Friday, July 20, 2012

Midagedgamer Report 7-20-2012




Well ,an interesting mix of news this week.

Of course the big bombshell was the official release date of Windows 8. At a Sales meeting Steven Sinofsky (Microsoft President in charge of Windows and Windows Live) announced  the general  availability of Windows 8 will be October 26th, 2012 on new PC's.  No word on availability of Retail versions, however. 
Of course with a $40 upgrade price (download)  for owners of windows back to XP it may not matter as most will likely opt for the digital upgrade instead of the $69.99 DVD boxed version anyway.  Even so, Microsoft's aggressive pricing indicates they're hoping for a quicker adoption than Windows 7.  With PC and ARM based tablets Microsoft is painfully aware it's playing catch-up with Apple even though IOS and OSX are still disparate platforms.


In Steam news...

Orcs Must die 2 coming out on July 30th, Steam is currently offering 10% off pre-orders.  It's also available through Gamersgate and gamestop for 13.49.  Steam's offering a 2 pack for 22.49 that effectively makes each copy roughly $11.  So buy one for a friend, you won't be disappointed.
The new game offers solo as well as co-op play plus a new playable character, the sorceress.   New maps as well as play on classic maps is in the offering as well as new traps and spells to dispatch those medieval baddies.

Borderlands is a game I've spent more time in than any other and there's a sequel coming out soon.  Fueling the hype, a recent quote from developer Gearbox's VP of Marketing Steve Gibson says Borderlands 2 campaign takes 58 hours to complete.  Gibson goes on to say, "."We want it to feel like you get more for your money, we’re happy for people to pay their money once and feel that they get ongoing value."  If the sequel is as good as the original it's going to be time well spent.

The game is scheduled for release September 12th 2012. 


So while we all anxiously await the next two DLC packs for Battlefield 3 we got broadsided by news of the Battlefield 4 beta.  Due in the fall of 2013, according to the BF3 Reddit page maintained by a BF3 Community manager with EA. 

Of course with any news on the next iteration of the Battlefield series is bound to cause some discomfort amongst the faithful.  EA is of course promising to continue support of BF3 past the release of END GAME citing their continuing support for Bad Company 2 as an example.  I suppose this answers the earlier question of whether or not END GAME was going to end the franchise.  Apparently this bovine's got some milk left in her.

How to gain admission to the Beta isn't completely fleshed out yet according to EA but apparently buying Medal of Honor Warfighter ( 69.99) is guaranteed to get you a spot right now.  As a side note this news showed up as a popup when I opened Origin Wednesday.


Origin servers went offline at 10PM PT for 2 hours for what EA calls "important updates" in preparation for their upcoming origin 9 client.  I wonder if it will still say, BETA.
In other EA news the new trailer for the upcoming DLC pack, Armored Kill was released Thursday.  Instabuy for a tank jockey like me..MBT Service star, You Are Mine!  Confirmed is the purported "largest map ever in a Battlefield game, "Bandar Desert" as well as the first ever arctic map "Aborz Mountain".  Both are shown in the trailer.


EA claims the next version of Origin (version 9) will be more User Friendly...


I guess they have a bit of work to do since they came out swinging against the "you're not as good as Steam" crowd.  Reasons cited include high prices, lack of indie games and draconian interface hostile to hardcore gamers.


In hardware news...

If you're interested in such things, rumor has it that the next  Sony Playstation will be called Orbis and will be based on an AMD x64 CPU with an AMD Southern Islands GPU (think 7xxx AMD GPU)which can display up to 4096x2160 resolution or 4K.  I guess Sony's going with the "value" option for its hardware since it's unlikely a console will receive a high end SKU.    

Apparently release is set to be  around holiday 2013.  As is current trend (think Xbox 360) there will be no backward compatibility with PS3 games and there will be measures to prevent the use of used games.  So get your games as cheap as you can because the $10 bargain bin is going away for all intents and purposes.  I'm sure someone will come up with a hack but of course you risk your PSN account with that route and you know how seriously Sony protects its PSN accounts.

Sony's half-hearted compromise offers buyers of used games limited functionality until they pay an additional fee to fully unlock the used game. 


In Graphics card news AMD has gotten aggressive with it's pricing against the Nvidia 6xx series of cards announcing price drops that shine a harsh light on Nvidia's lack of a new generation product in the mid to low end graphics market.

AMD announced price drops late last week across the Tahiti line of graphics cards with the top end 7970 GHZ edition at $499, the non over- clocked  7970 down to $429 and the 7950 at $349.  AMD's also offering a trio of free games (3 for free promotion)  with the purchase of these cards as well. 

Included in the price drop are the midrange of the Southern Islands family.  The  Pitcairm GPUS are currently represented by the  7870GHZ edition priced at $299 and the 7850 priced at $249.  Purchasers of a 78xx series GPU get a free copy of Dirt:Showdown to sweeten the deal.


So it looks like Activision/Blizzard is looking to ditch Vivendi's 61% ownership in the company.  Vivendi is said to be asking 8 Billion for its stake and has courted heavy hitters such as Microsoft and Time Warner as potential suitors.  Even so, they apparently have yet to find someone willing to pony up the cash. 

Vivendi says selling the shares back to Activision (who at last report has 3 Billion in cash reserves) is a last ditch effort and is looking at selling other of its assets first  to correct a recent negative credit watch set on it by ratings agency Standard and Poor's.    Perhaps with a sale to someone other than a huge media group, Activision could finally keep a decent development group together and stop gouging their customers.

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