the full story.
Paradox Interactive announces Achtung Panzer: Kharkov 1943, a war strategy title set during World War II's third battle of Kharkov. The game is planned for release in the first quarter of this year, and they say: "With the ability to play as either German or Russian forces, Achtung Panzer puts the destiny of the USSR and Wehrmacht armies in one's hands." This page has details on the game, which has its own Facebook page if you want to be its BFF, and the Achtung Panzer: Kharkov 1943 announcement trailer is on the YouTube. More details on features follow. Continue here to read the full story.
SEGA has released an Aliens vs. Predator "Kill Moves" trailer with an incredibly fast-paced look at some of the creativity aliens and predators tend to show in dispatching their victims. The clip is available on the YouTube and embedded below. Continue here to read the full story.
HanbitSoft has acquired worldwide publishing rights Hellgate: London, and plans to relaunch the action/RPG in China, Taiwan, and South East Asia, followed by the game's return to North America, Europe, and Japan. Says Kee-Young Kim, CEO of HanbitSoft: "Hellgate: Resurrection is heading towards success in Korea such that we decided to push ahead with launching the game overseas next year. We will do our best to get the game to the fans as soon as possible." Hellgate London closed early last year following the closure of Flagship Studios, and HanbitSoft has repeatedly indicated interest in returning the game to the west, but NAMCO BANDAI owned the game's European and North American rights until now. "We are pleased to participate in the revitalization of Hellgate through this agreement and are deeply gratified to allow Hanbitsoft to take the lead on this franchise and bring this game to the people who seek it," says Zack Karlsson, senior director of business development at NAMCO BANDAI Games America.
The Mass Effect 2 interview on guardian.co.uk talks with BioWare producer Adrien Cho about the upcoming RPG sequel. The conversation invokes the Modern Warfare series a couple of times as part of the gradual repositioning of the Mass Effect series as more of a shooter, though they maintain the game's role-playing does not suffer along the way: "When Mass Effect came out it was fairly unique. There was nothing else really like it around and it set a benchmark. It was the first game to really meld shooting and role playing games. I call it a Sci-Fi action/RPG/Shooter. So we haven't taken away any of this for Mass Effect 2. What we have done is focus on the shooter aspects more. We wanted to make it more visceral. We did this because we wanted to open up the audience to gamers who like Gears of War or Modern Warfare and introduce them to a genre that they may normally ignore. The upshot of this is they may notice the great things about Bioware games such as believable characters and great stories. If you can convince them that this is a fantastic shooter but then they will discover that there is so much more to Mass Effect 2 than that." Thanks Joker961.
It's not certain Sam Raimi's next film will be Warcraft, reports Dark Horizons, in spite of speculation that the RPG-based flick would be the director's next project after Spider-Man 4 plans imploded. They quote Raimi's producing partner Robert Tapert saying a next project has not been determined, and he may do "teeny, tiny small film." As for the Warcraft move, Tapert says: "It's in development. We're in the outline/story/script phase". Thanks Ant.
VentureBeat has a follow-up to recent comments by former EA exec Mitch Lasky that criticized EA's business dealings. They quote Jeff Brown, EA head of corporate communications, saying: "Mitch needs to try de-caf. It’s never easy being turned down for a job, but most people don’t spend three years obsessing about it. Since Mitch left EA, Apple invented the iPhone, Facebook evolved to include a gaming platform and EAMobile became the world leader." Aside from the personal attack, Lasky's comments about EA's business go unaddressed. Thanks MCV.
The MechWarrior: Living Legends Website now offers a patch to update this MechWarrior-inspired Crysis modification to version 0.1.0. A large number of changes are included in the new version, and the patch does not require the hotfix be installed.
Ars Technica - What we (and Activision) learned from Modern Warfare 2.
Price matters... PC gaming doesn't matter... You can shove the gaming press around... Microsoft giveth, and Microsoft taketh away.
- Intel H55, H57 Chipsets on iXBT Labs.
- In Win AMMO Case on PureOC.
- Kingston HyperX 4GB Kit 1600MHz RAM on Bjorn3D.com.
- Lacie iamaKey 8 GB Flash Drive on techPowerUp.
- LSI MegaRAID 9280-8E SAS 6G PCIe 2.0 RAID Controller on TweakTown.
- NVIDIA GF100 GPU Fermi Graphics Architecture on Benchmark Reviews, Bjorn3D, Guru3D, Hardware Canucks, HotHardware, Neoseeker, Techgage, and techPowerUp.
- NZXT Gamma Case on Overclockers Online.
- Sapphire ATI Radeon HD 5670 1GB Graphics Card on ThinkComputers.org.
- Seven Intel P55 Motherboards Tested From ASUS, DFI, MSI, GIGABYTE on MADSHRIMPS.
- Zotac IONITX-F-E Mini ITX Motherboard on XtremeComputing.
Redwood let us know that the way URLs were being presented in our Twitter feed was a problem since without the http:// part, links would not launch properly from his reader, which presumably impacted other users as well. Frans fixed this, and now links should launch properly.
Happy Martin Luther King, Jr. Day.
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