Paradox Interactive today announced that Crusader Kings II, the grand strategy game of medieval marriage, rule and conquest from Paradox Development Studio, has now sold over one million copies worldwide. Launched in early 2012 to critical acclaim, Crusader Kings II has been purchased for Windows, Mac, and Linux computers a combined total of over 1,000,000 times, and is still providing players with new realms, new conspiracies, and new historical timelines. Paradox continues to support Crusader Kings II with free and paid content, with a new expansion, “Charlemagne,” coming soon. “Whenever we discuss the sort of games we like to make, and the sort of fans we make them for, Crusader Kings II is one of the titles we point to as a shining example,” said Fredrik Wester, CEO of Paradox Interactive. “I want to thank every one of those million fans who have picked up Crusader Kings II for proving our point about game design for the truly dedicated. We make games for people who want to dive deep and explore a title with endless possibilities, where each player develops their own in-game story – and our players have responded. Every day we read the unique tales from our fans of the lengths to which they’ve gone to preserve their dynasties. Paradox is committed to growing those experiences in Crusader Kings II and in our entire portfolio.” Paradox Interactive has also shared some data about Crusader Kings II to underline the scope of the game’s success. Not only has the base game itself sold over a million copies, but the catalog of DLC and expansions for Crusader Kings II have sold a combined total of approximately 7 million units. Crusader Kings II is played by an average of 12,500 players every day, and roughly 100,000 players in a month. The average Crusader Kings II player has a playtime of just over 99 hours. For more information on Crusader Kings II, including the upcoming Charlemagne expansion, please visit the games official website.
Final mission, NEW multiplayer mode and FREE multiplayer update now live on Steam
Independent developer Rebellion today announced the launch of three new pieces of DLC for Sniper Elite 3 on Steam for PC, with the content due to come to Playstation 4, Xbox One, Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 in the near future.
This comes at the same time Sniper Elite 3 is 33% off in the Steam Weekend Sale (Ends Monday 10am PDT). And the PC Limited Special Edition also goes on sale at 33% off until Friday 26th September.
The Final Showdown
Save Churchill Part 3: Confrontation is the final episode and conclusion to the explosive Save Churchill campaign for Sniper Elite 3, featuring the largest environment ever seen in the series.
German sniper, Raubvogel lies in wait to ambush Churchill’s convoy en-route to the Casablanca Conference. Fight your way through the Axis barricades scattered amongst the foothills, move up into the mountains, flank the enemy encampments and begin your final ascent up the mountain to confront Raubvogel in an epic sniper duel that could decide the fate of a continent.
Stop Winston Churchill’s assassin before it’s too late! One bullet can change history…
NEW multiplayer mode – Capture the Flag
Capture the Flag has returned to the Sniper Elite series, offering players an objective focussed game with more speed and teamwork based gameplay.
Good snipers are still key to victory, but players will need to co-ordinate together to successfully assault the enemy base and capture the flag, relying on each other to protect the flag bearer and their own base from enemy attacks.
FREE multiplayer map – Night Watch
The fifth FREE multiplayer map for Sniper Elite 3 players on all platforms, Night Watch is one of the most challenging maps in the series. Taking players to an oasis shrouded in darkness, the ruins of an old town turned into a makeshift camp for enemy troops.
Two opposing watch towers provide the best sniping opportunities but also carry the highest risk, whereas vegetation on the water front can provide snipers with a place to hide from enemy scopes. The oasis itself provides a choke point as players close in on each other to take new positions and create sniping opportunities.
Night Watch is a balanced map available in all competitive multiplayer game modes, well suited to any team game whilst also offering a more focussed death match experience.
Summer of Sniper
Since its release on June 27th 2014 the Sniper Elite 3 team have been working constantly to bring new content to the game’s fans. Sniper Elite 3 has now had FOUR DLC missions, SIX weapons packs, THREE character skins and FIVE free maps. It’s been an incredible summer for both fans of the series and newcomers alike.
To celebrate Sniper Elite 3 is 33% off in the Steam Weekend Sale right now! As well as this the PC Limited Special Edition is 33% off on the Rebellion Gamestore .
NVIDIA has launched its newest Maxwell GPU. There will be two new GPUs, the GeForce GTX 980 and GeForce GTX 970. These next generation GPUs usher in new features and performance that move the gaming industry forward. Reviews are coming in from around the internet and, as always, we have rounded up a large number of reviews and we’ve posted the links to them below for your convenience.
The new GeForce 344.11 WHQL drivers are now available to download automatically through GeForce Experience, and from GeForce.com. These new drivers give GeForce GTX owners the ultimate gaming experience in the latest blockbuster titles, including Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel, The Evil Within, F1 2014 and Alien: Isolation, and add support for the brand new, Maxwell-powered GeForce GTX 980 and GeForce GTX 970, the world’s most advanced graphics cards. Additionally, GeForce 344.11 WHQL drivers add support for NVIDIA G-SYNC Surround displays, making your gaming experience more realistic and immersive than ever before.
Check out these latest hardware announcements for today from around the web. Also included are some hardware news bits, and on some days, a few rumors tossed in for good measure. Click on the links below to read the official press release, visit the products web page, or to an independent news source.
- NVIDIA Announces the GeForce GTX 980 and GeForce GTX 970
- NVIDIA Stops Making GeForce GTX 780 Ti, 780, and 770 Graphics Cards
- MSI Announces the GAMING Series GeForce GTX 970 and GTX 980 Cards
- Palit Introduces the New GeForce GTX 970 and GTX 980 Cards
- GALAXY Launches the GeForce GTX 900 Series Graphics Cards
- ZOTAC Announces GeForce GTX 980 and GTX 970
- ASUS Announces the Strix GTX 980 and Strix GTX 970 Graphics Cards
- Gainward Announces its GeForce GTX 980 and GTX 970 Graphics Cards
- MSI GeForce GTX 980/970 OC V1 and Gaming 4G Series Debut
- EVGA Announces its GeForce GTX 980 and GTX 970 with ACX 2.0
- Inno3D Announces the iChill GeForce GTX 980 and GTX 970
- GIGABYTE Unveils the GeForce GTX 980 and GTX 970 G1 Gaming Graphics Cards
- Turtle Beach Releases the Ear Force Z60 PC Gaming Headset
- EK Unveils Revolutionary New NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 980 Water Blocks
- Tesoro Updates Shrike Gaming Mouse With Colors, Higher DPI
- Acer Brings 4K2K Displays With NVIDIA G-SYNC to North America
- EK Introduces Sapphire Vapor-X R9 290X Water Block
- Samsung Unveils the S27D590C 27-inch Curved Monitor – VIDEO
- EIZO Announces the DuraVision FDF2305W 23-Inch Monitor
- AOC’s New Anti-Blue Light Technology Helps Protect Eyes While at the PC
- Club 3D Launches World’s First 4K USB 3.0 Docking Station
- COUGAR Launches 700K Feature-Rich, Aluminum Gaming Keyboard – VIDEO
- Logitech Unveils the G910 Orion Spark RGB Mechanical Keyboard
- Thermaltake Displays Full Range of Luna Series LED Case Fan: Luna 12, 14, and 20
- Koolance Confirms LGA2011v3 Compatibility for CPU-380I FC Block
- CRYORIG Provides Free Upgrade for LGA 2011-3
- GIGABYTE Introduces AIRE M93 ICE Wireless Mouse
- Be quiet! Unveils Straight Power 10 PSUs
- Antec Announces Availability of New EDGE Line of Power Supplies
- Sharkoon Unleashes Surprisingly Good-Looking Entry-Level PC Case – VIDEO
German Motor Torpedo Boats in WWII
By John Dudek @ The Wargamer
These German torpedo speedboats, also called S-Boats or E-Boats, proved their worth on escort and security missions, sea reconnaissance, mine laying and in particular in combat against enemy submarines and surface craft. They operated primarily off the Dutch and French coasts, along the English coast and in the English Channel, North Sea, Baltic and were also used in the Mediterranean and the Black Sea.
Bohemia Interactive celebrates Arma 3’s first anniversary with special livestream
Celebrating Arma 3’s official release on September 12 last year, Bohemia Interactive announce a special anniversary livestream on Arma 3’s official Twitch channel this Friday. The livestream, which will be led by Associate Producer Matt Lightfoot and Designer Nelson Duarte, will kick off tomorrow (September 12) at 10:30 AM Zulu/GMT/UTC – and is expected to run for about 3 hours.
During the ‘One Year of Arma 3’ livestream, various Arma 3 developers and community members will co-operate in an Arma 3 Zeus multiplayer session. For those who don’t know Arma 3 Zeus, this free DLC for Arma 3 enables players to take on the role of a game master, and influence a multiplayer session from a birds-eye perspective – creating a unique experience for the players on the ground. Since a birthday is not complete without gifts, Bohemia Interactive will also be giving away several copies of the Arma 3 Digital Deluxe Edition, as well as Arma 3 merchandise sets, to those attending the livestream. And… there will be cake!
Arma 3 was officially released on September 12th 2013 after extensive Alpha and Beta testing – pioneering Steam’s Early Access program. Since then, Bohemia Interactive has continued supporting the game with a steady flow of updates, which included the singleplayer campaign, new weapons, vehicles, objects,the Zeus and Karts DLC, plus various platform refinements. Later this year, the studio will release its Helicopters DLC, followed by the Arma 3 Marksmen DLC in the beginning of 2015. A major expansion for Arma 3, featuring a brand new terrain, is also in development.
For more information, please visit the official Arma 3 website.
Source: Blue’s News
This video offers a look at a co-op mission in Assassin’s Creed Unity, accompanied by developer commentary from creative director Alex Amancio to help understand what we’re seeing. Word is:
“In heist missions you’ll have to coordinate your skills and attacks to infiltrate, steal the artifacts, and escape without being detected. The less you’re seen, the higher your reward for finishing the mission will be. Heists are just one type of co-op mission and with constantly changing goal placement as well as a variable number and location of guards you can replay heists again and again for a fresh experience every time.”
Source: Blue’s News
The Battlefield Blog has more details on the upcoming The Final Stand DLC for Battlefield 4. They also announce testing of the add-on is taking place this week, providing instructions on how to try and get into the Community Test Environment to help, which requires a premium account (inspiring us to repeat our joke that paying to beta test is a grand tradition in the Battlefield series). Here’s a Final Stand official reveal trailer and here’s an excerpt:
With Final Stand, we knew from the start that we wanted to evolve the Battlefield experience and offer weapons and vehicles that behave differently than anything else on the battlefield. Taking place on the artic landscape of Russia, where the scientists of today are experimenting with technology that will define the battlefields of tomorrow (Battlefield 2142, anyone?), Final Stand will deliver four maps that are unique and distinct. With its military installations set against a wintry landscape, expect intense, infantry-focused combat.
Players will also discover secret prototype weapons and vehicles that further tie into the fiction around Final Stand, and to some extent the Battlefield series. This includes a Battle pick-up rail gun that fires a single round of powerful kinetic energy, and the hover tank prototype, which uses eight experimental jet propulsion engines to nimbly move around the battlefield. We have a few more surprises up our sleeves that we’ll share with you in the weeks ahead.
We definitely had a lot of fun designing these maps and the future-tech weapons and vehicles of Final Stand and hope you guys have as much fun with them as we do. That’s why we want you to start playing them now. Starting today we are going to be testing pre-release versions of the Final Stand maps on the CTE (Community Test Environment).
Ubisoft has announced the release of Assassin’s Creed® Birth of a New World – The American Saga available for the Xbox 360® video game and entertainment system from Microsoft, PlayStation®3 computer entertainment system and Windows PC versions of the game, from October 3rd, 2014.
Assassin’s Creed Birth of a New World – The American Saga is an exclusive compilation of the three Assassin’s Creed games that witnessed the birth of modern America, and includes:
- Assassin’s Creed® III: Challenge the Templar’s supremacy as Connor throughout the American Revolution.
- Assassin’s Creed® Liberation HD: Combat the Spanish forces in Louisiana as deadly Assassin Aveline de Grandpré.
- Assassin’s Creed® IV Black Flag: Explore the Caribbean seas and join the fight against the Templars as Edward Kenway, during the Golden Age of Piracy.
For more information about Assassin’s Creed please visit the Assassin’s Creed UbiBlog.