“Yes, we’re discontinuing Online Pass,” EA senior director of corporate communications John Reseburg confirmed to GamesBeat in an e-mail. “None of our new EA titles will include that feature.”

The modern military first-person shooter Battlefield 3 and a number of other EA games such as Madden NFL use Online Pass. You need it in order to play many of a game’s online features, including multiplayer. A code activates the Pass, which has a one-time use. You need a new code (which the publisher offers, of course, for a fee) if you’re playing the game on another console or if you bought the software used and the original owner redeemed the original. But players never embraced this feature.

“Initially launched as an effort to package a full menu of online content and services, many players didn’t respond to the format,” Reseburg said. “We’ve listened to the feedback and decided to do away with it moving forward.”

Online Pass is seen by publishers as a bulwark against the second-hand market, which retailer GameStop dominates. Publishers were worried that consumers were buying games used instead of new — especially big games with popular multiplayer modes. So the online pass became a way that publishers forced consumers to either buy a game new — or pay extra for online.

But from this point forward, you won’t need an Online Pass for any of EA’s games online.

“We’re still committed to creating content and services that enhance the game experience well beyond the day you first start playing,” Reseburg said.

EA wasn’t the only publisher using an online pass system. Activision and Ubisoft are among a handful that make use of it.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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The multiplayer servers for EA’s hit shooter Battlefield 3 are not fully functional due to a Distributed Denial-of-Service attack.

Developer DICE is attempting to counter the attack by updating and improving its servers. In posts on its message boards, DICE says it doesn’t know why its game is under attack, and it will continue to work to get the game working properly.

“We have been working around the clock to mitigate the impact of an ongoing denial-of-service attack on our Battlefield 3 game infrastructure over the last several days,” reads a post from the DICE team. “While the motives are unclear, the focus of the attack has been interference with network communications preventing access to multiplayer gameplay.”

We’ve reached out to EA to ask if it knows who is responsible for the attack. We will update with its response.

The studio went on to assure fans that this blunt-force attack has not compromised user data.

A DDoS attack is when a person or a group of people use software to make repeated requests on a server. If enough requests are made, it will overwhelm the server and cause it to begin spitting out errors. It doesn’t require any hacking skills, but a coordinated attack like this does need a lot of different PCs all running the software at the same time.

That suggests this is either a group of people or that someone is hiding the code for the attack in other software.

“As a part of our efforts to resolve these issues, we’ve conducted rolling restarts of Battlefield infrastructure to apply some updates,” the Battlefield forum post reads. “Thank you for your patience and support while we work to get everyone back and playing Battlefield 3 as soon as possible.”

DICE promises to provide more updates as it makes progress.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Electronic Arts unveiled Battlefield 4 at a special event this week during the Game Developers Conference. EA has a lot riding on the game, and Patrick Soderlund, executive vice president, is the one responsible for executing on the game’s development and launch this fall. The title depicts modern combat in an intensely dramatic and realistic way. (Here’s our preview)

As we noted earlier, the giant independent video game publisher is betting an awful lot on this game franchise. Battlefield 4 represents a huge investment by EA in a video game that feels like a next-generation experience, and consumers may have to invest in new hardware to play it. Battlefield 4 intends to make players feel as if they were completely immersed in a modern combat battle. This kind of game — coming this fall — is so important that it could make a difference for EA’s valuation in the stock market.

If EA messes the game up, as it did with last fall’s Medal of Honor: Warfighter first-person shooter, then it will lose another battle for consumers with rival Activision Blizzard. But if it pulls Battlefield 4 off flawlessly, it could sell millions more units than its predecessor did and take some market share from rival Call of Duty. EA has had more than 65 million people play its Battlefield games over the past decade. That represents sales in the billions of dollars. For the title, EA created a new version of the Frostbite engine, which renders the game world and its 3D animated sequences.

GamesBeat’s Rus McLaughlin and I caught up with Soderlund this week at the launch. Here’s an edited transcript of our interview.

GamesBeat: You’re looking to do more storytelling and insert more drama in Battlefield. What was the thinking that went into that?

Patrick Soderlund: The thinking is, when we realized we had technology that was at the level that we have today: This is a team that continuously pushes the boundaries of what you can do. These are guys that want to be the best in the world. When they told me their vision for the product — that they wanted to make a game that was more believable, more human, where the characters meant something to you as the player — I had a hard time believing that they could pull that off. It sounded too ambitious. So I said, “Okay, prove it to me.” This was eight or nine months ago. They showed me a snippet of a character interaction, and it floored me.

GamesBeat: What was that interaction?

Soderlund: It was a simple scene where you had two characters talking. Then there was a little bit of involvement in the talking, some interaction. I found it to be more filmic, more dramatic, more believable than anything I’d seen before. That’s when I realized that I had to support them in this idea. As a game creator, I love their vision. I love their expression. I just felt like, “This could be really big if we do it right.” Fast forward X months and here we are. Hopefully you could see that on stage today.

GamesBeat: What more are you pouring into it now? This is a bigger effort, right? You have a new engine and a bunch of other new stuff.

Soderlund: We’re talking about what you saw today. Obviously Battlefield is a multiplayer game. We’ll talk about that later. The focus for us is to create a single-player experience that is more like that — a narrative multiplayer game. We want you to experience something that feels more open, more variable. You can play the game on your terms, rather than the game playing itself in front of you. Patrick said it very well on stage. We go back to our heritage, where we come from, which is multiplayer. As I said in my presentation, the DICE team has continued to improve. They’re now state-of-the-art storytellers as well as awesome multiplayer designers. To me, that’s the mix there, and it can become something unique and exciting.

GamesBeat: Can you tell us some details on the platforms?

Soderlund: [chuckles] The demo is on a custom-built PC to our own spec using Frostbite 3. Frostbite 3 is our own proprietary engine. It’s not a commercial engine.

GamesBeat: So the consoles are all kind of the same technology now? Do you think it will play equally about all of those?

Soderlund: This is not about consoles today. But Battlefield is a multiplatform technology. It’s always been.

GamesBeat: Were there some lessons that you got out of Medal of Honor that you can apply to this?

Soderlund: This has been in development at the same time that Medal of Honor was in development. These teams are very separate. They have different leadership. These guys need no hand-holding. They’ve proven that over and over again. You have to separate the two. This is nothing to do with Medal of Honor.

GamesBeat: Is there something about the demo, do you think, that shows that there’s a lot of room to grow in this category? Is there something here that will make people dish out the money for a new rig or a new console because the experience is so much better than Frostbite games before?

Soderlund: I can tell you whatever you want. You have to ask yourself what you saw. If you believe that’s the case, then that’s probably what consumers will agree with.

GamesBeat: What does Frostbite 3 let you do that Frostbite 2 didn’t? We were all very impressed by Frostbite 2

Soderlund: There are so many things that we can do. The characters that you saw today, we could not create them in Frostbite 2. If you want to go hardcore tech, there’s a bunch of features in the engine that we probably should keep to ourselves that allow us to show the game off, as far as visual fidelity. As you could see, there’s a lot of things moving around in the game. Effects and background detail and things, the sheer amount of moving objects.

You can take out a single technical feature and that could be cool if you’re watching at a GDC tech session. To us, it’s not about tech. It’s the sum of everything, from how the characters look to how they move to how actors, for the first time, are displayed the way they look in real life through the game. That’s why it feels believable. You see the movement of their faces. The gestures they make are the same ones they made when we captured their performances.

We almost had to create a new breed of game designers. We call them game directors now. We’re now directing actors to participate in an interactive experience. That’s something that we’ve had to learn. It took us a long while before we got there. The first test we saw, I said, “This isn’t going to work.” We had to learn how to get better at this so we could direct a game. It’s very cool, but at the same time, it posed some challenges. The guys have nailed it. I couldn’t be happier about what they’ve done. We’ll give consumers a very different experience than what they’re used to. I hope you saw that today.

GamesBeat: Are you going for more spectacular, over-the-top action, or are you going for something more human and real? Which of those words are more appealing to you?

Soderlund: Go back to what you saw. This is a demo that, believe it or not, is more than 17 minutes long. When you look at it, there’s a lot of quiet moments. That’s not a surprise. It’s designed that way. At the same time, this is an interactive entertainment experience. We have to give you the spectacle, that blockbuster feel. You don’t want to go too over the top, to the point where it feels unrealistic. It still has to feel kind of realistic. It needs to feel right. If it feels right, it’s good.

GamesBeat: One of the things that was mentioned during the demo was an element of persistence. Does that apply to the multiplayer, or to the single-player, and how?

Soderlund: As Patrick said, we looked at what elements of multiplayer progression and social interaction we could then carry over to single-player. We’re not talking in detail about it, but you may have seen some things happening on the screen. Comparing yourself to other friends and how they’re progressing in the game. There’s a lot of features like that.

GamesBeat: You said this speaks for itself, but is there also a message you want to send out with it?

Soderlund: Of course. The message is, “We’re here. We’re very serious about what we’re doing. We believe we have something special.” I know we have a world-class team working on this. I personally think that we’re at a point in gaming where we can deliver an experience that is more dramatic, more believable, more human, and a lot more filmic. I heard a lot of people walking out of the theater saying that they thought they were looking at a movie, until they realized someone was playing it.

GamesBeat: This has to prove a lot of things to people. It has to prove that this is real gameplay, that this is how the game is going to look when you get it.

Soderlund: This was 100 percent legitimately someone playing the game. It was all live software. We had a crash in a couple of rehearsals before. I’m like, “Okay, this time, please don’t crash.” [laughs] It’s as live as it can be.

GamesBeat: Getting back to Frostbite 3, one of the things that was mentioned is that it allows you to iterate faster. One of Battlefield’s deficits when it was going up against Call of Duty is that it’s only able to compete every two years, whereas Call of Duty comes out every year. Does Frostbite 3 mean you could move more towards annualization?

Soderlund: What Patrick said on stage is true. We looked at the whole framework of the engine and said, “How can we get to better quality faster?” We realized that there were some flaws in how the engine was set up, and the tool chain around it. It took too much time to get to what we wanted. We spent a lot of effort on crafting a stronger and more efficient tool chain so we can get to something playable quickly. We call it “what you see is what you play.” Then, from there, we can put the iteration and polish on it. That’s what will get you quality. That’s the approach we’ve taken with the engine in that respect, and it’s one of the biggest improvements on the technology side. It’s rare that any developer has an engine that they can maximize to the fullest. That’s just not how it works. You can always do things more efficiently. A lot of what we’ve done has gone into make sure that we use what we have at the highest possible capacity and then adding to it.

GamesBeat: Do you consider this investment to be the biggest that EA’s making right now?

Soderlund: It’s a big investment, obviously, and it should be given what Battlefield 3 and Bad Company 2 have done. This is a mega-franchise. We as developers and game creators need to understand that we need to keep pushing the boundaries of what we can do with this, keep pushing forward so that consumers respect and love what we do. We’ll spend as much money as we need to make it successful.

Frostbite is the backbone of the Games label. It’s a platform that’s scalable, an open platform with each team contributing expertise to maximize the potential of each aspect of their game. It has hundreds of developers iterating on it. If we have a game team that specializes in narrative or storytelling or vehicles or physics or animation, they’re contributing to it. It’s a massive investment of human resources and development talent.

GamesBeat: How many different teams is that altogether?

Soderlund: We have a development team, an engine team, that continuously works on the engine. Game teams that use the engine make special additions and customizations to fit their particular needs. Then we decide what gets put back into the main branch of the engine. This is where EA’s size is an advantage. We have a community of developers working on this engine on a daily basis. We get new versions of it every two or three weeks. Then there are bigger steps that we take. Frostbite 3 is one of those big steps.

GamesBeat: When do you decide, “This is the cutoff. This is the engine we’ll be using.”?

Soderlund: It depends from team to team. The decision is based on what’s possible and what our development teams need. They’re the customers of the code base. They dictate what gets done. There’s a bunch of smart people working on this thing, and they have their own ideas on what needs to go in. We aggregated a number of advancements, and we’re able to cascade out a new iteration of the engine in Frostbite 3.

GamesBeat: You had some special guests here. You had John Riccitiello. Did he have a contribution to this?

Soderlund: John made a gigantic contribution to Electronic Arts as a company. I’m a good friend of his. He’s been involved with this and given his feedback and insights. The biggest thing he did, though, he’s always been a big supporter of what we’ve done and what we do. That’s why we felt it was appropriate for him to be here.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Electronic Arts and developer DICE are about to officially show off Battlefield 4, but we don’t like waiting. Thankfully, a user on the popular gaming message board NeoGAF uncovered a few screenshots from the war game.

DICE will unveil the latest entry in the popular first-person shooter franchise tonight at an event during the Game Developer Conference in San Francisco. We’ve got people on the ground ready to check it out, and we’ll have more for you about EA’s big military game as soon as possible. For now, click on the pictures below to see the action in glorious high-definition:

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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I think we can all agree that Damon Baird is, for all intents and purposes, a sentient dick move.

The least meatheady member of Delta Squad in the billion-dollar Gears of War franchise, Baird somehow turned the voice of reason into a non-stop whine. He mixed a solid background in “complaining about everything” with a side of “brag up minor accomplishments” and threw in a hint of “make someone else do it, I’m too smart.” In the brutal, planet-wrecking war between humans and the ruthless subterranean Locust, Baird was the guy people put up with — usually — because they had to, not because they wanted to, and we laughed at his many frustrations. Baird might’ve been Mr. Fix-It to series heroes Marcus and Dom, but he was comic relief to us.

Gears of War: Judgment (releasing March 19 on the Xbox 360) casts him as the lead protagonist. Consider that something of a metaphor. For this entry in their powerhouse franchise, original developer Epic Games kicked things over to a subsidiary, People Can Fly, most recently known for 2011′s amusingly profane but unremarkable shooter Bulletstorm. From the outside, it’s an interesting fit. Two secondary players get some time in the spotlight to tell their story … something I generally approve of.

But y’know how “story” has never been Gears’ strong suit?

What you’ll like

Shooting things with big guns

Set years before the first Gears of War, Judgment is the heartwarming story of how Baird got his groove taken away. He and his command, Kilo Squad — made up of fan-favorite Augustus “Cole Train” Cole and newcomers Sofia Hendrick and Garron Paduk — arrive already in chains, on their way to an amusingly blunt kangaroo court. The game then flashes back to explain why the presiding judge, General Loomis, wants to put on this farce just so he can legally kill them.

So yes, it’s a flashback-within-a-prequel, and that largely applies to the gameplay as well. Judgment doesn’t stray one inch from the cover-based, grub-killing shenanigans from Gears of War 3, right down to the loading message pop-ups, menu navigation, and visual cues for nailing an active reload (thus boosting your firepower). It still works, and a few small tweaks even slims the controls down a bit. People Can Fly jettisoned the pistol sidearm nobody ever used in favor of a two-gun package and modified the controls accordingly, also making it far easier to use grenades on the fly without having to select them first. Good changes all around.

Less good? The always-reliable Hammerburst lost both its auto-fire and its iron sights aiming, flipping it from best to worst for no reason I can figure out. To make up for it, three new additions make it into the Gears arsenal, two of which are standouts. I enjoyed planting live grenades on enemy heads with Booshka, a down-and-dirty launcher, but the sniper-lite Markza became my go-to gun. It took me a bit to dial into Markza’s dark charms, but true love eventually blossomed.

And while you still take these beauties on an 8-hour campaign, I didn’t feel the need to hug cover 24/7 this time. Between easy grenade throws and hordes of charging enemies, I probably spent more time out in the open than in all the other Gears games combined, and that made a nice change, too. It also made it easier to earn the universal currency of video games: stars. That’s right, Gears now grades you section by section, awarding experience points towards unlocks and assigning stars based on executions, dismemberments, and awards earned. It takes 40 stars to unlock a sixth, hour-long chapter called Aftermath, which flashes-forward to a side-story during Gears 3 where we catch up with some of Judgment’s survivors. Naturally, the years have not been kind.

Of course, once you hit that 40-star threshold — which you can comfortably do by mid-game — the motivation for earning starts drops away fast, save for Achievement whores and perfectionists.

Rocking the multiplayer

Likewise, the latest update to Gears’ online carnage streamlines the game, but not without a few major changes.

Mainly, it’s what’s missing that will annoy fans most. Capture the Leader? King of the Hill? Warzone? Execution? Dedicated Beast and Horde modes? All gone. The new headliner is OverRun, which adapts Battlefield’s Rush mode to a Gearsy five-stage attack/defend scenario. Human players guard a capped emergence hole while Locust players breach fortifications to destroy that cap, and it’s great fun in both directions. All the different Locust classes return, and now COG soldiers get classes, too: medic, engineer, soldier, and sniper.

No, those roles and their special abilities don’t exactly stretch the bounds of innovation either, but the balance of those abilities with the preset loadouts plays very well, particularly when your defenses crumble (victory goes to the team that holds out the longest), all while adding Battlefield’s tactical edge to your Gears playstyle. It’s a lean, mean game.

People Can Fly also ported OverRun’s framework over to Survival, the “Horde 3.0″ mode where instead of merely surviving increasingly tough waves of enemies, you must defend the e-hole caps for ten rounds; getting pushed back starts the count over again. Much as I like objective-based games, this ruins the point of Horde, which was simply to survive as long as possible. Forget roaming the whole map. You’re stuck to that one spot. As-is, Survival simply repeats OverRun’s example without giving you a turn as the Locust.

Domination’s control-points fight make for sticky fun, and it must be noted that every non-OverRun map counts as a winner. Several let you hop aboard a mobile platform. In Rig’s case, you slip behind the mounted chaingun of a King Raven helicopter as it hops from one landing pad to the next; Gondola has map-traversing (you guessed it) gondolas. Even without those extras, I found a lot to enjoy in Library’s literary cover and long sight-lines, while Streets’ excellent verticality always kept me looking up when I wasn’t aiming downward. For team or solo deathmatches, you won’t want for good killing fields, but don’t be surprised if you find yourself sneaking back to Gears 3 to play the old-school modes the way you really want to.

And a warning: I detected a shocking amount of clipping where the target in my sights suddenly teleported to another part of the room. I hope that doesn’t bode ill when a few million players jump aboard.

It’s got some character

With Baird in charge and the Locust War just beginning, Judgment isn’t nearly so dark and depressing as previous installments. It still knows how to twist a knife, though. Baird leads his squad through a freshly-destroyed city still draped with bright blue “Victory!” banners … a victory against Paduk’s country, as it turns out.

The flashback setup gives each member of Kilo Squad their own chapter — Baird gets three, including Aftermath — suggesting a broken Rashomon where everyone remembers the same thing. Ah, but the great Akira Kurosawa and Ryunosuke Akutagawa didn’t have an interactive medium to play around in. Judgment changes things up by letting players activate “Declassified” variants before every section of the game. These expose off-the-record details that fundamentally alter the game you’re about to play … handicapping your weapons loadout, adding a blinding fog or aim-impairing wind, putting you on a timer to escape before the saturation bombing begins, or boxing you in with enemies on all sides.

One Declassified tasks you with destroying egg caches or getting hit with more enemies as a result. I only found nine of the 10 caches before I got bored and moved onward. Believe me, I felt that consequence. I wish more Declassified options had taken this approach.

Regardless, I cannot stress enough how much activating Declassifieds improves Judgment. They finally kick the game and the gamer out of their comfort zones. Without them, the game proves almost ridiculously easy on Normal difficulty, and that makes Aftermath — which doesn’t have Declassifieds — more of a distraction than a challenge.

And that’s the big problem with Judgment.

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Forgive me if I don’t sugarcoat this: I couldn’t find a single socially redeeming quality to 2011′s downloadable co-op shooter Payday: The Heist, and I looked pretty damn hard.

I’m aware it has fans, but they’re wrong. I’ve used squirt guns with broken triggers that handled better than Payday’s weapons. The artificial intelligence qualifies more as artificial stupidity. Graphically, it’s a PlayStation 1 game suffering from clinical depression on your PlayStation 3. Best of all, your bipolar handler docks you $10,000 for whacking a civilian during your armed robberies while shouting how awesome you are for making a big, dead pile of police officers. The developer who makes a heist game that truly channels Michael Mann’s classy, complex, cops-and-robbers epic Heat has scaled Kilimanjaro barefoot and performed a victory lap around Australia, but Payday: The Heist is crass, simplistic, and small.

So it’s a big surprise that Payday 2 (targeting a summer release on PC, PlayStation Network, and “possibly” Xbox 360) looks all grown up. Developer Overkill Software stopped by the GamesBeat office to give us an early hands-off peek at the sequel, and at first glance, it doesn’t feel simplistic or small. Crass? The jury’s out.

It doesn’t hurt that its pedigree has improved. David Goldfarb, lead designer on Battlefield 3, now serves as PayDay 2′s director. “I always wanted to make a bank robbery game,” says Goldfarb. “I don’t know if that’s a normal ambition.” Perhaps not, but his game does look ambitious. The two scenarios he demoed, with assistance from QA agent Andreas Hall Penninger and Evan Icenbice, a producer at publisher 505 Games, steered well away from “kill every cop” assignments and into a far more tense and entertaining fight to survive and escape.

Everything starts with Crimenet, an interactive map where timed job opportunities constantly appear and vanish — some of these are quick-hit scores, while others play out over a few days. If your friends are already in a game, you’ll see them marked on the interface, and you can join them directly. Goldfarb says his team’s aiming for 50 missions, which then scale in difficulty. That’s a bit more than the first game’s nine scenarios, two of which are paid downloadable content.

Goldfarb’s first demo was a simple jewelry store heist made less simple by a new emphasis on stealthy approaches. You still roll as a heavily armed stick-up man with up to three co-op buddies, but you can pull off a lot of jobs in Payday 2 without firing a shot. It’s just not easy. I watched Penninger and Icenbice case the store, subdue a guard in an alley, then quietly disable alarms and cameras using class-specific abilities. Payday’s criminals now draw from four skill trees: crowd-controlling Masterminds, gun-heavy Enforcers, Technicians (“The Ocean’s 11 guy,” says Goldfarb) and their deployable sentry guns and explosives, and Ghosts, who mix second-story ninja work with electronic countermeasures. A hard skill-point cap prevents anyone from upgrading to minor godhood.

And for a while, it went down beautifully, silent drills cracking safes in the store’s back rooms. Then somebody walked in front of a door open to the showroom where anybody could spot him. The store alarm went off. Goodbye stealth. Hello, assault weaponry.

“Every time, something happens,” says Goldfarb.

And it’s usually your fault. “My favorite,” adds Icenbice, “was the one time we went in, and I went to put the silent drill on, but I accidentally meleed the wall. A lady heard it and screamed. The whole job went haywire from that one little thing.”

Penninger and Icenbrice immediately went loud, tying up hostages and doing some quick smash-and-grab from the jewelry store’s display cases until the cops arrived. That opened up a frantic gunfight as they defended the tight spaces of the store while the drills’ timers slowly ticked down. Consider that another improvement from the first game’s sprawling levels and fetch-quest interruptions. Assaults — where the police pop smoke grenades and send in their heavy hitters — used to be insultingly easy turkey shoots. Here, they felt especially dangerous even with a convenient choke point to cover.

It didn’t take long for the police — who also act considerably smarter — to pour in from every window. Penninger and Icenbrice decided to make a break, sprinting down the street under heavy fire, barely getting away with half their intended haul.

That counted as a success, but if you screw up, “there’s a random chance it’ll start an escape,” says Goldfarb, which he describes as, “Oh God, I’m in my car, and it’s upside down, and it’s on fire, and I’ve got to defend the money that we just stole. I saw cause and effect even inside the job chains.” Dropping a job and just running for the getaway car is also a viable option. At the end of each job, you’ll even get a bit of closure with a quick, live-action cutscene showing how you spent your haul.

To prove it, they ran the jewelry store again in what they jokingly referred to as “Waingro style,” jauntily rushing the front door, guns blazing. It ended fast. And badly. SWAT-snipers-in-helicopters badly.

“Shooting hostages doesn’t work,” says Icenbice. And how.

Goldfarb only had time to show me the beginning of one of the multiday missions, which starts with you and your crew in the back of a meat truck full of cocaine … and the cops have just pulled you over. “That turns into a whole different thing,” says Goldfarb.

Running on a pair of Asus laptops, Payday 2 looks a lot better than it ever did on the PlayStation 3, and an increased threat from police removes a lot of the shallow shooting-gallery feel from before. But least you think Payday’s abandoned its more gonzo instincts, a player with the right Mastermind skills can intimidate enemies into fighting on your side by throwing an explosive vest on them. In a video game, what are the odds it won’t detonate?

Either way, Payday 2 definitely ups the game on the original, taking a dumb petty crook and making it into a smooth criminal. Now I just need to get hands-on to see how smooth it really is.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Reckon you can wait 8 months for Grand Theft Auto V? Developer Rockstar thinks so. We’re not so sure.

It’s pretty clear that no one’s playing GTA V before September, though, following news that the open-world game isn’t hitting its anticipated spring launch window.

But don’t just sit and watch the GTA V trailers endlessly while you wait for that pesky summer sun to come and go. Watch these eight fan-made alternatives instead, created using Minecraft, Lego bricks, Battlefield 3, old GTA games, and the real-life streets of Rio De Janeiro. Heck, one even showcases Super Mario’s bad-ass side.

And remind yourself that it’s only 200-odd days until GTA V’s Sept. 17 launch. Just long enough to listen to that gravelly voice-over another 264,000 times (or thereabouts).

Grand Theft Minecart

Minecraft players keep amazing gamers with their creations. The ridiculously popular open-world crafting game hosts this impressive take on GTA V’s first trailer.

GTA V vs Battlefield 3: Trailer 1

It’s wonderfully endearing to watch highly trained military personnel shuffling around masquerading as female passersby. This homage to Grand Theft Auto V’s first trailer must have been a blast to make.

GTA V vs Battlefield 3: Trailer 2

Trailer one was a tough act to follow. This one beats it hands down, with the masterful use of an EOD [bomb disposal] bot as a rottweiler just over a minute in. The tank train is a stroke of genius, too.

Lego Grand Theft Auto V

I hate to think how long it took to re-create the GTA V trailer in stop-motion, using only Lego bricks, in this entry for YouTube channel Machinima’s Interactive Film Festival. Probably not far off eight months.

Grand Theft Mario V

Nintendo’s iconic hero Mario reveals his darker side in this parody trailer by humor website Jest. It’s tough being a family man, Mario. Just ask Bowser.

GTA V Real-Life Edition: Rio de Janeiro

Much darker than the other videos featured here, this fan-made film really captures the dichotomous nature of life in Brazil’s capital city. Those are some mean streets.

GTA V vs GTA: San Andreas

Re-creating a 2012 trailer with a game engine from 2004 is a tough task. This trailer makes it look easy, though, with San Andreas-era Los Santos ably standing in for its modern-day likeness.

GTA V vs GTA IV

This piece of work really showcases the progress that Rockstar has made, in terms of visuals, in the time between Grand Theft Auto IV and Grand Theft Auto V. It sure makes for an interesting comparison.

[Top image via Vareide/YouTube. Featured image via Ketegano15/YouTube.]

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Publisher Electronic Arts released its earnings for its fiscal third quarter today. The company just beat Wall Street’s expectations. That’s great, alongside the revenue numbers and forecasts for future profitability were a list of interesting metrics and highlights for the company’s many properties.

We’ve picked out some of the most interesting facts and figures so you don’t have to go delving into EA’s paperwork.

Battlefield 3 Premium has 2.9 million subscriptions to date

That’s a lot of $49.99 subscriptions. For those that don’t know, Battlefield 3 Premium is the all-access pass for the downloadable content to developer DICE’s first-person shooter. EA says the program generated over $108 million in its fiscal Q3.

Dead Space 3 and Crysis 3 preorders are both outpacing their predecessors

EA didn’t provide any specifics regarding Dead Space 3. The publisher simply claimed that preorders for the latest entry in the space-horror shooter are outpacing that of Dead Space 2. Crysis 3 is tracking 40 percent ahead of Crysis 2, according to EA.

EA’s mobile division is growing

This includes both handheld games and titles for Nintendo and Sony portables. This segment generated approximately $100 million for EA in Q3. That’s a 18 percent increase from the same period in the year before. EA’s iOS game The Simpsons: Tapped Out grossed $23 million on the platform. It took the spot as the highest-grossing publisher on the iOS App Store.

EA operates on a FIFA-based economy 

FIFA 13 sold a total of 12 million units by the end of EA’s Q3. That represents a 23 percent increase over FIFA 12. Revenue from digital sales for FIFA 13 reached $100 million for the quarter. That’s a 98 percent increase over FIFA 12. Total digital revenue for FIFA 13 throughout the first three quarters of EA’s fiscal 2013 topped $230 million.

Origin is still a thing

EA’s digital-download service has more than 39 million registered users. That number includes 17 million mobile users. The publisher has also signed an agreement with 86 indie developers to bring their products to Origin.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Electronic Arts reported earnings today that narrowly beat expectations for the third-fiscal quarter ended Dec. 31. Given the news in the game industry lately, it could have been a lot worse.

Redwood City, Calif.-based EA reported non-GAAP earnings per share of 57 cents a share, compared to 99 cents a year ago. Non-GAAP revenues were $1.18 billion, just shy of expectations. A year ago, revenues were $1.651 billion. Analysts expected 56 cents a share and $1.294 billion in revenues.

EA is one of the biggest independent makers of video games. Since its revenues are so large and it is diversified across so many platforms, the company is a bellwether for the health of the overall game industry. It is, however, still making the transition to digital revenues.

EA’s earnings indicated that the holiday quarter was weak for the whole industry, which is in transition as Nintendo ramps up Wii U sales and Microsoft and Sony prepare to launch new hardware.

“Despite a challenging quarter, we were able to deliver non-GAAP EPS at the high end of our guidance range,” said John Riccitiello, chief executive at EA. “We are investing for the future wave of growth that we foresee in digital and console.”

In after-hours trading, EA’s stock is down 1.19 percent to $14.90 a share, probably because EA guided lower for the full fiscal year. In a conference call, Riccitiello blamed the revenue shortfall on poor Medal of Honor: Warfighter sales and “industry head winds.”

EA grew by driving high-profit digital revenues and expense controls, said Blake Jorgensen, chief financial officer. Peter Moore, chief operating officer, said that EA was the No. 1 publisher on Apple’s iOS devices worldwide in 2012. He also said EA had six of the top 20 games in Western markets i n 2012, compared to four in 2011.

For the fourth fiscal quarter ending March 31, analysts had anticipated earnings of $1.22 billion in revenues and 72 cents a share in non-GAAP earnings. Analysts are expecting full-fiscal year earnings of $4.079 billion and non-GAAP earnings per share of $1.02.

EA lowered its own full-year non-GAAP sales outlook from $4.05 billion to $4.2 billion to $3.78 billion to $3.88 billion. Earnings per share for the full fiscal year are targeted at 86 cents to $1 a share. For the fourth fiscal quarter, EA expects non-GAAP revenue of $1.025 billion to $1.125 billion. Earnings per share are expected to be 57 cents to 72 cents.

Before the earnings came out, analyst Arvind Bhatia said he was cautious about the stock in the near term, but he believes EA will benefit from new console launches and its diversified model in the long term. GameStop, the industry’s largest game retailer, had already reported weaker-than-expected earnings.

Michael Pachter, analyst at Wedbush Securities, said in a note before the call that he expected EA’s results to be driven by international sales of the FIFA Soccer and Need for Speed franchises.  He had expected third-fiscal quarter results of $1.33 billion in revenue and earnings per share of 61 cents. EA’s big releases in the third fiscal quarter were Medal of Honor: Warfighter, Need for Speed: Most Wanted, and catalog sales of FIFA Soccer 13 and Madden NFL 13 (pictured).

FIFA 13 sold 12 million units in the third quarter, up 23 percent from a year ago. FIFA 13′s digital revenue was above $100 million, up 98 percent from a year earlier. Total FIFA digital net revenue in the first three quarters of the fiscal year were $230 million.

For the quarter ending March 31, EA has four major titles in the pipeline: Dead Space 3, Crysis 3, Army of Two: Devil’s Cartel and Sim City. EA said both Dead Space 3 and Crysis 3 preorders are ahead of the preorders for the previous games.

EA’s non-GAAP digital revenue was $407 million in the third fiscal quarter, compared to $377 million a year ago. EA said that Battlefield 3 Premium generated $108 million in the quarter in sales and it now has 2.9 million subscribers. EA said that The Simpsons: Tapped Out was a top-grossing game on iOS in the quarter, generating $23 million in digital revenue.

EA’s mobile games and services generated $100 million in the quarter, up 18 percent from a year ago. EA’s Origin game downloading service has over 39 million registered users, including 17 million mobile users. Trailing 12-month non-GAAP digital revenue was $1.5 billion, up 37 percent.

EA has $1.5 billion in cash, but 60 percent of it is held offshore. (There are tax consequences to bring it back).

The Battlefield 3 console servers are scheduled to go down this evening. The temporary shutdown is due to server migration according to the Battlelog Blog and will start at 10 p.m. Pacific tonight and last an estimated eight hours (so until 6 a.m. PST on Tuesday).

“Our Battlefield 3 console server migration will start at this time,” developer D.I.C.E. wrote in the blog post. “Online gameplay will not be available on consoles during this operation. We will message once servers are starting to spin back up.”

The post also included specific information for anyone using the server rental service in the “South U.S. region”:

“For the large majority of players renting a Battlefield 3 server, our server migration is a completely transparent operation except for the planned maintenance. If you are currently renting a console server in the ‘South U.S.’ region, the following applies:

• Your current lease period will run its full course with no change whatsoever.
• After the server migration you will not be able to extend your current lease or start a new lease in the ‘South U.S.’ region – we recommend that you use the ‘East U.S.’ or ‘West U.S.’ region instead.”

From that it seems the premium server rental service has not been as lucrative as expected and the initiative is being consolidated a bit. GamesBeat has contacted EA for specifics and will update this story should they respond.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Video game designer Cliff Bleszinski always speaks his mind — except for this one time. A few years ago, when I asked the creator of Gears of War and Unreal Tournament to give his thoughts on his competition — other shooters like Halo or Call of Duty — he declined.

It was a business decision. His former employer, Epic, makes the Unreal Engine software toolset that developers use to make games, so some of his competitors in retail might also be potential clients on the development side. It’s not a good idea to talk shit about them.

Bleszinski recently left Epic after a 20-year stint, however, which now frees him up to say what he really thinks of other shooters. I took advantage and got a full download in the final part of our exclusive interview. Enjoy this blast of Bleszinski. Who knows if we’ll ever get him to open up this much in the future.

• Part one: Bleszinski’s past
• Part two: Bleszinski’s present and future

GamesBeat: A long time ago, I wanted to have this frank talk with you about all the shooters on the market. At the time, you were wary about that because some of these developers were potential or active clients with your company’s Unreal engine. Maybe …

Bleszinski: It’s possible to say anything about any franchise that you don’t like as long as you mention what you do like because then it comes from an honest place. It’s the same thing as, “Oh, hey, I like your hair, but I’m not so big on the boots,” and then she’s like, “Oh, man, he doesn’t like my boots, but he likes my hair.” It’s just basic communication, right? As opposed to just saying, “Your guns are shit!” and then people are like, “Wow, you’re an asshole.”

GamesBeat: Let’s do that, then. Let’s run through a few shooters and get your thoughts about what you liked and didn’t like. Not from Cliff Bleszinski the gamer but Cliff Bleszinski the game designer. Let’s start with any recent Call of Duty.

Bleszinski: I’ve always said that shooting your friends in the face at 60 frames per second through iron sights will always be fun, no matter what. One of the things that franchise has always nailed is the smoothness.

I have this little game design trick I’m going to give you. I only learned this in the last year. Fire up any shooter — a twin-stick shooter. Start turning and looking up and down. If you can easily control the shape of the parabolas that you’re doing — if you can say, “OK, I want to make a really tight parabola” or “I want to make a really wide one” — that’s basically balancing the “patting your head and rubbing your belly” of twin-stick shooters. You can do a very good job of that, always, in Call of Duty and in Halo as well.

The single-player [in Call of Duty: Black Ops II] … I started getting into it, and I heard that they made a lot of effort to get rid of the linearity, but I just couldn’t get past it. It still felt like there’s an infinite amount of enemies spawning at me, and I’m just trying to race to a checkpoint as opposed to clearing out the room. It’s not my thing. I can’t do those campaigns, especially when I have a campaign like Far Cry 3′s, where it’s really open and so many crazy emergent things happen.

The multiplayer in Call of Duty — it’s that great grind of unlocking all the perks and gizmos. I found a lot of multiplayer maps this time around to be extra small in the first batch. The one on the aircraft carrier, the one on the boat. Anytime you’re on something that’s on the water, most of the time it’s going to be too confined.

There are these kids who have an infinite amount of time to play, and if one or two bullets take you out, it comes down to who shoots first. When you introduce latency, a lot of the times it’s a roll of the dice in regards to who wins.

If I want to play a game that has a more back-and-forth cadence, that’s when I want to play Halo. When I play Halo multiplayer, I don’t feel that whoever acquires the other guy first is going to win. In Call of Duty, the guy who acquires the other guy first wins. In Halo, you have your shields. The guy may miss with the grenades. You may jump. You may have a chance to recharge. Your friends may show up. It feels like there’s a lot more trading paint back and forth.

It’s like boxing. You get two boxers who are trading back and forth, [and] it winds up being an entertaining match as opposed to when Mike Tyson used to box, and he’d knock a guy out with one shot. Halo feels like the former. Call of Duty feels like the latter. I guess it’s a matter of what you want as far as lethality and twitch gameplay.

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The only video games I can recall ever depicting women in military combat were in the science fiction genre, and that’s pretty telling now that I think about it.

With the U.S. opening up direct combat roles for women on the real battlefield, it’s yet another step for cracking open the boys’ club that is the military. But I wonder how long it will take for video games, another distinctive boys’ realm, to reflect this new reality. It hasn’t happened yet, and honestly, women have been engaged in combat for quite a while even if the government only now chooses to recognize it in an official capacity. As U.S. Rep. Tammy Duckworth, a wounded veteran from my home state of Illinois said, “I didn’t lose my legs in a bar fight.”

This isn’t an indictment of game makers’ gender sensitivity. I bring this up because it is a good example of how the gaming industry — despite the number of women who play video games — still has a male-centric mindset that needs to evolve. Women have been playing a role in combat, but it’s never been adequately recognized even in the overabundance of military first-person-shooters released each year. Now that women will be officially recognized for those direct combat roles, it would be a good time for games to start reflecting it. It’s even possible the game industry could play a constructive role in helping future generations adjust to this change.

Entertainment factors into tempering our thoughts about a subject. Young men are playing these military shooters; some of them will go into service. It might do them a lot of good by the time they get there to have played a game where one or two of their A.I. squadmates in Battlefield 4 or Call of Duty: Whatever were women because it is going to take long enough for some of the men already established in the military to accept women as equals on the battlefield.

If game makers want to craft realistic military simulators from here on out, they’re going to have to address this change and study what it’s like for women in battle. It would reflect poorly on the industry if five years from now games were still showing all-bro teams in the military and ignoring the elevated role some women will inevitably be playing in real combat.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Games don’t have to be based on movies or sports teams to feature real humans. As 3D rendering technology advances, more and more developers turn to flesh-and-bone actors, and models to give life to their protagonists and antagonists.

In the case of Far Cry 3′s Vaas Montenegro (top image), Ubisoft hired Canadian actor Michael Mando to portray, voice, and provide motion capture for the sadistic madman as well as star in promotional material. Vaas’s appearance (combined with Mando’s performance) give the title an extra layer of realism.

I made a list of 20 celebrity sightings in modern video games with side-to-side images of their in-game models next to their real faces. Hover the cursor over the image below to launch the gallery.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Irrational Games (formerly 2K Boston) released the official cover art for the highly anticipated (and often delayed) BioShock Infinite earlier this month, and fans were mostly disappointed with the final look.

While previous games in the series proudly display the creepy and iconic Big Daddy and Little Sister characters, Infinite shows the star, Booker DeWitt, in a generic “hero” pose. For a game set in a steampunk flying city full of mechanical menaces and sorcery, you’d expect a more inspired box art.

DeWitt’s boring pose and general design are so banal that you could stick him in any action game and he wouldn’t seem out of place — something you could not do with a Big Daddy. Check out the gallery below and see for yourself.

What other games would Booker DeWitt fit in?

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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DICE is fast transitioning into “that Battlefield studio,” even if EA Games vice president Patrick Soderlund is on the record stating plainly that the publisher doesn’t want the studio to become a factory that pumps out nothing but sequels to the popular first-person modern-military shooter.

So, what else could the talented Swedish company have in the works? Well, maybe this Easter egg in Battlefield 3 is a hint — or maybe it’s just an allusion to the otherwise forgotten game Mirror’s Edge.

In the latest map for Battlefield 3, called Aftermath, a pair of red shoes sit perched on the corner of one of the tall Iranian buildings. The sneakers look uncannily like those that Faith Connors (the protagonist in Mirror’s Edge) wears throughout her journey in the first-person parkour game.

The below video shows exactly where in the level players can find said shoes. While watching, listen for Faith’s phantom breathing that you can hear right as the clip ends:

On Nov. 21, in response to Soderlund’s claim that DICE wishes to diversify beyond Battlefield, a former lead producer at DICE on the Battlefield series Tweeted the following:

It is general knowledge in the Stockholm dev scene that Mirror’s Edge 2 is in production at DICE eurogamer.net/articles/2012-…

— Ben Cousins (@BenjaminCousins) Nov. 21

DICE wouldn’t comment on that since it’s a rumor, and these hidden shoes might have nothing to do with an announcement. They are probably just the result of a level designer with a desire to tease fans, but evidence is piling up to support a case for Mirror’s Edge 2.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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If you blinked you might have missed Electronic Arts’ Medal of Honor: Warfighter, but last year’s Battlefield 3 continues to receive healthy support from developer DICE. The latest title update (live November 27 on Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3) continues to address issues going all the way back to our review, which panned the game for being buggy and unbalanced.

From DICE’s developer blog:

1) Addressed “input lag” on PS3
If you have been experiencing “input lag” playing Battlefield 3 on PlayStation 3, we now believe we have significantly improved this situation for all players.

2) Improved audio stability on PS3
The audio dropouts reported by some PlayStation 3 gamers playing Battlefield 3 should now be fixed for the majority of players .

3) Weapons balancing
Based on detailed community feedback and data analysis we have made some minor weapon tweaks to recoil and accuracy. The goal of these tweaks, and the overall goal in Battlefield 3, is to give each weapon a unique feel and competitive performance to other weapons of a similar type.

• M416: First shot and horizontal recoil slightly increased. This should make the choice between M16 and M416 more interesting again.
• L85A2: Slightly reduced horizontal recoil.
• AUG: first shot recoil slightly to increase weapon controllability.
• FAMAS: Slightly reduced horizontal recoil.
• G53: Vertical recoil reduced to make this weapon more controllable.
• QBZ-95B: Slightly reduced horizontal recoil.
• LSAT: Hip accuracy has been increased to highlight the weapon’s role as a highly mobile LMG.
• Type88 LMG: Recoil has been decreased to make it a viable option when compared to the M249.
• M5K: Increased horizontal recoil and decreased vertical recoil to focus this weapon as a high damage, low control PDW.
• UMP45: Decreased fully automatic fire to differentiate this weapon from the PP2000.
• MP412: Increased its accuracy to better distinguish it from the .44 Magnum.
• M26: Increased aimed accuracy to be in line with the other shotguns.

4) Weapons bug fixes

• Fixed the MTAR’s range not being correctly reduced when equipped with the sound suppressor.
• Fixed a bug where suppressive fire had reduced effect on the M16 and M5K when compared with other weapons.
• Fixed a bug where the M5K’s Flash Suppressor had no effect on accuracy.
• Fixed the L86A2 Heavy Barrel’s hip accuracy penalty being far larger than other weapons.
• Fixed an issue with the Mk3 shotgun’s ACOG being low resolution.

5) M-COM disarm fix
Fixed an issue where M-COM stations couldn’t be disarmed from the left side while standing up.

6) Alborz Mountains rock fix
Rocks and stones collision tweaked on Armored Kill maps. Players should no longer be able to exploit a collision issue that allowed them to hide inside rock formations.

7) Operation Shield/Alborz Mountains Tank Superiority area fix
Tank Superiority visual combat areas fixed on Operation Shield and Alborz Mountains. There was earlier a 10×10 meter patch on the mountain that became out of combat for US. This was technically already fixed server side, however this will update the actual visuals to be correct.

8) Death Valley collision fix
Collision tweaked on the railroad tunnel roof. This fix prevents players from being able to hide inside the railroad tunnel roof.

9) Sharqi Squad Rush spawn fix
Players would sometimes spawn out of combat if spawning shortly after the first M-COM explodes on Squad Rush on Sharqi Peninsula. With this fix, spawn points have been moved back to prevent this from happening.

10) Alborz Mountains Squad Rush fix
Cameras were incorrect in the spawn menu, pointing to old locations and not where you would actually spawn in. This has now been fixed.

11) Gunship balancing changes
We have now removed the gunship FLIR view (the position is still available, just not the black/white view) and decreased the damage radius of cannon explosions. This was done because of balancing reasons. Previously it was too easy for the gunner to get visual contact on enemy soldiers on the maps, and the splash damage is reduced to make it harder to kill infantry from the cannon seat.

12) Mobile Artillery spawn bug fixed
Two players can no longer spawn into the Mobile Artillery. This was a spawn-in-menu bug on the Operation Shield map which has now been fixed.

13) Tweaked hard to get medals
Looking at the persistence system, we could see that a number of the hard to get medals were actually too hard to achieve (in our opinion based on our intended design). While we never meant for all medals to have an equal distribution, the hardest ones were still intended to be more achievable than they have proven to be so far. Therefore, we have slightly decreased the prerequisites to achieve a number of the hardest to get medals in the game. One positive side effect (if you like playing Recon) is that we will likely see a slight bump in the Recon kit’s average Score Per Minute overall.

How to download the latest update (Multiplayer Update 5)
PLAYSTATION 3 SPECIFIC INFO
Patch goes live: November 27
How to download patch once it is live: When starting the game, the patch will automatically download. It is mandatory to accept this download if you want to play the game.

XBOX 360 SPECIFIC INFO
Patch goes live: November 27
How to download patch once it is live: When starting the game, you will get a popup notifying you that Multiplayer Update 5 is available. It is not mandatory to accept this, but we advise you to do so. Otherwise, you can find Multiplayer Update 5 both on Xbox Live Marketplace and in our in-game store as a manual download.

PC SPECIFIC INFO
Patch goes live: No later than December 4
How to download patch once it is live: As soon as you start your Origin client, the latest game update will automatically start downloading (unless you’ve disabled the option “Automatically keep my games up to date”, in which case it will start downloading when you try to run the game). In Battlelog, you will be notified from the Game Manager. Once you acknowledge the update, it will start downloading within the Origin client.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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It turns out that real soldiers don’t regenerate and machine guns don’t have unlimited ammo. Who knew?

It’s no secret that first-person shooters — in all their Hollywood-inspired clamor and spectacle — don’t simulate the realities of war very well. From basic rules of engagement, to gun safety (such as “don’t flag your buddies”), and the dynamics of combat, first-person shooters are more akin to interactive action flicks than a proper re-creation of armed conflict.

Of course, no one wants to play a hyper-realistic military simulator, as this hilarious Onion sketch illustrates.

No one wants to fill out endless paperwork, take mandatory sexual harassment training, write NCOERs (noncommissioned officer evaluation reports), sit through Powerpoint presentations with the potency of 10 Valiums, or stand 12-hour watches. No one wants to experience “hurry up and wait.”

Because that would be boring. Too realistic.

People want an escape from the mundane. But surely we can find a happy medium between silly action flicks and boring reality.

With the recent release of what will probably be the best-selling video game of the year, Call of Duty Black Ops II (for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Wii U, and PC), I thought it instructive to get the low-down from a real soldier, a veteran who deployed in support of the Global War on Terror. Sergeant Dave Mull deployed to Iraq in support of the Global War on Terror three separate times: ’04-’05, early ’07-late ’07, and ’08. His Military Occupational Specialty (MOS) is Cavalry Scount (19D), which essentially means that his job is enemy, area, and route reconnaissance. Altogether, he served 12 years.

Our conversation yielded some fascinating insights, and some of it may surprise you.

GamesBeat: What are some of the most basic details that your average military shooter gets wrong?

The author firing the M249 SAW (Squad Automatic Weapon). The barrels get really hot and have a tendency to overheat.

GamesBeat: What inaccuracies seem the most jarring? Is there anything that would prevent you from playing such a game?

Dave Mull: Hmm … they seem to be trying far too hard to make everything “epic” in campaign mode. It can sometimes be a chore trying to figure out which enemies actually count and which ones are the infinitely respawning cannon-fodder bots.

It won’t stop me from playing it, but you’d think they could remember that sometimes nothing happening can be just as, if not much more, suspenseful.

GamesBeat: It does seem like the goal of many shooters — Call of Duty especially — is bigger setpieces, bigger explosions, and bigger bodycounts. Which naturally makes them more like a Michael Bay movie than anything resembling reality.

Dave Mull: Remember in the Metal Gear Solid games, it’s intended that you don’t kill anyone. Of course, you can, but it’s not the way [series creator Hideo] Kojima envisioned it.

GamesBeat: Indeed. And a reader on Bitmob, GamesBeat’s sister site, pointed out that MGS4 is one of the few games to deal with post-traumatic stress disorder. In many ways, it’s a more realistic depiction of war than any first-person shooter.

Dave Mull: Very much so — specifically toward the end with Adam’s adoption of Liquid Snake’s personality and with the four gals of the Beauty and the Beast unit.

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If you follow VentureBeat but don’t regularly check our GamesBeat site, here’s a list of the best video game stories we ran over the last seven days that you may have missed.

This week, GamesBeat prepares for the Wii U launch Sunday with all the guides and reviews you’ll ever need, Call of Duty: Black Ops II goes on sale and gets reviewed, and Xbox Live turns 10.

You’ll also find reviews for When Vikings Attack, Angry Birds Star Wars, and a Threeview of Halo 4.

News:

• Sony’s PlayStation 3 hits 70M sold, good enough for third place
• YouTube rolls out new Wii app just in time for the Wii U launch
• Second Quest raises $70K to reimagine Zelda and games through art
• Gogamingo’s startup idea: Compete in tournaments, win real stuff
• Console-quality gaming without the console: OnLive is live in some LG TVs
• Valve cofounder Gabe Newell going to be a hall of famer
• This week in the Nintendo Download: Epic Mickey, Myst, and Hotel Transylvania
• Over 1 million players completed Halo 4′s campaign in the first five days
• Badgeville simplifies gamification for developers
• Rumble Entertainment seeks triple-A quality with Nightmare Guardians tablet game
• After a decade of service, Xbox Live usage hits an all-time high
• ‘The Dark Knight Rises’ Bane signs on as Sam Fisher in Splinter Cell film
• Major League Gaming: Serving 11.7 million viewers in 2012
• ChangYou new free-to-play portal targets midcore and hardcore gamers
• New Grand Theft Auto V trailer balances comedy, drama, and skydiving out of jeeps (video)
• THQ says it is in talks about extending its credit line with bank
• Zynga juggles leadership team as CFO departs for Facebook
• Star Citizen Kickstarter reveals early piloting gameplay
• Sony launches ‘augmented reality’ title Wonderbook: Book of Spells from Harry Potter author
• No second chances: Treyarch will ban anyone caught hacking Call of Duty: Black Ops II
• Here’s what a $99.99 box of Tomb Raider stuff looks like
• PlayStation Plus launches on PS Vita next week
• Call of Duty: Black Ops II’s unlikely cameo: Former CIA chief David Petraeus
• Halo 4 sold a record-breaking $220M in its first 24 hours
• BioWare Montreal using the Battlefield 3 engine for the next Mass Effect
• Notch: Minecraft PC sales just passed 8 million

Mobile news:

• Glu Mobile lays off employees at two offices, closes a third
• Zynga brings its match-three gem game to mobile
• Mobile developer Intellijoy partners with YogiPlay to improve its educational apps (exclusive)
• Mobile game startup Pocket Gems appoints No. 2 exec as CEO
• After 400 million downloads, Storm8 releases new puzzle game to continue customer engagement
• Kixeye: Zynga is ‘desperate’ to get hands on its secrets
• New Kiip expands beyond mobile game rewards to other apps and platforms
• PlayHaven rounds up $8 million to finance international expansion
• Tapjoy runs into new drama over its app download incentives
• Time to get a bit fit: Fitbit One activity tracker now shipping
• Mobile-and-social app analytics firm Swrve raises $6.25M (exclusive)

Wii U:

• 10 things you don’t know about the Nintendo Wii U
• Wii U players could get an unfair advantage in Call of Duty: Black Ops II multiplayer
• Wii U shortage will be severe during holidays, but new console may not outsell Wii in long run
• GamesBeat’s Wii U roundup: Everything you ever wanted to know
• Here is the Wii U menu music (and more)
• Nintendo’s Scott Moffitt gives us the latest on the Wii U launch (interview)

Reviews:

• Donuts and penguins are weapons of war When Vikings Attack (review)
• Nintendo Land: Where the amusement sometimes ends (review)
• New Super Mario Bros. U is far from new (review)
• What’s in the Box?! Call of Duty: Black Ops II Care Package edition (review)
• Breaking down the four different games in Call of Duty: Black Ops II (review)
• Threeview: Halo 4 reviewed by a critic, an analyst, and an academic
• Angry Birds Star Wars plays off of both franchise’s strengths (review)

Pieces of flair:

• New Skyrim: Dragonborn screens reveal expansion’s inner Morrowind (gallery)
• If Halo’s Master Chief had a dating site profile
• Call of Duty: Black Ops II debuts at midnight openings around the world (photo gallery)
• Call of Duty: Black Ops II multiplayer unlock guide
• All-new screenshots for Call of Duty: Black Ops II
• 2D game characters break into the real world

Publisher Electronic Arts and developer DICE are bringing the Battlefield celebration to the people.

It’s the Battlefield franchise’s 10th anniversary, and fans can hop onto EA’s digital-download service, Origin, and download Battlefield 1942 for free right now. Battlefield is DICE’s long running first-person military shooter series. The most recent entry, Battlefield 3, is available on PC, Xbox 360, and PlayStation 3.

“When we launched Battlefield 1942 10 years ago, we had lofty ambitions to create a first-person shooter that would push the boundaries of innovation, creativity, and design. We evolved the FPS gameplay formula by introducing the world to all-out warfare via land, air and sea,” said DICE general manager Karl Magnus Troedsson. “Since the beginning, the reception to the Battlefield series has been incredible thanks to our amazing fans. Every day, we strive to provide our community with great games and new ways to play as evident with Battlefield 3 Premium. We wanted to thank our fans who have supported us throughout the years by restoring Battlefield 1942 for a digital re-release and give everyone a chance to play the game that started it all.”

DICE also pointed out that Battlefield 3 just hit a major milestone of its own. Battlefield 3 Premium, which is a supplemental service that provides players with stat tracking and downloadable content for $49.99, recently hit two million subscribers. Stack that cheddar on top of the 17 million units sold and it’s clear just how important Battlefield is to EA’s portfolio.

Origin users can find the Battlefield 1942 download link here.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Jingoistic modern-day first-person shooters love quotes from icons of American history, or at least their loading screens seem to enjoy them. So I couldn’t help but use a JFK classic to summarize Medal of Honor: Warfighter as an experience: “Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or the present are certain to miss the future.”

Electronic Arts’ recently released multiplatform first-person shooter assumes we can’t get enough of the blockbuster bang-and-boom escapades that have made competing franchises like Activision’s Call of Duty so popular.

Yet with Warfighter, EA remains at the rear of the corporate first-person-shooter platoon because it chose to march in place instead of moving forward.

That doesn’t necessarily mean Warfighter can’t hang with its big-budget brothers in arms, so let’s enter the fray and take a closer look.

What you’ll like

The modern-warfare shooter model is tired but still fun

Warfighter clearly takes inspiration from other releases in its genre. Unlike some of the me-too efforts that have followed a similar path, the gameplay here can be pretty fun at times. Shooting mechanics are familiar and precise. Helpful onscreen icons let you know when you’ve nailed that reflex-rewarding headshot. And single-player skirmishes give you access to a convenient peeking move that facilitates leaning around corners, adding a slight cover-based-shooter vibe to the combat. Sadly, the feature is unavailable for multiplayer encounters.

Wait … is this Need for Speed?

The remarkably short single-player campaign doesn’t just leave you gripping human-neutralizing weapons. It makes you grip a steering wheel every now and then, too. These vehicle sequences are surprisingly lengthy, and they task you with driving through people-packed Pakistani streets and freshly paved Dubai motorways. You’ll even get to maneuver an indestructible Zodiac boat through a fiery-and-flooded Filipino town.

While these moments don’t have the same feel as a tightly tuned EA racing title, they break up the body-count-boosting fighting sequences pretty effectively.

United Nations of multiplayer

Obviously, Warfighter puts a lot of emphasis on multiplayer. Playing on the Xbox 360, I had to insert a whole new disc just to battle other flesh-and-blood beings. Regardless, you’ll encounter many of the standard FPS multiplayer tropes. So expect to unlock different combat classes and weapon loadouts by racking up kills in the different online modes.

What makes Warfighter stand out, however, is its global approach to the aforementioned classes. Keeping with its from-the-frontlines tone, you’re immediately asked to browse through different real-world, tier-one special-forces archetypes representing 10 countries. You can deploy as a United States Army SFOD-D assaulter, a Canadian JTF2 sniper, or even a German KSK heavy gunner, among others. While somewhat superficial, the international angle adds an interesting layer to the typical choose-your-guy-and-go approach.

Multiplayer also introduces the “fire team” concept where you’re paired with someone for a group-deathmatch session. You’ll receive bonuses as you help your fellow friendly, and you’ll even have the option to respawn at your buddy’s location (if he can stay alive long enough).

What you won’t like

Mediocrity ‘inspired by real events’

Every contemporary-combat based FPS has a gratuitous near-death, arms-flailing-in-front-of-you, holy-expletive moment or two … or 12. Warfighter joins the club, but the instances in its single-player campaign take inspiration from actual events, adding a never-before-seen level of “realism.” So this time, when a massive explosion causes a chain reaction that leads to a giant crane collapsing on top of you, it’s more “lifelike.”

Horribly rendered CG cutscenes try to weave a patronizing and sometimes confusing tale of country-first heroes sacrificing their personal lives in the name of righteousness. One of the protagonists deals with personal crises involving his need-to-know-basis mission and uncanny valley-dwelling wife and daughter. Again, mimicking the “real thing.”

The genuine men and women fighting these wars are facing life-and-death threats, both on and off the battlefield. No one can replicate or claim to replicate what they’ve gone through, are going through, and will go through. Most FPS releases hide behind a digital veil of ignorance. They’re just video games, right? Nothing but mindless fun. EA deliberately chose to stick the authenticity label on Warfighter, and that decision brings the consequences, and scrutiny, that come with it.

In short, Warfighter feels like a Michael Bay movie masquerading as a Kathryn Bigelow film.

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Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) hopes to jumpstart sales of its graphics chips and PC video cards by bundling top-selling video games with them.

The Sunnyvale, Calif.-based company is launching the Never Settle bundle that includes an AMD Radeon 7900 graphics card and multiple games for hardcore players. For those who buy the card, AMD will offer four major titles either free or at a discount. AMD needs the boost, as it recently reported a quarterly loss and said it would lay off 1,700 employees, or 15 percent of its workforce.

“This is the single most important game bundle of the year for Radeon graphics,” said Robert Hallock, AMD product marketing manager, in a press briefing. “This is the biggest graphics card bundle we have ever offered, and this is probably the biggest graphics card bundle that has ever been offered in the graphics industry.”

The bundle comes with an AMD Catalyst driver and free PC copies of Far Cry 3, Hitman: Absolution, and Sleeping Dogs. In addition, customers will be able to get a 20 percent discount on Medal of Honor: Warfighter. All of the titles are major releases for the fall.

The bundle has several options. If you buy an AMD Radeon HD 7800 series graphics card or a Radeon HD 7770 GHz Edition card, you can get Far Cry 3 for free and Medal of Honor Warfighter for 20 percent off. If you buy two AMD Radeon HD 7850 series graphics cards ($399), two Radeon HD 7770 GHz Edition cards ($239), or two Radeon HD 7870 GHz Edition cards ($499), then you can get Far Cry 3 and Hitman: Absolution for free as well as the 20 percent discounter on Warfighter. The value of the games in the bundles ranges from $60 to $170.

The new Catalyst 12.11 driver software provides a 15 percent performance gain in titles such as Battlefield 3, Medal of Honor: Warfighter, Sleeping Dogs, and Dirt: Showdown. The bundle will be available in October after the launch of Windows 8.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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The NPD numbers are in, and despite the beginning of blockbuster season, it was another down month for the video game industry.

The NPD Group, a financial analysis firm, tracks retail sales for the gaming industry each month, which makes it easier to keep tabs on the financial health of the people making games and gaming hardware. September’s diagnosis? This generation is breaking down with old age.

Hardware, software, and accessory sales were all down in year-over-year comparisons, but before we break down the numbers, let’s take a look at the top 10 best-selling games for September 2012:

1. Madden NFL 13: EA (Xbox 360, PS3, Wii, PS Vita)
2. Borderlands 2: 2K Games (Xbox 360, PS3, PC)
3. FIFA Soccer 13: EA (Xbox 360, PS3, Wii, 3DS, PSP)
4. New Super Mario Bros. 2: 295,000 — Nintendo (3DS)
5. Guild Wars 2: NCsoft (PC)
6. NHL 13: EA (Xbox 360, PS3)
7. World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria: Activision Blizzard (PC)
8. NCAA Football 13: EA (Xbox 360, PS3)
9. Lego Batman 2: DC Super Heroes: Warner Bros. Interactive (Wii, Xbox 360, PS3, DS, 3DS, PS Vita, PC)
10. Battlefield 3: EA (Xbox 360, PS3, PC)

Borderlands 2 nearly topped the list despite only having 11 days in retail compared to Madden’s full month. According to the NPD, Borderlands 2′s first-month sales outsold the original Borderlands, which launched in October 2009, by 234 percent.

Electronic Arts has four of its major licensed sports games all at or near the top of this list. EA published half of the 10 best-selling games in September. For years, we’ve grown accustomed to finding the most recent Call of Duty hanging around among the new releases, but EA’s Battlefield 3 seems to have stepped into that position.

“Madden NFL 13 launched on Tuesday, Aug. 28, and sold 11 percent more units in its debut month than the previous Madden last year,” Callahan said. “Not only was this an improvement over last year, but the launch of Madden NFL’13 represented the best month one performance at retail for a Madden title ever.”

One last note about this list, World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria couldn’t crack the top five, but the NPD Group does only track physical copies sold, and Blizzard sold the majority of this expansion through its digital channel.

The industry as a whole is down 24 percent from 2011, $1.11 billion in sales down to $848.3 million. New console sales took a 39 percent hit from $346.7 million down to $210.9 million. Hardware has reached a saturation point in which this current generation simply can’t do much more damage. Software and accessories were down 18 percent and 11 percent, respectively.

“Hardware sales are up on an average sales-per-week basis compared to August for the NDS, 3DS, PS3, Vita and 360, which points to momentum heading into the holiday season,” Callahan said. “In mid-September, Nintendo revealed launch details regarding the Wii U. The new console will launch on Nov. 18 and has the potential to reinvigorate retail sales of hardware.”

Nintendo, is phasing out the Wii console phasing out in favor of its upcoming Wii U in November, pointed toward an 89 percent increase in 3DS software sales compared to September 2011.

“Nintendo 3DS XL continues to galvanize our Nintendo 3DS business,” said Scott Moffitt, Nintendo of America’s executive vice president of sales and marketing. “Hardware sales are up, software sales are increasing exponentially, and the attach rate is growing stronger every month. With a great slate of upcoming games, including Paper Mario: Sticker Star, which arrives exactly one month from today, we like our position heading into the crucial holiday selling season.”

Nintendo also announced that Super Mario 64 DS became the third DS game to sell more than 5 million units in the U.S. It joins New Super Mario Bros. and Mario Kart DS which sold 10.6 million and 8.5 million, respectively.

Meanwhile, Microsoft released a statement saying the Xbox 360 sold 270,000 units in September, making it the best-selling “current-generation console” for 19 consecutive months. Consumer spending on Microsoft’s device remained high as well. The publisher bragged that total retail spending on its Xbox 360 platform surpassed $380 million, which is more than the PlayStation 3 and Wii combined.

When it comes to the first-person shooter combat game market, the Call of Duty and Battlefield series rule. But Electronic Arts and its Danger Close game studio are trying to get the previously neglected Medal of Honor series to capture the attention of the world’s most picky hardcore gamers.

This year, Medal of Honor: Warfighter promises to be a step up from past efforts in part because it uses the Frostbite 2 engine from the Battlefield series. Medal of Honor, last created in 2010, is about reproducing an authentic special operations experience. But this time, EA is moving the subject matter of the game beyond the Afghanistan-focused U.S. Tier 1 operators and to a global battle against terror.

Key to getting more gamers more engaged with the series is to get them to play multiplayer for a longer time. So we caught up with Kristoffer Bergqvist, multiplayer creative director at Danger Close, to talk about how Medal of Honor: Warfighter, which ships Oct. 23 on multiple platforms, will accomplish that. Here’s an edited transcript of our talk.

GamesBeat: If you pull out to the bigger picture — there’s Call of Duty, there’s Battlefield, and they’ve done very well. They’ve dominated. Medal of Honor still has to prove itself. So how is the multiplayer for Medal of Honor going to help lift you up to the level of the competition?

Bergqvist: It’s been interesting, defining Medal of Honor multiplayer. It’s something that happened very early on. One way to look at it is we’re the scalpel. Battlefield is the sledgehammer. They do the big tanks and jets kind of warfare. We’re about operators working on foot. More man-to-man combat.

One thing that defines our gameplay is the fighting functionality. Fighting as these two-man units. You and a friend pair up. You share intel. You share situational awareness. You can spawn on each other if you go down. Playing as a pair like that will pay off a lot, both in terms of score and in terms of kill/death ratio. It’s the single most important gameplay feature.

GamesBeat: What should we notice about this kind of multiplayer compared to what you were doing a couple of years ago, where it was all just American soldiers?

Bergqvist: There’s a couple of big things we’re doing that stand out. One is we’ve taken a page from EA Sports, where you can represent your nation. I go out and play as the Swedish unit, of course, because I’m Swedish. I represent my nation in the blue-versus-blue scenario. I can battle as the Swedish SOG versus, say, the American Navy SEALs to see who’s the best.

We also have a lot of classes — more classes than we’ve ever had before. Six classes. Each of them has unique support actions, unique abilities, unique gadgets and grenades. Unique weapons systems, of course. We have over 30 different abilities to try out. Everything from hand-thrown UAVs to trip-wire booby traps to flyable Apache helicopter gunships. That was a big focus for us during development — to add a lot of depth and a lot of content to the multiplayer experience.

GamesBeat: How many different worldwide special forces are there here?

Bergqvist: We have 12 units from all over the world? They’re from 10 different countries. We have three American units in there. You can play as any of those today. We’re going to start off with a smaller map, the same one that was playable at E3. After that, we’re going to northern Pakistan. We’re also going to play Sarajevo Stadium. It’s in Bosnia.

GamesBeat: That’s the way it’s going to be in the finished game as well?

Bergqvist: Yeah. You’re going to see all of them today. We have some combinations still locked in this version, though. Each of these units can exist in any class. We have 12 units and six classes, which makes for 72 possible soldiers in total in the final game. You’ll have access to 24 of them today, I think.

GamesBeat: It seems like a good marketing idea [laughter]. If you live in Pakistan, you don’t necessarily want to play as an American soldier all the time.

Bergqvist: The story behind it was that … when we started designing the game, we sat down and talked with the consultants we work with. We talk to a lot of American operators. They spoke very highly of other international special forces they’ve met and deployed with. We’re a very international development team, so we said, “Hey, that’s really cool. We want that.” That’s how it started, and we ended up with these 12.

GamesBeat: As far as improvements compared to 2010 — the buddy is there. You’ve got that. What else makes a difference?

Bergqvist: There’s a lot more content. We have six classes compared to the three from the last game. We have [five] game modes. We’ve done a lot of work using the ways in which Frostbite has developed since then. We’ve worked a lot with the control inputs, trying to take that to the next level. Making it as snappy and responsive as players expect.

Most of all, we have added a lot of depth to the game. We want a persistence system that will last for months. That’s also why we added all these features, all these gadgets. There are lots of things to unlock. We also added a weapon customization system that allows for hundreds of thousands of different variations on your guns.

GamesBeat: What else helps Medal of Honor become a year-round game? That’s the model Activision has moved Call of Duty toward with Elite and stretching the map releases across every month.

Bergqvist: We are increasing our focus on competitive gaming. We have a game mode especially designed for competitive gaming called Home Run. It’s more about a small team. It’s a one-life game mode with no respawning. If you get a group of six friends together, you can go online and choose to match up with any other clan that’s out there. Playing these matchmaking battles will earn you a ranking. You’ll get more ranking depending how good the clan you may have defeated was. That’s where we see most of the lifespan of the game.

GamesBeat: I noticed that you’re driving a car there in the single-player trailer. Are you going to be able to do that in the multiplayer as well?

Bergqvist: Vehicles are a part of some of our support actions, but not in that sense. There are remote-controlled drones, both flyable ones and ones that fly on tracks. We have this flyable Apache gunship that you can get in and control. You drive that with your fighting buddy, so you drive while he fires. Those are the kind of vehicles you can use.

GamesBeat: What are some other things people are going to notice as they start to unpack the game and start playing?

Bergqvist: The first thing they’re going to notice is, of course, the 12 different units. That’s the first option you get when you get in there. You see them all lined up.

Another thing they’re going to notice is the Battlelog integration. We now have Battlelog also inside the game clients, so you can access your news feed while you still have the game running. In Battlelog, we have a meta-game we call Warfighter Nations. By playing Medal of Honor: Warfighter multiplayer, you earn tokens. You can spend those on Warfighter Nations. You choose a country to represent there out of 193 different nations we feature in that meta-game. If you spend your tokens well, you’ll get more experience feeding back into Warfighter that will help you level up even faster.

GamesBeat: Are people going to be motivated to try more than one country, or do you expect people to stick with their native nation as long as they play?

Bergqvist: Actually, I see people switching a lot. I switch a lot myself. Partly because they have different support abilities. They can do different things. With all these variations, having 72 different soldiers to choose from, it’s pretty amazing. If you’re bored of looking at one, there’s a lot more to pick.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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If you follow VentureBeat but don’t regularly check our GamesBeat site, here’s a list of the best video game stories we ran over the last seven days that you may have missed.

This week, Cliff Bleszinski leaves Epic Games, online developer Kixeye comes under fire after a former employee blogs about alleged racism in the workplace, and Zynga pre-announces weak third quarter earnings.

You’ll also find reviews for Resident Evil 6, FIFA 13, and Bad Piggies, as well was previews for Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance, Skylanders Giants, and Medal of Honor: Warfighter.

News:

• The DeanBeat: Raptr’s gamer data shows that building real communities pays off in profits (it’s the community, stupid)
• Words With Friends co-creators leave Zynga
• Rovio teases Star Wars-themed Angry Birds
• Loot Drop reveals RPG storyline on Kickstarter
• Photo gallery of Skylanders creator Toys for Bob studio
• Activision gives Skylanders Giants the mega-investment treatment
• Zynga ‘pre-announces’ weak earnings again for third quarter
• Full Mario, Zelda, and Star Fox retail titles headed to 3DS eShop
• The 3DS eShop’s best game, Pushmo, gets a sequel in Crashmo
• AppFlood is one of the fastest growing developer-to-developer ad networks
• Kixeye fires four after investigation into allegations of racism
• Dishonored isn’t a Choose Your Own Adventure game, but this trailer is
• Artillery aims to make web browsers into game consoles (exclusive)
• Cliff Bleszinski leaves Epic Games
• Bethesda hires former Star Wars: The Old Republic executive producer to run new Austin studio
• George Washington stars as the villain in Assassin’s Creed III extra content
• Patch notes: Minecraft Xbox 360 Edition update includes Creative Mode, strongholds, and dozens more
• Game veterans launch a two-fer ‘old-school RPG’ game on Kickstarter
• Kixeye takes ‘substantial corrective action’ after black contractor calls out alleged racist behavior at social gaming firm
• Notch to Callaham: ‘Thanks for the personal attack’ (UPDATED)
• Ubisoft continues support for Ghost Recon: Future Soldier with new multiplayer maps
• Resident Evil 6′s science is not just for ‘old men in tweed suits’
• Buy certain games on the 3DS eShop, get Donkey Kong: Original Edition free
• Possible box art appears for the unconfirmed Star Wars: First Assault Xbox Live Arcade game
• Mass Effect trilogy on Xbox 360 won’t include any of the paid DLC
• Aaargh! KingsIsle Entertainment’s Pirate101 online game world to launch as early as Oct. 8
• Maingear launches a 17-inch gaming laptop with free custom paint jobs
• What were the cheapest and most expensive consoles in gaming history? (infographic)

Mobile news:

• Angry Birds maker Rovio plans to reveal its mobile book app
• Battlefield 3 graphics for mobile? EA has developer DICE on the job
• Directly record your iPhone games with Kamcord

MMO news:

• Mists of Pandaria sales fall short of previous two World of Warcraft expansions

Interviews:

• How animators bring Skylanders Giants to life (video interview)
• How Toys for Bob turned Activision into a giant toy company with Skylanders (interview)

Reviews:

• FIFA Soccer 13 strives for perfection through gameplay imperfection (review)
• Bad Piggies is a painfully challenging departure from Angry Birds (review)
• Resident Evil 6 thrives on its silliness but stumbles when things get serious (review)
• Pokémon Black and White Versions 2 take few risks but still offer classic thrills (review)

Previews:

• Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance may need to rise above its surprisingly conventional design (hands-on preview)
• How animators bring Skylanders to life (video interview)
• Medal of Honor: Warfighter wants to be ‘Saving Private Ryan meets Hurt Locker,’ but its gameplay is in the way (hands-on preview)
• Activision gives Skylanders Giants the all-in, mega-investment treatment (hands-on preview)
• Giant robots with frickin’ laser beams: MechWarrior Online closed beta (hands-on preview)
• Will Call of Duty: Black Ops Declassified lure gamers to the PlayStation Vita? (hands-on preview)
• Beef up your NBA 2K13 career with Facebook and mobile apps (preview)

Pitch us in one Tweet:

• The top 10 games of ‘Pitch us in one Tweet’ (#2: Colour Bind)
• The top 10 games of ‘Pitch us in one Tweet’ (#3: Hackycat)
• The top 10 games of ‘Pitch us in one Tweet’ (#4: Ring Run Circus)
• The top 10 games of ‘Pitch us in one Tweet’ (#5: Dunk Dreams)

Pieces of flair:

• Gaming art for your Twitter header (Part 4: It came from Japan)
• A insider’s photo tour of the Toys for Bob game studio, where Skylanders are born (photo gallery)
• Gaming art for your Twitter header (Part 3: PC)
• Steampunk NES’s creator spent 20 hours on the coolest gift a nephew ever got (gallery)z
• Gaming art for your Twitter header (Part 2: Popular franchises)
• Gaming art for your Twitter header (Part 1: The modern era)
• Mmm…10 video game cakes and other sweets (gallery)
• 15 bizarre Street Fighter Alpha mysteries

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Swedish developer DICE is hiring a new engineer to help bring its powerful Frostbite 2 graphics engine to mobile phones.

DICE, the studio responsible for the Battlefield series of first-person shooters, listed an opening for a mobile-software developer on its website. The company, which is a wholly owned subsidiary of Electronic Arts, previously showed off Battlefield 3: Aftershock, a smartphone followup to the visually impressive PC version.

Now, EA and DICE hope to give the mobile rendition of their games the same visual pzazz as their high-definition PC and console games.

In addition to promising a great place to work for creative people, the job posting also asked for the following:

Frostbite is looking for developers who want to join us in taking our engine to the next level. You will be part of a team focusing on bringing Frostbite to mobile platforms and work closely with game team customers and the Frostbite team to deliver an engine as great on mobile platforms as it is on traditional HD platforms

The graphics engine is a key aspect of any game. It provides any developer a strong backbone to build its product on top of. Gears of War developer Epic Games develops its own graphical powerhouse, the famous Unreal Engine, and then allows others to use it for a fee. Epic has already built scalability into Unreal. Several games, like Dungeon Defenders and Epic’s own Infinity Blade, use the engine on iOS and even on Android.

EA doesn’t like using Unreal. It is also one of the few publishers with a choice. It’s started to have its other subsidiary developers use Frostbite 2 as well. BioWare’s Dragon Age III: Inquisition, Visceral Games’ Army of Two: The Devil’s Cartel, and Danger Close’s Medal of Honor: Warfighter all use DICE’s engine.

If the Swedish company can optimize the graphics suite for mobile platforms, it’ll likely be an important part of EA’s smartphone-game strategy.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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If you follow VentureBeat but don’t regularly check our GamesBeat site, here’s a list of the best video game stories we ran over the last seven days that you may have missed.

This week, Zynga lost three more executives, Sony revealed a new slim PlayStation 3, and BioWare founders Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk retire.

We also have reviews for the action-role-playing games Borderlands 2, and Torchlight II.

News:

• The DeanBeat: The BioWare doctors built games the nice way
• Kickstarter lays down the law: ‘We’re not a store’
• EA draws fire for consulting SEAL who wrote tell-all about killing Bin Laden [updated]
• YoYo Games lands Microsoft as a supporter of its cross-platform game engine GameMaker
• Add to your collection of classic game collections with Midway Arcade Origins
• How Activision uses Salesforce.com for engaging with (complaining) gamers
• Expanded Dark Souls content from the PC coming to consoles in October
• Bunchball’s sales gamification 2.0: Easier to learn, easier to customize
• Making every gamer famous, Twitch raises $15M to expand its eSports webcasts
• The PlayStation 3 continues to slim down with smaller console this fall
• Microsoft set to boost original video content on the Xbox, hires TV exec
• BioWare cofounders Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk announce retirement
• Torchlight debuts on Linux along with the rest of the latest Humble Indie Bundle
• Badgeville gamifies Salesforce.com to make salespeople more productive
• Chasing more engaged users, Zynga acquires ‘midcore’ social game startup A Bit Lucky
• Sega: Sonic Adventure 2 and Nights into Dreams HD remakes coming in early October
• BioWare confirms Dragon Age III: Inquisition in the works that runs on Battlefield 3 engine
• Bohemia Interactive: ‘Insinuations are completely false’ about employees’ alleged spying [Updated]

Mobile News:

• Moga game controller for Android devices to debut Oct. 21 for $49.99
• With a veteran startup team, Scopely raises $8.5M for social mobile games
• Sharp and Fujitsu join Sony’s PlayStation Mobile program; new games debut Oct. 3
• Ludei can convert HTML5 apps into speedy mobile apps in minutes
• Pickmoto simplifies sports betting on smartphones
• Nvidia loses its mobile chips chief
• Comic book guru Stan Lee moves into mobile games

Zynga troubles:

• The exodus continues: Zynga’s chief security officer resigns
• GSN snatches up former Zynga chief marketing officer
• New departure from Zynga: Omgpop’s chief revenue officer (exclusive)
• Zynga alleges EA’s chief executive proposed an anti-competitive ‘no hire’ pact or he would ‘rain hell’
• Zynga strikes back hard at EA in copyright infringement case

Reviews:

• Torchlight II is a poor man’s Diablo that’s rich in content but not originality (review)
• Borderlands 2 nearly perfects the blend of shooter and role-playing game (review)

Interviews:

• Borderlands 2 dev on creating the canonical sequel to James Cameron’s ‘Aliens’ (exclusive)
• This year’s Halo/Call of Duty killer: Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed (interview)
• Facing down the giants: CEO Max Schaefer talks Torchlight II and its competition
• Nintendo VP Scott Moffitt dishes on the Wii U’s $299 price, living room strategy, and more (interview)
• Activision is finally swinging for the fences in mobile games (interview)

Features:

• The story of MarioBART: How one artist finds gaming inspiration in transit maps and lawn ornaments
• The good, the bad, the Minecraft: All the inspiration and clones you’ll ever need

Pieces of Flair:

• A working Aperture Science Sentry Turret from Portal
• Cel-shaded Lilith cosplay from Borderlands (gallery)
• Breaking Borderlands 2: Easy money, XP, Eridium, boss fights, and tokens
• Gotta mold them all! Clay versions of the original 151 Pokémon
• 15 baffling Street Fighter II mysteries

Electronic Arts and the Irish government have clinked their Guinness mugs and reached an agreement that will see the game publisher hiring 300 customer-service agents in Galway, Ireland.

Galaway was already home to about 100 of EA’s European “customer experience centre of excellence” employees. This latest growth spurt will bring multilingual support across a wide swath of EA releases.

“The EA European Customer Experience Centre is the focal point of our strategy to serve gamers on a global basis,” EA chief operating officer Peter Moore said in a statement. “In today’s fast-moving digital environment, we need to engage with our worldwide customer base on a 24/7 basis, across all of EA’s games and services and in multiple languages.”

According to the long-time publisher, that’s exactly what this round of hiring will produce. The plan is for the Galway outpost to provide help to EA customers in 16 different languages.

The Irish government’s involvement, via its Industrial Development Authority, is more evidence of the global economy’s shifting priorities. Many nations that once had strong manufacturing and labor sectors are now turning to technology and services to keep up with drastically fluctuating demands and market realities.

“Digital games form a key part of the government’s plan for jobs and growth, and recently I announced the establishment of a new industry-led group to drive the creation of 2,500 extra jobs in the sector by 2014,” Ireland Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation Richard Bruton said. “Today’s announcement that EA is creating a further 300 jobs so soon after investing in Ireland for the first time is great news and shows very clearly the enormous potential of this high-growth industry.”

EA has been notorious for its questionable customer service in the last few years. More customer-care representatives could mollify some of those issues.

The company is beginning recruitment in Galway. Interested parties can find out more about the available opportunities at EA’s jobs site.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Giant video game publisher Electronic Arts saw its stock price rise 5.5 percent today after the New York Post reported a rumor that private equity firms are considering a buyout.

The Post reported that makers of such games as SimCity, Mass Effect 3, and Battlefield 3 is in early discussions about a possible buyout with private equity giants KKR and Providence Equity Partners. KKR, headed by Henry Kravits, declined comment, as did Providence, in comments to the New York Post. EA also said it does not comment on rumors.

A source told the Post that EA’s management made it known that they would “do a deal at $20 a share.” EA’s stock closed today at $13.81 a share, up 72 cents. Its market value is $4.4 billion, well below the $7 billion it traded at for much of last year.

EA’s stock has fallen in part because the company’s flagship online game, Star Wars: The Old Republic, hasn’t performed as well as expected after six years in development.

EA’s largest rival, Activision Blizzard, was also reportedly up for sale as majority owner Vivendi wanted to sell its 61 percent stake for around $8 billion. No deal materialized. EA is a 30-year-old company that is adapting as fast as it can to the digital age. About a quarter of its revenues, or $1.3 billion in 12-months trailing revenue, now come from digital sources.

Rival Zynga has also seen its stock price plummet from $10 a share last fall to $3 a share today, knocking its value down to $2.28 billion. But rumors of a takeover haven’t hit Zynga, in part because founder Mark Pincus holds a majority of the voting shares of the company and so it can’t easily be taken over against his wishes.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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If you follow VentureBeat but don’t regularly check our GamesBeat site, here’s a list of the best games stories we ran over the last seven days that you may have missed.

This week, Konami cancels a patch for the Xbox 360 version of the Silent Hill HD collection (but totally updates it on PlayStation 3), Zynga’s chief operating officer steps down, and Amazon launches its own online studio and Facebook game.

You’ll also find a review for New Super Mario Bros. 2 and previews for Marvel: War of Heroes, FIFA 13, and PlayStation All-Star Battle Royale.

News

• TheDeanBeat: Kickstarter isn’t indie gamemaker Double Fine’s only funding route
• Blizzard’s authenticators breached in hack
• Calm down: Sony assures us that The Last Guardian is still in development
• Infinity Blade developers hire former Kingdoms of Amalur creators for new studio
• Ouya surpasses its funding goal on Kickstarter by $7.6M
• Konami cancels patch for Xbox 360 edition of Silent Hill HD Collection
• Game developers hate Windows 8, Microsoft responds
• Nancy Drew gamemaker turns to Kickstarter for mobile versions
• Facebook launches real-money gambling game in U.K.
• Wargaming acquires BigWorld middleware firm for $45M (exclusive)
• Amazon launches its own online game studio and first Facebook game
• The golden age returns? Seamus Blackley’s Innovative Leisure mobile game startup raises seed round (exclusive)

Second quarter earnings reports and NPD numbers

• Overall video game sales dive 20 percent in July, 3DS and NCAA Football 13 take top spots
• Nvidia earnings on the rise thanks to the Tegra 3 mobile processor
• Japan’s big console gamemaker, Square Enix, slips into a loss
• THQ losses beat expectations in fiscal first-quarter 2013

Interviews

• Guild Wars 2: Console ports, subscription models, and making sure it works on launch day (interview)
• Now just how many tanks can you fit in a battle map? Find out in the Armored Kill expansion for Battlefield 3 (interview)
• DoubleDown Interactive succeeds by not sucking at social casino games (interview)
• Game designer crosses over from making Halo games to Zynga’s social games — he’s never going back (interview)

Mobile News

• The Walking Dead shambles over to Facebook in new social game
• Activision’s The Blast Furnace resurrects Pitfall! for mobile devices
• Introducing The Blast Furnace, Activision’s first mobile-only development studio

Previews

• PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale will kick your ass in ways you could never imagine (preview)
• EA shows off smart Wii U GamePad tricks for FIFA 13 and Mass Effect 3 (preview)
• Mass Effect 3: Leviathan boldly goes where no Shepard has gone before (preview)
• Marvel: War of Heroes distills superhero combat into card-based digestible chunks (preview)

Reviews

• New Super Mario Bros. 2 is too obsessed with reliving the good old days (review)

Oh, Zynga….

• Meet Gems With Friends, Zynga’s newest (and familiar-looking) iOS game
• Zynga COO John Schappert steps down
• Zynga sees FarmVille and CityVille user spikes [UPDATE: Maybe not]
• Will Zynga’s ChefVille revive the company’s fortunes?

Pieces of flair

• Decorate your iPhone the retro way with these gaming-themed wallpapers
• The first 5 games you should get for your Nexus 7
• Check out the Ghostbusters, Sonic, and Minecraft references hidden away in these Team Fortress 2 maps (gallery)
• Annoy your friends and impress no one: Cheats for casual games

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Armored Kill is the next expansion pack for Electronic Arts’ Battlefield 3 military shooter video game, which has shipped more than 12 million copies in the past year. EA’s DICE game studio in Sweden is preparing to ship the new expansion for gamers in September. It’s the third of five packs coming from EA, and it’s free for players who subscribe to the Battlefield 3 Premium service.

As the name suggests, the expansion is all about vehicular mayhem in multiplayer combat. The modern warriors playing the game can drive tanks, all-terrain vehicles, mobile artillery, and even hitch a ride in a helicopter gunship. The pack of four maps includes the biggest map in Battlefield’s history, where players can trade armored rounds in tense tank duels.

We caught up with lead designer Niklas Fegraeus (pictured below) of DICE at EA’s recent summer showcase at EA headquarters in Redwood City, Calif. He says that fighting with armor against armor is a “purifying experience.” Here’s an edited transcript of our interview.

GamesBeat: So you’re the lead designer of…?

Niklas Fegraeus: The lead designer at DICE. That’s the simple way of putting it.

GamesBeat: And this expansion is coming when?

Fegraeus: It’s coming in September. It’s called Armored Kill. It’s the third one, the third of five.

GamesBeat: This sounds simple enough from the name. You get to drive around in a lot of tanks, I take it?

Fegraeus: Yes, it’s about the vehicles. [Chuckles]

GamesBeat: What map are we looking at here?

Fegraeus: This map is called Armored Shield. It’s in Russia. The mode that we’re looking at is Tank Superiority, which is a new mode that we introduced with the Armored Kill pack. It means that you have two tank platoons that go at it and try to control this central area here. You’ll see lots of big formations of tanks duking it out. They’ll be flanking each other and trying to seize control of this area. Lots of tank shells and explosions.

GamesBeat: There’s only one marker to grab, right in the center of the map?

Fegraeus: Yeah, only one marker to grab — and lots of tanks trying to stop you.

GamesBeat: How many players can go play on this map at the same time? How many vehicles are in there?

Fegraeus: It’s 12-versus-12. When you play a normal Conquest round with tanks, it takes a while after they’re destroyed for them to come back. But for this mode, we’ve tweaked that. Now tanks immediately come back, so that everyone can have a vehicle and bring it into battle.

GamesBeat: So you don’t really have too many infantry running around. Everybody’s in a vehicle.

Fegraeus: You can, of course, jump out of the vehicle if you need to repair, to set up mines, or to do things like that. But you’re very vulnerable. This takes place in pretty open fields, and there’s lots and lots of tanks around. It’s not safe to run around on foot. If that’s your thing, then go ahead. But this is really a tank battle.

GamesBeat: How many maps are in this collection, and does it feature other styles of play?

Fegraeus: There are four new maps in the pack. We’re introducing a bunch of new vehicles as well: two new tank destroyers, which is a lighter tank. It’s faster, and it has the same firepower, but it lacks the armored defense of the big tanks. Also, [this has] the four-wheeled ATV that some of you might recognize from Bad Company 2. That acts as a fast transport. Then we have the mobile artillery, which are these big trucks with artillery cannons on them. You can find a good firing point, deploy them there, and start suppressing areas or shelling bases to soften them up for an attack from your friends. Then we have the gunship, which is tied to a base; if you capture the base that gunship becomes yours. It starts circling the area and you can spawn in on it to parachute out. You can jump down onto the gun positions, the AA positions, where you can deploy flares or fire the AA cannons.

GamesBeat: Are you piloting that gunship?

Fegraeus: It’s on a path to cover the area. Players can utilize the weapons system and the spawn systems on it. And then, of course, they can pilot jets to protect it. It’s a big bird; it can take a hit. But it’s a big target as well, so you need to protect it.

GamesBeat: Have the players been asking for these kinds of things?

Fegraeus: Yeah, definitely. There’s always a big demand that we hear a lot, like, “C’mon, let’s make some really big maps, some awesome vehicle warfare!” We took that as our focus for this pack, and we just tried to make the coolest, biggest vehicle war experience we could make. That’s what we’re showing off.

GamesBeat: They haven’t had that so much before, right? This is the first real focus on armored….

Fegraeus: Well, Battlefield has always been known for big maps and the vehicle warfare aspect. This is just kind of purifying that experience and introducing some new modes that really emphasize that theme in that pack.

GamesBeat: Are there other air-versus-ground options in these maps?

Fegraeus: There’s no new jets, if that’s what you mean. The gunship has turboprops, I think?

GamesBeat: This series of five packs seems like a lot more than you’ve ever turned out so quickly. What’s that like for you?

Fegraeus: It’s exciting, actually. We were both surprised and really excited about the success of the game, Battlefield 3. We didn’t know it was going to become so popular. I don’t know the latest numbers, but it’s a lot. We said we really need to give something really great to all the fans. That’s when we came up with the idea of having these themed expansions, rather than just giving out new maps or something like that. We wanted to focus and do something big. So far we’ve had a positive reception. Now, with Premium, where you can just get all these in one go, no hassle, get them early, plus a bunch of other neat stuff that comes with Premium…I think that if you’re a core Battlefield fan, you’ll really appreciate it, and you can feel like Battlefield 3 was the best investment you could have made.

GamesBeat: If you buy them separately, how much is it?

Fegraeus: Separately, they’re $15 dollars each. If you get the Premium, it’s $49.99, but you get all the packs, the premium dog tags and knife, some Battle Log features, and, of course, the early access, so you can start playing this before anyone else.

[Image credits: EA, Dean Takahashi]

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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