The endless march of time means we’ll all eventually perish from this Earth, but it also means that silly things like Xbox 360 time exclusives will also pass. Maybe that’s not a fair trade, but I’ll take it.

Today, publisher Activision launched the Uprising map pack for Call of Duty: Black Ops II on PC and PlayStation 3. That means those players can hop online now and download the $15 expansion.

Uprising includes four new maps titled Magma, Encore, Vertigo, and Studio. Magma is a Japanese town on the outskirts of an erupting volcano (don’t touch the lava; the ground is lava). Encore is in London at an outdoor amphitheater. Vertigo takes players to a futuristic Indian skyscraper. Finally, Studio is an updated take on the popular Firing Range map from the original Black Ops.

In addition to those multiplayer maps, Uprising features a cooperative zombie-gangster mode called Mob of the Dead. It stars Ray Liotta (Goodfellas), Chazz Palminteri (The Usual Suspects), Joe Pantoliano (The Sopranos), and Michael Madsen (Reservoir Dogs) in the four player-character roles.

To hype the PS3 and PC release, Activision unleashed this new promotional video:

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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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Gamers pour millions of hours into top titles, but we never really had a good way to measure who is playing what across multiple platforms. That is until Raptr, a social network for gaming fans, began tracking play a few years ago.

Raptr just released its list of the 20 most-played games among its users in April. This method isn’t perfect since Raptr doesn’t log every gamer or even every system (it doesn’t log the 3DS or Vita), but it’s good for giving a glimpse at what people are playing.

We’ve embedded the list below:

Call of Duty: Black Ops II and League of Legends continue their stints at the top of the list, but Valve’s multiplayer online battle-arena game Dota 2 is making gains. In April, it jumped from fifth to third. That places it above Blizzard’s World of Warcraft for the first time ever.

Between League of Legends and Dota 2, MOBAs hold 10 percent of the total playtime among all Raptr members.

The only new title on the list is the multiplayer shooter Defiance for the PC, which placed ninth. Recent addition SimCity dropped off the list entirely.

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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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Guns good. Games bad. That’s the general sentiment expressed by speakers at the National Rifle Association, which held its annual meeting in Texas on Friday.

One speaker in particular, Fox News host Jeanine Pirro, cited violent video games and Hollywood movies as the spark that sets off mass murderers, according to Raw Story. She also told the audience of NRA members that alleged Boston bomber, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, has more rights than lawful gun owners. Tamerlan Tsarnaev, one of the two Boston bombing suspects, died attempting to evade law enforcement.

Pirro’s reasoning is that Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick refused to release Tsarnaev’s confidential financial information on the basis of privacy while a newspaper in New York published a database of gun owners in two New York counties. The publication’s editors claimed it was providing information in the wake of the mass shooting at a school in Newtown, Connecticut.

“How dare you compare me to a nut-job on the lunatic fringe in desperate need of medication doing nothing but watching Hollywood’s blood-soaked movies and playing the liberal Hollywood’s violent video games for days at a time,” she said. The NRA audience applauded the line.

Pirro was referencing Newtown shooter Adam Lanza. Following his Dec. 14 attack, a former plumber of the Lanza family claimed Adam would stay locked up in the basement playing games like Call of Duty for hours at a time. This quickly painted a picture of an angry young man fueled by violent games that many gun apologists and others latched on to.

Lanza’s mother had a collection of guns that he used in the attacks. Classmates also suggested that Lanza suffered from Asperger’s syndrome, which is a variation of autism. Investigators never confirmed that diagnosis.

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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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Experience is wonderful, but nothing beats double experience — and of course we all learned how unnatural triple experience is in Sunday school.

Treyarch agrees that double XP is good for you and is bringing an entire weekend of the stuff to the world right now. The developer launched a Double XP Weekend for its first-person shooter Call of Duty: Black Ops II earlier today. The event lasts through Monday afternoon on Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Wii U, and PC.

As usual, Treyarch is coupling the Double XP Weekend with something it wants to celebrate. In this case, that’s the impending launch of the Uprising expansion for the Xbox 360 version on April 16.

Uprising is part of the Black Ops II downloadable content Season Pass, which costs $39.99. For everyone else, it will retail at 1,200 Microsoft Points (or $15 in Earth currency).

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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 can’t escape the gun issue. That’s partly because the media looks for a scapegoat when confronted with difficult tragedies, but it’s also because so many games prominently feature firearms.

PBS stepped up to take on the issue of guns in games in its Idea Channel webseries. The show posed an interesting question: Is buying Call of Duty a moral choice?

Idea Channel suggests that because the developers of realistic military shooters license real weapons from real gun manufacturers, anyone who buys a Call of Duty or Battlefield is vicariously funding companies like Colt and Bushmaster.

Obviously, this is only a potential quandary for individuals so fundamentally opposed to guns that they believe no one should profit from gun sales. Gun enthusiasts don’t see an issue with directly giving money to firearm companies, so they won’t care if they indirectly fund them.

Despite the touchy subject, it’s a well-reasoned argument that is worth watching:

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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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In Call of Duty: Black Ops, developer Treyarch had President John Kennedy, President Richard Nixon, U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, and Cuban President Fidel Castro fighting off waves of zombies.

It was one of the standout aspects of that release.

The Zombies mode returned in Call of Duty: Black Ops II, but the cast of playable characters didn’t quite live up to those historical heavyweights. That is until the upcoming Black Ops II – Uprising downloadable content comes out on Xbox 360 on April 16.

Uprising will bring a new mode called Mob of the Dead to the first-person shooter. As the name implies, this new Zombies mode stars a bunch of wiseguy gangsters fending off the swarming undead.

Actors Ray Liotta (Goodfellas), Joe “Joey Pants” Pantoliano (The Matrix), Michael Madsen (Kill Bill), and Chazz Palminteri (A Bronx Tale) star as the heroes who are imprisoned in Alcatraz in the 1930s.

Check out the trailer with the Goodfellas-style voice-over by Liotta in the trailer below:

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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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Raptr has begun releasing monthly figures for the most-played Xbox 360 and PC games, and in its first-ever report, Call of Duty: Black Ops II is at the top. Black Ops II came out in November, but the first-person modern combat shooter is still commanding about 7.61 percent of overall gamer time.

Raptr is a gamer social network with 17 million users who share information about their game playing on the Xbox 360 and PC. Since Sony doesn’t allow PlayStation Network members to share game play data, there are no PlayStation 3 games in the rankings. The chart below ranks titles by the percentage of the total time spent on the top 1,000 games played by Raptr users.

While Black Ops II has the lead, it is closely followed by League of Legends on the PC, with 5.9 percent; World of Warcraft for the PC with 3.4 percent, and Gears of War: Judgment for the Xbox 360 at 2.54 percent. Dota 2 (Valve’s battle arena sequel to the Defense of the Ancients mod for Warcraft III) is still in beta but it has climbed up the charts recently, with play time up 63 percent from February. Game time for Dota 2 is half the time of its rival battle arena game League of Legends, but in the last week of March, the gap in playtime was just 25 percent under League of Legends.

Battlefield 3 saw a surge from the release of End Game downloadable content (DLC) in the first half of March. Halo 4 on the Xbox 360, meanwhile, continues a slow decline, with game time down 28 percent compared to February. The largest percentage of those Halo 4 players returned to play Mass Effect 3, thanks to the release on March 5 of the Citadel DLC for that game. A smaller group went to play Gears of War: Judgment.

BioShock Infinite launched on March 26, and the Xbox 360 version was the second-most-played game for that week, with the PC version coming in seventh. Meanwhile, Candy Crush Saga is still the top browser game on Raptr, and Marvel: Avengers Alliance is a distant second, with 25 percent of Candy Crush’s play time.

SimCity had severe launch issues, and it came in 20th for the whole month. During the last week of the month, SimCity was the 34th most-played game.

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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 never thought the world would tire of killing Nazi zombies, but developer Treyarch is ready for something new. To freshen up the action in the Call of Duty: Black Ops II Zombies mode, the studio is replacing the musty Nazis with mobsters, prisoners, and guards in the infamous island prison of Alcatraz.

Publisher Activision and Treyarch revealed today that the Uprising downloadable-content pack for Black Ops II is due out for Xbox 360 on April 16. The expansion comprises four new multiplayer maps in addition to the aforementioned Zombies mode, Mob of the Dead.

In Mob of the Dead, Treyarch is putting players in the shoes of four Prohibition-era gangsters voiced by renown actors Ray Liotta (Goodfellas), Chazz Palminteri (The Usual Suspects), Joe Pantoliano (The Sopranos), and Michael Madsen (Reservoir Dogs). Serving time in Alcatraz prison, the four mobsters must kill undead inmates, prison guards, and more.

New to Mob of the Dead, if a player is overcome by enemies, they will get a chance to keep playing in a Purgatory mode rife with unique objectives.

“With Uprising, the team has really outdone itself again,” Treyarch studio head Mark Lamia said. “In addition to creating four amazing new multiplayer maps, the Studio has been hard at work on the Zombies front to surpass what we accomplished with ‘Call of the Dead.’ What they’ve done this time around is nothing Zombies fans have seen before – and if you don’t believe me, just wait until you get into Purgatory.”

Uprising also includes four new competitive multiplayer maps called Magma, Encore, Vertigo, and Studio. Magma pits players against one another in a Japanese town overrun with lava from a nearby volcano. Encore takes place in a massive outdoor amphitheater in London. Vertigo has gamers running around the top of a futuristic skyscraper in India. Studio is an updated take on the Firing Range map from the original Black Ops. It is set on a Hollywood backlot with sci-fi and Old West props.

Take a first look at all of the new content in action in the first Uprising trailer:

Uprising is due out for PlayStation 3 and PC sometime next month.

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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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Tangentix has closed a $2.1 million funding round to finance its compression technology that can make game downloads three times faster. If the technology works, the company will be able to address a problem that is a major pain for players.

The technology will become increasingly useful as digital downloads via services such as Valve’s Steam and Electronic Arts’ Origin become a bigger part of the overall game business. A typical high-end release uses about 11 gigabytes of data. But with typical Internet connections that download data at 3 megabits to 4 megabits per second in the U.S., it can take many hours, and even days, to download a full title. Many gamers give up, and that turns into lost sales. Tangentix is attacking this major problem with better compression tech.

The firm says it can do this without requiring publishers or developers to integrate a software development kit, applications programming interface, or any other coding. Tangentix simply re-encodes the data from a finished gold disc on its own servers and then provides another gold disc to the publisher for normal distribution.

It says the compression is high-definition, meaning it doesn’t introduce artifacts or lower the fidelity of graphics. The technology even works on connections as slow as 256 kilobits per second. The faster download time also reduces a publisher’s cost for game distribution.

“The funding marks a major milestone for Tangentix as we work to implement our compression technology in multiple AAA titles and deploy a new paradigm for PC and Mac game discovery,” said Edward French, CEO of Tangentix, in a statement. “We believe the growing size of games is a real challenge for publishers and gamers, and next week, we’ll be able to show the world what we’ve developed that addresses the problem and will get people playing traditional AAA games in new ways.”

In the past, compressing data often meant making compromises that hurt the quality of the images being reduced. That, in turn, reduces the realism of the game and the sense of immersion that the player gets from being part of a virtual world. To date, Tangentix has compressed seven games for customers and is in discussions to do more during 2013. The company was able to take Call of Duty: Black Ops II and reduce it from 14.5 gigabytes to just 4.8 gigabytes.

The new technology comes from Hassan Ugail, a professor at the University of Bradford in England. He did research into the use of partial differential equations to represent 3D surfaces in a more efficient manner, and he uses that approach to mathematically compress data so that it takes up less space. He tried to use this technology to spot the faces of terrorists in 3D images for security applications. But it didn’t work so well since a lot of people can look like images of known suspects.

Since 2009, Ugail worked on the process with EV Group, a seed fund that incubated the technology. They built a team around the video game application and have now created a startup in Sheffield, England. Chris Deering, former chairman of Codemasters, is the chairman. Ian Livingstone, former president of Eidos, is on the board. David Reitman, formerly at Gaikai, is an advisor for the board. The company has 10 employees and is actively hiring.

Tangentix is demonstrating the technology at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco this week. Rival technologies include cloud gaming, which skips the download altogether and hosts titles in the cloud, sending only a video stream to players. The proponents of this technology include OnLive, Gaikai (owned by Sony), and Otoy.

The investors include the EV Group, RisingStars Growth Fund II, ParkWalk Advisors, Finance Yorkshire (Seedcorn and Equity) Funds. To date, Tangentix has raised $3.1 million.

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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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Robert Kirkman has a twisted mind. Somewhere in the dark recesses of his psyche lurked tales of hacking off limbs, gouging of eyes with spoons, and pinning down male genitalia with nails. And this doesn’t even have anything to do with what the zombies do. He just has to let all that shit out. That’s the only explanation I can think of for The Walking Dead, the writer’s ongoing black-and-white comic book story that has expanded its reach to television and video games.

The Walking Dead: Survival Instinct (out now for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Wii U, and PC) isn’t your typical first-person zombie-shootin’ game since you can’t mow down the undead with a generous supply of bullets. It takes place in the early days of the zombie apocalypse from AMC’s version of The Walking Dead — the popular TV series based on the comic — and puts you in the role of Daryl Dixon, the show’s crossbow-firing antihero.

In keeping with the fiction’s rules, gunshots and explosions attract way more zombies (via sight and sound) than those they actually kill, so it’s best to stick with melee weapons and close encounters to ensure Daryl’s safety as he fights through Georgia in search of his older brother, Merle. Developer Terminal Reality wisely emphasizes a survival aspect that zombie-focused games usually ignore, but it’s not enough to elevate Survival Instinct (as played on a PS3) from being more than just a mediocre experience.

What you’ll like

Struggling to survive

Unlike the undead shooting gallery seen in Left 4 Dead or Call of Duty: Black Ops II’s outlandish zombie mode, Survival Instinct has a distinctive gameplay loop of exploration, scavenging, and hunting down walkers (The Walking Dead’s parlance for zombies). It all comes together really well in the first few hours — you need to look for gas cans so you have enough fuel to travel from town to town; you explore that area for food, munitions, and possible survivors to bring with you; and when you’re done there, you drive over to the next place and repeat the process.

Zombies aren’t just cannon fodder since it only takes a handful of them to kill you. The best strategy is to break them up into smaller groups or isolate them individually, and then sneak behind and smash or stab their heads with weapons like a baseball bat or a machete. It’s impossible to account for every single corpse roaming around, so I always felt nervous when exploring an infested town. But it’s all the more thrilling when you do manage to outsmart them by picking them off or when you successfully hide from a huge herd that’s coming after you.

The road is fraught with danger as well. The chances of your car breaking down or finding a pit stop to search for supplies depends on which of the three routes you take. Driving down the back roads use up a lot of fuel, but you’ll pull over more often for supply runs. Regular streets take up a little less gas and gives you a medium chance to find new areas. And highways need the least amount of fuel, but you’ll also have a high probability that your car will stall.

The Walking Dead: Survival Instinct screenshots

Grounding this risk/rewards system in some sense of realism makes your experience unpredictable. I thought I was doing well when I had a surplus of food and guns … but the next area I traveled through (and the herd of zombies I met) nearly drained me of all of my resources.

It’s a solid system that would’ve worked well with better level designs and mission objectives. But repetition began to set in halfway through my 8.5 hour playthrough thanks to a bunch of problems, which more development time could have fixed.

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You would think that the Call of Duty franchise makes enough money, but Activision is looking to squeeze a few more dollars out of its popular first-person shooter.

The publisher announced today that it will introduce new in-game purchases beginning Wednesday for Xbox 360. These microtransactions include Personalization Packs for 160 Microsoft Points ($2), which each include a distinct weapon camo, three targeting reticles, and a custom Calling Card. For example, the Bacon Personalization Pack gives players a camo that wraps each gun in, well, bacon.

Players that buy the Extra Slots Pack for 160 MS Points get 10 more custom classes, 20 extra spaces to archive emblems, 32 more slots for films, and 40 more slots for screenshots in Theater Mode.

Finally, for 80 MS Points ($1), players can purchase Flags of the World Calling Card Packs by region. Gamers who get one of these packs can use a flag as their identifier — just like you could in the last few Call of Duty games … for free.

None of these in-game purchases should affect gameplay, since everything is merely cosmetic. Activision didn’t specify if or when this downloadable content will come to PlayStation 3, PC, or Wii U.

In addition to these new customization options, Activision will begin selling the Nuketown Zombies maps for 400 MS Points ($5) to players that didn’t preorder. Meanwhile, the Nuketown 2025 multiplayer map will finally go free for everybody.

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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 shuts down its Baltimore studio while consolidating three others, THQ will sell off Homeworld, Darksiders, and Red Faction in its last auction, and the Android-based Ouya console will ship March 28.

You’ll also find reviews of Star Wars Pinball and Tomb Raider, as well as previews for Lego City: Undercover, Warface, Time and Eternity, and Throw Trucks with Your Mind.

News

• The DeanBeat: The Nintendo Wii U’s troubles start with a dearth of developers
• Co-creator of Counter-Strike will launch his Tactical Intervention shooter on March 28
• Sony’s 4K movie service coming to PS4, but 100GB downloads remind us why 4K is a waste
• It takes 600 people for Ubisoft to make a triple-A game on PlayStation 4
• CCP holding special Eve Online/Dust 514 event at PAX East for players to make in-game ‘history’
• German publisher Daedalic taps into the international power of adventure games
• Call of Duty: Black Ops II Revolution map pack now available on PlayStation 3 and PC (not Wii U)
• This week in the Nintendo Download: Castlevania, Runner 2, and Retro City Rampage
• Portal developer Kim Swift’s next game is exclusive to Ouya
• Ouya confirms March 28 console shipping and hires ex-Journey developer Kellee Santiago
• Scopely announces marquee game developers as mobile-platform partners
• CCP: ‘No reason we need to stop at just Eve and Dust’ as MMO passes 500K subscribers
• Official key art for Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag
• OnLive offers a free download with every cloud purchase of The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings
• With 23,000 expected attendees, GDC will drill down into everything from PS4 to free-to-play
• GDC attendee survey chronicles the explosion of indie gaming and fall of Nintendo
• The Carrot to-do list for iPhone is your new master
• Don’t play this 800-player (!) online version of Bomberman if you have work to do
• ‘The Thunder King’ trailer celebrates the imminent arrival of World of Warcraft’s latest patch
• EA’s top digital executive Kristian Segerstrale leaves
• Social-game developer Playdemic appoints ‘Fighting Fantasy’ author as new chairman
• Will Wright talks about the new SimCity
• Deadpool game rated M for jokes during violence and inflating a blow-up doll
• GameHouse bets it all on its social casino games
• Online gambling now legal in New Jersey
• Skullgirls reaches crowdfunding goal faster than any other game in Indiegogo’s history
• THQ to sell off Homeworld, Red Faction, Darksiders in last auction
• The War Z is back on Steam more than two months after Valve pulled it
• EA chief technology officer on PS4: ‘We no longer have to constrain our games’
• EA says it missed Sony’s event to maintain ‘balance’ with Microsoft — but Battlefield 4 is ‘stunning’ on PS4
• Toki Tori 2 dev explains why you won’t find any text in its puzzle-platforming sequel
• Anodyne and Surgeon Simulator among latest batch of Steam Greenlight games (updated)
• EA enables gamers to use a single identity across game platforms (exclusive)
• Goofy EA numbers that show how deeply players are engaged in games
• Blizzard debuts its StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm launch trailer on Twitch
• Wii Mini is heading to markets outside of Canada
• Uncharted 3′s multiplayer goes free-to-play
• Ex-FBI profiler: ‘We don’t see video games as the cause of violence’
• New developer Win releases Slots Craze social game backed by online-gambling company
• Online gaming giant Nexon invests in ex-Call of Duty creative strategist’s Robotoki game startup
• Sony appoints new firm to plan PlayStation media strategy
• Lombardi still with Valve — LinkedIn update made in error (updated)
• Zynga shuts Baltimore studio and consolidates three other locations
• Harris Poll: 58 percent of adults believe in a correlation between video games and violence
• Wooga: Inside the social games wonderland of Jens Begemann (video)

Mobile News

• Red Hot Labs raises $1.5M for mobile games and a platform to make them spread
• Disney Mobile launches Toy Story: Smash It! game on app stores
• Samsung offers 100% of revenue to indie developers that use its app store
• Firefox OS needs games: Mozilla is confident it can entice developers by eliminating fragmentation
• Exent launches Android game subscription service for TVs (exclusive)

Reviews

• Star Wars Pinball: That wizard is not just a crazy old man (review)
• Tomb Raider hurts so good (review)

Previews

• With 7.5M users in Russia, Crytek’s free-to-play shooter Warface is coming to the U.S. (preview)
• Lego City: Undercover is less violent than Grand Theft Auto but still just as fun (preview)
• Throw Trucks with Your Mind is the best Star Wars game ever (preview)
• Forget saving the world: In Time and Eternity, you have to save your marriage (preview)

Interviews

• Think tank Gun Media brings experts together to make games (exclusive interview)
• Bungie leader Pete Parsons discusses how studio is shaping gaming’s Destiny (interview)
• The peculiar origin of Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance’s heavy-metal sound (interview)

Pieces of Flair

• Silent Hill: Revelation vs. Silent Hill 3: A visual comparison (gallery)
• Required Listening: Fire Emblem, Crysis 3, and interview with Tomb Raider composer Jason Graves

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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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Call of Duty: Black Ops II players on the PlayStation 3 and PC, today is the day. You can finally get your headshot-loving thumbs on first downloadable content pack for Treyarch’s first-person shooter.

Activision released the Revolution map pack on PlayStation Network and Steam today for $14.99. Gamers can also get it as part of a $49.99 Season Pass, which guarantees access to the four planned expansion packs.

Revolution includes four maps, a new gun, a Zombies map, and a fresh Zombies mode.

Check out Activision’s PlayStation launch trailer below:

I’ve had some time with the map pack on Xbox 360, and I can say that the new maps are a good time.

• “Hydro” takes place at a hydroelectric plant in Pakistan. At set intervals, certain parts of the map flood and will kill anyone who’s standing in the water’s path.
• “Grind” is in a Venice Beach skate park. It doesn’t have many corners to hide behind, which is very different for a Call of Duty map.
• “Downhill” takes players to a ski resort in the French Alps. This is my favorite of the new maps. It offers a few great sniping locations and plenty of ways to flank said locations.
• “Mirage” is a luxury resort in China’s Gobi Desert. This is another great map, which offers ample pathways to attack the enemy or set up ambushes.

In addition to the maps, Revolution is the first time that Call of Duty has a new DLC weapon. The Peacemaker submachine gun is very similar to the M27 assault rifle. If you like the M27 but also want to run around like a mad man, the Peacemaker might fit your playstyle.

As for Zombies, Treyarch added the “Turned” mode, which gives players the chance to play as the undead. The DLC also has a new Zombies level called “Die Rise.” Treyarch set the stage in a skyscraper in a destroyed Chinese city.

Activision still isn’t saying anything about when (or if) the DLC will arrive on Nintendo’s Wii U. That’s not a good sign for Nintendo. If one of the biggest games in the world can’t figure out delivering its popular add-on packs, then what chance do any smaller games have of doing the same?

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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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Just because Activision is absorbing Call of Duty and World of Warcraft money at an atomic level doesn’t mean the company can avoid cutting jobs.

The massive third-party publisher laid off around 30 employees today. At least a portion of the affected jobs were at Call of Duty: Black Ops II developer Treyarch. Activision cites a desire to realign for upcoming market realities as the catalyst for these cuts.

The publisher released the following statement to Kotaku:

Like any successful business, Activision Publishing consistently works to align its costs with its revenues—this is an ongoing process. In 2013, we expect to release fewer games based on license properties and as a result are realigning our structure to better reflect the market opportunities and our slate. Approximately, 30 full-time employees have been impacted globally, which represents approximately one half of one percent of Activision Blizzard’s employee population. We are offering those employees who are impacted outplacement counseling services.

The Treyarch layoffs seem to fit with the standard cyclical hiring-and-firing nature of game development. The studio finished Black Ops II, the downloadable content doesn’t require as much manpower, and the next Treyarch Call of Duty game isn’t due until late 2014.

As for licensed games, Activision is responding to a widely observed trend in the market. These days, licensed titles have a greater impact on iOS and Android than they do on gaming consoles. It’s a big risk for a publisher to pay for the rights to make a triple-A game.

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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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Telltale Games have become one of my favorite and most respected developers literally overnight. Recently, against my own better judgement, I gripped my controller with mixed anticipation and anxiety late into the night when I knew I would have to walk out my front door for work in the morning. Yet, even with the threat of extreme tiredness almost guaranteed, I had to finish the final episode of Telltale’s award-winning Walking Dead series. Having joined the “walker” bandwagon late with the television series, I was reluctant to believe any meaningful story could come from a series centered on zombies. Little did I know how emotionally engrossing the universe based on Robert Kirkman’s graphic novels would be.

After obsessively watching the television series from the pilot all the way up to the third season in a little more than a week (yes, seriously), I realized that if a developer could create an experience as heart-wrenching as the TV series, then it would be something truly special.

What sets Lee and Clementine’s story apart from literally everything else I have ever played is not just the superbly written characters but also the emotional impact that comes from every player choice. These decisions don’t just feel superficial, they present real conundrums. For me, the choice mechanic was far more refined than similar systems featured in games like BioWare’s Mass Effect series. The key to The Walking Dead’s choices is the complete absence of a moral code. Ultimately, you only answer to your conscience after making your decisions.

Perhaps I have grown tired of the bloated role-playing titles and rehashed military shooters that have released in a period where the current console generation is on the verge of retirement. Maybe my feelings might simply be a case of cynicism from growing older. One thing I am sure of, though, is that I have begun to value strong narrative above everything else as a means of holding onto my attention. Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 is probably the best example I can use to explain my convoluted views more coherently. Treyarch’s latest iteration of the COD franchise is, by all means, a magnificent first-person shooter. Yet, it is the first one since I started playing the series that I have simply lost all desire to play.

This isn’t because the game is bad (it’s easily as good, if not better, than previous entries), but upon reaching the halfway mark of the single-player campaign, I realized that I was just playing without any motivation. The arsenal of guns felt punchy, the locales were exotic, and I had the mindset of a soldier. Yet, despite all of this, I still felt completely disconnected from the game’s world. The Call of Duty series isn’t renowned for its resonating narrative, and regardless of how action packed everything around me was, I just couldn’t find entertainment in killing large swathes of grunts with little more justification than “they work for the bad guy who wants to make the world burn.”

Mass Effect and Eidos Montreal’s Deus Ex: Human Revolution are superbly crafted games, but even such widely praised titles felt artificial in their climaxes with awkwardly presented, arbitrary choices. Above all, I think what makes Telltale’s efforts so unique and entertaining is the nature of the story that they are telling. The characters’ struggle for survival is emotionally familiar, and that creates brilliant entertainment value. Just like in Kirkman’s novels, the zombies are simply a means to an end in telling a story of how extreme situations can fundamentally change a person’s nature. The characters are struggling in a fictional world with very real, human problems.

Undoubtedly, everyone has different tastes, and I would never expect or want everyone to share this view. As I have conveyed in this article, I am by no means trying to detract from titles that prioritize action over narrative. Above all, the games industry is desperate to prove it is capable of telling mature stories, but I think it has already achieved this lofty goal. The question that remains on my lips is: Can a game truly have both an enthralling narrative combined with an equally stunning amount of spectacle?

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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, World of Warplanes developer Wargaming bought Gas Powered Games, Nintendo announced a bunch of new content focused on Luigi as the company celebrates his 30th birthday, and both House of Representatives Minority leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and President Barack Obama defended video games.

You’ll also find a review of Aliens: Colonial Marines and previews for Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate and Darkstalkers Resurrection.

News:

• The DeanBeat: The state of free-to-play mobile gaming, by the numbers
• After last year’s boom, social casino games remain strong
• Zynga and EA settle lawsuit
• Four payment trends that will shape the future of game development
• $79 GameStick console now available for preorder
• January NPD: Xbox 360 outsells Wii U again
• The Ouya open Android console has nearly 500 confirmed games
• This is what a prototype PlayStation 4 controller reportedly looks like
• Valve officially releases Steam for Linux — and celebrates with a sale
• This week in the Nintendo Download: Wii Street U, Naruto, and Rabbids
• Game Closure launches free tools for anyone to build fast mobile-web games
• Wargaming buys Gas Powered Games following failed Kickstarter and layoffs
• Here’s some 3DS DLC and eShop love from today’s Nintendo Direct
• Nintendo announces Mario and Luigi: Dream Team, coming this summer
• Betable’s experiment with real-money gambling pays off in the U.K.
• PlayJam licenses its GameStick technology to Asian hardware manufacturer
• Kickstarter suspends online casino game’s campaign after four days
• Naughty Dog delays The Last of Us to June
• Valve reportedly cuts hardware jobs despite ‘Steam Box’ console rumors
• ‘Orbis’ vs. ‘Durango’: The altercation over rumored specifications for the next PlayStation and Xbox
• Hideo Kojima will talk Metal Gear Solid: Ground Zeroes at GDC in March
• Next Batman Arkham game coming this year
• Mojang releases Minecraft: Pi Edition for the Raspberry Pi Linux computer
• Gas Powered Games’ chief Chris Taylor struggles to stay positive after crowdfunding failure
• Rayman Legends developers protest Wii U game’s delay
• GameStop’s Digital Ventures chief resigns
• Gas Powered Games kills Wildman Kickstarter project (updated)
• Crytek CEO: ‘Single-player modes will have to transform’ into co-op experiences in free-to-play future
• Nintendo announces Valentine’s Day 3DS for sweeties everywhere
• Skylanders crosses the $1B revenue mark with over 100M toys sold
• Warren Spector wants game developers to think about their legacies
• Nancy Pelosi defends video games on Fox News Sunday
• Path of Exile: Crowdfunding that isn’t following the Kickstarter crowd

Mobile News:

• Maybe social games are the cure for the Valentine’s Day singles
• From tabletop to digital: Why people are paying $500 for a game that’s not out yet
• New smartphone shooter The Drowning hopes to improve first-person controls on touch devices
• Everyplay lets you brag in mobile-game replay videos with FaceCam
• Playnomics launches PlayRM monetization and analytics for mobile
• Call of Duty alum Robert Bowling announces new iOS and Android tactical strategy game
• Leanplum creates A/B testing for small mobile game developers
• Activision dates Black Ops II Revolution map pack for PlayStation 3 and PC
• Fingerprint is a safe multiplayer gaming platform for kids using mobile devices
• Microsoft opens a Los Angeles Xbox entertainment studio for next generation
• Nomad Games seals deal with Thumbstar to publish Talisman on mobile
• Uzbekistani startup Spair plans to bring OnLive-like streaming technology to smartphone games

Reviews:

• Aliens: Colonial Marines isn’t the Aliens sequel you wanted (review)

Previews:

• Darkstalkers Resurrection is a detailed re-creation of the arcade experience (preview)
• Anatomy of a monster: Dissecting the beasts of Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate (preview)

Interviews:

• Aliens: Colonial Marines dev discusses the highs and lows of triple-A development (exclusive)
• With $7.7M raised via crowdfunding, Chris Roberts makes his sci-fi game in the public eye (interview)
• How much choice did the player really have in The Walking Dead? (interview)
• Gaming academic Jesse Schell expounds on chocofication and motivating players to play and pay (interview)
• Origin Stories: How Gearbox got to make Aliens: Colonial Marines

Pieces of Flair: 

• Obama says we need more gamers. Who are we to argue?
• Celebrate Valentine’s Day the gaming way
• University professor schools us on writing good video game poetry
• Show some love with GamesBeat’s gaming valentines
• 18 ridiculous(ly expensive) video game special editions

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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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Time heals all wounds. For example, it takes about 30 days to rub away the pain caused by the Xbox 360 getting the Call of Duty: Black Ops II downloadable content earlier than the PlayStation 3 and PC.

Today, Activision revealed that the Revolution map pack for Black Ops II debuts on PS3 and PC on Feb. 28. That’s almost exactly a month since the add-on hit the Xbox 360 on Jan. 29.

Revolution goes for $14.99 and includes four multiplayer maps, a multiplayer weapon, a Zombies map, and a fresh Zombies mode. Check out the video for more details:

The maps include new locations like a hydroelectric plant in Pakistan, a skate park in Venice Beach, a French ski resort, and a luxury resort in China’s Gobi Desert.

Revolution also breaks the mold by including a new gun called Peacekeeper. It’s the first time a new weapon is available as a piece of DLC in the history of Call of Duty.

Finally, the Zombies content gives players the chance to play as the undead in the new Turned mode. It also has the new Zombie map called Die Rise. It’s set in a series of crumbling skyscrapers.

Revolution is the first of four planned expansions for Black Ops II. Each add-on pack costs $14.99, according to Activision, but fans can save some cash by buying them all at once in the Season Pass for $49.99.

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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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Updated February 13 with @Treyarch’s response.

I’m a little late downloading the Black Ops II: Revolution map pack. In fact, I haven’t even purchased it yet. Unless your middle and last names are Freakin’ and Chief, then most of you have heard about the (currently) Xbox 360 exclusive content pack. The Revolution downloadable content contains four maps, a submachine gun affectionately named the Peacekeeper, and an expansive Zombies map called Die Rise.

But most of you already know the inner workings of every choke point, flank route, and ledge-jumping shortcut. The maps are great; they add to an already dynamic and colorful collection of set pieces.

The Peacekeeper SMG shoots like a dream. My favorite all-time Call of Duty gun is the FAMAS from the first iteration of Black Ops. The Peacekeeper is like the FAMAS due in part to its recoil and fire rate. The damage effect is similar, and since the Peacekeeper is an SMG, handling the weapon just feels right.

Even the Die Rise map is impressive; albeit, it’s frustrating and hard to maneuver around. I’m sure with time and patience, Die Rise will be as expansive and as enjoyable as the main Tranzit map. The daylight coupled with the almost oversaturated color frame makes it a great departure from the dim, apocalyptic feel of Tranzit.

But the one gripe that I have isn’t about whether the new maps are suitable for competitive league play — it’s with a glitch that happens after an update. After installing the new update to make the Peacekeeper SMG compatible for players who do not own the DLC, I found that all my custom classes were erased (I had two extra), all unlock tokens were missing, and any permanent unlocks I had were now relocked. All of my multiplayer progress — gone. Upon discovering this, my buddy claimed that it happened to him as well, and he’s a 5th Prestige. He’s cut back to only five custom classes.

I reached out and Tweeted @Treyarch about the glitch. With enough patience, Matt Scronce(@MaTtKs), associate game designer, tweeted me back throughout the night.

I loaded up the game, and, sure enough, all of my progress was restored. That, folks, is the power of social media.

Right down to the custom class names. :3 Shut-up guys…

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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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Some things I’d rather not know. Like how much time I spend eating burritos each year. Let’s just keep that to ourselves, Chipotle.

On the other hand, I’m happy to learn more about my gaming habits.

Today, Raptr revealed its new personalized infographic tool, which provides data about its users’ gaming habits throughout 2012 in an easily digestible visual presentation. For example, I learned that I spent over 200 hours in various Call of Duty games. … OK, maybe I didn’t want to know that.

For the unfamiliar, Raptr is a social-networking website that tracks gamers as they play titles on PC, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and other platforms. It shows players how much time they spent on specific games and how many achievements they’ve earned. They can also friend each other and compare stats.

Members can get their personalized summary by replacing “username” in the following URL with their Raptr handle: http://raptr.com/username/summary/2012.

The infographic includes stats like the rarest Achievement/Trophy earned, hours played, and total games played.

To promote this new feature, Raptr is holding a contest that includes $400 in prizes. Gamers just need to tweet their stats from Raptr using the #RaptrRep hashtag.

If you want to see what the infographic looks like, here is mine:

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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!

---

Splinter Cell: Blacklist publisher Ubisoft recently announced a $170 special edition of the game that includes a remote-control plane. This package continues the game industry’s bizarre race to see who can release the biggest, most elaborate boxed set that people will still buy.

Blacklist’s Pint-Sized Paladin Edition (not its real name) isn’t the most opulent big-box around, and it’s far from the most expensive. Here are some of the most ridiculously expensive special editions ever released, in roughly ascending order.

Note: For comparative purposes, I’ve used sites like Exchange Rates and Currency UK to convert foreign currencies to the U.S. dollar. I calculated these values from the exchange rate on the day the game came out. Converted amounts for unreleased titles come from current rates, so these values are approximate.

Steins;Gate’s Double Pack Limited Edition

Cost: ¥18,690 (app. $202)

Steins;Gate is a Japan-exclusive visual novel about a group of teenagers who discover a way to send history-altering text messages back in time. It came out for the Xbox 360 in 2009, and a port for the PlayStation Vita comes out next month. Superfans can buy the “Double Pack” for the portable system, which includes the game, a disc of bonus content, an advance ticket to the upcoming Steins;Gate film, a metal hairpin, a ribbon choker, and the outfit you see in the above picture.

Are they real, human-sized clothes? I couldn’t really tell from my research, but I hope so, considering the price. You might wonder why anyone would pay so much for a game just to have an authentic version of a fictional character’s clothes. Keep that question in mind — we will revisit it later.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2′s Prestige Edition (UK)

Cost: £119.99 ($217)

One of the things we’re going to see repeatedly in this article is that things tend to cost more in the United Kingdom and Australia. That’s why the U.S. release of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2′s Prestige Edition, which cost $149.99, is not on this list, but the UK version, which was almost 70 dollars more, is.

The two sets are exactly the same. They both include the game, a download for the original Call of Duty on Xbox Live Arcade or the PlayStation Network, an art book, those infamous night-vision goggles, and a mannequin head based on main character “Soap” MacTavish to store the specs on when you’re not re-enacting the end of The Silence of the Lambs.

That’s actually the least creepy way I can imagine someone using those things.

Resident Evil’s 5th Anniversary Special Package

Cost: ¥28,000 (app. $230)

Say hello to one of the other trends we’re going to see again and again: elaborate special editions for the Resident Evil series (also known as Biohazard). This Japan-exclusive set came out back in 2001 to commemorate the original game’s fifth birthday, and it’s full of items of varying usefulness.

The Special Package included Resident Evils 1, 2, 3, and Resident Evil: Code: Veronica (which itself included a demo for developer Capcom’s other scary-shit-in-a-house game Devil May Cry), a DVD copy of the backstory-providing compilation “Wesker’s Report,” a pen, a key ring, a regular ring, some dog tags; a commemorative coin, and a locking briefcase to hold it all. So I guess you got plenty for your money.

Capcom only made 10,000 of these, which is probably why if you want one now, you’ll buy it at a high price.

Gran Turismo 5′s Signature Edition

Cost: €179.99 ($241)

While we’re talking about cramming a bunch of things into a box: That up there is the Europe-only Signature Edition of developer Polyphony Digital’s fifth Gran Turismo game. While the polished metal box in this set isn’t as espionage-ready as the briefcase in the Special Package, it’s still pretty cool in a “staring into the abyss” sort of way. And what’s in the box? Well, the game, obviously, along with a wallet, a key ring, a 1:43 scale Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG, a USB key containing a trailer for GT5, five in-game cars, and two books. One shows off the game’s cars and locations, and the other has 200 pages of tips and essays.

Oh, and do you see that little card up there on the wallet? That granted you entry into a contest to win a full-sized version of that little Mercedes up there. The competition included both in-game and real-life driving events, and Marco Calvo of Spain ended up winning. Mercedes values the car €180,000, so for Mr. Calvo, this bundle is actually the best value of any game ever.

Even if he lived in Australia, where this thing cost $299.99 (about $294 US).

Duke Nukem Forever’s Fully Loaded Package

Cost: $244.99

Duke Nukem Forever had several games’ shares of awkwardly named limited versions. You had the Balls of Steel Edition, the King Edition (it came with bubblegum because references to John Carpenter’s 1988 alien-invasion film They Live are still totally cool), and the boring old Steelbook Edition. But the PC-only FLP (I will not type it again, and you can’t make me) was the most expensive Duke experience available.

The FLP included the game, an art book, a mousepad, a wearable belt buckle, and an EVGA GeForce GTX 560 graphics card. I assume the new hardware allows you to play Duke Nukem Forever at maximum graphics settings — because we all know how notoriously taxing Duke Nukem games are.

Tekken 6′s Wireless Arcade Stick Bundle (UK)

Cost: £149.99 ($248)

Special editions aren’t always about keychains and snazzy cases. Sometimes, developers try to give their fans something useful. Take this Tekken 6 bundle that came out in the UK for almost $100 more than its U.S. counterpart. It comes with the game, an art book, and a wireless fight stick by peripheral maker Hori.

OK, so you could probably take or leave the book, but hey, that controller is alright, I guess. I’m sure they would have thrown in a keychain if we’d asked nicely.

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Activision Blizzard reported better-than-expected earnings for its fiscal fourth quarter ended Dec. 31. But it warned that 2013 will be a tougher year.

The success of last fall’s Call of Duty: Black Ops II and Skylanders: Giants drove sales. On a non-GAAP basis, the earnings per share were 78 cents, compared with 62 cents a year earlier and 6 cents above expectations. Revenue was $2.6 billion on a non-GAAP basis, compared with $2.4 billion a year earlier. For the fourth quarter, analysts expected 72 cents a share on revenue of $2.44 billion.

But in 2013, Activision Blizzard may have tougher comparison, since it is not releasing Diablo III or an equivalent game this year. Diablo III sold 10 million-plus units and generated 20 cents in earnings per share in 2012, according to analyst Ben Schachter.

Activision Blizzrd CEO Bobby Kotick said in a statement, “We are very pleased to report that Activision Blizzard delivered the best performance in its history. With better-than expected net revenues, record operating margins and record earnings, and over $1.3 billion in operating cash flow, we continue to set the industry success bar. I would like to thank our incredibly talented employees around the world for their passion, drive, and creativity, which continues to fuel our success.”

Kotick added, “As we look to 2013, we will continue to invest in our established franchises as well as several new properties. We expect these investments to drive our growth over the long term and to enable us to deliver superior returns to our shareholders in the years to come. In the short term, we expect to continue delivering strong profitability, but below our record-setting 2012 performance due to a challenged global economy, the ongoing console transition, and a difficult year-over-year comparison because of Blizzard’s record-shattering Diablo III success in 2012.”

For 2013, Activision Blizzard said its outlook is for 80 cents a share in net income and revenues of $4.2 billion. For the first quarter of 2013, Activision said it expects earnings of 10 cents a share on non-GAAP revenues of $690 million. Analysts expected non-GAAP earnings per share of 98 cents for 2013 on revenue of $4.6 billion.

But in 2013, Activision Blizzard may have tougher comparison, since it is not releasing Diablo III or an equivalent game this year. Diablo III sold 10 million-plus units and generated 20 cents in earnings per share in 2012, according to analyst Ben Schachter at Macquarie Equities Research.

Retail sales of games fell 21 percent in the U.S. in 2012.

Fourth quarter revenues were $1.77 billion on GAAP basis, compared with $1.41 billion a year earlier. GAAP earnings per share were 31 cents, compared with 8 cents a share a year earlier.

For the calendar year, GAAP revenues were $4.86 billion, compared with $4.76 billion a year earlier. Non-GAAP revenues were $4.99 billion, compared with $4.49 billion a year earlier. Revenues from digital channels were $1.54 billion, or 32 percent of the total. Non-GAAP Net revenues from digital channels were a record $1.6 billion.

For calendar year 2012, Activision Blizzard said earnings per share were share of $1.01, compared with 92 cents a share for 2011. On a non-GAAP basis, the company said earnings per share were $1.18, compared with 93 cents a share a year earlier.

In a conference call, Kotick said that Skylanders sold more than $1 billion to date and 100 million toys. He said Nintendo Wii U sales were lower than expected and that an industry transition was in the works as the industry awaits the launch of new game consoles.

Chief financial officer Dennis Durkin said that the outlook is lower for 2013 in part because of the console transition and lower predicted sales of Call of Duty for 2013 compared to 2012, and lower revenues for World of Warcraft in 2013 compared to 2012.

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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 overall income of $14.80 billion showed a decline of 9 percent from 2011’s $16.34 billion. Physical sales (new and used) suffered most, dropping 21 percent, from $11.25 billion in 2011, to $8.88 billion in 2012.

By contrast, sales of digital game content, including full games, add-on content, mobile games, and subscriptions, rose to a total of $5.92 billion in 2012, up 16 percent from $5.09 billion in 2011.

“When including all other forms of content spending outside of new physical games, the 2012 U.S. games market was more than twice as large as the total spending on new physical games alone,” said Liam Callahan, an industry analyst at The NPD Group, via press release.

“There were divergent trends when looking at content spending in 2012 as a whole, with a decrease of 21 percent in spending on physical content while digital content spending grew 16 percent; both formats combined for a total decline of 9 percent for the year,” said Callahan.

There were certainly no shortage of triple-A titles released last year, including sequels to the popular Call of Duty, Assassin’s Creed, and Halo franchises. But even these behemoths were unable to reverse the year-on-year sales decline.

With Nintendo releasing its latest home console, the Wii U, in late 2012, and both Sony and Microsoft rumored to unveil new systems this year, it will be interesting to see whether this has a positive impact on physical sales during 2013. For now, it looks like digital sales will continue to grow in importance to the multi-billion dollar industry.

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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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Once again, it’s time for our panel of video-game characters to get some skin in the game!

Super Bowl Sunday! That glorious national holiday where America shuts down to watch the best commercials of the year and some sports that happens between them! And this year, we get the Cain and Abel goodness of brothers John and Jim Harbaugh coaching the rival teams. Thanksgiving is going to suck at their house.

But enough trivialities! What say you, panel of experts? In the epic clash between the San Francisco 49ers versus the Baltimore Ravens, who shall reign supreme?

Launch the gallery to see the future!

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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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Competitive gamers better sharpen their Black Ops II skills — $1 million is at stake in the Call of Duty Championship.

Today, publisher Activision announced a partnership with Microsoft to hold the Call of Duty Championship in Hollywood on April 5-7. This tournament brings together 32 of the world’s top teams from Major League Gaming, the Electronic Sports League, and Xbox Live to compete in multiplayer matches of Call of Duty: Black Ops II on Xbox 360.

“More people play Call of Duty multiplayer every day then watch the average regular season game of the NBA,” Activision Publishing chief executive officer Eric Hirshberg said in a statement. “The scale and passion of the Call of Duty fan base is simply humbling, and yet there is no formal way to find out who among those millions of players is the best of the best, until now. Watching the performances of the very best Call of Duty players is already a mass spectator sport on YouTube and Call of Duty Elite. We are going to bring the best players in the world to Hollywood to compete on the ultimate stage for the ultimate prize. And we are going to invite our entire worldwide fan base to join in the fun.”

If your team has what it takes to make the plot of The Wizard come true in your life, then go to Elite.callofduty.com/esports to sign up. If you register with a team of four, head into the ranked League Play mode on Xbox Live to earn one of the last eight spots in the Hollywood tournament — the top eight eligible teams in the February season of League Play will get a chance to compete in the Call of Duty Championship.

“It’s an absolute honor to have players and fans celebrate the thrill of competition on such a grand stage,” said Mark Lamia, the head of Black Ops II developer Treyarch. “From the very beginning of development for Call of Duty: Black Ops II, we committed to making e-sports an integral part of the game, and it’s going to be awesome to watch the best teams in the world battle it out for everyone to see.”

E-sports is a growing sector of the video game market. Thousands of people watch competitive gaming online. This move from Activision is a big push to make the Xbox 360 version of Black Ops II one of the premiere e-sports games in that industry.

A large prize pool like this isn’t unheard of in e-sports — especially when it comes to the popular multiplayer online battle arena games. Valve had a $1.6 million total purse for a single Dota 2 tournament back in September. League of Legends has a total of $5 million in prizes across a season of tournaments. But competitive gamers already established the e-sports demand for those two games. Activision is coming at that sector from the top down.

The e-sports scene is growing more powerful every month, and this Activision moves seems like a way to market to that crowd. We’ll see how these gamers respond to that.

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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 United States military has more than 6,000 unmanned aerial vehicles in its arsenal. That’s more than the 2,300 fighter jets the U.S. has, according to a PBS investigation. We’re quickly moving toward a world where human-controlled robots represent our nation on the front line of war.

A primary criticism of the drone program is that the technology reduces real killing to nothing more than a video game. Well, a few drone pilots currently stationed in Afghanistan spoke out against that notion in a question-and-answer session on the popular Internet content-aggregation website Reddit.

Four drone operators hopped on to a single account for what the Reddit community calls an “ask me anything.” They each went by a one letter codename. A Reddit moderator verified that the pilots were legitimate.

Reddit user OMGWTFBBQCrew asked the team: “What kind of training do you undergo to pilot these seemingly ‘real life video games’?”

“It is a six-month course crammed into one month of intense training earning us an FAA student pilot license,” the pilot known as S said. “A lot of studying is involved, so we are required to hit the books pretty damn hard. We do, however, have personnel who are in fact licensed pilots ranging from small Cessna planes to regular, commercial planes like 747s. As for the video game part of the job, it usually involves a lot of Call of Duty on our down time.”

Another Reddit user, Gravitythrone, wanted to know if the pilots thought video game skills would translate to operating a Predator drone. Again, the pilots seemed to bristle at the implication that video games have anything to do with piloting a UAV.

“I wouldn’t say so,” the anonymous pilot known as W wrote. “I wasn’t much of a gamer prior to this job. I don’t think it has had a negative effect on my job skills.”

The drone operators certainly enjoy Call of Duty. The pilots mentioned it in several different answers.

“We are all about that Call of Duty — lol,” wrote W.

User Jhunte29 asked a series of questions to determine specifically how much flying a drone is “like Call of Duty.”

An unspecified pilot answered with only the following: ”I can tell you that this is the [most boring] game of Call of Duty you’ll ever play.”

Finally, users JonathanDnD asked if anyone on the team grew up playing games.

“Sure did,” the pilot known as J wrote. “Grew up on Zelda, Final Fantasy, Metal Gear Solid, everything Nintendo … until the Wii.”

So that’s that. Drone pilots play Call of Duty, they think their job is boring, and they don’t like the Wii.

Watch Rise of the Drones on PBS. See more from NOVA.

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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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One of the most popular console shooters is now capable of outputting video to one of the most popular live-streaming websites.

Twitch announced today that it partnered with publisher Activision and developer Treyarch to enable live streaming 0f Call of Duty: Black Ops II directly to Twitch. Black Ops II launched with the ability to broadcast gameplay to YouTube. By expanding this feature to Twitch, Treyarch will reach a more dedicated audience of gamers.

“Making Call of Duty: Black Ops II not only fun to play but also fun to watch was a key goal from the beginning of development,” Treyarch studio head Mark Lamia said in a statement. “We pushed ourselves to build these features right into the game in order to make live streaming as accessible and as social as possible for everyone. One of the things that makes this so special is that there’s no need for additional hardware or equipment. We want our fans to be able to share their experiences with the world.”

Many players already aired their Black Ops II gameplay on Twitch using video-capture devices and special software, but the built-in tools should help democratize the game-streaming scene. Gamers on the Xbox 360 can use their headsets to comment while they play, and they can even use the Kinect camera peripheral to stream video of themselves alongside the game. PlayStation users can do the same with a Move camera.

“Twitch is extremely excited to announce our integration with Call of Duty: Black Ops II,” said Twitch chief executive officer Emmett Shear. ”It’s going to blow the doors wide open for a new generation of console gamers to share their video game experiences. There’s no bigger gaming franchise on the console than Call of Duty, and we can’t wait to see what the community can create with this new tool. In-game streaming is entering a whole new world.”

Gamers can use their existing Twitch accounts. In addition to the Twitch website, players can view the streams using the Call of Duty: Elite app on phones, tablets, and browsers.

Twitch is a huge platform already. The website racks up 23 million unique viewers per month. Over 300,000 unique game broadcasters fill the site with nearly limitless content. The average viewer watches 1.5 hours of video a day. In December alone, users watched a total of 2 billion minutes.

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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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Don’t call it a map pack. The Revolution downloadable content for Call of Duty: Black Ops II has more than just some new multiplayer arenas.

Activision unleashed the first add-on pack for its popular first-person modern-military shooter Call of Duty: Black Ops II today on Xbox 360 for 1,200 Genuine Microsoft Points ($14.99). Developer Treyarch titled the DLC “Revolution.” It includes four new multiplayer maps, a new Zombies mode, a new Zombies map, and a new multiplayer weapon.

If you have the $49.99 Black Ops II season pass, you can boot up the game and start downloading the content at no extra charge.

The new maps include a hydroelectric power plant in Pakistan, a skate park in California, a ski resort in the French Alps, and an oasis in the Gobi desert.

Turned, the new Zombies mode, allows players to chase after player-characters as a zombie. The expansion includes a new Zombies map called Die Rise, located in the “far east.”

Finally, Revolution adds a whole new weapon into the mix. The Peacekeeper small machine gun is a light and powerful weapon. It has a fully unlockable experience and add-on path just like any of the other guns.

Activision hasn’t said when this DLC will hit PlayStation 3 or PC, but most other add-on content in the Call of Duty series hits those platforms a month after Microsoft’s console. Expect the same with Revolution.

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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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Activision released a new video to celebrate the impending release of its Revolution downloadable content for Call of Duty: Black Ops II.

The video stars actor Peter Stormare (wood-chipper guy from Fargo) as “The Replace,” the dude who replaces you in your life situations while you spend all your time playing Call of Duty. The new add-on pack is due out Jan. 29 on Xbox 360. It features four new maps, a new gun, and a new Zombies mode where players can control the undead.

Check out the funny video below:

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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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