Valve boss Gabe Newell recently touched upon the always thorny subject of DRM, stating that it lowers the value of games and that it doesn’t do anything for customers. Obvious statements, but popular ones, as his speech drew a round of cheers from a packed Games Developer’s Choice audience. Newell had just won the Pioneer Award. 
“One thing that you hear us talk a lot about is entertainment as a service,” opines Newell. It’s an attitude that says ‘what have I done for my customers today?
“It informs all the decisions we make, …

As I suspected, Dragon Age: Origins expansion “Awakening” is more Dragon Age. I played the first 20 or so minutes of the expansion at GDC this afternoon, moving my new Gray Warden commander through the Darkspawn-infested Vigil’s Keep and up to a mini-boss fight against a special speech-capable member of the Blight.
I didn’t take the several opportunities to use the new special skills, but I did have a big takeaway from the short demo courtesy of online content producer Fernando Milo: the expansion will be more balanced than the …

Telltale Games isn’t done with the Sam & Max adventure series. The studio has announced the third downloadable season, “The Devil’s Playhouse,” which looks to begin hitting in monthly increments starting on April 15th.
Perhaps more startling is the fact that Telltale is set on plopping the new 5-part season onto PSN. As revealed last afternoon via press release, and during their shindig at GDC a foggy night ago, the series premiere, “The Penal Zone,” will debut on PSN as well as the PC and Macintosh. Check below the fold …

As expected, the Mass Effect 2 universe will continue to expand beyond free downloadable missions. Earlier this afternoon I watched game project director Casey Hudson plow through the game’s first chunk of paid DLC, “Kasumi’s Stolen Memory,” that looks to incorporate a new character, a new SMG, and even a unique way to play this April 6th.
The content, which can be launched at any point during the narrative, can be divided into two themed swathes. The first half is exploration-based. The space Rogue Kasumi is seeking an item of value …

Having played a few minutes of Black Rock Studio’s Split Second and messed around with Bizarre Creation’s Blur in the multiplayer beta, I still can’t seem to decide which I’m looking forward to more. So, I’ll totally cheat and say I want both games equally.
That VideoGame Blog was curious about the state of Split Second on PC, and luckily for us, Disney Interactive was in a talkative mode. “We will be releasing on PC at the same time but it will be a limited online release,” explained a company rep.
For …

It feels like only yesterday Infinity Ward was talking up the mysterious first Modern Warfare 2 downloadable map pa–oh, that totally was yesterday. Huh, that was quick! The marketing division has created an informative site about “mapathy,” an all-too-real medical condition affecting millions of gamers.
They say the cure is coming to Xbox LIVE on March 30, which would mean an April release for PlayStation 3 and PC since Microsoft acquired a full month of exclusivity for the add-on. The real question, at least in my mind, is whether or not …

Perhaps the exclamation point is overkill — the latest free add-on for Mass Effect 2 is simply a new heavy weapon. Nothing more, nothing less. The Arc Projector, as BioWare has so lovingly named it, can now be downloaded for anyone with access to the Cerberus Network storefront.
On the other hand, the gun sounds rather fun to use. You point it at things you want to electrocute to death, and splash damage plays a big role in its effectiveness. There’s a nice picture on BioWare’s site that shows the Arc …

So, Medal of Honor is going modern, and here’s what it looks like. A modest collection of new screens for EA’s series reboot has hit the Internet today, featuring tanks, beards, guns, and all the shades of brown that a current-gen game needs. 
Medal of Honor has never really been able to stand up to Call of Duty, but Electronic Arts is definitely hoping to give the series an edge with this new title. Whether it succeeds remains to be seen, though we can tell you it’s going to have to …

When confronted with the prospect of Ubisoft’s horrific DRM system, which requires PC players to never ever be offline ever, a distressing amount of people shrugged and went “Eh, I have good internet anyway.”
Well, it seems that Ubisoft itself didn’t have very good internet – not in Europe, at least – as its authentication servers went down at around 8AM GMT, kicking some players off their Assassin’s Creed 2 sessions and subjecting others trying to come online to lengthy log-in waits or frequent timeouts.
A Ubisoft UK representative, “Ubi.Vigil” responded to …

Get ready to never stop playing a videogame. I mean you pause it on one device, pick up another and play the exact same game at the exact same place where you left off. Sure, Microsoft has been talking about this forever, but it actually seems like they’ve got it working now. As demonstrated by Microsoft’s Eric Rudder at TechEd Middle East in Dubai the company is bringing their platforms together in a big way. You can see him do it in the above video.
Rudder starts to play a …