2k-games-china posts

Many people thought that Gearbox Software's follow-up to its acclaimed FPS-RPG hybrid game Borderlands would be a sequel. Some people thought that we would hear more about the long dormant Aliens Colonial Marines game. But no one expected that Gearbox would step up this past summer and announce plans to take over from 3D Realms to finish off the near-legendary game project Duke Nukem Forever.

Yet that's exactly what happened. Following internet rumors earlier this past summer, Gearbox revealed that it was the new developer behind the 13 + year old first person shooter at PAX last September. Gearbox also revealed that it owns the Duke Nukem franchise outright. While the team is still keeping a lot of things about its version of the game under wraps, Big Download got Gearbox's founder and head man Randy Pitchford to talk a little bit more about the game and other topics.

Last weekend, some of the attendees who managed to wait through long lines at PAX Prime 2010 got a chance to play a small portion of Duke Nukem Forever for the first time in the game's 13+ development cycle. But will the rest of the general public get a chance to sample this long awaited shooter via a free demo?

VG247.com put that question to Gearbox Software's Randy Pitchford who stated, "I think that is an important thing to do ..." Now that the game is officially back in development, Pitchford said, " ... we can actually make those plans. No (sic) we can get with retailers and figure out the launch window, and figure out demo timing, and work with the first-parties on that." Indeed retailers have been kept in the dark that Duke Nukem Forever was back in development until the morning of the game's re-reveal this past Friday, Pitchford stated, "We weren't able to do that until this point, because if we did we risked damaging it even further."

While we can't be at PAX Prime this year, the folks at 2K Games are there streaming footage of folks playing a small portion of the single player gameplay of Duke Nukem Forever. Think about that for a second. For the first time in the history of man, people that are not 3D Realms or Gearbox Software team members are playing Duke Nukem Forever in public. Anything is truly possible,

Our sister site Joystiq captured some of the streaming video which you can see above and also after the jump. Yes, it's shaky and blurry but at this point we will take it, thank you very much. Gearbox head man Randy Pitchford is also making behind closed doors presentations about the long awaited first person shooter but apparently the footage from that presentation can't be shown to the public yet.

On Thursday, Take Two Interactive made news with a set of financial results that were much higher than expected. Today, investors decided to ride the good news with a much higher stock price. As of this post, Take Two's stock was at $9.80, a rise of over 10 percent compared to Thursday's stock price.

Take Two reported much higher revenues and a net profit when investors had expected a loss. The company announced it was raising its expectations for the rest of its fiscal year which will end on October 31 and says it now expects the company to turn a profit for the entire fiscal year. Upcoming games from Take Two's 2K Games' brand include Civilization V later this month, XCOM and Spec Ops: The Line in 2011 and BioShock Infinite in 2012. And don't forget that 2K Games is about to announce something BIG in about an hour from now.

The OnLive streaming PC game service continues to add to its still limited lineup of games. This weekend it was revealed that Mafia II, the long awaited open world crime action game from 2K Games, will be made available to OnLive users on Tuesday, August 24 at 12:01 am Pacific time (that's 3:01 am Eastern time).

As they did this past week when OnLive added Kane and Lynch 2 to its library, OnLive users who purchase Mafia 2 will be sent a coupon to purchase any other game on OnLive's service for free. The free game offer will end on August 29.

As promised a few weeks ago, a playable demo of Mafia II has now been released for PC owners to download via Steam. The demo comes just a couple of weeks before the full version of the long-in-development crime action game is scheduled to be released by developer 2K Czech and publisher 2K Games.

The demo takes place in the fictional city of Empire Bay in the 1950's where your character Vito Scaletta and two of his buddies, Joe and Henry, have been assigned to take out the mobster known as "The Fat Man". The full PC version of Mafia 2, which will include support for Nvidia's PhysX game physics and 3D visuals, is due out on August 24.

We've already reported on plans by 2K Games to offer a physical Collector's Edition for Mafia II. Now the upcoming crime action game will also have a Digital Deluxe Edition of the game for those folks who don't care to head to their local game store. Both the regular download and Digital Deluxe download versions of the game, available at select locations, will offer a free copy of the original Mafia game for people who pre-order the titles.

The Digital Deluxe version of Mafia II will include a number of extras including access to the Made Man content pack which adds two cars and two suits to the game. The game's soundtrack, a digital art book and a digital map of the game's Empire City will also be included. The Digital Deluxe Edition will cost $59.99.

In a separate email press release, Valve announced that all PC versions of Mafia II will include support for Valve's Steamworks tools including achievements, leaderboards, auto-updating and more.

[Via email press release]

Long before the Call of Duty games, before the Medal of Honor franchise and even one month before the release of the first Rainbow Six game, the first game in the Spec Ops franchise of military tactical first person shooters was released in 1998. First developed by Zombie and first published by the now defunct Ripcord Games, the series has been in limbo for almost a decade by its current owner Take Two Interactive.

Now Take Two Interactive's 2K Games brand is bringing Spec Ops back to life, most likely due in part to the massive success of the Call of Duty/Modern Warfare franchise from Activision. This time the tactical first person shooter action viewpoint is out and third person over the shoulder action is in with Spec Ops: The Line, developed by German-based Yager Development. We got to see a hands-off but live demo of the game at E3 2010.

It may be a holiday here in the US (it's also a bank holiday in the UK) but that doesn't mean you can't save some money while you enjoy your day off. Amazon.com has you covered with a very nice deal for Borderlands, the 2009 released first person shooter-RPG combo game from Gearbox Software.

The game itself is on sale for $27.99 which is $2 off its normal price. So what? So the folks at Amazon.com have sweetened the deal even more with adding the Borderlands Double Game Add-On Pack for free with your order. That's two DLC expansions (The Zombie Island of Doctor Ned and Mad Moxxi's Underdome Riot), a $19.95 value, for the cost of nothing. There's no word on how long this deal will last so we suggest jumping on it now if you haven't bought Borderlands or the two DLC expansions before now.

Even with this crappy economy, the tickets for the 2010 San Diego Comic-Con have all been sold out for months. If you are lucky enough to get a ticket you will be able to have a change to purchase some exclusive comics, toys and other items at the July show.

Many action figure companies have exclusive products at Comic-Con and this week Toy News International reports that one of them, NECA, has revealed that their Comic-Con exclusives will include an Eleanor (with Saved Little Sister) figure from their BioShock 2 line up. This is likely just the first of what will be many game-oriented Comic-Con exclusives for 2010.

[Via Kotaku]