Well, technically not so much "new maps" as "now widely available" maps. The four bonus maps included with the special edition version of the game will be available for all as DLC March 18th. Price of entry is $7.

Regarding the maps themselves, two are designed for the games competitive multiplayer modes and two are designed for cooperative modes. The competitive maps are called "Docks" and "Machine". The cooperative maps are called "Outpost" and "Hive".  The latter two take place in an overrun human colony and Alien breeding ground and are designed for human versus alien gameplay.

I haven't played the game yet, but the latter coop. maps sound right up my alley.

The announcement has come to fruition and the iPhone version of Street Fight IV is now available for your portable fighting pleasure.

Gameplay is your typical on screen buttons-in-the-corner setup. The fighting action tries to stay centered on the screen, but fat fingered individuals may want to be wary as the buttons do take up quite a bit of space. Another thing to note is that there are only eight fighters available: Ryu, Ken, Blanka, Guile, Chun-Li, Dhalsim, M. Bison and Abel.

Street Fighter IV on iPhone can be had for $10.

Title says it all. For a limited time you can get your mits on Mass Effect 2 at Amazon for a good thirty to fourty percent off depending on which platform you go for. You can get the Xbox 360 version for $39.99 (over $59.99 retail) or the PC version for $29.99 (over $49.99 retail).

No word how long the deal lasts so don't hesitate if you are interested. Its a pretty good game after all.

Ubisoft's draconian DRM, which requires legitimate PC gamers to have an internet connection at all times to play their games, has successfully displayed its ineptness by locking legitimate customers out of their games when the authentication servers went down over the weekend.  

There is currently a twelve page long thread at the Ubisoft forums full of gamers detailing their inability to play their games. As a result, gamers who took their chance with the DRM have had a rough time being able to log in and play the games packaged with the DRM, Assassin's Creed II and Silent Hunter V.  According to community managers from Ubisoft, the reason for the outage is a result of the over whelming demand the servers are currently facing. At this time it appears the servers are still experiencing issues.

In other news, piraters don't need to deal with this dilema because they already cracked the DRM measures the day after the games came out, rendering Ubisoft's whole point of shipping games with the DRM utterly pointless.

Square Enix's long awaited Final Fantasy XIII will be released next week but if you are planning to choose the 360 version over the PS3 you may want to reconsider. According to an in-depth analysis at eurogamer.com, between the two versions the quality of the Xbox 360 port doesn't quite reach the visual fidelity of it's PS3 counter part.

"Adequate but a touch disappointing" best sums up the Xbox 360 version. Fine edges lose precision, and while the effect is mitigated thanks to the MSAA along with the multitude of post processing effects the engine has at its disposal, the fact is that the lack of resolution can make the 360 build look sub-par. The clean CG look of the PS3 game in motion is unduly compromised, and while it's still a handsome enough title on Xbox 360, it lacks the pristine presentation of its sibling.

If you're an owner of both the 360 and PS3, and need some help making a choice between the two, this article is a good read. Along with a detailed break down of the visual differences between the two SKU's, the reasons why the downgrade of quality may not have even been necessary is discussed.

Click the link below to see the whole four page report.

Face-Off: Final Fantasy XIII

The blue bomber returns to his element once again in Capcom's retro throwback title Mega Man 10, the second game modeled after the series original 8-bit roots. Mega Man 10 offers some new features to the formula including an easy mode to make the game more accessible to the easily frustrated and the ability to play through the game as Proto Man from the start, but does this manage to keep the game fresh or is the nostalgia starting to wear thin?

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Resident Evil creator Shinji Mikami's latest game, Vanquish, will see release this winter according to an article in the latest issue of Famitsu magazine.

From the details released so far, the game which is being developed by Platinum Games will be a third person shooter that features a cover system and high paced action. Players wear an armored suit with all sorts of high tech armaments and battle it out with robots in a conflicted setting between Russia and the U.S.

The game is slated for release on the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 and is currently 80% complete through its development cycle.

[via Kotaku]

There has been quite a bit of activity lately between Call of Duty developer Infinity Ward and publisher Activision which started with the arrival of some "bouncer-types" at the offices of Infinity Ward and later lead to confirmation that studio heads Vince Zampella and Jason West were no longer under the developer's employ. Aside from some vague explanations made by Activision concerning breaches of contracts and investigations of "insubordination", cold hard details behind why Vince and Jason left the studio have been sparse, but here are the facts and speculations we know so far.

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GDC is in a week and that means big news in the gaming industry. One such morsel of news is the announcement that Crytek, the developer of the upcoming Crysis 2, will officially debut stereoscopic 3D support for CryEngine 3.

Crytek's director of global business development Carl Jones has said that this addition to CryEngine 3 will enable developers that license the engine to create 3D content on the engine's supported platforms (Xbox 360, PS3, PC) This being the case, "There are basically no longer any limits to a designer's creativity," Mr. Jones has said.

[Update] It looks like CEO and founder of Infinity Ward, Vince Zampella, and co-founder, Jason West, have officially left Infinity Ward according to their LinkedIn pages. In regard to working for Infinity Ward, both LinkedIn pages now have an end date of March 2010. The reason behind the departure is still unclear aside from what was mentioned in the SEC filing Activision submitted.

Yesterday some news landed that some intimidating "bouncer-type" men had showed up at the offices of Call of Duty developer Infinity Ward. These men were tight lipped concerning the reasons why they were at the building which, understandably, caused some confusion and worry. Later, senior developers Jason West and Vince Zampella were noticably absent from the premices and following some news that the two developers had met earlier that day with Activision, in addition to an update to Jason West's Facebook status (posted by Kotaku) and LinkedIn profile, it appears the two developers have been released from Infinity Ward.

According to an SEC filing Activision submitted yesterday morning, a human resources investigation had been cited by the publisher concerning "breaches of contracts and insubordination by two senior employees at Infinity Ward." It appears one of those employees is Jason West, but at this time its unconfirmed if Vince Zampella was the other.

From within the report:

"This matter is expected to involve the departure of key personnel and litigation. At present, the Company does not expect this matter to have a material impact on the Company."

Details are sparse as to what sort of insubordination or breaches in contract took place here. Considering Infinity Ward's Modern Warfare 2 is a money maker for the publisher you have to wonder what would of had to take place for Activision to cut out two of the developers behind the game. There could be a perfectly legitimate reason why these guys were shown the door, but little is known at this time.