May 2011 Archives

The campaign trailer for Epic's upcoming blitzkrieg, Gears of War 3, is out showing off a bit more of what players can expect from the single-player storyline aiming to finish the trilogy.

The last time we left Cole and Fenix, they had managed to drown the Locust with the sea and stop the early extinction of mankind. Now it looks like Fenix's father is still alive and you can bet that he'll be doing everything he can to rescue him.

That means it's going to be an action packed thrill ride to who knows where, one filled with colossal creatures, ruins, and more glowy Lambent. Will you be ready when it emerges on shelves on September 20th? I know I'll be.

A short tease was released for the next chapter in the Starcraft II saga, Heart of the Swarm. Unfortunately, this doesn't mean that the game might actually be coming out this year. Earlier this month, Activision had their quarterly financial call in which Thomas Tippl, COO and CFO of Activision Blizzard, had said:

"As I mentioned on our last call, given Blizzard Entertainment has not confirmed the launch date for its next global release, our outlook at this time does not include a new game from Blizzard in 2011. Should Blizzard not release a major title this year, we would expect, for planning purposes, to launch a minimum of 2 Blizzard titles in 2012."

Of course, that only says that Blizzard hasn't said anything yet about dates so they're planning on two Blizzard titles in 2012 if they don't pull the trigger this year. It's a safe guess that the two titles could be Heart of the Swarm and the long awaited Diablo III.

One odd thing about the trailer. It was posted on Gametrailers, then pulled. It didn't take long for it to show up elsewhere, though, with the Gametrailers intro stripped out (but you can still see the watermark). Check it out while it's fresh.

Disney has found another way to capitalize on its popular animated and live-action characters: "Disney Universe," a multiplayer game scheduled for a fall release.

From Disney Interactive entertainment:

In Disney Universe, players can select from more than 40 classic and contemporary Disney character costumes, including Alice ("Alice in Wonderland"), Mike ("Monsters, Inc."), TRON ("TRON: Legacy") and Stitch ("Lilo & Stitch") to explore six different worlds inspired by legendary Disney and Disney•Pixar films.  Each world will allow players to experience objectives and missions that follow Disney and Disney•Pixar movie storylines.  Players will select a character-based costume, with each costume offering a specific tool that changes and grows in power as players adventure through the game.  Disney Universe offers frenetic gameplay, multiplayer with up to three friends and slapstick humor that will appeal to players of all ages. 

Disney Interactive announced the game as a release for Mac, PC, PlayStation 3, Wii and XBox 360.

From the get go, Disney Interactive is also announced plans to sell a lot of DLC for this title. This writer has no objection to DLC as long as players get their money's worth and aren't nickled and dimed with small bits of content. Free advice to publishers: Bundle your DLC like a good PC expansion pack and customers will like you more.

 

L.A. Noire is one of the more interesting video games I have ever played not simply because I enjoyed most of what the game's development team put into the title, but because it brought to mind so many memories - not all of them pleasant - of experiences I have had during my journalism career.

This is not a second review. It's more of a self-indulgent column about some ideas that came to mind while playing L.A. Noire. Take it for whatever you think it's worth.

Playing and writing about L.A. Noire led me to wonder how my time as a news reporter may have made my experiences with the game different from those of other reviewers whose careers are more firmly rooted in the gaming and entertainment media.

I have never been a full-time crime reporter - let alone worked in law enforcement - but I have had at least a glimpse of the grimier side of California life over the course my newspaper years.

What follows are some stories to explain why I found L.A. Noire to be more affecting on a personal level than other games I highly admire, such as those within the Legend of Zelda, Fallout and Mass Effect series.

The "Shinobi" franchise will return to the Nintendo 3DS, Sega announced today.

Any gamers old enough to remember the arcade machines of the 1980s must have played Shinobi at least once. Shinobi was a super-hard side scrolling title that put players in the role of a ninja fighting hundreds of enemies, which is a description that could also describe Ninja Gaiden and many, many other games. Ninjas were big in the 1980s.

Shinobi survived into the 1990s and that decade's competition between the Sega Genesis and Super Nintendo. Shinobi, of course, was on Sega's side at the time.

It almost seems weird to see Sega making a game for a Nintendo product, but things have changed, although Sega reports Shinobi will stick to its side-scrolling roots for the Nintendo 3DS.

The game is scheduled for a September release.

"If you think the atmosphere is thick in here, wait until you try the gas chamber."
Det. Rusty Galloway, LAPD

L.A. Noire, in some of its best and most grim moments, is a title that reminds players that homicide is a part of American life.

Crime scene after crime scene, L.A. Noire forces players to confront the consequences of violence. In the role of Los Angeles Police Department detective Cole Phelps, players must examine the bodies of the dead and pursue their killers. The investigations can be a slow and deliberate process, and in playing Phelps' part, players must try to think like a detective as they sift through clues and interview witnesses and suspects.

In this writer's opinion, the question of whether games can be art is not a matter of if, but how. In L.A. Noire, developers and publishers Team Bondi and Rockstar Games, have put together an attractive game with top-notch voice acting and story that usually hits the right marks. All that can be achieved in cinema, and L.A. Noire's storyline could have easily been written as a solid detective drama.

But despite being screened at the Tribeca Film Festival, L.A. Noire is not a movie and its merits as a work of art must be considered as a function of its merits as a video game. As such, if a work of art can be assessed in its ability to make its audience feel an emotional response or fire their own imaginations, L.A. Noire succeeds as a game and art by giving its players an opportunity to imagine what it is like to investigate a murder.

A new trailer for the upcoming Fear 3 shows off its "Soul King" multiplayer mode, in which players begin each round of competition as ghosts who must possess other characters and collect their rivals' souls.

Whoever finishes with the most souls wins. There's a reason the franchise's title is "Fear."

Here's a link the video on the game's official site. It's pretty bloody so it may be NSFW unless your job requires you to look at gaming footage.

Fear 3's developer is Day 1 Studios and publisher is Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment.

The title is scheduled for a June 21 release for PC, PlayStation 3 and XBox 360.

The fact that the world did not end on Saturday means there is an increased probability that "Duke Nukem Forever" - a title first announced in 1997 - will actually come out.

The wait for this game has been long enough to outlast at least two End of the World Predictions, and if it turns out that the world ends in 2012 (based on some unorthodox interpretations of the old Mayan calendar), gamers will have little more than a year to actually play the game.

Duke Nukem Forever's publishers at Take Two Interactive announced today the title has gone gold, meaning it's ready for a retail release. In honor of this allegedly momentous occasion, and the fact that I have a lot of work to do today on the Daily Bulletin's and Sun's business beat, I'm just going to post the full press release after the jump.

Los Angeles Clippers star player Blake Griffin (The Clippers actually have a bona fide star and can now promote a guy who plays on their own team instead of advertising their opponents like they used to do) wants a guest spot in id Software's upcoming shooter "Rage," if this advertisement is to be believed.






It's always cool to see a famous guy willing to poke fun at himself and jump over a tiger. Rage, developed by id Software and published by Bethesda Softworks, is set for a Sept. 13 release for PC, PlayStation 3 and XBox 360.

Quick link to some new media for the forthcoming "Hunted: The Demon's Forge.":

Bethesda Softworks on Friday released, "Around Dark Corners," featuring inXile Entertainment staffers discuss the "ambient and creepy" sound design and how to stimulate the sounds of flying arrows and blood splatters.

Hunted is scheduled for a May 31 release for PC, PlayStation 3 and XBox 360.

L.A. Noire (Team Bondi/Rockstar Games) is out today. Tech-Out will have a review soon, but I have to leave the office and actually play it first. A number of co-workers who don't often play games are familiar with the title, so I'm definitely curious to see if the game lives up to the hype.

(Aside: I was often puzzled by Rockstar's spelling of "noire," since the term film noir does not have the "e." I checked out some comments today on Kotaku and GameSpot and learned "noire" is the feminine spelling and noir is the masculine version. The word is French for black and since "la" is the feminine definite article in French, the title may have a double meaning: "L.A. Noire = "La Noire" = "The Black.")

Anyway, L.A. Noire is out for PlayStation 3 and XBox 360 and is rated M for such reasons as nudity, blood and gore and drug use. I would write that "games are not just for kids anymore," but if you're reading this, you probably already know that.

Today's other releases include:

• SpongeBob SquigglePants (THQ). Social game featuring Nickelodeon's SpongeBob SquarePants. Rated E and released for Nintendo 3DS. THQ released a previous version of this game for the Nintendo Wii.
• The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings (CD Projekt/Atari) Fantasy RPG. Rated M and released for PC. The official web site has some news on fixing some release date technical difficulties.
• Fable III (Lionhead Studios/Microsoft Games Studios). RPG. Rated M and now released for PC. Tech-Out reviewed the console version in November.
• Honest Hearts (Obsidian Entertainment/Bethesda Softworks). DLC add-on for Fallout" New Vegas. Available via XBox Live and Steam. Bethesda reports a PlayStation Network release will happen ASAP.

 

It's not a joke. It's really happening. The official Playstation Blog writes that PSN was phased back into service inside the United States and Canada in the last several hours.

The official Playstation Twitter had even given a play-by-play on which regions were coming up first, apparently starting in the northeastern states and then jumping to California after that. An updating map was also provided and was colored in as PSN came back to life.

PSN will also prompt PS3s to update with newest firmware which was made available several hours prior to the network relaunch on the official site. If you didn't download it from there, it will prompt you for the update when you try to get back on PSN. It will also prompt you to change your password, so be sure to think of something creative.

I'll admit, I didn't feel as affected as some that had gone as far as to trade in their PS3s for Xbox 360s. After updating my PS3 and changing my password, there wasn't much fanfare after that. Granted, people will finally be able to blast each other in the face in online match ups now that it's back, but with the Store still down, it's still a mixed blessing for some that can't redeem certain codes for DLC through it.

But for PSN's team of engineers, I'm sure that it has been a long and stressful road to get to even this point. Despite the bad press and further threats against the network, they had pushed on. A lot of the new improvements that Sony promised will be transparent against the backdrop of Fatalities and co-op. There won't be a virtual ticker tape parade here, other than in watching players sign back in. Yet for Sony and its team, that might be reward enough.

Here are a couple links to new videos for the forthcoming "Hunted: The Demon's Forge" and "Fear 3."

Developers working for inXile entertainment talk about creating the villains for Hunted in "At War With Monsters." The game's publisher, Bethesda Softworks, released the vid.

The second video, classily titled "F**cking Run," is for Fear 3, developed by Day 1 studios and published by WB Games. The video shows how players must avoid antagonist Alma's "wall of death" while playing the title's cooperative mode. (Obvious strong language in the link. You've been warned, folks.)

Green "night vision" imagery, shouting, gunfire and explosions dominate new teaser trailers for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3.

Activision released the images Friday on the company's Call of Duty channel on You Tube. America, England, France and Germany each get their own spot, so players can expect to see each country featured in this year's Call of Duty installment.

Oddly enough, there was no imagery of fighting in Baghdad, Afghanistan's Helmland Province nor Tripoli. But as far as fake wars go, it looks like Activision and EA Games, makers of "Battlefield 3," will be fighting a tough battle this year for gamers' attention and money.

(H/t G4 TV.com)

Computer and Videogames has a story in which they spoke to the producer of the upcoming action RPG, Dark Souls. Kei Horono admitted that "I would be lying if I said the problems with PSN hadn't caused us some problems, but we are in contact with Sony and are aiming to meet a street date of October 11."

The team at From Software who are developing Dark Souls had hinted at a larger online component than they the one used to great success in its predecessor, Demon's Souls.

Andriasang posted the translated points of an interview from Japanese gaming site, 4Gamer, with the director of Dark Souls, Hidetaka Miyazaki, where he stated that he wanted to bring back the feeling of "the old Dragon Quest" games. In that way, he hopes that it will deliver the sense of where everyone feels the struggle of everyone else by sharing tips as they did in the old days. PS3 players saw a taste of this with Demon's Souls where they could actually leave simple hints - or deceptions - behind that the servers shared with everyone else in the form of text messages.

With PSN down, however, none of that is coming through making the world of Demon's Souls even more grim than it already is. The difficulties that Kei Horono admitted to above also emphasize the troubles that other developers may be having with PSN's forced downtime -  especially for those working on PS3 titles with online features.

IGN had posted a story last month in the early days of the outage speaking to one such developer that was directly affected, Open Emotion Studios. The Irish developer was set to release their puzzler, Mad Blocker Alpha, on PSN for the States on April 19th but as everyone knows, circumstances prevented anything PSN related from happening the next day when Sony took it offline. Paddy Murphy, CEO for Open Emotion, said that they have been in contact with Sony who promised extra marketing to help promote their game to help "recoup our potential losses".

But the days of exclusivity continue to wane with more games appearing on both the Xbox 360 and PS3. Dark Souls will be the first taste of From Software's unique punishment that Xbox 360 players may have missed if they didn't have access to a PS3 and a copy of Demon's Souls. Even with PSN down, continuing development with Live is likely providing valuable lessons useful for whatever networking tricks will be worked into the gameplay for both versions. This may be why Kei Horono seems confident in hitting that October 11th release date.

And why players will have another reason to be afraid of Halloween.

New trailers are out today for "L.A. Noire" and "Honest Hearts," the next DLC episode for Fallout: New Vegas.

I'm not supposed to embed trailers for Mature-rated games without age gates, so links to follow.

L.A. Noire, from Rockstar Games and Team Bondi, is scheduled to be released May 16 for PlayStation 3 and XBox 360. If you're reading this, you probably already know the game tells the story of an LAPD detective in 1947 Los Angeles and features highly-touted facial animations. The idea is to let players figure out if suspects and witnesses are telling the truth, and this writer looks forward to seeing how well it works in practice.



"Honest Hearts" places Fallout: New Vegas players in a post-apocalyptic Zion Canyon, Utah. I have to admit that I've barely made a dent in New Vegas, but Utah is an amazingly beautiful state. The DLC is set for a May 17 release for PC, PlayStation 3* and XBox 360 players.



*This assumes PlayStation Network is back online by then. Sony has not announced a date as of this posting.

Namco Bandai Games announced today that "Dark Souls," a "spiritual successor" to popular RPG "Demon's Souls," will be released in October for North American and European players.

The original Demon's Souls, released in 2009, came out as a PlayStation 3 exclusive and earned a reputation for being really, really hard. Tech-Out reviewer Reggie Carolipio wrote:

Demon's Souls isn't for the impatient. It's not for people that don't want to feel as if they're inches away from success only to have it often taken away from them at the last second, pushing them even harder if they haven't broken their controller yet. But it's not so hard so as to be a masked attempt at humiliating its players. In some ways, it shares a lot in common with an old-school 2D title on the NES, right down to the respawning enemies.

Demon's Souls' hardcore attitude refuses to coddle you. Death is as much a part of the festivities as is dispatching the shambling, soulless things that stand in your way. Its deep character development and crafting system, open world hub, provide enough glimmers of hope to string players along and its gothic aesthetics brilliantly stain its fantasy world with plenty of Prozac inducing gloom while leaving you crying at the same time for rolling off of the edge of a cliff while dodging an enemy.

Namco Bandai apparently wants players to expect Dark Souls to be as to tough as the 2009 title. The URL for the game's website is www.preparetodie.com.

The forthcoming Dark Souls will be released for XBox 360 as well as PlayStation 3, Namco Bandai reported today.

Today's new game releases include Bethesda Softworks, "Brink" a new FPS and Disney Interactive's "Lego Pirates of the Caribbean: The Video Game."

Brink is rated T for Teen and available for PC, PlayStation 3 and XBox 360.

Lego Pirates of the Caribbean is rated E-10+ and on sale for Nintendo DS, Nintendo 3DS, Nintendo Wii, PC, PlayStation 3, Sony PSP and XBox 360.





Also out today:

• Dream Trigger (D3Publisher): "Arcade shooter" for Nintendo 3DS
• MX vs. ATV  Alive (THQ) Racing title for PlayStation 3 and XBox 360.
  

Movie tie-in games are a staple of the industry along with the notoriety that they often bear as quick cash-ins. Not every movie gets one, though whenever one is made, it's usually greeted with a mixture of dread and fear by those that know their reputation. Exceptions to the rule are rare. The hope that the next project might break the curse also often disappears almost as quickly as the game does into the bargain bin.

Thor: God of Thunder from Liquid Entertainment tries to shatter that reputation, building on the excitement surrounding the film. Yet even for the mighty Nordic godling empowered by Marvel heroism, it proves to be a fight even he can't win.

Identity theft has been on quite a few people's minds especially in the wake of the downtime that PSN and SOE have suffered after having personal information put at risk in hack intrusions. Now Sony has the details on an ID protection enrollment program that they are providing as a complimentary offer, free of charge, to Playstation Network and Qriocity members.

Posed here on their official blog, the service is described as good for 12 months and will inform those who subscribe to it of any unusual activity pertaining to their information and put them in touch with a staff of "licensed private investigators and identity restoration specialists". A special enrollment code will go out to members from Sony that will be good up until June 18th.

I looked the company up (Debix, Inc.) to see who they were. In addition to researching solutions to security breaches, they offer an on-call ID protection service for $9.95 per month. If someone attempts to sign up for credit under your name, an alert contacts your phone allowing you to indicate whether it is fraud or not.

Debix also offers the AllClearID service which is what Sony mentions in their release above. AllClearID has a free service plan that you can sign up for immediately, but Playstation.Blog notes that customers will be getting the AllClearID Plus service which normally costs $9.95 a month - all of which will be covered by Sony for twelve months of monitoring. As of this writing, Sony hasn't yet emailed the activation codes needed to sign up for it yet, but AllClearID has already made itself ready.

It's a big, and potentially expensive, step for Sony to make, but it also makes a point on what they are willing to do to rebuild the trust of their customers. As their team begin the "final stages" on the improvements they've made to the system, all we can do is wait and see what they do next.

The attack on PlayStation Network was a "very carefully planned, very professional, highly sophisticated criminal cyber-attack designed to steal personal and credit card information for illegal purposes," Sony Computer Entertainment asserted in a letter to members of Congress.

From the Associated Press:

Sony first disclosed the attack last week and said it may have compromised credit card data, email addresses and other personal information from 77 million user accounts. On Monday, Sony said data from an additional 24.6 million online gaming accounts also may have been stolen.

The company has shut down the affected systems while it investigates the attacks and beefs up security. (Sony Computer Entertainment Chairman Kazuo) Hirai said Sony is working "around the clock to get the systems back up and to make sure all our customers are informed of the data breach and our responses to it."

Hirai also asserted in the letter that his company's investigation found "the intruders had planted a file on one of those servers named 'Anonymous' with the words  'We Are Legion.'"

Anonymous known for its hacking or "hacktivist" attacks on whomever its members (?) don't like, threatened Sony in an April 3 posting on the AnonOps Communications blog after Sony pursued legal action against George Hotz, AKA Geohot, the hacker who figured out and told the world how to jailbreak the PlayStation 3.

Sony and Geohot settled out of court, but not until after Sony won a federal magistrate's approval to subpoena Geohot's Internet provider to learn who visited his site.

Nonetheless, an April 24 posting headlined "For Once We Didn't Do It" on AnonOps denies any official Anonymous attack on PlayStation Network. Whoever wrote the post, however, acknowledged that wildcat "Anons" may have acted on their own volition.

I honestly have no idea how Anonymous functions and if it can even be described accurately as an "organization." What I do know, however, is that Sony has already confirmed that whoever is responsible for the data breach would have been able to access users' identifying information, which is never a pleasant thought for anyone whose data could be compromised.

The oft-irreverent Gawker reports Anonymous fears a "nerd backlash" following allegations that their members (again, ?) are responsible for keeping gamers away from online play.

Anonymous has come to realize that attacking Sony's PlayStation Network alienates a powerful group of potential supporters: nerds. The point was proved after Anonymous launched an unrelated attack on Sony in early April that briefly took down the PlayStation Network, in retaliation for Sony suing a kid who bypassed the Playstation 3's security systems. The attack sparked a nerd backlash which crippled Anonymous chat servers with retaliatory strikes and was generally a PR disaster.

"All the Sony kids were flooding the [Anonymous chat servers] and whining and complaining," said Gregg Housh an activist associated with Anonymous. An attack on Sony's PlayStation Network "pisses off a lot of people they want as fans not enemies." A similar concern was voiced last December when Anonymous contemplated attacking Amazon in revenge for it banning Wikileaks: One reason for not attacking was concern that the attack might anger people who were trying to do holiday shopping.

(Hotlinks in original.)

Sony has not reported the confirmed compromising of credit card data and asserts major credit card companies have not notified Sony of any fraudulent activity likely to be rooted in the April data breach.

Bioware and EA Games will delay releasing Mass Effect 3 until 2012.

After setting out on an Internet search after seeing news of the delay on Twitter, this writer traced the news to Mass Effect 2's Facebook page.

I've seen a lot of web comments from players who seem to be OK with delay, especially considering the widespread opinions that Dragon Age II - another Bioware/EA Games release - seemed rushed and oversimplified.

Tech-Out reviewer Todd Kistler liked much of the Dragon Age II's storytelling aspects, but also found the game to over-simplified when compared to its predecessor.

In other EA News, the Redwood City-based publisher announced its fiscal results today. The firm reported a $312-million loss for the year ending March 31. That figure signified an improvement over the previous year's loss of $677 million.

Nintendo, scheduled to unveil its next gaming console in June at the E3 convention in Los Angeles, announced today that it will reduce the price of its Wii console from $199.99 to $149.99.

The console will also be packaged "Mario Kart Wii" and matching "Wii Wheel" peripheral. The Wii's iteration of Mario Kart will replace "Wii Sports" and "Wii Sports Resort."

Nintendo also announced four titles, "The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess," "Animal Crossing: City Folk," "Mario Super Sluggers" and "Wii Sports" will sell at the reduced price of $19.99 as the first four titles in the "Nintendo Selects" line, i.e. popular games that get to be sold at a discount with slightly different packaging, a la the "Greatest Hits" series for PlayStation 3 games or the "Platinum Hits" line for XBox 360 games.

Bethesda Softworks is releasing a series of videos for their forthcoming shooter, "Brink." The vids explain game concepts like character classes, the game's HUD and general gameplay.

One interesting tidbit: The game will allow players to change classes in the middle of the game.

I can't post the videos since the game is rated M for Mature, but I'm assuming everyone who can find this blog can click a link.

Brink is scheduled for a May 10 North American release for PC, PlayStation 3 and XBox 360.

 I can also post the opening sequence from the classic "Get Smart" television series. So there.

I like to post links to coverage from the San Jose Mercury News, The Sun and Daily Bulletin's sister paper in the heart of the Silicon Valley.

Merc staffer Troy Wolverton reports today that Apple's new iOS update will make changes to the location tracking software that allowed iPhones and iPads to track users' whereabouts.

An excerpt:

The iOS update seeks to address many of the issues with the location file identified by the  researchers. According to Apple, the update will limit the amount of data kept in the location file, will prevent iTunes from backing up the file to users' computers and  will delete all information in the file when users  turn off location services.

However, the update doesn't necessarily address  all issues with the file. Apple has said previously  that it will continue to store 7 days worth of  location data in the file even after the update.  Forensics researchers, who have said that they have been using the location data stored file in  criminal and other legal investigations, said that  even that amount of data would still be useful in  their work.

Gamers who wish to plunder, swashbuckle and raise a general ruckus in (electronic) Lego form may wish to check out XBox Live to play the new demo for Lego Pirates of the Caribbean: The Video Game.

The demo is available today, Disney Interactive Studios reported. From the announcement:

The game demo will feature the familiar Port Royal level, from the first film, "Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl." Players can jump into a tropical pirate adventure delivered in the humorous and quirky LEGO videogames style. The demo allows players to explore Port Royal in both Story Mode and Free Play, where players can seek out compass treasure and 10 ship-in-a-bottle minikits using 17 of the 70+ characters from the full game, where players will be able to play through all of the previous Pirates of the Caribbean movies, including the fourth installment, "On Stranger Tides."

The game is scheduled for a May 10 release on Nintendo DS, Nintendo 3DS, Nintendo Wii, PC, Sony PSP, PlayStation 3 and XBox 360.

The first "Fallout: New Vegas'" next three DLC packs will be released May 17, Bethesda Softworks reported today.

The new episodes follow December's release of "Dead Money" for XBox Live players and remind this writer that he has not even finished all of Fallout 3's DLC. (I'll get into that spaceship someday.)

Fallout fans may remember (perhaps bitterly, if they play on PC or PlayStation 3) that "Dead Money" was a timed exclusive for Xbox and did not arrive on other platforms until late February. There's no such arrangement this time, so all players who want to give Bethesda their money for more Fallout action can give Bethesda their money at the same time.

Here are descriptions of each episode from Bethesda's press release:

Available on May 17, "Honest Hearts" takes you on an expedition to the unspoiled wilderness of Utah's Zion National Park. Things go horribly wrong when your caravan is ambushed by a tribal raiding band. As you try to find a way back to the Mojave, you become embroiled in a war between tribes and a conflict between a New Canaanite missionary and the mysterious Burned Man. The decisions you make will determine the fate of Zion.

 

In Old World Blues, releasing in June, you will discover how some of the Mojave's mutated monsters came to be when you unwittingly become a lab rat in a science experiment gone awry. You'll need to scour the Pre-War research centers of the Big Empty in search of technology to turn the tables on your kidnappers or join forces with them against an even greater threat.

 

Lonesome Road, available in July, brings the courier's story full circle when you are contacted by the original Courier Six, a man by the name of Ulysses who refused to deliver the Platinum Chip at the start of New Vegas. In his transmission, Ulysses promises the answer as to why, but only if you take one last job -a job that leads you into the depths of the hurricane-swept canyons of the Divide, a landscape torn apart by earthquakes and violent storms. The road to the Divide is a long and treacherous one, and of the few to ever walk the road, none have ever returned.

Each DLC episode will be sold for $9.99 American or 800 Microsoft Points, for those doing business in the Republic of XBox Live.

Obsidian Entertainment developed the New Vegas games for Bethesda.

Sony Online Entertainment (SOE) has gone offline for "maintenance" according to the statement at their site located here which has temporarily replaced their homepage. According to the message:

"Customers outside the United States should be advised that we further discovered evidence that information from an outdated database from 2007 containing approximately 12,700 non-US customer credit or debit card numbers and expiration dates (but not credit card security codes) and about 10,700 direct debit records listing bank account numbers of certain customers in Germany, Austria, Netherlands and Spain may have also been obtained. We will be notifying each of those customers promptly."

They also go on to state that their main credit card database was not at risk as it is located in a "completely separate and secured environment." SOE and PSN (Playstation Network)  provide separate entertainment services for Sony. SOE is probably better known among PC users for the MMOs they have focused on that platform, such as Everquest and Star Wars Galaxies.

However, perhaps as many as 24.6 million user accounts were also affected by the attack with personal information compromised in the same way that they had been on PSN with names, addresses, and hashed passwords placed at risk. Whether or not the two incidents are related is anyone's guess. Since SOE is down, that also means anyone hoping to squeeze in a little time on any of its games are going to have to wait.

To say that Sony has had the worst few days in their life is probably something of an understatement at this point. With PSN's forced downtime and now SOE's over security, I can only imagine the IT specialists working in the trenches at the company praying for some light at the end of the tunnel.