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Earlier this week a dispute popped up between popular publishers Activision, and the Call of Duty 2, 4, and Modern Warfare 2 developer Infinity Ward.  The two top men at Infinity Ward, the founders Vince West and Jason Zampella, were fired by Activision for disputes in the creative future of the Call of Duty series.  Activision also has announced that this years Call of Duty will be developed by Treyarch while leaving the year afters for a new company.  Infinity Ward will seemingly not have another CoD game out until 2011.

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Steam has today confirmed that it will bring it’s digital distribution platform to Mac this April.

The service will launch with a variety of games from Valve’s extensive library, including Left 4 Dead 2, Team Fortress 2, Counter-Strike, Portal and the Half-Life series. The Newly-Announced Portal 2 will be the first title to be released by Valve for Windows and Mac when it is released this Christmas.

The launch of the Mac version of Steam will also introduce a feature called Steam Play, which will work in conjunction with Steam Cloud to allow consumers to play their purchased games on both PC and Mac.

“As we transition from entertainment as a product to entertainment as a service, customers and developers need open, high-quality Internet clients,” said Valve president Gabe Newell. “The Mac is a great platform for entertainment services.”

We know this has been in the pipe for a while now especially after the teaser ‘Apple’ like images released in early March.

[Via MCV]

Activision have made a worrying prediction about there prize pig World of Warcraft, according to a risk assessment the MMO giant could be toppled by the social gaming scene.

Speaking in its 10k annual report Activision said  ”We also compete with other forms of interactive entertainment, Such as casual games like iPhone applications and other mobile phone games, and games developed for use by consumers on social networking sites.”

“Future increased consumer acceptance and increases in the availability of such games or other online games, or technological advances in online game software or the Internet, could result in a decline in platform-based software and negatively impact sales of our console and hand-held products.

“Newer technological advances in online game software may also render products such as World of Warcraft obsolete.”

In 2009 Call of Duty, Guitar Hero and World of Warcraft made up 68 per cent of Activision’s net revenues this makes worrying reading for Activision as losing one of these could seriously effect them.

“A substantial portion of our revenue and profitability will depend on the subscription-based massively multiplayer online role-playing game category. If we do not maintain our leadership position in this category, our financial results could suffer,” Activision added.

Worrying times at Activision.

Despite Nintendo breaking records here, there and everywhere and committing absolute annihilation on any competitor in sight the industry has never really took a shine to the Wii. Comments from the likes of Sega and Capcom have done even more to not help matters. There comments are apparently echoed throughout the industry even though some Dev’s dare not admit it.

In a recent interview over at Gaming Union former DICE CEO and Co-Founder Fredrik Lillegrin had a few things to say about the Wii:

Gaming Union: Are you surprised with the negativity surrounding the Wii from various groups, even after all this time and its success? Would you develop a Wii game if you were a traditional developer?

Fredrik Liliegrin: If I got paid to develop a Wii game I would do it. I would not put an original IP on the Wii today unless I thought I had an absolute home run.

Gaming Union: Why not?

Fredrik Liliegrin: Because the Wii, to me, I would describe it as a Virus, that doesn’t stick. Everyone comes home, it’s a toy, people have got to realize the Wii is a toy, not an entertainment focused product. People come home, someone, they play Wii for a bit, feel it’s really cool, blah blah blah, they go out and buy one. Ask people how often they play the Wii, that are not the core game consumer that buys one because they have an Xbox 360 and a Wii or a PlayStation 3 and a Wii. The people that only own the Wii, ask that consumer how often they use their machine. They just don’t use it, it was cool, but they’re not gamers, so they put it away. Other than the Wii Fit phenomenon that helped a lot of people get a nice cutie voice telling that they’re fat and need to go work out, they need to find other alternatives. Nintendo is smart in that way in that they realize this is not a video game machine, this is not a games game machine.

[Via Gaming Union]

CCP the developer of popular Online MMO EVE Online has opened a new studio in Newcastle in the UK.

The Icelandic company is currently advertising a number of job positions in nearby Gateshead with some of these roles asking for console specific experience. The Newcastle based studio will work on “Current and future” console projects, according to CCP.

CCP is known to be currently working on it’s first console project, the project which is an EVE spin-off is called DUST 514, which is a first-person multiplayer shooter which according to CCP will plug in to EVE’s online universe. Players will be able to interact with players of the PC game. As far as we know most DUST 514 development is currently being undertaken by CCP’s Shanghai office.

CCP is currently targetting a team of 10 – 20 staff to work at it’s Gateshead studio who will work closely with the Icelandic and Chinese arms of the company. The studio is also being formed around a handful of staff from Midway’s Newcastle team, which worked on The Wheelman and binned project Necessary Force.

If your a resident of the United Kingdom and have seen the all the iPad hype you’ll of probably thought ‘Where can I get one of those?’ and then you’d visit the Apple site to see there were no prices in sight.

Well thanks to Geeky Gadgets we now have more of an idea, according to a mystery source of the site the iPad will be available in the UK when it launches for as little as £389.

The site says that the base 16GB model will cost £389, with the 32GB costing £439 and the 64GB coming in at £489. If this is correct it looks like once again folks in the UK will be paying more than their American counterparts.

At today’s exchange rate the 16GB version which costs $499 works out at around £327 which is a £62 price increase when compared to the leaked UK price.

At the present time the website does not have any information about the top-of-the-range 3G models, however they claim that first shipments will arrive in the UK in April and not in March as Apple had previously stated.

The ever great country that the UK is have now decided to up the gaming stakes when it comes to naming things. A major ring road in Derby, Derbyshire, England has been officially renamed to Lara Croft Way after a overwhleming 89% of votes said that it was a good idea. The reason for this choice was mainly because the game series was developed near the ring road at Derby.

If that doesnt prove that the UK loves gaming then nothing will.

Further to what we already know about the situation, i.e the fact Lupo wasn’t all that innocent in getting himself suspended. Lupo has now released a new video in which he states that he has purchased a new Xbox console.

In his video Lupo shows us his numerous accounts that he has:

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UK supermarket giants ASDA and Tesco have entered the huge pre-owned games market selling pre-owned titles in some of their UK stores. It’s understood that Asda is currently trialling the scheme in its Leeds store which is believed to have begun on Monday.

ASDA’s competitor, Tesco, has been running a similar scheme since last year. Both supermarkets are selling second hand titles and allow customers to trade them in.

The pair become the latest in a long-line of non-specialist retailers to enter into the second hand market,  following the likes of HMV and Woolworths in the UK. US retailers Wal-Mart and Toys R Us, as well as  online retailer Amazon, have also done the same at some locations within the US.

Pre-owned sales have always been a corner stone for retailers especially in the recession, with gamers seeking to get more value for money out of there purchase.

[Via MCV]

We still have no clue what titles Microsoft will launch with Natal, but Microsoft have yet again commented on speculation and said that it won’t just be throwing titles at Natal.

Speaking in an interview with Destructoid, Xbox product director Aaron Greenberg said:

“We want the first impression to be a great one, so we are not going to dump products on it just because we can,”

“We are going to be very careful in the way we think about our portfolio .We are going to be very thoughtful about what we bring to market.”

This comes after previous comments that Natal won’t just be for casual gamers but also for the main stream fanbase, as well as a leak of a possible launch date earlier this week from British TV personality Jonathan Ross.

Either way Natal is certainly shaping up to be quite an interesting launch creating a lot of hype anywhere it is mentioned lets just hope it’s launch does not follow other hyped up no-shows.