Saints Row: The Third is releasing today, and many are arguing that the publisher, THQ, is doing the game a disservice by trying to squeeze it in amidst a plethora of big releases like Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary, and Assassin’s Creed: Revelations.
Deep Silver (the creators of the surprise hit Dead Island), just announced that the new DLC for Dead Island will be titled “Bloodbath Arena” and will be released on November 22nd. It sounds like the DLC will add a hoard-type mode, with the addition of four new arenas and a new weapon. News that Dead Island is doing this shouldn’t be much of a surprise, as many of the holiday games that are coming out or have already been released in the past weeks have had a similar type of mode (Gears of War 3, Uncharted 3, Modern Warfare 3, etc.), and with Dead Island’s success, it seems natural that they would follow suit.
The DLC will be released at the lower DLC price of $9.99, but the question that I want to ask is not whether people are still playing Dead Island or not (because the replayability is there), but whether or not this is something that players would want to purchase? At least in recent memory, Gears of War 2 (an exceptional game) brought the idea of Horde mode to prominence, and with all of the other triple-A titles releasing equivalent wave based modes, is 10 dollars the right price to charge for this mode?
Another Call of Duty release, another record-setting launch. Within 24 hours of being released, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 sold over 6.5 million copies in the U.S. and U.K alone. Activision reports that the game generated $400 million in revenue, which topped its predecessors handily: Black Ops’ generated $360 million in 2010 and Modern Warfare 2made $310 million in 2009.
Dubbed “the biggest entertainment launch ever,” Activision CEO Bobby Kotick said that “Life-to-date sales for the Call of Duty franchise exceed worldwide theatrical box office for Star Wars and Lord of the Rings, two of the most successful entertainment franchises of all time.” Microsoft also reported a record amount of users on Xbox Live after Modern Warfare 3 was launched.
Ten years ago it was widely believed that it was impossible to have a truly great First Person Shooter on a gaming consol. Halo was the game that proved it could be done. With a control scheme and design choices that became industry standards, Halo Combat Evolved indisputably earned its place as a classic. Now, ten years to the day of the first game’s launch, 343Industries is releasing an enhanced edition. Our correspondent got some hands-on with it at the New York Comic Con and here’s what we’ve gleaned about Master Chief’s rebirth.
As
every gamer knows, video games are an expensive hobby. So many games are
released in so little time, and the only thing holding you back are those
little green pieces of paper you have (or more likely, don’t have) in your
pocket. This week is especially painful for us gamers without cash, as Halo Anniversary, Saints Row: The Third,
Assassin’s Creed: Revelations, Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3, and Need for Speed:
The Run are all being released. If you only have enough money to buy one
game, which should it be? Assuming your wallet survived the launch of Battlefield 3, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare
3, and Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim,
that is.
Indie developers Iron Tower Studio, hard at work on their
upcoming RPG Age of Decadence, have posted a progress report for the month of
November on their official forums. ITS’s
Vince not only describes how the beta testing process is moving along, but also
explores quest design in RPGs and how they’ve been implemented in AoD.
Among other things, the post explains how one of the goals
with AoD is to present quests or events to the player in a more organic
way. Rather than being directly asked to
retrieve an item or tediously collect random raw ingredients or monster parts,
for instance, the player will instead encounter opportunities with meaningful
choices and branching outcomes. A brief
conversation with a preacher may lead the player to takeover an entire
religion, while a seemingly innocuous ruined tower inhabited by squatters may
turn out to be much more.
On November 10th, Gabe Newell issued a statement
on the Steam Forums’ main page advising users that the forums had been defaced,
accounts compromised, and that databases with sensitive information had been
accessed. A news alert was also issued
through the Steam client. The breached
databases included user names, purchase histories, email addresses, passwords,
and credit card information.
