Activision posts

Call of Duty Black Ops for the PC platform just got its second bug patch thanks to the Steam auto-updater. The hit first person shooter from developer Treyarch and publisher Activision continue to try to improve the PC port which suffered from a number of performance issues when it was released last week.

This second patch has some more CPU performance improvements to the game. It also gets the game's server browser improved so it doesn't do a full refresh as often as before. There's also a few crash bugs fixed for some minor issues. Again this will likely be only the second in a series of future bug patches for the game.

Update: Steam has just release the first single player oriented patch for Call of Duty Black Ops. It also has some CPU improvements as well as some matchmaking improvements to the Zombie mode.

Bungie is one of the few independent game developers that can truly write its own ticket in the business. Now the Redmond, Washington-based company is looking to its fan community to sign up and beta test its next game, the first in a planned series of titles to be published by Activision.

While details of the game have been kept under wraps there is recent evidence that the title will be coming to the PC platform. In a post on the Bungie web site the company its huge fan base "to officially put your name on the list of those willing to lend a helping hand." Signing up to be a Bungie tester will include, among other things, "Alpha and Beta Testing for our next game." Bungie states that "hundreds of thousands of gamers will likely be needed before all is said and done" so it sound like there's a good chance you could be chosen to play test Bungie's next game project.

While Activision is busy shutting down or selling off other internal developers, it has no problem praising one that has exceeded expectations. Today the publisher announced that Call of Duty Black Ops, the recent first person shooter from developer Treyarch, has generated over $650 million in revenue in just its first five days of its release worldwide.

Activision is using its internal estimates for these sales numbers which is says exceeded the $550 million that the previous game in the series, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, generated in 2009. While the press release did not break down sales numbers for each platform, the PC port has not only been the best selling game on Steam for the past couple of weeks but the multiplayer portion of the game has been on top of Steam's players stats since its launch on November 9.

The Call of Duty series has taken players to conflicts around the globe from World War II to the modern era. Black Ops falls somewhere in between by putting players into the role of a covert soldier named Mason during the 1960s, fighting a Cold War against both Russia and Cuba. Players have a chance to play through a number of deniable ops that takes them everywhere from the Vietnam War to frozen wastes in Russia. In the course of completing over-the-top mission objectives that range from trying to assassinate Fidel Castro to escaping from a Soviet POW prison, players uncover a conspiracy surrounding a devastating chemical weapon called Nova 6 and an impending attack on the United States.

Check out all Call of Duty: Black Ops downloads

On Tuesday it wasn't looking good for the future of UK developer Bizarre Creations. Its owner Activision admitted that it was looking into several options "regarding the future of the studio" behind this year's racing game Blur and the just released action game James Bond 007 Blood Storm. Today Develop reports things are looking up at the developer.

According to what unnamed sources have told the web site Develop that "there's multiple parties interested in buying us." One of those buyers could be Microsoft who had sales success with Bizarre Creations with three entries in the Project Gotham Racing series for Microsoft's Xbox console division.

Bizarre Creations, the UK-based developer which released its latest game, James Bond 007 Blood Stone, just two weeks ago, could be closing down. According to several sources including VG247.com and Giant Bomb the decision was made today by the studio's owner Activision to close the studio. 200 employees are reportedly affected by this decision.

Formed in 1994 the developer worked on games for a variety of publishers, including Sega and Microsoft, before being bought by Activision in 2007. However its first game for Activision, the racing game Blur, did not sell well when it was released last May. Activision is reportedly close to issuing a press release concerning Bizarre Creations' status later today.

[Via Joystiq]

Update: Joystiq has an official comment from Activision on the situation stating, " ... because of the broader economic factors impacting the market, we are exploring our options regarding the future of the studio, including a potential sale of the business." Bizarre Creations is not officially shut down but is under a UK-required 90 day "consultation period" where its employees have been told the studio could be shut down, sold or downsized when that time period is completed.

Call of Duty Black Ops came out last week but the PC port of Treyarch's first person shooter has been dealing with a number of performance and lag issues since its released. The developer pushed out a quick update on Thursday via Steam that made some improvements but more are on the way.

In a message board post on the game's official forums, Treyarch's community manager Josh Olin gave some info on future PC updates. That includes improvements to the game's Quickmatch multiplayer feature that will give players better ping numbers and lower lag. There are also some hitching issues on certain graphics cards that will be addressed. Also the game's exclusive dedicated server provider GameServers.com have "bumped sv_maxrate to 25000 across all servers to reduce lag." Despite it's issues, there are a ton of gamers playing Call of Duty Black Ops on Steam with over 118,000 multiplayer users at one time on Sunday.

Transformers may be more than meets the eye but for the people at toy company Hasbro the long running robot franchise is also about taking to other media including movies, of course, and games. The fan site TFW2005.com recently listened in on Hasbro's Investor's Day internet feel and learned some interesting stuff about future game plans.

First is that Hasbro announced there will be a sequel to Transformers: War for Cybertron in 2012. The original game, which came out in June of this year from developer High Moon Studios and publisher Activision, got solid review marks and apparently sold well enough to get a second game ordered.

Second, some of you may remember that a Transformers MMO was announced for Asian territories earlier this year. Well Hasbro now says that game will be ported to other countries as well. We have hopes that there will soon be a way for US players to control transforming robots against thousands of others.

Last month it was revealed that Activision would be publishing Apache: Air Assault, a military helicopter sim-action game from developer Gaijin Entertainment. However that game was listed as only coming out for the Xbox 360 and PS3 consoles. Now it looks like the game will be coming to the PC after all as a downloadable only product.

The web site Yuplay.com is currently taking pre-orders for the $49.99 game which should be released sometime later this month. The game itself has the player controlling the Apache AH-64D Longbow helicopter throught 16 different missions in a variety of locations around the world.

Call of Duty Black Ops' PC players just got the first patch update to the already mega-selling first person shooter from developer Treyarch and publisher Activision. The patch, delivered via Steam's auto-updater, has just a couple of mutiplayer oriented bug fixes but hopefully they will deal with some of the performance and lag issues that have plagued the PC port since it was released on Tuesday.

Specifically, the first PC patch has some "performance improvement for dual and quad core systems". Many of the game's issues have been linked to its CPU performance. The other note in the patch is for a "Friends fix for join in progress and Friends tab in server browser." This is almost certainly to be just the first of many bug patches for the game.