DICE and Visceral developing new Star Wars games, EA becomes exclusive publisher of license

Months after acquiring Lucasfilm, Disney shuttered its games division, LucasArts. Since then, fans have wondered: what will happen to Star Wars games? Surprisingly, they won't be published by Disney Interactive. Instead, Electronic Arts has announced a "multi-year exclusive licensing agreement to develop and publish globally new games based on Star Wars characters and storylines."

According to the press release, "EA will develop and publish new Star Wars titles for a core gaming audience, spanning all interactive platforms and the most popular game genres, while Disney will retain certain rights to develop new titles within the mobile, social, tablet and online game categories." These social games could be extensions of the unannounced games that LucasArts was working on before its closure.

This isn't EA's first foray with the Star Wars franchise, of course. It launched Star Wars: The Old Republic--an ambitious MMORPG that later had to go free-to-play as subscriber numbers dwindled.

Were it not for id Software's seminal Wolfenstein 3D, who knows how we'd be shooting men in the face today? Publisher Bethesda Softworks today announced a "reimagining" of the Nazi-busting FPS in Wolfenstein: The New Order, developed by MachineGames. This is the first game from the studio founded by Starbreeze veterans, which Bethesda owner ZeniMax snapped up in 2010.

The New Order is set in an alternate 1960, where the Nazis won World War 2. Our hero B.J. Blazkowicz will once again be shooting men (and Nazi robots) to save us all.

Wolfenstein: The New Order is headed to PC, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and unspecified next-gen consoles (presumably PlayStation 4 and the Next Xbox), slated to launch between October and December--the fourth quarter--of this year.

Here's the announcement trailer, part of an exclusive marketing thingy with GameSpot:

From: http://www.maximumpc.com/article/news/amd_catalyst_134_update_addresses_latency_performance_several_games

AMD promises a significant reduction in latency in titles like Skyrim and Tomb Raider.
A new driver package is available for AMD Radeon, Mobility Radeon, and PowerXpress GPUs. It's AMD's Catalyst 13.4 update and it's supposed to "significantly" improve latency performance in Skyrim, Borderlands 2, Guild Wars 2, Tomb Raider, and Hitman Absolution, according to the release notes. it also offers performance gains in several titles across the entire range of Radeon HD 7000 Series graphics cards.

Specifically, Radeon HD 7000 Series card owners can expect the following:

Batman Arkham City (1920x1200): Performance improvements up to 5 percent
Borderlands 2 (2560x1600): Performance improvements up to 10 percent
Quake Wars (1920x1200): Performance improvements up to 13 percent
Hitman Absolution (2560x1600): Performance improvements up to 11 percent
Wolfenstein MP (1920x1080): Performance improvements up to 11 percent

http://store.origin.com/store/ea/html/pbPage.origin-deals?easid=Origin_SHOOTERACTIONPROMO_Web_Hero_BuyNow

EA's Origin is currently running a sale on a variety of action games and their DLC, including Battlefield 3, Tomb Raider and Assassin's Creed 3. The sale includes physical copies on Windows PC, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 as well as digital copies sold through Origin; the discounts are as high as 50 percent off. Here are some of the highlights:

Battlefield 3: $9.99 (PC download), $19.99 (PC, PS3, 360 retail)
Battlefield 3 Premium Edition: $29.99 (PC download), $34.99 (PC, PS3, 360 retail)
Tomb Raider: $24.99 (PC download)
Tomb Raider Survival Edition: $28.99 (PC download)
Assassin's Creed 3: $24.99 (PC download)
Dead Space 3: $29.99 (PC download), $39.99 (PC, PS3, 360 retail)
Darksiders 2: $24.99 (PC download)

Before the release of Battlefield 3 DICE stated that no mod tools would be released because they were "too complicated" for people to use. Now, two years later, a modder named NoFate is defying that statement with a tool called Venice Unleashed which will allow players to create custom server rule sets, disable graphical effects, develop mods, and enables many hidden features such as a spectator mode.

http://enlist.veniceunleashed.net/

Source: www.pcgamer.com. Written by: Phil Savage

And the retail leaks continue. After Tesco’s unplanned reveal of CoD: Ghosts, details of Battlefield 4 have surfaced through an EB Games pre-order poster – spotted by BF4Central. It teases an enhanced Battlelog, the title of the first DLC expansion, and an October 31st release date. This is actually the second Battlefield promo spotting – Gamespot previously let slip the return of Commander mode and the sequel’s three playable factions. Maybe the affected publishers need to have a whip round to raise cash for some less hole-ridden info buckets.

According to the poster, Premium mode will return, giving “exclusive” DLC access, as well as uniforms, weapons, “and more”. The first – undated – expansion is announced as “Drone Strike”. Presumably that won’t involve an elected player from each match sitting in a separate oval office, celebrating every enemy takedown and desperately ignoring reports about collateral damage.