Counter Strike: Global Offensive confirmed for Summer launch!

Earlier this week at Microsoft's showcase event, Counter Strike: Global Offensive developer has confirmed that the highly anticipated CS:GO is set to launch this Summer for the PC, PS3, and Xbox 360. Hurray! Now for the bad news, cross-platform play is dropped from CS:GO. So many things could be explored with cross-platform play, and it would have been one of the first FPS games to support it, but it probably would just take too much time, work and effort, even for Valve developers.

I'm not too bothered about not getting any cross-platform love from the developers, since I am, and will be playing anything on the PC. However, it would still be really cool to be able to play with other peoples who are on their consoles, and to see how the game-play will turn out. I guess this is kind of a good thing since the developers would be able to focus more on the development for each platform.

Sign up for the beta for CS:GO here! 

Image source: http://www.evilsourcegaming.com/2012/02/csgo-beta-opening-up-to-more-players-today/

Final Mass Effect 3 Launch Trailer

Mass Effect 3 will be released tomorrow in the US! BioWare has recently released a new dramatic launch trailer for this game to get everyone pumped up for Mass Effect 3. Every moment of the 3 minute trailer is full of awesome action, chaos, and explosions, it's so amazing that it could very well become a movie on its own.

You can really see how much time and effort BioWare has put into the trailer, I've got goosebumps all over from watching that trailer. Let's hope that BioWare will not let us down.

New F2P 3rd-person MMO shooter: Loadout

Coming this Summer is yet another Free-to-Play MMO 3rd-person shooter, Loadout. It emphasizes heavily on players being able to customize your outrageous weapons, equipment and accessories, as well as the over-the-top effects and cartoony graphics. Loadout promises this one thing, "The more you play, the more you can customize."

If Team Fortress 2 and Borderlands had a baby, it would be this game. I'd even say that Loadout is really similar to FireFall.  Seeing how successful Team Fortress 2 has been after going F2P, it seems like many MMO shooters are also jumping on the F2P wagon. I just hope that it will not become another Pay-to-Win game, and that the cash shop will only sell cosmetics items. Other than that, Loadout seems like a pretty good game to get into.

Sign up for the beta here:  http://loadoutgame.com

Image Source:http://loadoutgame.com/media/

Valve's "Steam Box" gaming console

Valve is rumored to be developing their own console, currently known as "Steam Box". Steam Box is developed with the idea of a low-cost and micro-sized PC that would be able to play all of Steam's games. The baseline specs of Steam Box is reported to be a Intel Core i7 CPU, 8GB RAM, and an Nvidia GPU, which would run pretty much any PC games in high quality.

Maybe for once, I might consider getting a console. I mean heck, a console with specs better than what my PC currently have? Shut up and take my money! It's great to see Valve venturing into consoles, and not just sticking to the PC platform. Although Valve has not confirmed any of the reports yet, they should be making announcements in the near future. 

Image source: http://www.slashgear.com/valve-announces-15-million-steam-subscribers-0810151/

BioShock Infinite Release Date!

BioShock fans rejoice! 2K Games has recently announced the release date for BioShock Infinite. It is set to be released on 16th October in the U.S. for the PC, PS3, and Xbox 360, and 19th October for the international release. BioShock Infinite is one of the most anticipated titles of 2012, and it will be set in an alternate steam-punk universe in 1912, USA.

This title is quite a different feel from the previous BioShock titles which are set in the underwater metropolic, Rapture. With the floating sky-cities, I am sure that BioShock Infinite will be a promising title. I look forward to playing this game on the PC when it is released. 

Image source: http://www.joystiq.com/2010/08/12/bioshock-infinite-preview/

600 Blizzard staff getting laid off!

With the drop of World of Warcraft subscribers, from 12 million to 10.2 million, Blizzard is cutting 600 staff members globally. Most of the staff that are getting fired are not from game development departments, so all the on-going games in development, such as Diablo 3, Starcraft 2 expansions, and Blizzard DOTA, will still be in progress.

Losing your job is never fun, especially not when you were working at Blizzard. I hope that Blizzard will still continue to deliver promising titles. Could the massive drop in WoW subscribers be due to competitive title such as Star Wars: The Old Republic? Or is Activision behind this? Who knows? 

Image source: http://starcraft.wikia.com/wiki/Blizzard_Entertainment

Microsoft Flight released for free!

The long awaited flight simulator, Microsoft Flight is finally released today. It can be downloaded from their official website and played for free. There will be however, downloadable content that you can buy and unlock from the Game For Windows Live Marketplace. Right now, the game is only limited to Hawaii, but more regions will probably be added on to the game in the near future. 

It's nice to see more games, or flight simulators jumping on the F2P wagon. One thing that still bums me out is that additional content usually means DLCs that we need to pay for. Hopefully, they'll find some payment model that will benefit both publishers and consumers without milking us dry.

Microsoft Flight's Official Website:  http://www.microsoft.com/games/flight/ 

Image source: http://flyawaysimulation.com/