Europe To Attack The Pirate Bay

In a few weeks, The Medina Report will be voted on by European parliament. The Medina Report entails many new anti-piracy regulations and measures. The Pirate Bay, a popular online BitTorrent tracker, is one of the main targets of these new rules. It is calling for more responsibilty to the internet service providers to filter material that is infringing on any copyright laws.

I will say for any Europeans who may read this that I strongly urge you to write to your members of parliament and tell him how you believe that this is the wrong path to take. This is a step towards ISP's knowing all your information that is on your computer, they want to filter the internet!

Remedy Entertainment Hard At Work On Alan Wake

The development team at Remedy Entertainment is hard at work, preparing their upcoming game Alan Wake. Remedy Entertainment is most famous as the dev. team behind the Max Payne Series, which has now been made into a film starring Markie Mark Wahlberg as Max. Alan Wake is a completely new game that's being billed as a "psychological action thriller".The character of A. Wake is said to be modeled after the Finnish actor Ilkka Villi. It should be released within 2009.

EA Cooking Up A Plethora of Need For Speed Titles

Many gamers agreed that the last of the Need For Speed games was shameful, but EA seem to think it is still a stong franchise and are not giving up. Among a few new Need For Speed titles are two PC games.

One will be a free to play massively multiplayer online game called Need For Speed World Online. Yes, you read it right, free to play. Can't complain with a free game, especially one from a respectable firm, lets just hope they don't screw it up.

The second will be a new game following in the series called Need For Speed: Shift. This will be a first person racing simulation.

EA is basically splitting the brand into a few different genres, which may work out and seems like a decent idea if played out correctly.

Popcap Games Revenues Way Up

Popcap Games, developers of such well known casual games as Bejeweled, Zuma and Peggle, have revealed that their 2008 sales were up 85% compared to 2007. This could be because of the number of new releases. 2008 had 15 new games for Popcap as opposed to 10 in 2007.

Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare Gets Map Pack 3

Activision and Infinity Ward have released the third map pack for the PC version of their Modern Warfare Call of Duty game. The list of maps will follow:

MP Pool day Map
MP Pass Map
MP Shipment 2 v1.0 Map
MP Iranian embassy 2 Map
MP Lumberyard 2 final MapMP Spetsnaz base final v1.1 Map
MP Aosta valley v1 Map
MP Coldfront Map
MP Destroyed village Map
Forest beta Map
Freedom bridge Map
MTL Havoc Map
MP ZE Cargo night Map
MP Monastery b1 Map
BP Football Map
BB SMG v1 Map
MP Coldfront Map
MP Destroyed village Map
Forest beta Map
MP MOH Southern France b1 Map
Toybox4 b2 Map
MP Pripyat Exclusion zone v2 Map
MP RVS Streets Map

Stranglehold Version 1.1 Patch Released

Fixes:

* Many resolution bug fixes.

*The movement keys are remapped to the arrow keys, and you can now lean out from cover.

*Fixed default keyboard layout to allow for the movement keys to be remapped to the arrow keys, you can now lean out from cover.

*The animations of the menu items on the change resolution screen now correctly reset after changing resolutions.

Left 4 Dead Patch Released

Valve have released a new patch for their new online shooter Left 4 Dead. A few issues have been addressed. They have fixed an exploit dealing with the melee combat system where switching weapons would allow players to bypass the delay for a swing. In Versus mode, burning tanks will have their hp affect the damage taken. They also fixed an exploit with something to do with the "joinclass" command.

PC users can get the game and the patch through Valve's own digital distribution service, Steam.

Microsoft Closes Aces Game Studio

Microsoft's Aces Game Studio was the developer in charge of Microsoft's Flight Simulator for over twenty years. Now in a shocking news update, Microsoft has announced that along with a 5,000 employee lay off, The Aces Game Studio will be shutting down for good. Microsoft has commented that they haven't deserted the Flight Sim Series.

Since the fall of 2007, Microsoft has been shutting down quite a few of their game studios. FASA Studios, Ensemble Studios and Carbonated Games. Bungie, the dev team responsible for the Halo series, has also left Microsoft to become an independant. Microsoft still maintain an ownership stake in Bungie though.

First EA, now Microsoft? What in the world is going on?

EA Drops 200 More Employees

It seems in our current economical state, even the gaming powerhouses like EA are at risk. Last year they shut down their Black Box Studio and now they are cutting 200 more jobs from those same left over employees from that studio. They had been relocated to another studio but have finally been given the axe. According to sources the employees will have the opportunity to relocate to another one of EA's offices.

This comes not long after EA Tiburon announced that they were laying off numerous employees yesterday. It's a sad day for EA.

2 New Spore Games Coming

Maxis have announced that they will be releasing four new Spore games, 2 of which will be for PC. The others are on the Wii and the DS. These new PC titles are to be released before the end of the year.

The first of the two is called Spore Galactic Adventures which will be an expansion on the Space portion of the game and will allow more ways to experience the space game. Players will now be able to beam down onto planets and earn rewards for completing challenging missions.

The second new game is called Spore Creature Keeper and is being developed as a stand alone product. This game is aimed at a younger audience and brings in new elements of nurturing, teaching and caring for your creations.

The Wheelman Delayed Until March 20th

Despite Midway's mentions that their current fiscal state would not affect the launch of their newest action games The Wheelman, it has been delayed a little over a month. It was due to hit store shelves on February 16th, but gamers looking for it were left with puzzled looks on their heads as they walked out of their local game store. The game features Vin Diesel as the main character and the game runs on the ever popular Unreal Engine 3. Midway did say that there would be demo versions available for all three systems soon, but no date has been set for that yet.

The Wheelman is now set to hit store shelves on March 20th.

New PC Release Dates, Great Games Coming Soon

January 23, 2009 - Age of Booty - Capcom - Strategy
January 26, 2009 - MLB Front Office Manager - 2K Sports - Sports Simulation
February 2, 2009 - Pristontale 2: The Second Enigma - Wicked Interactive - RPG
February 3, 2009 - Burnout Paradise: The Ultimate Box - Electronic Arts - Racing
February 6, 2009 - Women's Murder Club: A Darker Shade of Grey - Elephant... Entertainment - Adventure
February 6, 2009 - Zeno Clash - TBA - Action
February 10, 2009 - F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin - Warner Bros. Interactive - Shooter
February 10, 2009 - X-Blades - SouthPeak Games - Action
February 10, 2009 - Perimeter II: New Earth - Strategy First - Strategy
February 10, 2009 - Warfare - GFI - Action
February 10, 2009 - Officers - Tri Synergy - Strategy
February 18, 2009 - Drakensang: The Dark Eye - DTP - RPG
February 19, 2009 - Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II - THQ - Strategy
February 20, 2009 - The Sims 3 Collector's Edition - Electronic Arts - Simulation
February 20, 2009 - The Sims 3 - Electronic Arts - Simulation
February 24, 2009 - Codename: Panzers - TBA - Cold War - Strategy
February 24, 2009 - Godfather II, The - Electronic Arts - Action
February 24, 2009 - ShellShock 2: Blood Trails - Eidos Interactive - Shooter
February 25, 2009 - Puzzle Quest: Galactrix - D3 Publisher - Puzzle
February 27, 2009 - East India Company - Lighthouse Interactive - Strategy

The End Is Near For Midway Games

Midway Games are in quite a bit of financial trouble as of late. The Publisher of such games as Mortal Kombat and the upcoming 'The Wheelman' seems to be on a dead end path heading for certain doom. They have reached an agreement to extend their deadline with their creditors until February 12th.

They are in debt around $240 million, but they must pay $150 million in full on that date. Midway have officially stated that this ordeal should not affect the release of 'The Wheelman' for PC, Xbox 360 and PS3. The Wheelman features Vin Diesel as the star of the game.

Best Selling PC Games of 2008

World of Warcraft has 5 titles in the top 13! wow... domination.
This is a list of the top 20 best selling PC games of 2008:

1. World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King Expansion Pack
2. Spore
3. World of Warcraft: Battle Chest
4. Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures
5. Warhammer Online: Age Of Reckoning
6. Call Of Duty 4: Modern Warfare
7. The Sims 2 Double Deluxe
8. World Of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King Exp Pk Collector's Ed
9. Fallout 3
10. World Of Warcraft: Burning Crusade Expansion Pack
11. Call Of Duty: World At War
12. The Sims 2 FreeTime Expansion Pack
13. World Of Warcraft
14. Sins Of A Solar Empire
15. Warcraft III Battle Chest
16. The Sims 2 Apartment Life Expansion Pack
17. Crysis
18. Left 4 Dead
19. Diablo Battle Chest
20. The Orange Box

No GTA 5 In 2009 Says Rockstar

Rockstar games have announced that no GTA follow up will be available for quite some time. Despite speculation by the online community that Rockstar were already hard at work on the follow up to the newest iteration of the series Grand Theft Auto 4. I have a theory of my own on this one. They only stated that there will be no Grand Theft Auto 5 in 2009, but does that mean there won't be any games like vice city or san andreas, based off of the GTA 4 platform? Only time will tell. Only time will tell...

World of Warcraft Reaches 11,500,000 Subscibers!

Blizzard Entertainment have announced that their ultra popular MMORPG World of Warcraft has hit a new milestone. 11.5 Million subscribers are currently subscribing. They also noted that the newest expansion, Wrath of the Lich King sold 2.8 million copies worldwide within its first 24 hours of sale which makes it the fastest selling PC game of all time. Nothing to turn a blind eye at to say the least. Wrath went on to sell 4 million copies its first month.