Thanks for your patience, everybody! And a really big thanks to our first round of testers, who were instrumental in helping us make the SFM a better user experience.

They were SO helpful, in fact, that we're happy to announce that SFM Beta is now open to everyone, for free, as of right now. We've also provided a new SFM-specific page in the Steam Community where you can view, rate and discuss all the latest user-created videos.

Plus, just so we don't all overdose on "Meet The Heavy" shorts, we've decided to release a new session, to give all you folks something new to riff on. So get out your guitar (and some audio recording equipment) and prepare to "Meet The Engineer".

You can download the Source Filmmaker here on Steam.

source: http://sourcefilmmaker.com/post.php?id=8375&p=1

ULTRA-CHAOS says: so valve fans what are you waiting for GO BUY IT FREE WITHOUT PRICE!!!

P.S. Source Filmmaker is only computer animation it not game it just like pixar and dreamworks

Last year EA went on record calling the NPD's sales reports "a misrepresentation of the entire industry," and this year EA Labels president Frank Gibeau is taking that sentiment one step further, saying EA largely ignores NPD reports.

"An occasional bad report from NPD, which measures a sliver of what's actually happening in gaming, gives people an erroneous impression," Gibeau tells Games Industry International. "My point is it's an irrelevant measure on the industry. It's totally irrelevant. We don't even really look at it internally anymore."

NPD reports track retail games sales from stores such as GameStop and Wal-Mart, but don't provide a comparable breakdown of digital sales. In Q4 2012, EA saw digital sales generate $419 million, while packaged goods made more than double that, with $949 million.

David McQuillan, president of NPD Games, is "surprised" by Gibeau's comments for a few reasons, provided in a statement to Joystiq. The first: "While we will not comment on the specifics on our long-standing relationship with EA, we can say with confidence that we have daily dealings with all of our major publisher clients. And we know for a fact they're using the data."

The second reason McQuillan cites is the continued prevalence of physical sales, making up 56 percent of industry sales in 2011. "The current games industry is still largely rooted in retail and any industry player involved with AAA content simply can't take their eye away from the retail environment," he writes.

NPD Group's David Riley adds, "We do cover digital. Granted, it's not near the level of granularity that we provide via physical point of sale, but physical POS is still huge and needs to be taken seriously. In my opinion, you do a disservice to our industry when you dismiss the value of retail sales research."

EA's Digital sales are growing rapidly, Gibeau says, and EA is focused on riding that streaming, cloud-based, downloadable wave into the future, with or without NPD sales reports.

"We're going to be a 100 percent digital company, period," he says. "It's going to be there some day. It's inevitable."

source: http://www.joystiq.com/2012/07/02/gibeau-says-ea-mostly-ignores-npd-reports-npd-knows-for-a-fact/

A fresh controversy has arisen in Australia regarding the price of Battlefield Premium for Battlefield 3, which has forced Electronic Arts to give PlayStation 3 users a partial refund, while Xbox 360 owners are still complaining of price gouging.

EA advertised Battlefield Premium at $49.99 AU, but neglected to mention that that price was for the PC version of the game. The PlayStation 3 gamers were charged $79.95 AU, while Xbox 360 gamers were charged 4000 Microsoft Points ($66 AU), and on top of that, require an Xbox Live Gold subscription.

PS3 owners made their displeasure known, and EA was forced to drop the price of the PSN version to $64.95, and awarded gamers who'd already purchased Premium a $14.95 refund to their PlayStation Wallet.

Some gamers are upset that Battlefield Premium is still being advertised as $49.99 AU even though it only represents the PC version. EA has not responded to that criticism as of yet.

Battlefield Premium is essentially Electronic Arts' version of Call of Duty: Elite, and includes prepaying for all Five Expansion Packs (at a 33% discount), with early access to the content, exclusive in-game items, exclusive online Double XP Events and Insider Tactics from DICE.

source: http://www.strategyinformer.com/news/18578/aussie-console-gamers-refunded-on-battlefield-premium-due-to-misleading-advertising

Cult character actor Michael Ironside has a long list of worthy accomplishments. He played the brain-bursting telepath in Scanners, the jingoistic one-armed military commander in Starship Troopers, and the victim of the immortal line “See you at the party, Richter!” in Total Recall. (And, no big deal, he was Jester in Top Gun.) And for the last decade, Ironside has also been voicing stealth superagent Sam Fisher in Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell series. That’s all about to change. In the just-announced sequel Splinter Cell Blacklist, Sam Fisher will be played — that is, voice-acted and performance-captured — by Eric Johnson, star of Rookie Blue and the Flash Gordon remake.

In a new video obtained by EW, Ironside talks bluntly about his early approach to the role — he notes, with tough love, that he found the original character “very shallow.” But he also praises the development of the character and offers some praise for Johnson’s performance. The video also looks behind the scenes at the game’s performance-capture stages. Thrill to the sight of grown-ups putting on high-tech bodysuits and pretending to hold guns in each other’s faces! Acting is fun.

source: http://popwatch.ew.com/2012/06/04/splinter-cell-blacklist-video-michael-ironside/

Earlier today, we informed you about Dark Souls: Prepare to Die Edition’s latest trailer. However, we are here now to bring you some bad news. A lot of PC gamers had high hopes when Namco announced that the PC version of Dark Souls would hit Steam. Don’t get your hopes up though as it will not support Steamworks. In fact, From Software has officially revealed today that the game will use Games for Windows LIVE.

The company has updated their official product page and as we can see below, the game will use Microsoft’s GFWL. This is the first time that GFWL has been confirmed, as the boxart of the game stated that Dark Souls: Prepare to Die Edition would only be a Games for Windows title and there was no mention at all for the LIVE service. However, this is not the case with the game’s product page, as we can clearly see that it will require Games for Windows LIVE.

Our guess is that From Software ported the online code from the X360 version and as a result of that, they decided to use GFWL in order to avoid any kind of – possible – compatibility issues.

Special thanks to our reader Alex Eldridge for spotting it!

source: http://www.dsogaming.com/news/confirmed-dark-souls-prepare-to-die-edition-will-use-gfwl/

ULTRA-CHAOS says: Namco Bandai? more like Namcrap BandeviL!