Mark your calendars, 1943 fans! The best deal of the summer just got official drop dates for the Xbox 360 and Playstation3. The Xbox version hits the Live Arcade on July 8th, with the PS3 version coming a day later on July 9th.

Still waiting on the PC release date to be announced.

Battlefield 3 Planned for Holiday 2010?  [ 7 Comments  ]
6:18 PST | ^Scott^ | Print News | Category: BF3A site called Tech Fragments claims to have some additional information on Battlefield 3 stating they have been tipped off it will support 40 players, 24 vehicles, and 17 weapons with unlocks. They also seem to have heard it will be out in the 2010 holiday season with a free 1 map playable beta a few months before possibly in summer 2010. Thanks to Andyfrom VE3D for the tip.

We have also gotten information from a tipster that Battlefield 3 will be similar to Battlefield 2 and will support up to 40 players per team. There will also be 24 different vehicles that you can choose from and 17 different weapons. Like Battlefield 2, the game will also feature unlockable equipment.

So when will Battlefield 3 be released? The time isn't known but EA says not this year. We also heard that it would be the holiday season in 2010, however like with many of the other Battle field installments we'll probably get an early one map beta that can be played free a few months before. We're speculating that we'll see a Battlefield 3 Beta download in the Summer of 2010. However, nobody knows for sure.

Wednesday brought a plethora of E3 2009 nominations for Battlefield: Bad Company 2 from both IGN and GameSpy, as the game stood strong in both the Shooter and Online Multiplayer categories. These awards follow previous nominations from 1UP and GamingExcellence. The excitement around BFBC2 is mounting! Pre-order your copy today! IGN Nominations: - Best Multiplayer Experience (Overall) - Best Multiplayer Experience (PS3) - Best Multiplayer Experience (PC) - Best Shooting Game (Xbox 360) - Best Shooting Game (PC) GameSpy Nominations: - Best Online Game - Best Shooter
Battlefield 1943 Nominated for "Best Multiplayer Experience" at E3 2009

Battlefield 1943 backed up its previous “Best of E3” nomination from GamingExcellence with a potential “Best Multiplayer Experience (PC)” selection from IGN. Check back soon for the latest news and info on this epic multiplayer experience!

 

Following the news we covered the other day, the verdict is now in, and as expected Intel has been found guilty and fined €1.06 Billion ($1.45b/£948m) by the European Commission for anti-competitive practices. This fine smashes the €497 million fine issued to Microsoft by the EU in 2004 for abusing its dominant market position. Nine years on from when AMD first made a complaint that Intel had paid computer manufacturers not to use AMD chips in Europe the EU have ruled that Intel had given rebates to manufacturer's if they only used their chips, and had also found that a retailer had been paid to sell only Intel based systems.
"Intel has harmed millions of European consumers by deliberately acting to keep competitors out of the market for computer chips for many years," said Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes, "Such a serious and sustained violation of the EU's antitrust rules cannot be tolerated."

Source: BBC

The guys at 4Players.de posted up an interview from their visit to DICE, where they had a chance to interview Battlefield: Bad Company 2 Producer, Patrick Bach. Although many of questions could not be answered they did manage to get some new screenshots.

(Via Google Translate) 4Players: Bad Company was a pure console game. The second part is on the other hand, also for the PC. Where does this sense of change?

Patrick Bach: Because there are so many PC users there who are complaining we have not been able to play this title. We have the Bad Company-project than a mere console production is created because we felt that the PC community is not considered good enough for them would be, because PC owners are entitled to a certain degree of authenticity and realism, if it comes to weapons and equipment goes. When we published it, the PCler came to us and asked why we do not also for the PC have published. It is a good Battlefield titles, so why can we not play him? And we replied that we thought that they did not want to have. But Frostbite is also a PC Engine, so we have no major problems, the game on the PC to bring. And we do now in the second part too.Read the rest...

BFHQ.se visited DICE a couple weeks ago and had the chance to play Battlefield 1943. Five of the people from their team posted up their impressions of the game.

The Q&A at the end provides a couple parts of new info not only about BF1942, but also about the upcoming patches. More information and a beta for the BF2 & BF2142 patches is expected this month (April).

Punkbuster or similar anti-cheat software will be released for the PC-version. What and how it will work is yet to be seen.

The patches for BF2 and BF2142 are making progress. We can expect more information and a beta during April.

The financial crisis has not affected DICE much. They have noticed somewhat of a drop in sales, but no employees have been fired due to the crisis. Mirror's edge sold less than expected.

There are no plans of releasing a mod or map editing-tool for BF1943.

At the most, 15 people have been involved in the production of BF1943. In the beginning, there was only Patrick, Gustav and one more guy.

The units in BF1943 do not look like those in Battlefield Heroes, that misconception might have cone from the first cartoonish trailer that was released.

The maximum amount of players for the PC-version is yet to be decided. There is nothing that says it has to be 24. Read the rest...

Bazajaytee aka Barry Tingle, made a post on the EA UK Forums detailing some new information on the 1.50 patch. 

Firstly, sorry I have been away for so long, its been a busy time. So here as per request in a number of threads here is an update to where we are with 1.50.

• Yes its still coming
  
• We have been working on a few things to do with DRM as old versions of Battlefield 2 use an old version of SafeDisc
  
• We have had a number of last minute hacks appear which we have made fixes for to help stabalise the servers.
  
• We have a minor issue to solve with the Chinese version of the game.

While I can't give an exact date, we are aiming to release our first Beta towards the end of April '09 as long as everything else goes well.

DRM has always been on Battlefield.
SafeDisc, SecuROM and PACE depending on which version of each game you have.

DRM doesnt have to be as punishing as it was with Spore. Battlefield doesnt do limited installs. It does protect the exe files though.
What we are looking at doing for Battlefield is removing the requirement for the DVD to be in the drive during boot up. Whether we can get this going is what we are checking. It won't limit your installs on other machines or limit how many times you can install though.

FEATURES
- Additional support for Windows Vista.
- Added Highway Tampa as a required map.
- Added a new map called Operation Blue Pearl.

GAMEPLAY TWEAKS
- Changes made to both the J10 and F35B to make them more balanced. Please note that the J10 is a superior dogfighter to the F35B and as such these two aircraft will never be equally matched.
- AA targeting tweaked to make it more effective.
- Added checks to prevent "runway grieving".
- Various changes made to prevent cheating.
- Tweaked the hit detection, hits will be more accurate to the model.

EA UK Forums

*D5*Rapidfire48 writes "AMD have just released their ATI Catalyst 9.4 Driver for Windows 7, Windows Vista and Windows XP. Highlights of the ATI Catalyst 9.4 Windows release include: 

New Features

• ATI Catalyst 9.4 includes a new ATI Overdrive auto-tune application to estimate the over-clocked engine and memory values for ATI Overdrive supported ATI Radeon Graphics accelerators
Designed for the ATI Radeon HD 4000 Series