Video Games

Battlefield: Back To Karland Set For December Release

Battlefield fans have been waiting to go Back to Karkland since the DLC was announced prior to the release of Battlefield 3 and EA and DICE have released a bunch of new info and a gameplay video for the upcoming expansion pack/DLC. Check it out below:

Back to Kirkland is the first DLC Map Pack for Battlefield 3 and aims to reintroduce four maps from Battlefield 2. The maps in question are Strike at Karkland, Gulf of Oman, Sharqi Peninsula and Wake Island. As well as new maps, the DLC is also going to add some new weapons, vehicles and achievements to the game’s multiplayer.

Counter-Strike: Global Offensive Open Beta Set Launches Next Week

Anticipation is high for the sequel to one of the bigget online first person shooters of all time and Valve have announced that the closed beta for Counter Strike: Global Offensive will begin next week. The closed beta will allow gamers with keys to try out two of the new maps (Dust and Dust2). While Valve aim to start the beta small, they have said that they will be quickly opening up the beta to larger and larger amounts of players.

Jak and Daxter Collection Officially Annouced by Sony

In a move that is not surprising to anyone, and that has been leaked multiple times before its official announcement, the Jak and Daxter HD Trilogy is coming to Playstation 3 this February.

  The contents of the package are each of the three original Jak and Daxter games. With the last game in the package (Jak 3) being released in 2004, it does give each of the games a sense of nostalgia, which is ultimately what Sony wants to happen. On the Playstation Blog (where this story was officially dropped), the response has been overwhelmingly good, which in my opinion is what is needed at this point in time.  As of right now, the video game market has slowed down, but a large resurgence will come in February with releases likeMass Effect 3, Bioshock Infinite and (a bit later) Max Payne 3, and I wouldn’t be surprised if Sony timed the Jak and Daxter Collection to release at that time to boost first party support.

Happy Birthday PlayStation 3

The PlayStation 3 turned 5 years old on November 17th.  The PlayStation
brand struggled through some dark times in the early days of the PS3
launch.  The PSP was decimated by the Nintendo DS and the PS3 was a year
behind on an XBox360 that was just starting to hit its stride.  With a
staggering price point of $600.00 and a relatively weak launch line up,
year one was looking pretty grim.  Sales were meager in the first years
of the PS3’s life.  Sony, to their credit, never gave up.

Why All Games Shouldn’t Be $60

The games industry has faced more change in the last five years than it
has had in probably the combined 20 years before that. We’ve seen the
rise of downloadable games, indie games and DLC, which expands a game’s
longevity. We’ve seen components of games getting locked off for used
buyers unless they spend an extra $10. DRM has become more intrusive
than ever, and then it kind of-sort of went away. The cost of developing
games has skyrocketed, and so too have the marketing budgets. After
all, if a game has cost millions of dollars to make, you want to make
sure it sells millions of copies, right? These are the so-called
Triple-A games: games coming out at $60 that the publisher has clearly
put a lot of marketing and development muscle behind. In all these
changing economic conditions, though, one thing hasn’t changed too much:
most console games still cost $60 at retail, regardless of the amount
of cash spent developing or marketing the title. Surely all games aren’t
created equal, so why the uniform approach to pricing in the retail
space, especially compared to the changes the downloadable marketplace
has brought with it?

Microsoft Confirms Halo 4 Will be Released in Current Generation

Despite increasingly frequent rumors
that the next Xbox will launch in 2012, Microsoft has confirmed that Halo 4 will launch as an Xbox 360 title.
Halo 4 has been given a launch
release window of Q4 2012, which is also the prominent rumor of the next Xbox’s
release. This has led some to believe that Master Chief’s latest adventure will
be a launch title for the next Xbox.

Microsoft Battles Pirates With “Silent” Update

Pirates, beware: Microsoft is once
again cracking down on pirates and their modded Xbox 360s, and it looks to be
extremely effective. The latest update, which happens without the user’s
consent, updates the console’s “dae.bin” file. The update adds unique data to
each console, which allows Microsoft to flag consoles and trace the users who
distribute their dae.bin file. Users who play discs with the AP 2.5 disc
protection will immediately receive a flag on their console, which could then
lead to a ban. The update is said to be “silent,” installing automatically
without the user being aware of it. Once the update is complete, users who try
to play their pirated games will discover an “Unsupported disc” error. Further,
users will be banned from online multiplayer.