Gamernode: Latest PC News

Quake Live to be a 'freemium' game

Today, during the Game Developer's Conference, iD Software announced that their new partnership with IGA Worldwide is what will spawn the new, free Quake Live game.

Formerly known as Quake Zero, Quake Live will be the next iteration in the Quake series as a re-creation of Quake 3 with new online competitive features inside a free, downloadable client.

"IGA understands game developers and game players which makes them the perfect partner for Quake Live. Whether it's been the ease of implementing their SDK or just their excitement about QUAKE LIVE, they have been fantastic to work with," said Todd Hollenshead, CEO of id Software. "As we work to bring QUAKE-style deathmatch excitement to the masses, IGA has fully supported our vision."

"Quake Live's expected features include a matchmaking serv...

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Molyneux states PC gaming is lacking innovation

During GDC, Peter Molyneux -- Lionhead Studios' boss -- gave some comments regarding the state of PC gaming. Stating that PC gaming is lacking innovation and in a tragic state, the comments seem to mirror similar thoughts Epic Games' Cliff Bleszinski made last week.

Molyneux said, "I think it's a huge tragedy. I mean, you might as well say PC gaming is World of Warcraft and The Sims... The weird thing is everyone's got a PC, they're just not buying software for it."

Molyneux also stated that while PC gaming innovation took a rebound with the release of a few popular casual games like Peggle, Puzzle Quest and Diner Dash recently, the market is back into repetition and a lack of innovation.

"The fascinating thing is when they first started, all these games came out like Peggle and Mystery File...

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American McGee's Grimm debut trailer

For some reason, I can't get enough of the idea of taking sweet, innocent children's fairy tales and turning them into a sick and twisted horrorshow. I don't know if it's just me, but that's something that makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. Here's the debut trailer for American McGee's Grimm, an episodic PC game from the mind that brought us the similarly deranged Alice. Look for it this summer.

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Amazon.com getting into gaming digital distributio...

The Tech Report spied a job posting by American e-commerce company Amazon.com who are looking for a "Software Development Engineer - Video Game and Software Downloads." Judging by the job description, one may deduce that Amazon is looking into getting its hands on digital distribution.

The job description states, "The Software and Video Games Digital Technology Team is the right team for you. Our team is responsible for digital distribution of software and video game products from the Amazon website, including the newly launched Amazon Software Download store."

Amazon currently has its software downloads page up but only tax software is available for purchase. Digital distribution is certainly rising in popularity lately and is attributed to its use in many PC gaming communities and services...

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The Witcher's surprise revealed, new edition!

If you've been holding out to experience an excellent RPG such as The Witcher, then May will be a grand time to get your hands on the game. The surprise has been lifted today and CD Projekt RED announced that The Witcher will be re-released in May with plenty of new enhancements, changes and improvements.

In the massive press release, Maciej Szczesnik, project manager for CD Projekt RED, mentioned some of the new game features in the new edition. Things included are lower loading times (reduced up to 80%), wider PC configuration support, a complete revision of the English translations (changes to other languages are promised too), over 50 new character models, inventory menu UI changes and over 100 new animation gestures during dialogue scenes.

Adam Kicinski, CEO of CD Projekt RED, said tha...

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Parliament to ISPs: ban illegal downloaders

The BBC is reporting that in the UK, talks are in place attempting to force Internet Service Providers to ban users from the internet if they illegally download files.

Representatives of Parliament note that the plan is still in the very early stages and has yet to be placed before legislative committees. The Internet Service Providers Association was quick to sound off on the proposal.

"ISPs are no more able to inspect and filter every single packet passing across their network than the Post Office is able to open every envelope," commented representatives of the organization.

This threat may sound menacing, but I wouldn't lose too much sleep over it, my little game, music and movie pirates. File swapping was going on long before the government knew about it, in ways they couldn't understand...

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The Witcher sells 600K copies, surprise on Monday

Being a PC gamer allows me to enjoy great titles like The Witcher. Coming totally out of left field (in this case an ocean) during a turbulent time of excellent games usually would of spelt disaster for a seemingly unknown game from a brand-new start-up game developer but The Witcher earned plenty of critical acclaim and praise by critics upon its release.

CD Projekt RED, the game's developer, announced today that The Witcher sold over 600,000 copies worldwide in just three months. You don't have to be a scientist to know that for a debut game by a newly started developer to sell 600K copies is pretty darn good.

Adam Kicinski, joint CEO of CD Projekt RED, was grateful for the game's success and discussed the overwhelming odds held against The Witcher, "It's a great success for us, made all ...

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NVIDIA planning PhysX integrated video cards

After the announcement that NVIDIA would acquire PhysX physics software/hardware developer AGEIA earlier this month, rumors ran rampant that the video card developer would integrate the PhysX technology straight into its video cards but when will we see them hit the market?

Over on The Tech Report, they have word from NVIDIA CEO Jen-Hsun Huang that the GeForce 8 cards will be able to run PhysX.

"We're working toward the physics-engine-to-CUDA port as we speak. And we intend to throw a lot of resources at it. You know, I wouldn't be surprised if it helps our GPU sales even in advance of [the port's completion]. The reason is, [it's] just gonna be a software download. Every single GPU that is CUDA-enabled will be able to run the physics engine when it comes. . . . Every one of our GeForce 8-s...

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TF2 patch tomorrow; patch notes detailed

Valve posted up the patch notes to an upcoming Team Fortress 2 patch, which is due for release tomorrow. The patch notes include general optimizations and performance tweaks to the Source Engine, a new TF2 map, numerous gameplay and performance fixes for a few existing TF2 maps and two fixes for SourceTV.

Badlands, a remake of the original Team Fortress Classic map, will be finally released tomorrow; in addition with a few changes to Dustbowl, CTF Well and Granary will be implemented too. One notable fix will affect snipers, "Added a small delay (200 ms) before a zoomed sniper shot can get a critical hit."

For SourceTV users, a new fix, "SourceTV now uses a hidden slot on the game server. This allows for 24 player servers to also have a SourceTV proxy connected to it," should alleviate any ...

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So what's taking Spore so long, anyway?

Hot on the heels of the announcement of Spore's official release date, Newsweek's N'Gai Croal sat down with project lead Will Wright, and asked him exactly why this game is taking so damn long to complete. Will responded, and then gamers smiled.  He said:

"...probably the biggest design challenge was keeping it very accessible to players so that every bit of the game was intuitive, easy and approachable. At the same time, we were going to mix all these genres, so we wanted to have one kind of control scheme, camera scheme, feedback system, rewards, across these different game genres. That probably overall was the biggest challenge, I think."

He later added some details about the way content would be shared between players, which is very much akin to social networking websites - and very c...

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PC Gaming Alliance to form at GDC next week

The Game Developers Conference (GDC) is the largest annual gathering of video game developers and is scheduled to be held next week, February 18-22, in San Francisco. During the event, several companies, including Intel, Microsoft, NVIDIA and AMD, will announce an association called the PC Gaming Alliance.

As you can tell from the name, the PC Gaming Alliance will, basically, renew interest back into PC gaming. With all the recent discussion regarding the "death" of PC Gaming (which I think is untrue), including this fine article discussing both sides of the argument from Sean, this alliance will hopefully win back any lost confidence from video game developers.

In 2007, retail PC game sales only accounted for 14% of the total 2007 game sales in the U.S. While one may argue that the percent ...

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Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3 revealed

Electronic Arts and PC Gamer revealed Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3 today, courtesy of this snazzy cover of the upcoming April 2008 issue of PC Gamer. It's been seven years since the last installment in the Red Alert franchise, Command & Conquer: Yuri's Revenge, an expansion pack to Red Alert 2, was released in 2001.

It's a given that Red Alert 3 will head to PC (it's on PC Gamer after all), so we'll have to see if the game will head to consoles. I wouldn't be surprised if the game headed to consoles, since past recent iterations in the C&C franchise, such as Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars and the upcoming FPS Tiberium have been released for consoles.

The magazine hits stands on March 4th, so fans will have to wait patiently till then. Hit the jump to see the magazine cover, it's pretty...

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Spore given official September 7th release date

Electronic Arts and Maxis announced today that the highly anticipated evolution sim, Spore, finally has an official release date. According to the press release, the game will "be available at retailers worldwide the weekend of September 7" for the PC, Mac, Nintendo DS, and mobile phones.

Said Spore's lead designer and creator, Will Wright:

"The wait is almost over. We're in our final stages of testing and polish with Spore, and the team at Maxis can't wait to see the cosmos of content created by the community later this year."

Neither can I. Spore looks to be a phenomenal virtual experience, and one of the best 2008 has to offer. I can't wait.

[EDIT] Thanks to GN reader vincian, I searched around and found the following snippet in a July 10th, 2007 interview with IGN:

IGN: Are you planni...

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Mass Effect to be released for PC in May

In news that warms my BioWare RPG fan boy heart, Electronic Arts announced today that the former Xbox 360 exclusive title Mass Effect will be released for PC in May 2008.

EA will take over all current and future publishing duties regarding the Mass Effect franchise, which appears to be the opposite of what was initially reported as a rumor back in December.

The PC edition will feature a few new changes, including customizable controls (thankfully), enhanced visuals and resolution support and a reworked inventory screen; I've heard of horrendous problems with the inventory screen for the Xbox 360, such as being too cumbersome and clunky, so to see it be reworked for PC is great to know. Other changes include:

1. Optimized controls designed specifically for the PC.2. High resolution visuals - ...

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Weighted Companion Cube in WoW?

Valentine's Day is fast-approaching, and Blizzard has brought the lovey-dovey festivities to the land of Azeroth via the "Love is in the air" celebration. Until February 15th, World of Warcraft players can snag perfume, cologne, love tokens, love rockets, picnic baskets, and a variety of other gifts to show their virtual affection.

More important than all that (at least to the obsessive videogame community, anyway), Portal's famous Weighted Companion Cube has been spotted in the wild, sporting a brand new outfit that is more fitting to the Azeroth fashion trends. I guess that would make it the Weighted Companion Crate, huh?

When in Rome...

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Mod DB '07 Editor's Choice Mod of the Year results...

A few weeks back the Mod DB Player's Choice Mod of the Year Award results were finally revealed. Now it's time for the Mod DB Editor's to have their say.

This years results are a little different from the norm. According to Mod DB Editor stenchy, "The list focuses on projects that have been pushed to the sidelines in a flood of constant media and news updates, yet merit some of their own time under the spotlight."

Editor's Choice Best of 2007:

1. Infinity: The Quest for Earth (Prototype Unreleased I-Novae Engine)2. The Hunted Chronicles (Dark Places Engine)3. Europe in Ruins (Essence Engine)4. Flipside (Source Engine)5. Age of Chivalry (Source Engine)6. Paranoia (GoldSrc Engine)7. C&C Generals: Shockwave (SAGE)8. Eternal Silence (Source Engine)9. E.Y.E. (Source Engine)10. M...

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Rainbow Six Vegas 2 gameplay footage

The sequel to Ubisoft's critically acclaimed Rainbow Six Vegas is scheduled to hit store shelves in just over five weeks, and fans of the first game are already chomping at the bit in anticipation. Now I'm not a huge fan of the Rainbow Six franchise, but those of you who are, have a look at this new gameplay footage.  Then curse me for making your wait even longer.

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The Orange Box to be cut into slices

The Orange Box is undoubtedly one of the best values that has ever been released upon the gaming world with the bundling of the original Half-Life 2, HL2 Episodes One and Two, Portal, and Team Fortress 2--all for the ridiculous price of what it would cost for one video game.

But the Orange Box is about to be peeled and cut into separate slices according to an Electronic Arts third-quarter earnings call. Warren Jenson, CFO and executive vice president at EA said, "We are unbundling Orange Box and releasing separate PC SKUs, Half Life 2: Episode Two, Portal and Team and Fortress [2] [for the PC].

Jensen did not mention a separate release of Half-Life 2: Episode One for the PC, although this may have just been an oversight on his part. However there is speculation whether or not The Orange Box ...

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Microsoft won't kill XP yet. Gives it an extension...

Microsoft's XP operating system was going the way of the dodo bird coming this June as Microsoft announced that it was planning to discontinue XP for OEM and packaged editions in favor of Vista taking over the reigns as the main OS for PCs. But it seems that XP may have been given a stay of execution.

The decision by Microsoft to stop making XP initiated a petition over at InfoWorld's website in order to save XP. At the moment over 75,000 signatures have been gathered. In addition, the website is posting a series of articles regarding why individuals, organizations, and businesses are protesting the fact that Microsoft is "forcing" them to switch over to the unpopular Vista.

A survey done by King Research of 961 IT professionals showed that 90% had concerns about Vista due to issues regar...

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Crysis 1.2 patch details

Details of the upcoming Crysis 1.2 patch have been revealed in a weekly news update from the Crysis Dev Team.

Posted on the CryMod Forums, the news update covers some of the cheat protection to be implemented, along with bug fixes, a mod loader and multiplayer balancing issues. Also included was a WIP changelog of the 1.2 patch:

1. Optimizations and Stability

- Fixed crash with AI triangulation in the editor.

2. General Fixes/tweaks

- If climbing a ladder while cloaked, energy no longer depletes at the same rate as if player were standing still. - Mouse cursor will no longer be permanently removed on attaching gamepad.

3. Weapons

- Decreased air speed of grenade launcher projectile for better readability. - Added smoke trail to grenade launcher shell for better visibility.

4. Ve...

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