activision

There's sour news out of Irvine, Calif., today, as Activision Blizzard subsidiary Blizzard Entertainment announced that it will reduce its global workforce by 600 employees.

The company noted that 10 percent of its staff cuts--or about 60 people--were actively involved in game development.

Blizzard was quick to point out that the World of Warcraft development team will not be impacted by the staff reductions.

The company's massively popular massively multiplayer online role-playing game has struggled in the past year, slipping from 10.3 million to 10.2 million subscribers through the end of December.

Read more of "Blizzard laying off 600" at GameSpot. … Read more

A game like World of Warcraft requires several thousand servers to operate the hundreds of online realms within its ecosystem. Earlier this year, Blizzard Entertainment auctioned off several of those server blades "used during World of Warcraft's early days."

A Reddit post brought up the subject again recently, and contains a few pictures of a server blade used for the European server Sunstrider from February 27, 2005 to August 24, 2010. There's little doubt that countless gamers spent thousands, if not millions, of hours playing during that time frame. A special clear enclosure reveals the innards of the server, which contains 6 gigabytes of RAM (DDR-400MHz). It did not come with the original hard drives. … Read more

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3's first downloadable content (DLC) release is coming next month, game developer Infinity Ward has announced.

Speaking on the Call of Duty Elite Web show "Roll Call," Infinity Ward creative strategist Robert Bowling said the DLC will be made available to Xbox Live users on January 24, Joystiq reported today. As in previous Call of Duty DLC launches, the content will be made available on the PlayStation 3 and PC at a later point. Bowling didn't say when that might be.

However, before the game's players get too excited, beware … Read more

After at least three years and an estimated $155 million, Electronic Arts and BioWare open their new massive multiplayer game, Star Wars: The Old Republic to general audiences on December 20.

The developers' hope is that the game will bring meaningful competition to the World of Warcraft-dominated online gaming market. Gamers and the "Star Wars" faithful, on the other hand, just hope the game is fun. We've been playing the game in an early release phase, open to customers who preordered the game and others.

Rich: Games in the MMO (massive multiplayer online) genre are notoriously hard … Read more

Two of the year's biggest games are going head to head this holiday season, both seeking the crown as best military first-person shooter. Unless you've cut yourself off from all forms of media consumption, I'm of course talking about Modern Warfare 3 and Battlefield 3.… Read more

Blizzard Entertainment announced in a brief press release this morning that its long-awaited PC role playing game, Diablo III, will not launch in the fourth quarter of 2011 as expected. Instead, Blizzard has pushed back the release of the game until early 2012.

This news will surely disappoint gamers who have had to wait more than a decade for a follow -up to 2000's Diablo II. Blizzard also spurred fans' hopes for an imminent release with the release of a closed Diablo III beta test, which was opened to the press earlier this week.

"We pulled together people from all of the teams involved with the game to decide whether we felt it would be ready before the end of December, and we grudgingly came to the conclusion that it would not," said Blizzard CEO Mike Morhaime in a blog post. "The upside of today's announcement is that we will be running the beta test longer than we initially planned, which will allow us to invite more of you who have opted in."

Expanded beta access may sate some fans, but Blizzard's Diablo III forum is already alight with comments from gamers having difficulty with the extended wait for the final product.… Read more

Blizzard Entertainment opened its Diablo III beta trial to the press yesterday, giving us and many other outlets the chance to try out its forthcoming action role playing game. After taking a monk character through the beta content in single-player mode on normal difficulty, we have an overall positive impression of Blizzard's new take on its long-running franchise.

The Diablo series is known for fast, click-based combat, complex character development decisions, and a near-constant stream of monsters, gold, and loot thrown in your character's path. Diablo games also have a reputation for replayability because of randomized dungeon layouts and the number of possible character classes and skills. The series is also notorious for its ability to hook gamers into playing long into the night.

If the beta is any indication of the final product, Blizzard has successfully captured that "Diablo-ness" in Diablo III, while introducing some streamlined new game elements that make the experience more accessible than earlier titles. We need to play through the final product game before we decide whether that accessibility comes at the expense of depth, but we'll be interested to see how the more hard-core players adapt to some of Blizzard's new design decisions.… Read more

Gamers rejoice. At Call of Duty XP, an event for fans of the game this past weekend, Activision announced that Microsoft will release a Modern Warfare 3 Xbox 360 bundle.

Like various other game-themed consoles, such as the Gears of War Xbox or the Tron controller, the bundle's design will resemble the theme of Infinity Ward's newest game.

The entire package will consist of two custom wireless controllers, a 320GB hard drive, a copy of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, a month's membership to Xbox Live Gold (for you to rack up your kill count), and custom startup/disc loading sounds (yes, the sounds are from the game).

There's no Kinect unit included, however. You'll have to purchase one separately to be able to have some Dance Central action when you're out of the war zone.

The bundle will be available on November 8 in the U.S., Canada, Mexico, Australia, and New Zealand and will retail for $399. Preorders are already being accepted.

(Source: Crave Asia) … Read more

The rift between Electronic Arts and Activision won't be mended anytime soon.

Speaking yesterday at the Gamescom conference in Germany, Activision Publishing CEO Eric Hirshberg said, according to Eurogamer, that EA has engaged in "mudslinging" that simply isn't beneficial for the industry or gamers themselves.

"This isn't politics. In order for one to win, the other doesn't have to lose," Hirshberg reportedly said during his address. "This is an entertainment industry, it's an innovation industry and, at best, it's an art form. But we're still a young art … Read more