dlc

preGAME 04: Battlefield: Bad Company 2

This week on preGAME, hosts Jeff Bakalar and Mark Licea take a sneak peek at the online multiplayer component of Battlefield: Bad Company 2. Watch as Mark hops into a game on Xbox Live during the show!

But before we get into the live game demo, we'll discuss the new downloadable content (DLC) for some very notable titles. Resident Evil 5, Borderlands, and BioShock 2 all have extra content coming your way, so tune in to see when they'll each be available and how much they'll cost. This news story leads us to our featured discussion of the week: whether or not DLC is here to stay. We'll touch on the good, the bad, and the annoying.

All this plus a DICE 2010 awards recap and all of the week's top headlines and releases on preGAME!

Want to be a part of our live taping? Make sure you head to http://cnet.com/live/pregame every Tuesday at 4 p.m. Eastern. If you missed any of the stories we talk about on today's preGAME, make sure to check out our links below.

DICE awards wrap-up Next Call of Duty game to take place during Cold War? Sony files patent for universal game controller Is Project Natal laggy?… Read more

Our E3 2009 Predictions

With the new and supposedly improved Electronic Entertainment Expo just around the corner (here are some of last year's highlights), we decided to run down some quick predictions for what the overarching themes of the show will be.

Dan Ackerman:

God of War III and Rock Band: Beatles will be the big mainstream games and public (and retail buyers) care about. Variable price points, which are easy to do on DLC, help gamemakers target recession-addled audiences. Booth babes return, but in a subtle, post-wretched-excess kind of way. New hardware/accessory pushes from Nintendo and Sony hope to boost flagging … Read more

Digital City No. 31: Mourning the Virgin Megastore, plus NBA vet Kevin Willis visits

Episode 31 of the Digital City, where we discuss the Virgin Megastore liquidation sale (or lack thereof), Amazon's new big-screen Kindle, and how the video game DLC trend is jumping to handhelds. Later, NBA vet Kevin Willis drops by to talk about his love affair with the iPhone.

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Listen now: Download today's podcast

Fallout 3 universe expands even further with Broken Steel DLC

The near universal penetration of broadband Internet connections on home video game consoles is giving rise to a new business model for games. With publishers able to reach consumers directly through Xbox Live, Nintendo's Virtual Console shop, and the PlayStation Network Store, there's a growing trend toward offering small, variably priced, incremental content to expand existing games, rather than focusing on a handful of expensive tent-pole projects that can take years to develop.

One of the games to best take advantage of this is Bethesda's Fallout 3, a post-apocalyptic role-playing game that topped many best-of-2008 lists. To augment the game's 50-plus hours of content, Bethesda has previously released two downloadable expansions, called Operation: Anchorage and The Pitt, both of which add several hours of new storylines and characters to the game (both are available for around $10 on Xbox Live or the Games for Windows marketplace).

The third, and most ambitious expansion, called Broken Steel, will be available May 5, and we sat down with Bethesda recently for a preview to find out what we can expect. … Read more

Steam gets into micropayments with in-game DLC

Valve's Steam software has a new feature for game publishers that lets them sell additional downloadable content, or DLC, from within their games.

To do this, it uses a new in-game purchasing system built off of the in-software Web browser. The first title to feature this is The Maw, which now includes two additional levels that can be purchased for $1.25 each, then played immediately. Previously, all add-on content was sold as a separate purchase from Steam's game store.

The new feature is available to all developers as part of Valve's Steamworks publishing platform. For games … Read more

Resident Evil 5 to get online gameplay with Versus

What could be better news for a gamer than knowing there will be downloadable content for a game before its release? Capcom just announced Versus mode for Resident Evil 5. So, when you get tired of playing with them, play Versus, and take 'em out. Resident Evil 5 will be available March 13.

According to Capcom, Versus allows up to four players to match wits in online battles across two very different game types. Slayer's Rule is a point-based game that challenges players to kill Majinis. In Survivor's Rule, players hunt the most dangerous game, each other! Players … Read more

Will you survive Left 4 Dead DLC?

For some time now I've only been a two-console owner, the PlayStation 3 and the Nintendo Wii. I received a lot of flack from co-workers and friends for not having an Xbox 360 and was even referred to as a "Sony fanboy."

Then Valve released Left 4 Dead and a group of us from the office downloaded the demo and had a little PC LAN party. From that moment I knew I had to add that game to my library; however, it was only available for the PC and Xbox 360. I was never a big PC … Read more