Hasta La Gadget!

Pink slips were flying around the offices at High Moon Studios today as Activision has decided to lay off 40 of its full-time employees. The cuts began happening right after the High Moon Studios team completed development of Activision’s upcoming Deadpool game. Activision stated that it “works to align its costs with its revenues,” and that reducing its staff is all part of aligning “our development talent against our slate.”

While there is a massive amount of lay offs happening at High Moon Studios, development of its future Transformers games, including War of Cybertron, Dark of the Moon, and Fall of Cybertron, will not be affected. It was only back in February when Activision decided to lay off 30 full-time employees from both its offices as well as from Treyarch’s studios. It released a similar statement back then, saying that it “works to align its costs with its revenue”.

Like the employees that were laid off back in February, the employees laid off from High Moon Studios will be offered outplacement counseling services. The counseling services will help the employees through the termination of their job, and will hopefully be able to help them secure new employment elsewhere. The services usually help set up interviews, assist in job searches, offer networking services, and much more in order to help the employee transition to their next job.

Deadpool’s storyline is penned by Daniel Way, who wrote the former Deadpool comics. Deadpool’s character will be voiced by Nolan North, who has voiced Deadpool in the past. The game is a 3rd person action game with a major emphasis on guns and swords. Deadpool will break the 4th wall numerous times to offer players hints, and also to add humor to the game. Deadpool is set to launch over the summer on the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and the PC.

[via Kotaku]

Activision axes 40 High Moon Studios employees upon completion of Deadpool is written by Brian Sin & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

It was this past winter when Bungie finally unveiled their first multi-platform game, Destiny, and considering what an excellent job they did with its Halo franchise, you can expect many first-person shooter fans to highly anticipate the game’s release. At this week’s Game Developer’s Conference, Bungie showed off a new video for Destiny highlighting the game’s character development so far.

Considering how tight-lipped Bungie has been in regards to Destiny so far, this character development video is just what gamers need in order to attempt to understand what exactly is going on in the game. In the video, you’ll see a number of classes that will be available to play as in the game, and what we assume to be some of the different species you’ll come across in the game. You’ll see a number of concept art, 3D models and even getting to see some of the models moving about. (more…)

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Blackberry Gaming Platform Advantages, In Select Markets, Raspberry Pi Runs Classic DOS Games Thanks To Emulator,

You know something? I never figured out that the day would come when a company would actually roll out an app that has something to do with a game. Such a thing is practically unheard of, and Activision has just introduced the Call of Duty Elite app for Windows Phone 8. In a nutshell, Call of Duty fans will be able to make use of this official app from Activision in order to keep track of their stats, which means you can now throw away all of that pencil and paper.

Call of Duty Elite is best described as an online service which will enable users to track all of their stats from the Call of Duty series. First launched in the middle of 2011 on the Xbox 360 platform followed by a PS3 release, it is nice to see the same app being ported over to the Windows Phone 8 platform, allowing you to keep track of your stats on the go no matter where you are, as long as there is a decent Internet connection in place, of course. With this Windows Phone 8 app, you can gain access to unique content, daily competitions with prizes, Elite TV, and insider analysis among others. Not only that, this app is free for Windows Phone 8 users. Whoopee!

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Treyarch and Activision’s newest Call of Duty installment is getting a big promotion this weekend on Steam. The game is on sale through Monday for only $40 ($54 for the Digital Deluxe edition). Plus, Black Ops II multiplayer will be free to play all weekend long until Sunday at 1 pm PT. Players will also receive double XP during this time.

If you’re not sure of the difference between the regular edition and the Digital Deluxe edition, the latter includes the Nuketown Zombies and Nuketown 2025 bonus maps, weapon camouflage skin, two player card backgrounds, the official soundtrack, and a free download of Call of Duty: World at War — all for only $14 more!

As for double XP and the free weekend, all platforms that the game is available on are eligible to play. It officially starts at 10 am PT, which is just in a couple of hours as of this writing. The free weekend will end on Sunday at 1 pm PT, while gamers will be eligible for double XP until Monday at 10 am PT.

This marks the first time that Call of Duty: Black Ops II has been free to play for the weekend, but it’s actually the third time that the game has seen a double XP weekend. Treyarch and Activision held the first double XP weekend back in December, and then later on just last month. So far, it looks like the companies are hosting these types of events once a month, so we may see more double XP weekends coming up throughout the rest of the spring and summer.

Call of Duty: Black Ops II on sale, double XP this weekend is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Want to know just who’s developing for the PlayStation 4? Sony just gave is a very good peek: it’s promising worldwide support for the console, and quickly flashed just which companies that entails. The cursory look shows us many familiar heavyweights, such as 2K, Activision, Capcom, EA, Konami and Ubisoft. We’ve also spotted Rockstar, Square Enix and other names that most would have hoped for with the new PlayStation. Suffice it to say that Sony hasn’t had any problems attracting the support it needs for a decent early lineup, although we don’t know how many of these developers will have something ready for launch day.

Update: A few exist that aren’t (directly) mentioned in the graphic above: Blizzard is porting Diablo III to the PS4, and Bungie will put its future MMO-like shooter, Destiny, on the game machine.

Check out our liveblog of Sony’s event to get the latest news as it happens!

Filed under: Gaming, Sony

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