Activision Hands Out Free Month To Paying Members of COD Elite Outages On Going

Call of Duty Elite remains basically down and out three days after the release of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3. Activision said today they will be extending all one-year paid memberships to the service by 30 days to help make up for the outage.
They are also extending the ability to sign up as a "Founder" until the end of the month.

The biggest issue that Elite initially faced was registration, Activision said. But updates yesterday greatly increased how many people could register at one time. Which led to the next problem: Too many users.

"At launch, our registration and login systems were crushed by gamers trying to enter the Elite site at the same time," according to an update on the service. "We have now fixed the registration and login systems, but we have found that the greater than expected demand is crashing servers. We're immediately deploying multiple additional servers to beef up the system. We are also going to temporarily limit access to Elite services on both the console applications and website while we build additional capacity and scale. We'll look to increase access to greater numbers of users as soon as possible."

As Activision pushes to get those extra servers up and online they say they will be limited access to the service. They don't, however, say how they're limiting it. It would make some sense for them to give first access to premium members, since those users are paying extra for the service, but this is a service meant to be open equally to those who aren't paying as well, so maybe that would be a bad idea.

Activision also was quick to point out that once you do get into the service, if you're able to, it may show stats that seem to be incorrect. Don't worry, they say, those correct stats are still being tracked.
by brian crecente

The stat-tracking service outage doesn't seem to be impacting gameplay, which remains online and mostly trouble-free, from what I've seen.

Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim Day One Patch

Bethesda Community Manager Nick Breckon has confirmed that the eagerly anticipated Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim will be going live with a patch that'll update the game on PC, 360 and PS3.

"Yup. All platforms going to 1.1 by 11/11/11" stated the man from Bethesda, showing admirable regard for his overlords newfound addiction to the number '1'. When pressed for further details he simply replied "There'll be notes when the time comes."

Skyrim reviews go live later this week. If you simply can't wait to imagine yourself striding through its snowy mountain-tops then calm yourself with videos showing the first 28 minutes of Skyrim. Watch out though, you'll get eaten by spoilers.
Skyrim's out on November 11 and we've already booked the day off work. Let's hope that patch doesn't take too long to download, eh?

Unreal Tournament 4 Releasing For Next Generation Console

Looking forward to the next next-gen (8th console generation) Unreal Engine 4.0 is expected to be released with Unreal Tournament 4 to show off its prowess, as with every new Unreal Engine comes a showpiece, usually an Unreal game. An example of this happened before the release of Unreal Engine 3, when Epic Games’ own projects — Gears of War and Unreal Tournament 2007 (later renamed to Unreal Tournament 3) — were touted as the company’s showcase titles for the latest Unreal technology.
Back in August 2005, Epic Games vice president Mark Rein revealed that the creators of the Unreal games and technology have already begun work [two years before in 2003] on what will eventually become Unreal Engine 4.
unreal tournamentEpic Games boss Tim Sweeney, who’s been working on the Unreal Engine 4 core system design as the technical director, said in March 2008: “There is a long life ahead for Unreal Engine 3. [Unreal Engine] Version 4 will exclusively target the next console generation, Microsoft’s successor for the Xbox 360 [AKA Xbox 720], Sony’s successor for the PlayStation 3 [AKA PlayStation 4] – and if Nintendo ships a machine with similar hardware specs [AKA Wii 2], then that also. PCs will follow after that.” Mark Rein later clarified that Tim Sweeney meant that Unreal Engine 4 was coming to PC, and that “When Tim Sweeney was talking about Unreal Engine 4 … he mentioned something along the lines of it being exclusively for the next generation of consoles… what he meant was, it won’t run on this generation of consoles.”
For those interested, Unreal Engine 4 development will fully start sometime in 2008. With the next generation of consoles not expected to launch until around 2011-2012, it’ll be a while before you’ll be fragging photo-realistic enemies in Unreal Tournament 4.

references teamxbox,tgdaily,wikipedia

2.8 Billion Hours Played

Call of Duty: Black Ops Hours Played Nearing 3 Billion

The population of the planet just hit 7 billion people. The total number of hours played online in Call of Duty: Black Ops, released one year ago, just exceeded 2.8 billion, according to Activison.Amazing

‘Half Life 2: Episode 3′ might not be out yet because of Value’s success with Steam.

Stardock’s Brad Wardell makes a case for why ‘Half Life 2: Episode 3′ might not be out yet because of Value’s success with Steam.

Steam is a success. Most, if not all, of Valve’s games are also a success but could Valve’s success with Steam actually be preventing it from delivering even more great games?
According to Stardock’s Brad Wardell, the answer is yes. Wardell might actually know a thing or two about game development and digital distribution too as Stardock just sold off the company’s Steam competitor — Impulse — to retailer GameStop. According to Wardell, Steam’s success could be one reason why a new Half-Life has yet to be released.



Wardell explained that while Impulse generated a lot of revenue for the company, it also required many of the company’s top people to work on it. He argued this development focus kept those same top people from working on games. Wardell argued Valve could be having similar experiences with Steam and games like Half-Life.
He was not saying this is definitely the reason for no new Half-Life but did argue putting top talent on Steam would just make sense. Wardell stated it would just make business sense to throw a business’s best people at the part of the company that is making so much money. Steam certainly is making a lot of money for Valve. Wardell’s logic does not seem that far fetched.
But Valve has never been known to rush out new games. They have a history of taking their sweet time and even delaying games several times before releasing the finished product. Also, as acknowledged by Wardell, Steam is much more successful than Impulse. One would think that Steam’s success and profits would allow Valve to just hire more developers to work either on Steam or game development. It wouldn’t seem like Valve would be forced to work with a limited number of developers who had to work on either Steam or games. However, if Steam is the part of the company that makes the most money, why not make sure it is doing well and let Half-Life 2: Episode 3 and/or Half-Life 3 sit in limbo a little longer?
What is your take? Do you think Valve spending time and resources on Steam is keeping them from working on games like the next Half-Life? If this is the case, how would that make you feel?

Source Industry Gamers

Midnight Release For Modern Warfare 3 Brings Long Lines

At the stroke of midnight Nov. 8, Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3 went on sale around the world. As midnight came in each time zone, the midnight madness started with long lines and combat dress-up.
For a lot of gamers, launches of their favorite games aren’t just fun. They’re cultural events that are tied up in their sense of who they are. It reminds us of the launches of Apple’s iPad 2 and iPhone 4S, with crowds lined up around the world at Apple Stores.
Bobby Kotick, chief executive of game publisher Activision Blizzard, said in an interview with USA Today that he is hopeful the game will continue the record-setting pace of previous games. Analysts are predicting the game could sell more than 20 million units and beat last year’s title, which was the best-selling game of all time.
“It seems like this will be an incredibly successful launch. Pre-orders are well, well ahead of (last year’s Call of Duty) Black Ops,” Kotick said.
A bunch of stores broke the midnight sales launch time and started selling their games early. The Guardian reported that games were on sale 48 hous ahead of the midnight deadline at the Computer eXchange store in London. And some K-Mart stores in the U.S. evidently started selling ahead of the sales time as well. copies of Modern Warfare 3 were selling on eBay for more than the $59.99 sticker price on the game. Some of the listings were removed. Best Buy was offering a free smartphone with a Modern Warfare 3 purchase.
As I went on the multiplayer version of Modern Warfare 3, the indicator map show green dots where people were already playing across the globe. The map showed big swaths of green in Australia, Western Europe, and the East Coast of the United States. And more than 100,000 players were already ranked in the Call of Duty Elite Leaderboard.
For those who don’t get a Modern Warfare 3 copy, there’s still Battlefield 3 from rival Electronic Arts. That game sold more than 5 million units in the first week after it went on sale on Oct. 25.
In Australia, tens of thousands of people lined up to buy Modern Warfare 3. In the United Kingdom, more than 500 stores opened at midnight.

by Dean Takahashi

Batman Arkham City Headed to Origin

Batman: Arkham City will be available on Origin from early November, following the announcement that other publishers will be able to sell their content on EA’s digital retail service.
Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment, THQ, and Capcom will be the first publishers to add their content to Origin.
Origin is also set to bring beta cloud storage for game saves and achievements to gamers, on top of its existing streaming demos (courtesy of Gaikai) and browser titles.

Origin ran into some difficulties during the launch of Battlefield 3, temporarily stopping gamers from logging in or creating new accounts.