TechSpot - PC Technology News and Analysis

It’s no secret that when the PlayStation 3 first launched two years ago it was sold at a significant loss by Sony in order to get consumers to buy the system and then spend money on games. This has changed dramatically over time, and while Sony is yet to reach break-even point with its console, prices have come down significantly from $840 in 2006 to about $448 today.

Revisions to the internal hardware including graphics and the cell processor have contributed to the cost reduction, and though they were forced to get rid of backwards compatibility for PS2 games, Sony considers this a fair trade-off that allowed them to boost sales with a price cut. The company is expected to achieve break-even point between cost and sales in 2009, according to market research iSuppli, and eventually start making a profit on each console sold in late 2009 – though a further price cut down the road might be necessary to compete with the Xbox 360 and Wii.

Shortly after EA announced that they were officially partnering with Valve and distributing via Steam, the company has made a further announcement stating they have expanded that offering. Initially only open to the U.S. and Canada, any Steam users in Europe were out of luck if they wanted to snag EA titles through the service.

That's changed, and now EA's Steam titles are officially available in Europe as well. They mention that this applies to “most” of Europe, which indicates that some regions still may not have access to the games through Steam. It’s also worth noting that, perhaps in an effort to win back PC gamers, EA has made its titles available on Steam without third-party DRM schemes like SecuROM – a world of gamers just might respond quite positively to this change.

If you're having a hard time waiting for Blizzard to give StarCraft 2 some solid release dates, perhaps some narrated video of the game in action will satiate you for now. A multiplayer session of the upcoming successor to one of the most popular RTS games of all time can now be watched, a full 21 minutes long. Not quite as good as getting our hands on a demo, but the video itself is still fun to watch and does give you a feel of what the game will be like upon release.

What struck me most was the similarity in the UI to the original game, both in screen layout and the interface elements themselves. If it works well, stick with it, I suppose. The narration goes over different elements of gameplay, explaining what is going on during the match. Gameplay appears similar enough that existing SC players might be able to just jump right into it.

Since they announced development, Blizzard has released a lot of videos promoting StarCraft 2, but given very few people access to the game itself. I hope Blizzard produces demos or give actual release dates soon, as opposed to simply more videos.

Every once in a while, a game publisher will wise up and offer a low-cost or even free treat to the game-playing public. Sometimes they are seriously behind the times and release games that are over a decade old for free. Some others throw some newer cookies out, and THQ and Valve are doing just that with a weekend sale for S.T.A.L.K.E.R.

This Steam-only offer has the original S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl game selling for a mere $5, a fourth of the regular current price.

Considering the game is not yet even two years old, it's certainly a good deal if you're a FPS fan. A full-fledged, modern game for only $5? Almost too good to be true.

It’s official. Game publishing giant Electronic Arts today formally joined Valve's Steam service, as speculated earlier this week following the sudden appearance of the Spore end-user license agreement on the platform. Five titles are available now for purchase via Steam, including Mass Effect, Need for Speed Undercover, Spore, FIFA Manager 09 and Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning, plus the Spore Creepy & Cute Parts Pack.

The games are apparently available without the controversial SecuROM DRM they initially shipped with. This is truly a testament to the popularity of Steam and a big win for Valve, considering EA traditionally has digitally distributed their internally-developed PC games only though its own EA Store and Steam competitors like Direct2Drive. Other recent EA releases expected to join the Steam lineup “in the coming weeks” include Dead Space, Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3 and Mirror’s Edge.

It’s been a bad week for businesses, particularly in the gaming industry, with studio Free Radical shutting down, Midway laying off a quarter of its workforce and now mega-publisher Electronic Arts expanding the scope of its previously announced layoffs. The company, which had said in October it plans to reduce its work force by 6 percent – or about 600 people – said today it will now cut 10 percent of its workforce and close at least nine studio and publishing locations.

The company hoping to save around $120 million in annual costs, after incurring charges of $55 to $65 million as a result of severance packages and other reorganization-related expenses. EA also said it plans to slim its product line by cancelling several unspecified games, which presumably includes the Need for Speed series, as it focuses on its more profitable hit games. At the same time, however, the company said it “remains committed” to taking creative risks and investing in new games.

Electronic Arts has finally released the long-awaited de-authorization tool for Spore, fulfilling its promise three months after vowing to ease off on the game’s DRM restrictions. The new tool lets gamers bypass the newly increased five-machine install limit on Spore by managing their own available “slots” rather than relying on EA. It will also help ensure that authorizations aren’t unnecessarily lost to system upgrades or reinstalls.

This should alleviate concerns raised earlier this year after EA confirmed the game could not be activated on more than three different machines or PC configurations, ever. The bad news however is that while the tool is available for PC users, there’s no version currently available for Mac gamers. You can find a step-by-step guide along with the tool itself, right here.

Electronic Arts and Crytek are apparently getting into the holiday spirit of giving, with an announcement today that they will be allowing gamers to download and play the multiplayer component of Crysis Warhead this Christmas free of charge. Starting tomorrow for a ten day period – December 19 to 28 – players can download Crysis Wars from the official Crytek community website, where they'll be given a unique key to play on all online multiplayer servers.

The game features three multiplayer modes as well as 21 maps and two new holiday maps – Savanna and Frost – that will be released this week. The new maps come bundled with patch 1.3, which fixes loading problems experienced with custom assets in downloaded maps. Sounds good? All you need to do in order to participate in the free play period is register at www.mycrysis.com.

All throughout this year, special attention has been paid to certain game developers and publishers. A lot of consolidation has happened recently and it seemed at one point that Take-Two would also become another in a long list of companies under the immense fold of EA. Starting with a $2 billion offer that ended up becoming a hostile affair. Take-Two remained steadfast and fought off EA, committing to do their development and publishing independently. Months later, how is the company faring and where do they see themselves going?

Depending on how you look at it, the company is either doing amazingly good or simply “OK”. From a pure sales standpoint, the year was very good for them. Their favored developer, Rockstar, and its hugely popular GTA 4, ended up producing $710 million in sales, representing the overwhelming majority of their total revenue. This brought the company into a very profitable state, a change from 2007, where they operated at a loss. They've also gotten two large contracts with Rockstar to help keep them going next year.

Despite that fairly optimistic numbers, the company itself posted disappointing news to their investors, claiming they expect to see a drop in sales in 2009. On top of that, they also showed that the company actually lost money in Q4, despite the game industry itself being hugely successful. As a result, Take-Two's stock value plummeted, dropping 21% in a single day. However, the company still expects to see at least some profit for 2009, despite the lowered expectations.

Nintendo and Nyko today settled one of the many pending lawsuits related to the Wii. This one in particular was brought up by Nintendo earlier this year, accusing video game accessory maker Nyko of violating its intellectual property rights relating specifically to the Nunchuk controller.

Financial terms of the settlement weren’t disclosed, but apparently Nyko and its retail partners will be allowed to continue the device after the company agreed to redesign its Wii Kama Wireless Nunchuk to make it looks less like the official wired version of the Wii Nunchuk add-on. Nintendo is currently facing two additional cases related to the Wii controllers, although in those instances the company is at the receiving end of the lawsuit.

Electronic Arts is apparently looking at other ways to deliver games to the masses. While as part of their digital distribution strategy the company has traditionally opted to sell games through its own online store, a recently spotted Spore end-user license agreement on Steam suggests they are at least toying with the idea of using the Valve service.

Such a move would not only increase their distribution possibilities, but it also gets the game developer and publisher a better platform with a more user-friendly DRM scheme. Though nothing has officially been announced, it's not totally unfeasible that the two could reach some sort of deal for digital distribution. Electronic Arts has already allowed the distribution of Crysis and Crysis Warhead on Steam, but Spore would represent their first internally-developed title on the platform.

If true, other obvious candidates from internal EA studios to get the Steam treatment could include Mass Effect, The Sims, Warhammer Online, the Command & Conquer series, and Dead Space.

After a bit of speculation regarding Konami’s recent teaser about a new Metal Gear game, the company has confirmed that the next title in the series will be appearing on the iPhone/iPod Touch platform – and not as an Xbox 360 port as it was speculated. Dubbed Metal Gear Solid touch, the new game was made official by Konami shortly after information leaked via scans of gaming magazine Famitsu.

According to what little information is available so far, gamers will have access to eight stages initially, with more added in the future through downloadable content. The title is based on the characters and story from Metal Gear Solid 4 and players will naturally be able to control everything through the device’s touch screen. Also included with the game are unlockable Metal Gear wallpapers and movies, which players can access by using points that they earn as they clear stages.

Metal Gear Solid touch is due for release in Spring 2009 in North America, Japan and Europe. Along with the announcement, Konami also revealed that Dance Dance Revolution, Silent Hill: The Escape, and Frogger are coming to the iPhone later this month.

A recently unsealed document from a lawsuit against Microsoft has revealed that the company’s own engineers knew the Xbox 360 could damage discs if moved or reoriented while in use – go figure. While many of us would consider it common sense, it appears that Microsoft has received around 55,000 complaints from people who ended up with scratched discs for doing just that.

In all fairness, though, it has been reported that the system is not as well suited to a vertical configuration as Microsoft would have you believe, even if the system is treated in a careful manner.

The plaintiff in the case argues that Microsoft knew the uniquely-high speed of the Xbox 360 drive – 7,500 RPM compared to 4,000 and 3,500 RPM for the PlayStation 3 and Wii, respectively – could lead to these problems. There are also allegations that the company considered and rejected three possible solutions to this issue before the console was released in 2005, which included increasing the disc holder’s magnetic field, reducing disc rotation speed or adding bumpers to the disc drive.

The company opted to implement none of these measures for various reasons, with the last one being ruled out as too costly, so instead a warning was added to the product manual and the disc drive itself. Speaking from my own experience, I haven’t had a single issue with scratched discs in more than 2 years since buying a 360, though I would certainly never think of moving the console while a disc is spinning inside. As for the infamous “Red Ring of Death,” it’s been a whole different story for me, having replaced my Xbox 360 two times already.

Rockstar Games has released the first trailer for Grand Theft Auto IV's highly-anticipated downloadable content, The Lost and the Damned, which will be coming on February 17 exclusively for the Xbox 360. The trailer pretty much confirms what has already been uncovered, while showing off some of the new environments and situations Rockstar have been cooking up for us.

The Lost and Damned puts players in control of a new main character, Johnny Klebitz, in a plot that intersects with the original Niko Bellic storyline in GTA IV. It features new missions that offer an entirely fresh way to explore Liberty City with new multiplayer modes, weapons and vehicles. Further details, including pricing, will be announced soon. In the meantime, check out some new screenshots here and the recently released video after the jump.

Sony only released PlayStation Home a few days ago but the online virtual world has already been hacked multiple times over the weekend. Particularly, one user managed to circumvent some of the advertising systems built into Home by using Apache and DNS redirection to display his own images and videos – though only locally.

Granted, this can hardly be considered a major security threat but another, more worrisome vulnerability will supposedly enable gamers to upload, download or delete any file from the Home server. While the claims have yet to be verified, if true it would be a potentially disastrous oversight on Sony’s part, even if PlayStation Home is still in beta.

Epic’s blockbuster title, Gears of War 2, has received its first piece of downloadable content on Xbox Live. Called “Combustible,” the DLC offers three new maps including Gold Rush, which features multiple paths for combatants to explore, the Fuel Station, with plenty of exploding objects and Flood, where players will have to be careful of the rising and falling tide of Imulsion floating through the level.

Each of the new multiplayer maps will also be playable in the popular five player co-op Horde mode. The 79MB Combustible Map Pack is available to download now for 800 Microsoft Points, or $10. If you aren’t sure about the purchase just yet, perhaps you'll want to check out the trailer showing off the new maps after the jump.

One of the unique advantages that Steam has given Valve over many other developers is that they can poll user's hardware directly and know exactly what their customers are using. Based on this information, Valve is able to predict how hard a game would be on most common configurations, see new hardware get adopted and estimate how long until it becomes “mainstream”. Meanwhile, other developers have had to learn the hard way, timing their game releases incorrectly and thus limiting their sales due to harsh hardware requirements.

Valve does share the collected information, or at least some of it, and just released their statistics for last month. Most interesting in this recent report is the growth identified in both hardware and software. In particular the use of single-core CPUs has shrunk dramatically, whereas dual-core and even quad-core CPUs have gained in popularity. Dual-core CPUs now make up nearly half of Steam users, and quad-core has passed 10%.

On the software side, Windows Vista has seen real growth. Perhaps a little too late, with Microsoft already busy working on Windows 7. Also interesting was the split in terms of screen resolution – 25% of Steam players used 1024x768, 37% used 1280x960 and 28% used a widescreen ratio (16:9). Whatever the reason, people seem to have a very sharp divide on what resolutions they prefer (or perhaps their hardware can handle).

A slumping economy certainly hasn't slowed game sales. NPD has put together some statistics that put video games sales in the U.S. just a tad south of $3 billion for the month of November, and quickly approaching $22 billion for the entire year. A good portion of those November sales came from hardware, which accounted for $1.21 billion, much of which is attributed to the continued success of the Nintendo Wii and its 2 million units sold in November.

Top selling games that contributed to the $2.91 billion for the month include Gears of War 2, Call of Duty: World at War, and Left 4 Dead in the console side of things. Unsurprisingly the most popular PC game for the month was WoW's expansion, Wrath of the Lich King, followed by Call of Duty: World at War, Spore and Fallout 3.

PS3 games and the PS3 console sales still remain lackluster compared to their competition in the U.S., but overall the game industry still appears to be very healthy.

As if the recent toolset announcement wasn’t enough for Fallout 3 fans to be joyful about, Bethesda has begun spilling the beans on the upcoming “Operation: Anchorage” pack that will be arriving exclusively for the PC and Xbox next month. In an interview with IGN, the company has revealed the new content will see Fallout survivors participating in the historical liberation of Anchorage from the Chinese Red Army by way of a virtual reality simulator.

Operation: Anchorage will include additional armor, weapons, and achievements, which can then be carried over into the main game. The first downloadable content for Bethesda's highly-acclaimed post apocalyptic action title should provide about four or five hours of gameplay, according to the company, and will cost 800 Microsoft Points ($10). A second and third piece of DLC dubbed The Pitt and Broken Steel, respectively, should debut later in 2009, providing plenty of extended life for the game.

There's no doubt that MMOs have changed the face of online gaming as we know it today. The immense success of World of Warcraft demonstrates this and the game has often been the target of studies surrounding people and online gaming. Interestingly, claims about the dangers of online gaming addiction are spreading even further, with an FCC Commissioner making the bold claim that MMOs, and WoW in particular, have increased the college drop-out rate in the U.S.

We all see many sensationalist claims being made about games, and we all probably remember the sometimes-amusing antics of Jack Thompson. It’s rather perplexing, however, to have someone in such a high position make these claims. If there is any evidence to back up the claims that the FCC Commissioner made, they weren't cited – and you can certainly expect some outcry from the gaming community regarding this.

This could lead to interesting battles between educators, gamers and gaming companies. Should the FCC even be making any assertions regarding people's computer use? I would very much like to see a Blizzard response to these statements.