Hasta La Gadget!

Despite all of the whining we’ve been hearing about Battlefield Premium, the service is still proving to be quite popular with players. Electronic Arts announced today that Battlefield Premium has reached 1.3 million subscribers after only being available for about a month and a half. The service got an official reveal at E3 2012, with Electronic Arts launching it later that same month.

For those not in the know, Battlefield Premium allows players early and “free” access to all of Battlefield 3‘s DLC for an upfront payment of $50. Provided the user hasn’t purchased any Battlefield 3 DLC when they go to sign up for Premium, the service allows them to save $25 on the cost of all of the game’s currently available and planned DLC. This means that, for hardcore Battlefield fans at least, signing up for Premium isn’t a bad idea.

Of course, Battlefield Premium isn’t the first service to offer all of a game’s DLC for one bulk payment. Publishers have been doing that for quite some time with bundles dubbed “season passes,” and Activision offers a service similar to Premium called Call of Duty Elite, which launched (rather shakily) alongside November’s Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3. Both services offer more bonuses beyond early access to DLC, with Premium in particular offering extra cosmetic bonuses and double XP weekends that are exclusive to subscribers.

Battlefield Premium’s success has some implications for future EA games, as the publisher will likely pursue a subscription-based strategy with other games now that it knows the initiative worked with Battlefield 3. Depending on who you ask, this may or may not be a bad thing. If customers find that such offerings are a good value, then it can’t be all that bad, but EA may get a little bit too excited and overdo things, like it has done in the past (Mass Effect 3 DLC anyone?). Still, if nothing else, whatever EA is planning to do should be an interesting experiment in the realm of subscription-based gaming, so stay tuned for that.

Battlefield Premium hits 1.3 million subscribers is written by Eric Abent & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Last week, Bethesda VP of marketing Pete Hines sparked outrage among Skyrim fans when he pointed out that the studio hasn’t announced the game’s first DLC, Dawnguard, for any platforms other than Xbox 360. Now, Hines is promising that more information on the PC and PS3 versions of Dawnguard is coming soon, telling one perturbed Twitter follower over the weekend to “Just sit tight. We’ll have info soon.” Just how soon? A few hours ago, Hines tweeted that Bethesda should have that info later this week.

So, it doesn’t look like it’ll be too long before anxious PC and PS3 players finally have a release date for Dawnguard. Of course, there’s also the possibility that Bethesda will announce that the PC and PS3 versions of Dawnguard have been canceled entirely, so watch out for that. Many were expecting news of its multiplatform release date last week, when the 30-day exclusivity deal with Microsoft was lifted, but such news never showed up. When fans found out that Dawnguard had never technically been announced for PC and PS3, they treated Hines to a barrage of angry tweets. Now that we have the promise of additional information coming sometime in the near future, Hines might finally get to take a break from dealing with upset Skyrim players.

All of this fuss over the PC and PS3 versions of Dawnguard makes us wonder if the outrage is worth it. Skyrim was met with critical praise upon release last year, but with Dawnguard it’s a different story. Skyrim‘s first DLC only managed to garner middling reviews, but to be fair, it seems that a lot of critics had a problem with its steep price more than anything else. Still, it would be a bit unfair for Bethesda to deliver DLC to only one platform and leave the other two in the dust, so we suppose that the angry tweets are at least somewhat justifiable in this case.

Bethesda has said in the past that it’s planning to release multiple pieces of expansion pack-like DLC for Skyrim, but just how many the studio is planning remains unclear. We’re now 8 months out from Skyrim‘s release date, so it seems unlikely that we’ll be getting more than one more piece of DLC for ol’ Skyrim. Bethesda may surprise us though, so keep an ear to SlashGear – we’ll be sure to let you know about this additional Dawnguard information once Bethesda shares it!

Dawnguard PC and PS3 information coming soon promises Bethesda is written by Eric Abent & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Overhaul Games confirmed today that the PC version of Baldur’s Gate: Enhanced Edition will be arriving on September 18. The Mac and iPad versions are also releasing sometime in September, but sadly Overhaul didn’t want to talk specific dates for those versions. The Android version doesn’t have a release date yet, but we’re hoping that having a solid release date for the PC version means that the Android port will be following shortly after.

In addition to the release date – or release window, depending on your platform of choice – Overhaul also announced a handful of new characters for the re-release. First up is Neera, a “half-elf wild mage slowly coming to terms with her enormous magical potential.” Next we come to Rasaad yn Bashir, a “Calishite Monk demonstrating his monastic arts to the people of Nashkel,” and finally we have Dorn Il-Khan, who is a particularly nasty looking half-orc Blackguard “whose otherworldly patron grants him terrible powers in the form of his black sword and unholy spells.” Images of all three can be seen in the gallery below along with a slew of new screenshots.

You can recruit all three of these new characters, with Overhaul promising that each will add a few hours of gameplay. Neera and Rasaad both come complete with a new area to explore, so their inclusion brings far more beyond just a couple of new character models to look at. Neera, Rasaad, and Dorn will all be included in the PC and Mac versions, with Dorn and Neera only available as an in-app purchase in the iPad and Android versions.

Also included in Baldur’s Gate: Enhanced Edition is a new arena called The Black Pits. Players will be tasked with fighting their way through 15 levels of the arena, and Overhaul claims that it adds over six hours of game time. Baldur’s Gate: Enhanced Edition will cost $19.99 on PC, but you can knock two dollars off the price by pre-ordering the game. The Android and iPad versions should come in right around $9.99, which explains why two of the three new characters need to be purchased separately.

Oh, and by the way, wild mage is the best mage class in the game. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

Baldur’s Gate: Enhanced Edition gets September release date is written by Eric Abent & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

You would think that, as time goes on, more and more Steam users would be adopting better hardware for their PCs. The Steam hardware survey for June 2012 tells us that may not necessarily be the case, as the company actually saw an increase in lower-end PC use over past hardware surveys. Take, for instance, the number of computers that use Intel Integrated Graphics – while NVIDIA and ATI GPUs are still by far the most common, in June Steam saw the use of Intel Integrated Graphics rise to 11%.

There was also a rise in the use of single and dual-core systems. Systems that use DirectX 11 and DirectX 10 GPUs rose ever so slighly (both by less than one percent), but the number of systems using DirectX 9 rose by 1.5%, meaning that DirectX 9 systems are now used by almost 20% of Steam’s user base. Also of note are the most common resolutions: 25% of participants in the poll are using 1920×1080, 18% are using 1366×768, 10% are using 1680×1050, and finally, 1600×900 comes in with 7%.

PCGamesN points out that this rise in older hardware could mean that more users are installing Steam on their laptops. There’s also the fact that indie games are all the rage at the moment, and those don’t usually require high-end hardware to run. Indeed, you can enjoy a lot of Steam’s game without having a beast of a rig, and considering that indie games are generally much cheaper than major releases by big publishers, it seems like that may be one of the reasons why we’re seeing more middling PCs accessing Steam.

It’s also worth pointing out that a bug in the system recently discovered by Steam prevented new computers from being included in the monthly surveys. While the bug was present, only computers that had participated in the poll before were polled again in recent hardware surveys, meaning if you recently installed Steam on a new PC, it may not have been included in the results. The bug has since been fixed, but it’s causing all of this data to appear all at once instead of over time as it would have normally. Still, despite the bug, this is an interesting development, and it will be exciting to see where the data goes in future hardware surveys.

Steam hardware survey sees rise in lower-end PCs is written by Eric Abent & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

A new exploit has been discovered in Diablo III that makes Wizard characters essentially invincible. The exploit reportedly works for both Softcore and Hardcore characters, which has some players up in arms and others scrambling to complete Hardcore more before Blizzard issues a fix. In the meantime, Blizzard has been removing forum posts that mention the exploit in a effort to keep the amount of people using it in-game to a minimum.

The exploit is performed by using the Wizard’s Teleport and Archon abilities in quick succession. One poster on the Blizzard forums listed the steps required to make this exploit work, but Blizzard has since removed the step-by-step guide to making your Wizard invulnerable. Kotaku managed to swipe the list before Blizzard moderators were able to take it down, however, so here’s what you need to do in order to enjoy a risk-free romp through Sanctuary:

Step 1: Select Teleport – Fracture. Bind it to a key
Step 2: Select Archon, tested with Improved Archon
Step 3: Hover your mouse over or near your charcter
Step 4: Press Teleport
Step 5: QUICKLY(!) Press Archon

Many other posters in the thread have confirmed that the exploit works, and though some say that it takes a couple of tries to get the rhythm down, pulling off this exploit is apparently pretty simple once you get the hang of it. As with other game-breaking exploits and bugs in Diablo III, Blizzard will likely push a fix out the door quickly, so if you’re planning on making use of this particular exploit, do so with the knowledge that it probably won’t be long before Blizzard fixes it.

Diablo III exploit makes Wizard characters invincible is written by Eric Abent & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.