When Dawn of War II was released in 2009, the real-time strategy sequel offered an outstanding competitive multiplayer that experienced fans really enjoyed. Except that Dawn of War II lost the sinister Chaos Marines from the original game. All that’s about to change with the Chaos Rising standalone expansion pack, which will restore the forces of Chaos in all their glory, add new heroes and powers, and plus offer plenty of new gameplay features for all Dawn of War II players regardless of whether they actually get the expansion. We recently had a chance to play through some multiplayer sessions with the expansion, particularly as the forces of Chaos, and have much to report.

Check out this teaser:

We should mention right off the bat that although many new changes and additions are coming with Chaos Rising, the only one you have to pay for is the Chaos faction. Every other addition will be made available for Dawn of War II owners free of charge. These include, first and foremost new multiplayer free-for-all victory point mode that will challenge you to scramble for control of seven strategic locations on a map in either head-to-head matches or two-on-two-on-two team matches. Capturing and holding a strategic location will add to your ticking point count, and the more locations you control, the faster your point total will tick up to the magic number of 1,000. In addition, the launch of the expansion will add seven or eight new multiplayer maps (one of which will take place on an abandoned cruiser-class ship, inspired by the classic Space Hulk tabletop scenario) for all Dawn of War II owners. Multiplayer will plus be fully updated to be compatible with the expansion so that no one will need to play on a separate server whether you don’t have Chaos Rising–you’ll even be able to play multiplayer matches with Chaos Rising owners (you just won’t be able to use the Chaos faction yourself).

Additionally, don’t forget the psychic powers that augmented the Warhammer future realm. Those who don’t get the expansion will additionally still get the five new multiplayer units for the sequel’s four factions (each faction gets at least one new unit), which were added to the game to fill in key gaps in each side’s strategy. The Space Marines will receive the assistance of the Librarian, a wizardly fellow with a knack for hurling lightning bolts; the Orks will receive the Weirdboy, a long-range support unit whose powers come directly from the heated shouts of “Waaagh!” from other Ork troops; the Eldar will receive a much-needed heavy infantry unit that can take some real punishment in the Wraithguard; and the Tyranids will receive two new troops in the durable Tyrant Guard melee warrior and the Genestealer Brood (another reference to Space Hulk), a swift melee warrior that automatically infiltrates (becomes invisible) after remaining still.

[The forces of Chaos are preparing to take Dawn of War II’s multiplayer by storm. (image courtesy of GameSpot)]

Our day with the multiplayer included plenty of quality moment with the mighty forces of Chaos, which, like the other factions, have multiple options for commanders (Dawn of War II’s hero units). Interestingly, even though Chaos is already, according to Warhammer 40,000 fiction, arguably the most malevolent and evil force in the universe, the Chaos faction in the expansion will be aligned with one of three Chaos deities with different portfolios. The chaos lord, effectively the Chaos version of the Space Marines’ melee force commander unit, will be associated with the god Khorne, the deity of melee combat and blood. The defensive commander, the plague champion, worships Nurgle, the Chaos god of death and decay, and has a variety of defense abilities such as healing powers and defensive auras. The support commander, the chaos sorcerer, is a disciple of the deity of magic, Tzeentch, and is described by the Relic team as a “toolbox” character with a bag of very interesting tricks, including mind control and teleport abilities. Just like in the original Dawn of War II, you’ll start each competitive multiplayer match as Chaos choosing one of these commanders to bring into battle, equipped with various types of equippable wargear items that supply miscellaneous bonuses, expendable items such as grenades, and usable abilities–that’s on top of additional global abilities which different Chaos commanders possess.

From what we’ve seen, even though the Relic team remains committed to maintaining a strong, fair balance of potential amidst each faction, it has additionally gone out of its way to load up the commanders of Chaos with an embarrassment of riches in the profile of loads of interesting new abilities and strategic combinations. While we’re assured that Chaos will be a well-rounded faction for players of all skill levels, and the faction does, indeed, seem to have a good mix of melee, ranged, and vehicle units with suitable inherent potential to get the job done, Chaos plus seems to have plenty of interesting details that will help skilled players who take the moment to learn these nuances excel in matches.

For instance, the faction’s marine units (which include basic space marines, havoc heavy infantry marines, tactical plague marines, and dreadnought walkers) can be upgraded to align with one Chaos god or another, which will change their operate to be anti-infantry or anti-vehicle, or to focus on ranged or melee. In addition, several units and abilities seem like they’ll reward players with excellent micromanagement skills, such as the tier-two bloodletter daemons, which are already-powerful melee units with a limited teleportation ability, and the Great Unclean One, the faction’s top-level unit and something of an avatar of Nurgle–a giant, bloated daemon which can vomit bile on its enemies or lasso them closer with a strand of its exposed intestines. The faction’s commander abilities seem very useful, but several of these will plus be best used by skillful micromanagers, such as the plague champion’s “mass warp” teleportation spell and the chaos sorcerer’s “noxious cloud” (a swirling green cloud that damages any foes it touches, but persists for several seconds in the world and can be given continual move orders like a regular unit to chase down enemies on the move).

[Oh, hi. that is the Great Unclean One (image courtesy of GameSpot)]

We had the opportunity to play through a handful of head-to-head skirmishes and some free-for-all matches as well, and found Chaos to be a faction that seems to benefit from leapfrogging from expansion to expansion, capturing a key strategic point and fortifying it as soon as possible. Although the faction has supreme military units, its basis of support lies with heretic units–these are now used to build supporting shrine structures (best placed near control points), and can next be used to worship at these shrines. Depending on which commander you’ve chosen, worshipping at a shrine will produce different effects–chaos lord shrines will briefly summon some bloodletter melee daemons that will vanish after a short period; plague champion shrines will heal nearby allies; and chaos sorcerer shrines will cause nearby units to infiltrate and can additionally fire energy bolts like a turret. Chaos seems to have a very even mix amoung forceful melee and vigorous ranged units and will afford players more than decent opportunity to mix and match to their tastes.

Our most memorable match was a four-player free-for-all multiplayer skirmish in which we played as a plague champion hero and focused primarily on ranged units and vehicles. Partially fueled by the desire to take good notes for that preview, and partially fueled by the desire to not be crushed in the first five minutes of the match, we played it safe, quietly nabbing the nearest strategic points and energy generator points and fortifying them with heretics while waiting for other players to either clash among themselves or to come to us. Defensively “turtling” will only take you so far in free-for-all, however, since your victory will depend on how many points you can earn by capturing strategic locations on the map; the more locations you capture, the more quickly you’ll earn your points. However, controlling strategic points plus still limits your unit cap, so whether you hang back and hide, you’ll not only be surpassed in point counts by more-ambitious players, you’ll additionally limit the size of your armies and won’t be able to really mass troops. next again, in free-for-all, whether you assemble too aggressive a push too early and take a quick point lead, you’re basically painting a giant bull’s eye on your forehead as being the separate biggest threat whose point advantage must be neutralized.

[Chaos will be a well-rounded faction with strong ranged units and strong melee warriors, like these bloodletters (image courtesy of GameSpot)]

Regardless of what anyone thought of the single-player campaign in Dawn of War II, most fans agreed the multiplayer was great. And Chaos Rising will add a whole lot more to the already-excellent multiplayer with new units for all four base factions, a new multiplayer mode, a fistful of new maps, and a new faction with a whole lot to offer. The expansion will ship in March.

Read more at GameSpot

That’s gonna leave a mark. The Jedi knight guts his foes with a lightsaber and knocks out the unlucky with a well-placed Force push (image courtesly of GameSpot).

An time-warping moment ago, in a galaxy far, far away, game developer BioWare, a studio founded by two medical doctors on the foundations of nerdy swords-and-sorcery role-playing, made the jump to deep space with Knights of the Old Republic, a Star Wars-themed role-playing game that told a story that predated the events of the motion pictures by several centuries. Some years later, the developer is now working on a massively multiplayer online game in the same universe–a game that will let you play as a Boba Fett-like bounty hunter, a Han Solo-like smuggler, or a Mace Windu-like Jedi Knight…among others. We recently had a chance to get a bit more insight on the game from its developers, and we plus had our first chance to play the game using the Sith inquisitor profession, which we’ll discuss shortly.

All of the eight playable professions have now been revealed for the game. Previously revealed classes:
the Republic trooper, the smuggler, the Sith warrior, the bounty hunter, the Jedi knight, and the Imperial Agent. The studio has now revealed the final two professions: the Sith Inquisitor, an evil Force-powered character reminiscent of Emperor Palpatine who is capable with a lightsaber but possesses an array of even-deadlier Force powers; and the Jedi Consular, which is patterned after the Knights of the Old Republic profession and is plus good with a lightsaber, but better with light-side Force powers and tends to look for ways to resolve clash with words, rather than with a fight.

The development team reiterated its commitment to deliver an enjoyable Star Wars experience above all else, and suggested that that outlook additionally influenced the game’s character design. Rather than focus on standard online RPG archetypes such as “healer,” “tank” (frontline fighter who soaks up damage from enemies), and “DPS” (or “damage per second,” a combat character that focuses on dealing as much damage as possible), the team is focusing on creating characters who are fun to play and supply the kind of experience you’d expect from playing such a character in a Star Wars game.

However, in the interest of game balance, the studio is adding several game features that will help assemble the game enjoyable to play without having lopsided character classes or forcing players to group with assured other professions to have any kind of chance. For starters, each class is being designed around a number of different themes that can apparently be specialized in to customize your character around your playing style. The example given was the smuggler profession, whose general themes include “luck,” “recklessness,” “opportunity,” and “cowboy.” These themes contributed to designing the class around two different archetypes: a “gunslinger” archetype that uses such skills as taking cover in combat and using a “dirty kick” attack in melee, while carrying dual pistols into battle and using smooth-talking skills to get out of sticky situations; and a “scoundrel” archetype that focuses more on stealth and critical headshot hits, as well as unconventional medical skills–reminiscent of the way Han Solo rescued a frostbitten Luke in The Empire Strikes Back by gutting a tauntaun and shoving Luke’s body into the beast’s warm carcass.

In addition to the open-ended character design, the team will additionally add computer-controlled “companion” characters that your character will meet and join by moment, and can shout upon as needed. Two examples shown by the developers were “Khem Val the Dashade,” a Sith inquisitor whose effective lighting-based abilities supply excellent ranged damage, while “Xalek the Kaleesh,” a Sith apprentice, deals heavy bursts of damage with his lightsaber attacks.

The presentation ended with a hands-off demonstration of the Jedi consular character in motion on the Jedi home planet of Tython as the character did battle with squat, humanoid “flesh raider” enemies. The consular seems to be pretty handy with a lightsaber but is even better at using Force powers, including “mind maze”–an ability that temporarily stuns a group of enemies and prevents them from attacking, and “Force slam,” a telekinetic potential that lifts an enemy in the air, soon after smashes it down into the ground. The consular additionally has a “meditation” skill which briefly incapacitates the character, but quickly regenerates spend Force powers–a much-needed feature that would clearly have been welcome in Knights of the Old Republic, and will probably construct the lives of Jedi characters much easier in The Old Republic.

We next moved from hands-off demonstration to hands-on day with the Sith inquisitor profession on the starting planet of Korriban. Korriban, as you may recall from the Knights of the Old Republic games, is the homeworld of the evil Sith–effectively, the dark Jedi of the Star Wars universe. In both of those previous games, Korriban was a world in transition–while the Sith have established a home base and training ground on the planet, they additionally run an active excavation outfit in the “Valley of the Dark Lords,” a series of abandoned desert tombs where mighty Sith warlords, and their mighty Sith secrets, lie entombed.

In the Knights of the Old Republic games, players ran missions for the Sith to explore these tombs in search of artifacts, escaped slave laborers, and treacherous rival Sith students. In the Old Republic, as a Sith inquisitor, you’ll end up with similar tasks, though you’ll additionally take on new quests and find yourself working for, and against, numerous Sith academy trainers in short order. Our session began with our character’s initiation with an initial meeting to speak with our first Sith instructor. Once we did, the game initiated a dialogue sequence reminiscent of those in Knights of the Old Republic, complete with branching dialogue options (including straightforward answers and wise-guy remarks) and quick camera cuts amoung different characters. The instructor, who addressed us simply as “Slave,” made a few casual death threats before sending us out to the Valley to retrieve a set of holocrons (basically, documents discs) from the tomb of the fallen Sith lord, Zash.

Eager to explore Korriban and zap as many folks, places, and things with lightning as possible, we made our way to the shortest possible route to the valley entrance using the onscreen mini-map, but not without passing by another quest-giving Sith trainer, who demanded we assist her with a different mission–that of smuggling a captured and brainwashed Jedi off the planet to help spread confusion and chaos on Tython. While the trainer very much seemed like a cold-hearted Sith and repeatedly threatened us when we did not immediately accept the mission, it raised an interesting question–who precisely had been brainwashed, the captured Jedi or the Sith trainer who demanded we smuggled the prisoner safely off Korriban? We pondered following through on the quest, but decided that it might not offer as many opportunities to zap things with lightning, and instead made a beeline for the exit.

The Valley of the Dark Lords in The Old Republic looks like a much huger, more-detailed version of the preliminary dig sites from the Knights of the Old Republic games. The entire area is still an inhospitable desert, but in that case, is bathed orange from the intense heat of the sun. The valley opens up into a series of huge dig sites laid out next to each other, and the central walkway is cluttered with metal girders, digging equipment, and other industrial debris. We made our way down to the valley and headed to the tomb to which we were assigned, which was helpfully marked by a waypoint on our mini-map, to meet an archeologist character waiting on the outside. The character, who was not a Sith warrior, but still seemingly as cruel and impolite as any Sith, demanded we seek out something called the “Red Engine,” essentially a multiple-location puzzle which could be fully activated only when each differently-located fragment was anointed with the blood of a slain enemy. That was all we could stands (we couldn’t stands no more), so we went running headlong into the tomb in search of something, anything, to start zapping.

Fortunately, the ruins were full of living things to form dead. On entering the tomb, we found a separate holocron left by a dead Sith initiate that claimed that rebellious slaves had turned on their captors and reprogrammed the local maintenance droids to attack Sith. So we not only had a reason to destroy escaped slaves and mutinous droids, we plus had a quest to do so. In addition, the tomb was infested by giant caterpillar-like monsters known as “K’Lor Slugs,” which, to our delight, turned out to not be immune to lightning bolts.

Our character was apparently built up to be a few levels higher than a character in that area normally would, and was equipped not only with a deadly lightsaber, but plus with numerous special abilities. Like all massively multiplayer games, these abilities are bound to hotkeys on your keyboard, expend a assured amount of energy (in that case, your character’s Force energy), and require a convinced amount of moment to “cool down” before they can be reused. However, unlike World of Warcraft and EverQuest, and more similar to games like City of Heroes and Champions Online, The Old Republic doesn’t have a basic auto-attack that will automatically produce your character repeatedly whack away at your currently-targeted foe. Instead, our character had a basic “saber strike” melee attack and various lightning-based and telekinetic Force powers, such as a simple damaging blast known as “shock,” a energetic stunning attack called “overload” which caused our character to leap upwards and strike the ground with his lightsaber while stunning all nearby enemies, and “whirlwind,” a telekinetic potential that incapacitates a loner foe by lifting it off the ground with a gust of wind.

These powers helped us easily carve up our enemies into mincemeat as we both activated the first few parts of the Red Engine by slaying enemies nearby while picking up the first few holocrons for our main quest. Sadly, instance flies when you’re destroying enemies you have completely outclassed, so we were unable to complete any of our main quests within our allotted playtime. However, we had plenty of opportunities to crush our enemies, and found that while the inquisitor class seems to have limited lightsaber skills, its Force powers more than compensate and definitely invent you feel like you’re playing a very energetic and dangerous character.

The Old Republic seems like it has much to offer–powerful character classes built on Star Wars fiction rather than stodgy old massively multiplayer archetypes; playable Jedi and Sith characters from the outset; and did we mention the lightning? Though we’ve finally had a chance to play, we can’t help but feel like we’ve barely scratched the surface of what seems like a very deep game. Stay tuned to GameSpot for more updates.

More info at GameSpot

The PC version of Red Faction: Guerilla will be packed with all prior console DLC and pre-order substance, plus advance subject matter from the next console DLC pack that isn't even out yet. Screenshot courtesty of GameSpot.

The PC version of Red Faction: Guerrilla will bring by Volition's proprietary GeoMod 2.0 physics technology, which models extensive environmental destruction for just about everything in the world. It will additionally include what Volition describes as “full DirectX 10 support,” which can be seen in features like advanced lighting that procedurally pokes through destroyed rubble. The PC version has additionally been developed with support for the USB Xbox 360 controller and has been optimized for mouse-and-keyboard setups.

Otherwise, the PC version of Guerrilla will offer the full RFG console experience, including the entire story of Alec Mason, the miner-turned-guerrilla-warrior who joins the rebellious Red Faction to oppose the oppressive regime of the Earth Defense Force on the red planet of Mars. Guerrilla will additionally, as mentioned, offer Demons of the Badlands, a full prequel to the game starring Samanya, one of RFG's secondary characters. It takes place before Samanya's date with Red Faction and explains how she came to join the rebellion.

Red Faction: Guerilla touches down on the PC later that month (thanks to GameSpot for the screenie).

When the game ships on September 15, Red Faction: Guerrilla for the PC will definitely offer plenty of goodies right out of the box.

The Sims 3 was released earlier that year and it added new depth to the pastime of controlling the lives of little computer public as they lived, loved, aspired to lofty ambitions, and got into hilarious catfights. The first expansion for the game, World Adventures, will add three new huge areas to explore (China, France, and Egypt), along with intriguing new puzzle-based gameplay, tons of new environments and character clothing, new moneymaking options, and new character traits. And we got the first look.

World Adventures will let you trot the globe to three different worldwide locations, either on a simple vacation (which you can take at any day whether you’ve got the simoleons to afford a plane ticket), or as part of an “adventure”–an expanded version of the opportunity system that would randomly pop up at assured points in your sims’ careers. These adventures will take you to one of these three nations to take on quests to explore and plunder trap-filled ruins on behalf of a greedy corporation, though once you’ve fully explored one locale’s ruins, you can decide whether you prefer to side with the company (who would prefer to bulldoze them), or with the locals, who would prefer to keep their landmarks safe.

that kind of quest- and choice-based gameplay is a first for the Sims series, and makes World Adventures a lot more like a role-playing game than any previous ones in the series. You’ll have an extensive adventure journal that will keep track of a huge number of statistics and achievements, including how many relics (a new type of collectible item) you’ve gathered, how many puzzles you’ve solved, different areas you’ve visited, and your sim’s “visa points” (which determine how towering you can stay abroad). Stats are very crucial to the World Adventures team, and apparently to the Sims community, and there will be a ton of them. There will plus be tons of new collectible items, including new plants, new seeds, and new catchable fish for all the packrats out there.

We watched a demonstration of a sim exploring a tomb in Egypt, which was filled with rubble that needed to be cleared away (and can be cleared faster with athletic skills). Behind the rubble lay a switch that opened up a stairway to a lower level, though the pyramid additionally had several other adjoining chambers which were obscured by a fog-of-war. Different chambers may contain treasure caches in urns with valuable relics, or dangerous traps, or worse threats.

We watched our explorer try to navigate a fire trap that belched flames up out of the floor, and fail miserably, catching on fire and making a panicky run to the nearest pool of water and diving in with a cowardly leap. However, after getting dunked, our sim was affected by the “soaked” moodlet (minor conditions in The Sims 3 that can positively or negatively affect your character), which additionally made him immune to fire, so he was able to safely cross. He moved on to a treasure room full of urns containing items, but didn’t realize that there was a sarcophagus at the other end of the room, from which a hideous mummy emerged.

Mummies will attack your sims and drag them into a fistfight, and unless your sim is a master of the martial arts skill (which is new to World Adventures), you’ll end up with the mummy’s curse, which will kill you in two weeks’ worth of game date unless you pay a visit to the Sphinx, which is additionally in the area, and plead your case. Of course, whether you prefer to be adventurous, you can actually spend the night inside a cursed sarcophagus and become a mummy yourself, which will cause you to move much more slowly and die should you catch on fire, but will additionally increase your strength and limit your personal needs (so unlike regular sims, you won’t need to sleep or take bathroom breaks) and otherwise invent you much longer-lived. You’ll additionally get new, rare mummy social interaction options. (Though whether you die as a mummy, you can come back as a ghost-mummy. Yes, a ghost-mummy.)

While you start your adventures on location at a base camp, all three universal locations have their own businesses and amenities, as well as locals whom you can meet, interact with, and even fall in love with and marry, next bring home to Sunset Valley (the original Sims 3 neighborhood). Sims from these different regions are being designed to look like they belong to those regions, and will have various behaviors added to their personalities under the hood that will serve the purpose of modeling their different cultures–should your sims decide to marry someone from abroad, their children will evince these behaviors.

Along with new behaviors come new traits, new skills, and new side activities that can be used to generate a good-looking income on the side. The three new traits each enhance the expansion’s three new skills. The first new skill is martial arts, which is first learned in China, practiced with a training dummy item, and can be advanced to compete in a special martial arts tournament in that country. The second new skill is photography, which can be advanced through various skill levels to take on new styles (such as panoramic shots or sepia-tone photos), and the expansion will offer a series of photography challenges to fill an album collection, including simpler stuff like grabbing a photo of a new father carrying a baby to esoteric, secret photo setups that will be much harder to nab.

The final new skill is “nectar making,” which originates in France, and involves using grapes to form non-alcoholic “nectar,” which, whether made properly, will give its imbibers a “good meal” moodlet that will manufacture them much happier, but which, whether made poorly, will invent its drinkers spit out the swill and bring their moods down for a while. Skilled nectar vintners can age their bottles in a nectar rack and sell aged bottles for a pretty penny, and having an advanced gardening skill (to grow good grapes) will help considerably in that profession.

Dig your way to adventure that November when World Adventures ships.

In addition to all that other stuff, World Adventures will add the three new explorable areas, each of which will be comparable in size to Sunset Valley, along with a huge number of brand-new clothing outfits, plus tons of scenery items, which can be used by industrious players to build out their own trap-filled ruins to explore, filled with hidden switches, buttons, staircases, traps, and treasures. There will definitely be a ton of interesting new stuff to play in an expansion that will go in a new direction for Sims expansion packs. World Adventures will be released later that year.

More info at GameSpot

Clutch - racing and zombies, with video and review on skorcard.net

You have racing and zombies in Clutch. What else do you need in life (well, Conan the Barbarian might disagree)?

This is an uber-cool game that combines aspects of Night of the Living Dead and Death Race 2000. As far as driving goes, it is not nearly as brutally serious as Carmageddon, the 1997 racer with an amazing physics model and buckets of blood. But, it gets high grades in the Gore department.

Clutch - more racing and zombies, with video and review on skorcard.net

Think of Clutch as a going-green game, since you can equip your cars with spinning blades that suck screaming zombies into the grill and convert them into booster power. Actually, is that considered “green”, or just “red”? Either way, it is sure to make the likes of Al Gore happy!

Check out the video:

Early last year, Electronic Arts announced a new Web and microtransaction-based model called Play 4 Free, with Battlefield Heroes to inaugurate the program. Despite a few delays in beta testing, EA DICE’s third-person shooter is now rolling through its fourth week of release, and today, the publisher revealed it has surpassed 1 million sign-ups.

Although the game has registered a sizable number of players since its June 25 launch, it’s unclear how many will buy into the title’s microtransaction system, which is the primary revenue stream for that free-to-play shooter. According to EA, the PC-exclusive title generates income through advertisements and the purchase of in-game items and character customizations. As detailed in GameSpot’s hands-on preview of Battlefield Heroes, the shooter features an over-the-top aesthetic and centers around multiplayer gameplay.

Battlefield Heroes faces the challenge of standing out not only in a crowded field of shooters, but plus a crowded field of Battlefield games. Last week saw the launch of Battlefield 1943 for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, with Battlefield: poor Company 2 following that winter for the PS3, Xbox 360, and PC. There’s additionally Battlefield 3, which may not be out until considerably later, with EA COO John Pleasants stating the game wouldn’t launch before April 2010.

Posted by Matthew Peters on Tue, 14 Jul 2009 11:15:15 -0700

In March, Activision revealed that signal of Duty 4: contemporary Warfare had sold 12 million copies after nearly 17 months on the market. whether one analyst is right, it might not take very towering for contemporary Warfare 2 to beat that mark.

In a note to investors today, Janco Partners’ Mike Hickey predicted that contemporary Warfare 2 would sell through to consumers 11.1 million copies in less than two months. He says the game can achieve that mark with the help of a ramped-up preorder campaign courtesy of Activision, the more-than-doubled size of the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 installed bases since the release of the original contemporary Warfare, and the series’ massive fan base.

“On May 26 2009, Infinity Ward’s community manager Robert Bowling ‘fourzerotwo’ commented that signal of Duty 4 has by 13 million rare users on Xbox 360,” Hickey explained. “A particularly impressive number considering an estimated 30 percent of Xbox’s installed base is not connected to Xbox Live. On January 8, 2009, Bowling estimated that there were by 4 million rare online users on the PS3 platform and by 10 million on the Xbox 360. We assume the PS3 strange users have now eclipsed 5 million based on Xbox 360 identified online user growth of 30 percent.”

That puts Hickey’s estimated online signal of Duty 4 gamers at 18 million. Assume that 30 percent of signal of Duty fans don’t take their systems online, and Hickey believes that the potential market for contemporary Warfare 2 consists of a whopping 25.7 million gamers.

Putting it bluntly, Hickey said, “We believe shout of Duty: contemporary Warfare 2 will likely be the largest video game release for
[calendar year] ‘09.”

contemporary Warfare 2 will release on the PC, Xbox 360, and PS3 November 10. For more on the title, check out GameSpot’s latest hands-on impressions.

Get the full write-up at GameSpot

Aside from being formed by Westwood Studios veterans, Petroglyph is perhaps best known for its work on real-time strategy title Star Wars: Empire at War, released to rave reviews in 2006. As such, it was with some surprise when Petroglyph announced in December that it would be dipping its toes into the massively multiplayer online gaming genre with Mytheon, a free-to-play role-playing/strategy hybrid that would be published by newcomer True Games.

Cave paintings may or may not be involved.

Now, it appears as whether the independent studio intends to wade a bit deeper into the MMOG pool. Trion World Network has announced that it has partnered with Petroglyph on an as yet to be named massively multiplayer online real-time strategy game.

Aside from talking up the Petroglyph team’s previous work on such titles as Command & Conquer and Dune II, Trion revealed no relevant gameplay details about the upcoming project. However, Petroglyph appears to be taking an ambitious approach to the project, with Trion CEO Lars Buttler saying of the game that it will be “the world’s first truly high-end MMORTS.”

According to Trion, its deal with Petroglyph is the first it has made with a third-party developer for use with its server architecture known as the Trion Platform. The publisher-developer formed in 2006 under Might and Magic series creator and former NCsoft developer Jon Van Caneghem and for EA vice president of global online Lars Buttler. In September, the company revealed that it had secured $70 million in additional venture capital funding, building on a $30 million investment it had previously received.

Star Gate Worlds screenshot

The Stargate Worlds development team is working hard every day to get this game built. Team members are in the office seven days a week to deliver Stargate Worlds.

Brad Wright is the Stargate expert and a creative consultant on Stargate Worlds who advises us on the story; unfortunately we had not recently updated him on our progress or the impact from the current global economic crisis, and he was not fully aware of the continuing progress on our game.”