Harnessing the power of mobile smartphones to bring about public humiliation, a digital newspaper in Russia is going after poor drivers.

Created by an online newspaper in Moscow called The Village, people within Russia can use a mobile application called Parking Douche to inform the public about poor drivers that like to park on sidewalks or other areas that aren’t acceptable for parking a vehicle. After someone downloads the application to their Android smartphone, they can start taking pictures of a driver that’s parked their vehicle illegally. The application requires the person to take two pictures of the vehicle. The first picture should be a wide view to demonstrate the car owner’s poor parking skills and the second picture should be a close up photo of the driver’s registration plate.

The application automatically converts the picture of the registration plate to a text field and asks the smartphone owner to check the validity of the registration plate number. In addition, the user can select the exact color of the car using a color field on the touchscreen as well as the general body shape of the car. Using GPS within the smartphone, the exact location of the parked car is also noted by the application.

After uploading all the data to the newspaper, people that live in the immediate area will start to see pop-up advertisements on The Village and other partner sites. While reading an article, a pop-up advertisement shows a replica of the car’s design and color in addition to the exact registration number on the vehicle’s plate. The caption reads “This parking douche annoys you on this site like he does on ‘Street Name’.“

The Village then encourages people to share the poorly parked car on Facebook to get rid of the advertisement. In order to avoid annoying readers of the newspaper that don’t live in the immediate area of the illegally parked car, the advertisements are specifically localized by IP address. Only people living in the immediate area will see the advertisement. Due to requests from people in countries like the United States, Japan, Germany and the United Kingdom, management at The Village has made the application open-source software.

Microsoft may be on the hook for up to $7.4 billion thanks to a glitch that stopped offering users a choice over which browser to use, but how come an increasingly dominant Apple has escaped antitrust allegations?

Guess what? Microsoft is the baddie again.

The European Commission has accused Microsoft of ignoring its legal obligations under a 2009 antitrust settlement agreement by failing to offer European users a “browser ballot.” The ballot is supposed to inform European computer users of multiple Web browsers available for the Windows platform and enable them to set a default browser that’s not Internet Explorer. But from February 2011 to July 2012, millions of European users probably did not see the required ballot, meaning Microsoft could potentially be on the hook for many billions of dollars.

What’s the big deal here? Surely most computer users are aware they can download and install any browser they like on their PC? And why is Microsoft required to present a browser ballot and un-bundle Internet Explorer, but Apple can bake its Safari browser (and WebKit) deep into both iOS and OS X without any government scrutiny? What does any of this mean for Microsoft’s tablet-centric Windows RT?

EU browser ballot

Windows users in Europe have been confronted with a browser choice ballot since 2009 as part of the Microsoft broader antitrust settlement with the European Union. Among other things, Microsoft was accused of abusing Window’s dominant status in the desktop operating system market to give Internet Explorer a major advantage in the browser wars. Microsoft argued bundling IE with Windows was just innovation, and it was no longer meaningful to think of Internet Explorer and Windows as separate things, but European authorities disagreed. Microsoft was required to let PC makers pre-install and ship any browser they liked with Windows (although most stuck with IE), let users uninstall IE if they liked, and offer Windows users a ballot with a choice between a wide variety of other browsers they can download and install. The browser ballot does include IE, but presents browsers randomly to avoid fights over placement. The settlement agreement requires the ballot to be offered through 2014.

Just one problem: When Microsoft released Windows 7 Service Pack 1 in February 2011, Windows stopped showing the browser ballot to many European users. Microsoft has admitted that the browser choice ballot was not displayed, blaming the trouble on a technical error that it corrected within a single business day of hearing about the problem. (However, Microsoft somehow avoided hearing about the problem for almost 18 months.) Microsoft estimated some 28 million Windows 7 PCs that should have seen the browser ballot did not, but the glitch also impacted an unstated number of systems running versions of Windows XP and Vista.

The browser ballot wasn’t the full scope of Microsoft’s settlement with the European Union, and has generally been derided as a weak solution to the larger issue of Microsoft stifling browser competition by bundling Internet Explorer with Windows. However, it is the most public example of changes Microsoft has had to make to avoid antitrust scrutiny, and it may have had an impact: according to StatCounter, Internet Explorer has been eclipsed by both Firefox and Google Chrome in Europe since the browser ballot went into effect.

Microsoft’s settlement with the EU is legally binding. If Microsoft is found to have violated the terms of that settlement, the company could be on the hook for as much as 10 percent of its global annual revenue. For Microsoft’s 2012 fiscal year, that would total up to almost $7.4 billion. The EU could also decide to impose additional requirements on how Microsoft operates within the European Union. For Microsoft, the stakes are high. Microsoft has four weeks to respond and can request an oral hearing. However, the EU will almost certainly see calls to give Microsoft more than a slap on the wrist.

“If companies enter into commitments, they must do what they have committed to do or face the consequences,” noted European Commission President Joaquín Almunia, in a statement. “Companies should be deterred from any temptation to renege on their promises or even to neglect their duties.”

What about Apple?

Whenever we cover news about Microsoft’s legal obligations and what regulatory agencies like the Justice Department and the European Commission have to say about Windows, Internet Explorer, Windows Media Player, and other products, we always get questions about Apple. Why doesn’t Apple have to serve up a browser ballot in OS X? How can Apple bake its Safari browser into iOS (and make it perform better than any third-party browser) without antitrust authorities crying foul? Basically: Why does Microsoft get a hard time while Apple gets a free ride?

It’s easy to understand why folks ask these questions. After all, at Apple’s high-profile media event yesterday, Apple CEO Tim Cook lauded Apple’s performance in the PC market, noting that Apple not only makes the number one desktop and notebook computers in the U.S. market, but also is seeing its computer business grow about seven times faster than the rest of the PC industry — where the PC world will be lucky to see 2 percent growth for 2012, Apple is looking at 15 percent.

And what about Apple’s dominance in other markets? Firms like ABI Research and IHS iSuppli put the iPad’s share of the tablet market at nearly 70 percent for the second quarter of 2012. And since the EU is so concerned about Web browsers, Apple’s CEO Tim Cook trumpeted that iPads are responsible for more than 90 percent of Web browsing traffic from tablets. Why aren’t regulators crying foul over Apple baking Safari so deeply into iOS? Apple even makes it more difficult for third-party iOS browser to compete by consistently rating competing browsers 17+ in the App Store and barring them from using the souped-up Nitro JavaScript engine Safari relies on.

Isn’t Apple’s curated approach to Macs and the iOS ecosystem just another way of saying Apple locks out competition?

Why Apple isn’t getting scrutiny

The reasons Apple skates clear of antitrust scrutiny for its Mac and iOS lines have to do with market share and how the company conducts business.

On the desktop and notebook computer side, Apple may be seeing its computer business grow at a faster rate than the overall PC market, but Apple is not a dominant player. Recent figures from IDC and Gartner don’t even put Apple in the top five PC makers worldwide, and Gartner places Apple third in the U.S. market with a 13.6 percent share. Apple may have the number one desktop and notebook computers in the U.S. market, but it shipped fewer than half the number of computers as HP. What’s more, these figures represent near-historic highs for Apple; it’s tough to argue Apple has somehow been abusing a dominant position in the PC market and needs to be reined in by governments. Moreover, since Apple doesn’t license its operating system, Apple’s computer sales are also representative of OS X’s share of the desktop market. The vast majority of all computers sold from other manufacturers are running Windows — so Microsoft remains the dominant player in the operating systems market.

On the mobile side, the success of the iPhone and the iPad means Apple has a much stronger presence…but guess what? Apple isn’t the market leader in mobile either — that’s Android. According to IDC, in the second quarter of 2012 Android accounted for 68.1 percent of the worldwide smartphone market; Kantar Worldpanel Comtech recently found Android accounted for more than 60 percent of the global smartphone market, and two-thirds of the European mobile market. The iPad does currently account for 70 percent of the tablet market, but remember the iPad got there first, and the market is new enough that being first still carries weight. Amazon, Google, and Samsung are all aggressively marketing Android-based tablets, and Microsoft is about to enter the market with its Surface products.

But even if the iPad continues to be the dominant tablet line for years to come — and regulators eventually decide smartphones and tablets are separate markets — Apple likely will still not be subject to the kind of antitrust scrutiny visited on Microsoft over the years. Microsoft drew the ire of regulators not just for having a dominant position in the desktop operating system market (that’s not illegal, and neither is a monopoly), but for abusing that position. Among other things, Microsoft cut deals with computer makers to dictate what software could and could not be included on new systems, fiddled with its APIs so Internet Explorer and other Microsoft applications would have an inherent advantage over competitors, and used its Windows monopoly as a distribution channel for Internet Explorer with the intention of wiping out competitors like Netscape.

With one possible exception, Apple isn’t capable of committing these abuses. Apple doesn’t license its operating system, so it can’t strong arm partners who make iOS devices — there aren’t any. Similarly, with Android the dominant mobile operating system, it’s difficult to argue Apple deciding to bundle capabilities into iOS — like Photo Stream and iCloud, for instance — constitutes an abuse. Competitors can (and are) offering similar services for iOS (Dropbox, Instagram, anyone?) and are free to develop for Android, Windows Phone, Windows RT, or even BlackBerry or Symbian if they like.

The one antitrust concern in iOS might be the built-in Safari Web browser. Apple does permit third-party browsers for iOS — Google Chrome Opera Mini, Atomic, Dolphin, and (heck!) iCab are available for iPhone and iPad, although Mozilla recently “retired” Firefox Home. But Safari outperforms the competition by being able to tap into the high-performance just-in-time (JIT) compiler in the Nitro Javascript engine. Although Web apps got the same capability in iOS 5, third-party Web browsers have to rely on a slower JavaScript engine or (in Opera’s case) outsource Javascript to a remote service. Apple also won’t approve a browser that includes a JIT compiler of its own. Apple claims these restrictions are all about security — iOS is more secure than Windows, OS X, and Android in this regard — and Apple gives Safari a pass because Apple can perform rigorous QA on it as part of iOS. However, is does mean that Safari has an inherent advantage on iOS that competitors can’t match. That’s eerily reminiscent of the API adjustments Microsoft made to favor Internet Explorer on Windows.

What might happen to Microsoft?

Although Microsoft is undoubtedly in hot water for breaking the browser ballots (and thus the terms of its settlement with the European Commission), few expect the company will be on the hook for billions of dollars over the issue.

Microsoft doesn’t seem to be slithering out of its mistake. “Although this was the result of a technical error, we take responsibility for what happened, and we are strengthening our internal procedures to help ensure something like this cannot happen again,” the company said in a statement. Microsoft has suggested it be required to display the browser choice ballot for an additional 15 months, which would mean European Windows users would see a browser choice screen through at least 2015. The European Commission hasn’t commented on that suggestion, or any possible sanctions against Microsoft.

Looking forward, Microsoft might face difficulties with Windows RT. When Microsoft ships its ARM operating system this week, it will support one and only one Web browser: Internet Explorer 10. Microsoft is denying third-party developers access to components that would be necessary to create a competitive browser on the platform: not just a JIT Javascript compiler, but lots of other internals that just aren’t accessible to Windows RT apps. Microsoft’s reasons for this decision are very similar to Apple’s reasons for denying access to the Nitro engine: stability and security.

However, Microsoft is also unlikely to see any antitrust action over browsers in Windows RT — at least, not anytime soon. Right now, Windows RT accounts for essentially zero percent of the mobile or tablet market, so Microsoft can’t possibly be abusing a dominant position. Competitors might argue Microsoft’s existing antitrust settlements in the United States and the European Union should be extended to Windows RT, but that’s also difficult. In the United States, federal oversight of Microsoft formally concluded in mid-2011. Oversight in the EU is still ongoing — hence the scuffle over the browser ballot — and terms of the settlement could conceivably be applied to ARM-based devices running Windows RT. However, regulators will probably wait to see if Windows RT goes anywhere. After all, Windows Phone has been out for two years, and nobody is worried about Microsoft abusing its monopoly power there.

We spoke with Corey May, lead writer for Assassin’s Creed III, and the man responsible for fleshing out the life of Connor, the newest hero to dawn the hidden blade and take up the ancient fight against the Templars.

Next week, TVs and monitors around the world will be occupied with images of brutal and spectacular killings disguised with a charmingly and patriotic historical motif. In less than a week, the third Assassin’s Creed will be released and fans of the series will once again step into the role of an assassin fighting an ancient war against the secret society of Templars, negotiating the future of civilization through the pointy end of a hidden blade. The game was once again developed by Ubisoft Montreal, and has become one of the biggest franchises in the world. The hype around it is such that even bad reviews (of which we earnestly hope there will be few to none), won’t stop this juggernaut from smashing its way to massive sales. 

The series has managed to offer up annual releases over the last three years, and has only missed one year, 2008, since the original game debuted in 2007. But even while Assassin’s Creed games hit store shelves last year and the year before, developers were quietly working on the next chapter of the franchise, with a new setting, a new engine, and a new protagonist. It was a massive undertaking to release annual iterations while simultaneously working on something that would essentially reboot the series and yet still keep the continuity correct while expanding on it. That took intense planning of the narrative. Plot points needed to be laid out years in advance, and the cost of developing games in a spoiler happy world meat that only a relative few number people could be involved with the planning. One of those people was Corey May, lead writer for Assassin’s Creed III.

May has been one of the staples of the Assassin’s Creed franchise, and has been a writer on every major Assassin’s Creed game (with the exception of last year’s Revelations, which he was still involved with, just to a lesser degree). For at least eight years, May has been immersed in the world of the assassins, and was there when the first outline of the world that we have come to know, and will be learning more of for years, was first created.

“The high level stuff started during AC1, and I still remember there was an off-site where I was with Patrice [Désilets, lead designer of Assassin’s Creed 1] and a couple of other people. We were talking very high level about where we were heading – not just with the game, but the franchise,” May said. “So there was a blueprint, a road map that was created. In the interest of full disclosure, obviously things change over the years and new developments will occur, but we always try to go back to that main blueprint or map and try to stay within the confines of what we laid out all those years ago.”

The setting of the Assassin’s Creed III is the familiar setting of Revolutionary America, of course. A glance at any of the several commercials in seemingly constant rotation online and on TV will confirm that. But while most people can probably describe a rough sense of what happened the day the Declaration of Independence was signed and names like Bunker Hill are inexorably connected to American history, many of the details of the period remain lost in the annuls of time. Bills like the Townshend and Sugar Acts, as well as documents like the Declaration of Rights and Grievances may ring a few bells to those historically minded, but to many they are just feint echoes of civics classes from years past.

Thankfully, that period of history is relatively well recorded. The details will always be somewhat subjective, but there is more than enough documentation to paint a relatively accurate picture of what life during those days was like. Maps can be used to recreate the original look of the  towns, and many of the most influential people of the day lived lives of renown that made it into books we can study today.

To that canvas, May introduced the story we will soon be playing, featuring the half- English, half-Mohawk protagonist Ratonhnhaké:ton, or Connor Kenway as he will be more commonly known. May, along with fellow writer Matt Turner and the Ubisoft Montreal team, created Connor as an avatar for us to interact with the historical figures in fictionalized, but a still somewhat faithful recounting of events of that time. Connor will participate in a storyline unique to him, while building upon the lore that started in 2007 with a Syrian Assassin named Altaïr ibn-La’Ahad, and continued thanks to Altaïr‘s descendants including the Renaissance assassin Ezio Auditore, Connor, and the modern assassin Desmond.

To breathe an air of authenticity into that world, May and the Ubisoft team spent a great deal of time researching the setting and what life in those days was like. The team even went as far as to speak with linguistic experts about regional dialects of the period, and the cities of New York and Boston have both been painstakingly recreated to their 18th century foundations.

“About a year was spent pretty much exclusively on research,” May told us. “There was obviously some rudimentary outlining and brainstorming about certain plot points, or motivations, or character development things, but the bulk of the first year was spent immersing myself in the time period.”

Joining May was a team of people that would go beyond what he could do on his own with the time he had, and several experts, including historical professors and archivists, were consulted to ensure accuracy.

Of course, whenever you base a fictional story in a historical setting, there is the unavoidable battle between indulging in romanticizing the period and keeping the historical aspects as realistic as possible. Now more than ever, many Americans look to the Founding Fathers with an almost religious zeal that often sees the past through selective lenses, so attempting to deconstruct the myths of that era could prove tricky when gamers experience things about heroes of the past they may not expect — or appreciate.

“We found tremendous opportunities to play with exploding those more romanticized notions,” May said. “We’ve been fortunate in terms of the themes of this game, and with everything that’s going on in the world, how sometimes that romanticizing of the past can actually be a very dangerous thing. We definitely speak to that throughout the game.”

And the opportunities are there in spades. George Washington is remembered as a masterful commander of the Continental Army, inspiring the beleaguered militia to victory over the world’s most powerful military. That is technically true, of course, but a closer look at the history of the period shows that Washington was wracked with self-doubt, and was constantly fending off personal and political attacks from within the American forces. It is conventions like that, that the Ubisoft team has enjoyed exploiting in every AC game.

“I remember a lot on AC2, we went into it, we were set during the Renaissance and there’s all this talk of how it was this time of high art and learning, and education and enlightenment. And the truth is that most of the education that was going on was through books and things that were pillaged from other countries – knowledge that was being, in fact rediscovered after having lain dormant for centuries,” May said.

“There was the realization that all the wonderful things from the Renaissance were primarily reserved for the wealthy and the privileged, and most other people lived in rather miserable conditions. And for all the talk of enlightenment there was still corruption and manipulation, and all sorts of nasty backstabbing and stuff like that. It was fun to say most people perceive it as ‘X,’ and the reality is that it was in fact ‘Y.’ We play quite a bit with that in AC3.”

That idea helped breathe life into the previous games by making the societies relatable. While the nature of the world at that time may have been different from ours, the core ideals like love, the desire to improve oneself, and especially revenge, were just as powerful motivators as they are today. Historical people were not perfect, and through those imperfections we can understand and appreciate them.

“We try and remain balance, but the idea with the story was not to hold people up as images of perfection. There’s a tendency sometimes to deify people, and it’s not productive. I think it’s more productive to acknowledge what both their strengths and weaknesses were,” May said. “We commend them for the things they did right, but they should also criticized for the things they did wrong. In the cases of most of these people they did some things that were terribly, terribly wrong and left us with centuries of heartache and misery for a lot of people, many of whom still haven’t truly recovered from it. We’re not going to gloss over it.”

One of those groups still suffering are Native Americans, something that is depicted in the game. The tribe that Connor comes from is that of the Mohawks. After originally allying themselves with the Dutch settlers in what would become the state of New York, the Mohawks also made peace with the French. 20 years later, the French would turn and attack them, which led the tribe into the arms of the British and an uneasy alliance. More broken promises followed, but ties continued to strengthen between the Mohawks and the British Crown after treaties were signed. That left the Mohawks obligated to fight alongside the British, despite having those same treaties negotiated by many colonists they found themselves at war against. After the War ended, the Mohawks then found themselves forced north into Canada and west into the unknown.

“It’s an attempt to provide people with both sides, and then allow players, in this instance Connor the character, to make a decision about what he wants to do with the information he now has,” May said.

The new setting will no doubt strike a chord with Americans, especially in this time of heighten nationalism as elections loom, but it is one of many potential locations that could have been selected. One common discussion among fans of the series is where and when would you like to see a game take place. Although May is deeply involved with the development process, he himself is a fan, and mentioned that his personal choices for future locations would be Colonial India, Victorian-era London, and Revolutionary Russia during the early days of the 20th century.

Each of these choices is a legitimate potential setting. When the game was first being dreamed up, members of the development team plotted out not just the main points that they wanted to focus on in the games, but their secret history of the world, documenting all the possible encounters in the war between the Assassins and the Templars that quietly determined the course of civilization. Any of these moments could be fodder for future outings.

“There’s a fairly considerably sized stack of documents hidden deep within the AC archives, that plots out — very generally — some of the major moments in the war between the assassins and the Templars. It’s centered around pivotal moments in human history,” May explained. “So what happens is we have what’s basically a cook book, or a bible, that walks us through the sort of high level narrative arc of different time periods, different places, and different assassins. With each new iteration, there’s a moment where we take a look at what’s available to us, and begin discussions on where and when we’re going to go next.

“In this instance we were very attracted to the American Revolution because we really liked the themes. They dove tailed very nicely with the overall themes of the franchise, in terms of what it is that the Templars and the Assassins are fighting over – this idea of the right to self-determination versus the imposition of a way of life by a power that believes itself to know better.”

While May has spent nearly a decade immersed in the world of gaming, he originally began in film as a producer. After graduating from Harvard in 1999, he co-founded Sekretagent Productions with his writing partner Michael “Dooma” Wendschuh in 2002. After a brief meeting with Ubisoft’s Chief Creative Officer, Serge Hascoët, where they talked about a Rayman Saturday morning cartoon, May was invited to visit the Montreal offices to discuss possible collaborations in the future. May was soon hired to write the script for Prince of Persia: Warrior Within and has been working in games since.

“A lot of times you hear about people that want to use this as a stepping stone, and I find that my trajectory was a little bit different,” May said. “The film business was, in retrospect, a stepping stone to where I really love being, which is in the video game business, and I don’t want to leave. Ever.”

That attention to narrative building via multiple means has served May well. Although the games are without question the driving force of the Assassin’s Creed series, and all canonical lore of the series has to tie into them, the franchise has begun to seep into other media, and the story has spread across time. One graphic novel featured an Iberian assassin in the 3rd century, while another story focuses on an assassin that lived during the height of the Roman Empire. The animated short Embers, which stars an aged Ezio, even introduces a Chinese assassin, and May’s hope of a Revolutionary Russian assassin has already been somewhat realized in the comics The Chain andThe Fall.

The property has spread out from the games, and will soon be translated into a movie. Not satisfied with the Hollywood treatment of game properties, Ubisoft decided to create its own entertainment property, and its first film project will be Assassin’s Creed. The publisher recently announced a partnership with Regency to help produce and distribute the movie, which will star Michael Fassbender who will also serve as a producer.

Although May was unable to give specifics of the development of the film, he sees the movie as just another medium to convey what is already a strong story with themes that run deep.

“The universe that the team has built is so magnificent, so rich, and so vast, that there are, in my mind, endless opportunities to explore really interesting themes and meet really compelling characters and tell really compelling stories,” he stated.

Having come from movies, May has an interesting perspective on the nature of the relationship between films and games. At one point, May even attempted to adapt a game himself after obtaining the film rights to the original Fallout. The story Sekretagent attempted to pitch was exceedingly faithful to the source material. May, being a gamer himself, tried to adapt what made the original property such a memorable success, down to the plot of the game. But again and again he was met with a studio mentality based around the sales figures of the game alone, which doomed the project from the start.

That mentality is still very prevalent, even dominant when it comes to film adaptations of games. The few properties that do manage to make it to the screen tend to undergo massive conversion that compromises what made them attractive in the first place. There are a few exceptions, but they are very much in the minority. 

“I think that there’s a disconnect,” May said. “There aren’t enough people in place at the studios that understand – or maybe they do understand but don’t care – I don’t know, I can’t speak for them. There seems to be a disconnect. The game is seen as something that can be leveraged; a brand that can be manipulated, and that makes me sad.”

Still, the future looks bright for Assassin’s Creed. With the movie fast tracked and being developed by Ubisoft itself, there is a great deal of hope that this will be the property that finally breaks the ceiling and allows the flood of quality game related films that could follow, in much the same way that it took a few successful comic book themed films began a rush on comic properties. But even if that isn’t the case, the franchise remains one of the strongest and most successful in all of gaming.

Joining Assassin’s Creed III next week on shelves is Assassin’s Creed III: Liberation, a PlayStation Vita exclusive that May also consulted on. The portable game features the first playable female assassin, Aveline de Grandpré, and takes place in New Orleans between 1765 and 1780. Although the games follow different characters in different locations, there will be some crossover, and Connor is said to make an appearance at some point.

While the spotlight is firmly on the two upcoming games at the moment, Ubisoft is certainly already hard at work on the next Assassin’s Creed game. Whether that game is a continuation of Connor’s tale in the same way that Brotherhood and Revelations continued Ezio’s story, or if Ubisoft has a surprise waiting for us, May is certainly deeply involved. Although he isn’t talking.

“As of right now, all I know is that we are launching these two awesome games, everyone should preorder them at their retailer of choice,” May said with a laugh.

Assassin’s Creed III and Assassin’s Creed III: Liberation will both debut on October 30.

The first downloadable additions to XCOM: Enemy Unknown have been revealed, though you may already own one of them.

In an announcement made this morning, 2K Games and developer Firaxis Games revealed the first two downloadable content additions for the recently released strategy game XCOM: Enemy Unknown. The first is simply a retail version of the Elite Soldier Pack already available to those who pre-ordered XCOM, while the second includes three new maps and new singleplayer story content.

As those of you who pre-ordered XCOM (or were handed a DLC code by friendly GameStop employees) know, the Elite Soldier Pack includes a wealth of new soldier customization options. There’s new hair styles, new armor styles, and a number of new colors with which to paint your soldier. Additionally, the Elite Soldier Pack grants players a new recruit designed to resemble the soldiers seen in the original UFO: Enemy Unknown (aka X-COM: UFO Defense). When it hits the various downloadable content services this pack will set players back $5, though unfortunately 2K failed to mention when that might occur.

The second and more interesting DLC pack has been dubbed the “Slingshot Content Pack.” We have neither a release date nor a price point for this pack, but we do know that it’s focused on expanding XCOM’s single-player, story-driven content. According to Gamespy, the pack will offer players a new three-mission story arc in which they’ll be accompanied by a special NPC character who functions unlike any seen in the game to date. Instead of simply escorting this Yakuza member to a designated drop zone, players will fight alongside him against a squadron UFOs hovering over China. Though he has a unique look and voice, Gamespy claims the character functions in battle much like the Heavy soldier class.

Alongside these new missions, the Slingshot Pack will also include a healthy number of new aesthetic customization options. These will be different from those seen in the Elite Soldier Pack, and in addition to the standard hair designs and color schemes, the Slingshot Pack will also include entirely new “alternate looks for [the late-game] Titan, Ghost, Archangel, and Psi armors.” To wit: the Giger-esque skull helmet seen on the character in the header image above.

We expect more word on when these DLC offerings will become available in the next few weeks. 2K’s announcement makes it sound as if that Elite Soldier Pack could go on sale any day now, and we doubt the Slingshot Pack will be far behind. As soon as we’ve got official word on any of this, we’ll let you know.

Disney Interactive co-president John Pleasants has revealed the first details about Toy Box, a secretive gaming initiative that he claims will unite Disney and Pixar characters for the first time.

In a recent New York Times piece detailing Disney’s upcoming digital plans, Disney Interactive co-president John Pleasants offered up surprisingly candid details about a never-before-revealed gaming project the company is working on dubbed “Toy Box.”

[Pleasants] is also pouring money into a project Disney refers to as Toy Box, a console game with extensive mobile and online applications in which various Pixar and Disney characters will interact with one another for the first time. “I’m excited about what we’ve already done and where we’re going,” [Pleasants] said, adding that Disney has had three No. 1 apps in the last six months.

Disney CEO Robert Iger is suitably optimistic about the Toy Box project, and has promised that the Disney Interactive division would finally turn a profit in 2013.

That’s an impressive vote of confidence from Iger, but it does little to explain how this Toy Box game will function. We know that it’s a console game, and that it includes interactions between Pixar and Disney characters. We also know that it has some sort of “mobile and online applications” functionality. With all that in mind we have three ideas of what Toy Box might eventually look like.

First, imagine a socially-focused, free to play, massively multiplayer online game in which players can interact with all of the aforementioned characters. This game will include both mobile and web-based applications that allow you to check your in-game progress (we expect this game to have some kind of quest mechanic) and possibly upgrade your character either through microtransaction purchases or simple mini-games. Given the appeal of Disney’s character roster, this could very well be the first console-based, family friendly, online multiplayer realm.

Our next idea seems less likely, but more intriguing. What if Disney were to take a page from its relationship with Square Enix to create a Disney/Pixar-themed roleplaying game a la Kingdom Hearts? That model could easily feature online functionality and mobile and web applications while still maintaining its status as a story-driven singleplayer roleplaying experience. Disney Interactive has proven its willingness to court big-name developers for its games — Deus Ex designer Warren Spector is the driving force behind the Epic Mickey franchise — and we’re sure there are tons of talented people who would love the opportunity to create a vast adventure with access to the Disney and Pixar intellectual property vaults.

Finally, our favorite idea is also the least likely. What if Disney Interactive’s creative team collectively went insane and decided to create a massive, Tekken Tag Tournament 2-esque fighting game featuring beloved Pixar and Disney icons? Buzz Lightyear could punch out Goofy, then tag in Woody to perform a cutesy variation of the Road Warrior’s Doomsday Device on Pluto. Or perhaps Mickey could point out the absurdity of Donald Duck’s lack of pants by kicking him straight in the crotch — that’s casual violence with clever meta-commentary! As we said before this is intensely unlikely, but the idea sounds hilariously awesome, and like Tekken Tag Tournament 2, those mobile and web applications Pleasants mentioned could easily be used to enhance such a classic fighting game model.

In fairness, we have no real evidence pointing toward any of the above scenarios, and we’ll probably be waiting a while before Disney Interactive sees fit to properly unveil Toy Box to the general public. That said, how many of you were sold the moment you read that the game will feature both Disney and Pixar characters? We understand that, for vast swaths of the population, this is an immense selling point.

In an effort to hype its excellent racer Forza Horizon, Microsoft's ad team has turned to YouTube hoping to tap our modern obsession with voyeuristic reality TV.

Yesterday, October 23, Forza Horizon hit store shelves. As the latest in developer Turn 10 Studios’ criticially acclaimed, blockbuster Forza Motorsport series Horizon has a lot to live up to, but as you can see from our recent review the game is a solid addition to the franchise. Given Turn 10′s blatantly obvious affection for cars and car culture this shouldn’t be much of a surprise, but what is interesting is the novel method in which Microsoft’s advertising executives have decided to promote this release.

Alongside the standard magazine ads and 30-second TV spots, Horizon’s launch is also being promoted by a TV series called Chasing With Steve Aoki. Never heard of it? That’s because this show was created specifically for the Forza Horizon ad push. According to a piece in AdWeek, an advertising firm known as Alloy Digital teamed Microsoft with the Fuse music network to create the show. The first episode is now available on Fuse’s YouTube channel (though you can also find it embedded below), and new six-minute episodes are scheduled to appear twice a week for the next month.

As for the show’s format, it’s something of a blend of familiar reality television tropes. It pits three two-person teams against one another in what initially seem to be tests of driving skill (that would make sense, given the game this show is promoting), but are in fact simple “get from point A to point B in an urban setting faster than the other teams then complete a relatively simple challenge” events. You’ve seen this same format on shows like The Amazing Race and dozens of others we don’t have the inclination to mention right now. 

“Wait, I understand all of that, but who is this Steve Aoki guy?” you might be wondering. Aoki, the show claims, is a “world-class DJ.“ That vaguely ties in to Forza Horizon’s impressive soundtrack, but we expect it’s more likely to have been the hook that convinced executives at Fuse to partially back this project. Fuse is also planning to promote the series via its television network so Aoki’s involvement at least gives the company a credible way to explain the presence of these ad spots among its musically-focused programming.

In Microsoft’s case the show’s constant Xbox 360 and Forza Horizon product placement spots likely convinced the company to back this advertising scheme. They are simply everywhere. Barely two minutes in to the first episode and we witness one of our teams fire up an Xbox 360 so they can watch a video containing a clue from Aoki (he’s both a DJ and the kayfabe mastermind behind the challenges these players endure). Further, in episode four we’re promised that instead of completing challenges in the real world, the contestants will have to face off in Forza Horizon. 

When asked why Microsoft would greenlight such an outside-the-box ad strategy for this game, Rob Matthews, the company’s global general manager of marketing for its interactive entertainment division, claimed that it comes down to the fans Microsoft is hoping to appeal to. “We have a healthy mix of digital because we know the game-playing audience entails heavily digital consumers who are socially connected,” he said.

News.me's team - which is part of Betworks - is shifting its focus to Digg now that the Twitter restrictions have forced the startup to rethink its priorities.

Social news curation app News.me is bowing out and you’ll no longer find it up in the App Store as of today, although existing users who have downloaded the app will receive continued support.

News.me announced today that Twitter is to blame for the decision. Twitter had been silently building out its own platform discovery features, which were recently introduced. “This move did not come as much of a surprise to us, but it put Twitter squarely in the category of ‘competitor’ to News.me,” News.me General Manager Jake Levine said in a statement. News.me was then faced with a dilemma after the new Twitter API restrictions were in place. The app was violating Twitter’s updated Display Requirements and sticking around would mean sinkng more resources into News.me to keep Twitter and the curation app’s users content. Instead the team chose to turn its focus elsewhere. Levine boiled it down the decision to one point: “We don’t want to invest time and energy into an application that competes with a platform on which it relies.”

You can still receive the latest news shared by your friends in News.me’s email digest, and all current users of the News.me app will be supported by the team. This just means that if you’ve wanted to download the app to your iOS device but never got around to it, you’re out of luck. The next best option is to sign up for News.me’s email digest, which will send your friends’ shared news straight to your inbox.

It’s unknown how long current user support will last. After all, the mark of a successful news reader app is the number of users it’s able to attract.

As the Betaworks-incubated startup winds down its attention on News.me, they’re shifting focus to the recently acquired and relaunched Digg, where they’ve already invested their efforts. Digg iself is a social news curation site in many respects so the team will continue working together. Levine explains that the News.me team will “take what we learned from News.me to build the Internet’s best social news applications.”

He posted some promising numbers about Digg’s relaunch that seem to suggest the site has a good chance of being resurrected from near death. According to Levine over one million people have visited the new Digg and only three months after Digg’s iPad and iPhone apps were released, its mobile app user numbers are nearing those of desktop app users. Levine then pointed out a chart from The Atlantic, indicating that Digg appears to send more referral traffic than StumbleUpon.

If you’re bummed about the stats of News.me, Digg is a viable substitute with the same team and technology behind it. Of course the bigger takeaway from the shuttering of News.me is that yet another Twitter app has had to shut down or switch tactics since the API restrictions were handed down. 

Halo 4 will of course see numerous downloadable additions after its release, and we've now got word of the first three.

When Halo 4 hits retail shelves on November 6, it will mark Microsoft’s biggest game release of the year. Unless the game is somehow abysmally terrible it will pull in tons of cash and the Halo franchise will continue to build steam. Given the importance of this game, it shouldn’t come as any surprise that Microsoft and developer 343 Industries are hard at work readying downloadable content additions for Halo 4. Though we’ve currently got no word on how many DLC packs Halo 4 might see in total, we can tell you all about the first three.

Microsoft issued an announcement this morning focusing on the Halo 4 “War Games Map Pass.” Similar to the season pass schemes employed by numerous other big game releases (Saints Row 3 and Borderlands 2 jump to mind), this War Games Map Pass would allow Halo 4 fans to pre-pay for the game’s first three DLC releases at a pretty sizable discount over what they might spend buying the DLC piecemeal. To wit: The Map Pass has a retail price of $25. Each individual DLC pack will set you back $10. In total you’ll be saving $5 by picking up the Map Pass.

Oh, and Microsoft claims that those who buy the Map Pass will also “receive two bonus in-game helmets, as well as a unique in-game emblem.” So if the savings aren’t enough of a selling point maybe in-game decorations can motivate you toward buying the Map Pass.

While the Map Pass was the focus of Microsoft’s announcement the truly interesting bit was the detailed descriptions offered for each of the first three Halo 4 DLC packs. Have a look:

• Crimson Map Pack (December release timeframe)
  • Maps: Wreckage, Harvest, Shatter
  • Description: Witness the chaos of a clash of civilizations in Wreckage, with its blend of claustrophobic spaces and dangerous exposures and venture into the human colony environs of Harvest, and explore a human foray on an alien moon in Shatter.

• Majestic Map Pack (February release timeframe)
  • Maps: Landfall, Monolith, Skyline
  • Description: Landfall’s emphasis is on infantry battles against a glittering ocean on a distant world, while Monolith exposes you to the naked vacuum of space – and the firepower of opposing teams, and Skyline’s distinctly industrial feel provides new challenges in somewhat familiar, but occasionally confined spaces.

• Castle Map Pack (April release timeframe)
  • Maps: Daybreak, Outcast, Perdition
  • Description: Daybreak is set in a military facility against the backdrop of an idyllic mountain range, while Outcast plunges you into the warrens, canyons and arches of an alien edifice, and Perdition takes players into the heart of an urban sprawl, with tactical speed and situational awareness its key features.

A new study on tablet usage from Google found that people use their tablets to check their email more than anything else. After that, they spend more time playing video games than anything else.

Players are not playing on video game consoles quite as much as they once did. Handhelds are hurting as well. Now even social gaming, the segment that was eating into console and handheld time just a few years ago, is transforming into something else, losing players that once stayed glued to their desktop screens to other activities. Where is everyone going? According to Google, tablets are the machines people play video games on these days.

A new study called “Understanding Tablet Use: A Multi-Method Exploration,” compiled by Hendrik Muller, John Webb, and Jennifer Gove of Google found, unsurprisingly, that video games are a central activity for tablet owners. “[Our] goals were to provide a detailed picture of how people are using tablets today. We investigated when, where, why, and how people interact with content on their tablets,” reads the study, “We explored activities including, but not limited to, media consumption, shopping, cooking, and productivity.”

What did the 33 participants in Google’s study do the most with their tablets? Check their email. After that, though, Google found that the most common activity other than checking email on a tablet is playing video games. More than 51 percent of those surveyed used their tablet for gaming, and almost 11 percent of all time spent using the tablet was for playing games.

Email use came first by a wide margin, with more than 84 percent of respondents using tablets for checking mail and nearly 19 percent of all time on the device spent doing so. What’s significant about Google’s findings in regard to gaming though is that it found people spent significantly more time playing games than they did on social networks, watching videos, shopping, or even web surfing. Even in those cases when a larger percentage of participants used their tablet for those activities—more than 57 percent of users used their devices for social networking for example—they spent just over 6 percent of their tablet time checking the networks, far less than on games.

Similar studies have been conducted in the past couple of years, as Google’s own says, but this study differs significantly. Nielsen, for example, found that social networking and video watching were took up more time than game playing. User habits are changing and fast.

What does that mean for game developers? Hard to say. Making money on tablets, even Apple’s hyper-popular iPad, is difficult. The average revenue from an iOS game is just $2400. People may be playing on tablets, but they’re still not spending what they do on consoles.

We compared last year's iMac to the newly redesigned 27-inch iMac announced at yesterday's Apple keynote. Not sure if you're a Mac, check out how the Dell XPS One 27 holds up to its Apple counterpart.

Apple could have saved the announcement of its new iMac as its “One More Thing” that the company is famous for adding at the end of keynotes. It didn’t, but it could have. We certainly weren’t expecting an announcement of its weight to be thrown into Tuesday’s iPad mini event. In fact, the iMac’s slim chassis and sleek design, not to mention the updates to its insides, warrant an Apple press event of its own. Perhaps the company needs a break from huge press gatherings, seeing as yesterday’s event came a little over one month after the company announced the iPhone 5. Either way, we now have a brand new, extremely Air-thin and beautiful iMac starting at $1,300. To do this, Apple had to get rid of the iMac’s optical drive, but Apple’s Phil Schiller made sure to add that “for those who are still stuck in the past, we do offer an external optical drive.” But should you snatch up the current model before the new one hits shelves, or should you forget about Apple altogether and consider an equally impressive (and less expensive) option from Dell? Dell’s XPS One 27, starting at $1,280, offers more bang for your buck than the new 27-inch iMac, which starts at $1,800. We compared the two computers, while also throwing in the 2011 iMac model, so take a look to see how they stack up.

All three machines offer the same screen resolution (2560 x 1440) and size (27-inch), and the same amount of storage (1TB), but that’s about all that’s similar amongst the three of them. The iMac update doubles the amount of RAM, bumps up its Bluetooth connectivity to 4.0, and takes the leap to Intel’s Ivy Bridge Core i5 and i7 processors. With edges that are just 5mm thick, and Apple’s new Fusion Drive, which combines both 128GB of flash with 1TB, the updated iMac definitely stands out from its predecessor. That being said, we thought the last version was pretty great, so you may want to consider skipping the bells and whistles of the new version for a refurbished 2011 model. Clearly, the Dell PC listed on our table is considerably cheaper, but that’s generally the case when comparing Apple to Windows machines. The Dell XPS One 27 matches up closely with the 2012 iMac, so if you’re looking for a top-notch machine at a smaller price tag and want to give Windows 8 a shot, then the XPS One 27 is for you. 

A new quarterly earnings report shows a Nintendo that won't repeat last year's first annual loss. Even as the House of Mario recovers, though, its handheld business is still struggling.

With less than a month to go before Nintendo unleashes the Wii U on a public with a contentious relationship with video game consoles, Nintendo had less than spectacular news for its shareholders. Despite promising momentum for the Nintendo 3DS consoles at the end of the June quarter, Nintendo’s performance from July to September was poor enough that it had to lower its projected earnings for the full fiscal year. Where Nintendo was previously expecting to bring in 20 bill yen in profits (just below $251 million), it’s now only expecting profits of 6 billion yen (just above $75 million.)

It isn’t all bad news. That Nintendo is expecting a return to profitability at the end of the fiscal year after reporting its first ever annual loss back in April should help its weary shareholders and employees feel more secure in the future of the company. There is more bad than good in these numbers though, especially since they come at the end of a quarter when Nintendo released a brand new entry in core series like New Super Mario Bros. and Pokémon. The system those games are meant to sell, the Nintendo 3DS, just isn’t selling in the numbers Nintendo needs it to.

Overall, Nintendo 3DS sales were up over the same period last year. From July to September, Nintendo sold more than 5 million 3DS systems, up from just over 3 million during the same period in 2011, bringing the console’s lifetime sales after 18 months to just over 22 million consoles. That places it roughly on par with where the Nintendo DS was sales wise at the same point in its lifecycle. In a period when Nintendo released not just New Super Mario Bros. 2, a sequel to one of the Nintendo’s bestselling games ever, but a new model with the Nintendo 3DS XL, Nintendo should have seen more growth for its handheld device. September Nintendo 3DS sales were down 18 percent in the US. Bad news.

Losses are narrowing, though, meaning that expected profit, no matter how slight, should still happen. Nintendo lost 28 billion yen (nearly $351 million) over the quarter compared to above 70 billion yen (nearly $881 million) during the same period last year. That means that Wii U production and Nintendo 3DS costs aren’t hitting the company as hard as they could, freeing up more capital for game development.

This is a transition period for Nintendo, not just from one console to another, but to new business types. This quarter also saw Nintendo embrace digital distribution for what would have been retail exclusive software. The fruit of that labor won’t ripen until 2013, but all the software sales in the world won’t help Nintendo if people don’t buy its machines in greater numbers.

Capcom takes a page from the BioWare play book with its upcoming patch for Resident Evil 6. Out in December, the update looks to fix major complaints about how the game is played.

Like BioWare did earlier this year with its controversial Mass Effect 3, Capcom is now promising to release an update for its fall tent pole Resident Evil 6 in December to address myriad player complaints about the shooter. Unlike BioWare’s Extended Cut ending, though, Capcom’s release is mostly mechanical, looking to fix many of the problems with Resident Evil 6’s play.

Chief among these fixes is the ability to customize camera positions on the screen. Many complained that Resident Evil’s characters took up too much of the screen, obscuring enemies and co-op partners during the game’s frantic shootouts. Players can now zoom in or out to their heart’s desire.

The other significant change is access to Ada Wong’s stealth-focused campaign from the outset of the game. Players originally had to complete Leon, Jake, and Chris’ campaigns before the single player-centric Ada campaign became available. There are other tweaks, including a new difficulty mode and expanded subtitle support, but these are secondary to the previously mentioned alterations.

As illustrated in Digital Trends’ review of Resident Evil 6, though, the game’s many mechanical problems weren’t what ultimately rendered Capcom’s game a lavishly produced mess. It was those foundational issues coupled with a lack of narrative, tonal, and aesthetic coherence that ultimately crippled the game. Capcom’s December patch will certainly make portions of the game easier, and potentially more fun, to play but it won’t come close to making Resident Evil 6 the game it could have been.

So why bother? Does Capcom hope that it will improve its relationship with a spurned audience with this fix or hopefully give the game a pre-Christmas spike in sales? Issuing a patch for a console game is not cheap; retaining that money and investing it in the development of its next game might better serve Capcom.

Here’s how the game business is starting to work: Massive game publisher funds massive team of game developers who in turn make massive big budget game. Game releases. Massive number of players and critics say that the game is bad. What, pray tell, is the responsibility of the game publisher and developer in this all too common scenario? Is it a good thing when a video game maker admits that they’re wrong? That they in effect charged people for a broken product that needs to be mended?

Rather than spend so much on these lavish productions, publisher/developers like Capcom and Electronic Arts would be wiser to make smaller, cheaper games that can be better polished before release.