battlefield-bad-company-2 posts

While Valve has never revealed specific revenue and sales numbers for its Steam PC/Mac download service, a organization called Forecasting and Analyzing Digital Entertainment (FADE) claims in a press release today that the Steam service generated $970 million in revenue in 2010. The month of December 2010 alone saw $213 million in revenues for Steam, according to FADE's numbers.

While the press release didn't give specific sale unit number, it did say that Call of Duty: Black Ops was the number one best selling game on Steam in 2010 with $98.2 million in revenue. Assuming that number is accurate, that means the game sold about 1.6 million copies on Steam (at $59.99 a copy) in less than two months. The 2009 released shooter Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 came in second in revenue in 2010 with $39.4 million and Valve's own game Left 4 Dead 2 was third with $36 million. According to FADE's study, over 180 games on Steam had sales of at least $1 million in 2010.

Big Download contacted FADE to find out more about how it came up with its Steam revenue numbers. It's Director of Research & Analysis Benjamin Schlichter told us, "Our sales figures for Steam are estimated by incorporating a passive user survey of approximately 8 million registered Steam users. This allows us to track actual sales conversions by users, so we can offer insights into the Steam market." He declined to give more info about FADE's methodology, stating, "Our system is proprietary, which allows us to ensure our competitors can't offer the same volumes of information." We have emailed Valve to see if it wishes to comment on FADE's estimated revenue numbers on Steam. You can check out FADE's estimates of the top 10 best selling games on Steam in 2010 after the jump

Update: We have gotten a statement from Valve's Marketing Director Doug Lombardi who told us simply, "We do not release our detailed sales. We have never met with FADE."

Battlefield 1943 for the PC has finally been officially cancelled after PC gamers have spent nearly two years waiting for the promised port of the multiplayer shooter. In a post on the Battlefield blog Karl Magnus Troedsson, the general manager of the game's developer Digital Illusions, stated, "I often need to make hard calls regarding where we put the studio's focus. Part of the challenge is to balance work on the new against the already shipped, prioritizing the amount of energy spent on the known franchises and the time spent on developing something entirely new."

Troedsson stated that while they will continue to support its previously released games such as 2010's Battlefield Bad Company 2, he added that DICE had made the decision to move forward with development of its next game Battlefield 3. He stated, "Our goal is crystal clear: we're going to build the best Battlefield game ever, and we'll do whatever it takes to make this the biggest launch in DICE's history." Therefore the decision was made to cancel development of Battlefield 1943's PC port along with a PC version of Battlefield Bad Company 2's Onslaught mode. Troedsson states, "Instead, our talented teams will focus on delivering the greatest possible gaming experience in our next behemoth release. We're confident this will lead to an even better experience in Battlefield 3, not only on PC, but on all platforms."

Battlefield 1943, basically a graphical remake of some of the maps and content of DICE's first game in the series, Battlefield 1942, was released back in July 2009 for the Xbox 360 and PS3 consoles via download. The game went on to become a huge sales hit for the developer and its publisher Electronic Arts. DICE promised a number of times in the that a PC version would be released, stating at one point that the delay was to give PC players more features such as DirectX 10 graphics support, 32 player support in multiplayer and more. As recently as last November a DICE team member said the PC version was still in development.

It's Thursday night and we know that college students, at least here in the US, consider that day to be the actual start of the weekend. Just remember that 8 am test you still have to take tomorrow.

• Heroes of Newerth has a new automatic patch available to download that adds some new flags, icons and bundles, among other things
• Steam has automatic updates available for Blue Toad Murder Files and The Polynomial.
• GoG.com has added Alien Shooter 2 to its list of DRM-free games.
• Game Informer has a three part video interview with Bethesda Game Studios head Todd Howard.
• Apparently James Cameron loves Crysis 2.
• This guy is playing the original Max Payne with the Kinect controller.
• And finally here's a Battlefield Bad Company 2 music video with music by Toto..sort of.

Owners of gaming PCs with Nvidia GeForce-based graphics cards can now grab the first beta graphics drivers of 2011. The GeForce.com web site now has the downloads to the new 266.35 beta drivers for the GeForce family of graphics chips. The beta drivers support the newly launched GeForce GTX 580 and GeForce GTX 570 graphics chips.

The new drivers boost performance for the 400 and 500 family of GeForce-based cards in a number of PC games including Battlefield Bad Company 2, Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 and many others. In addition the new drivers add ambient occlusion support for StarCraft 2, allowing for more realistic lighting and shadows in the Blizzard RTS game. You can check out examples of how ambient occlusion looks in the game at the GeForce.com web site.

Finally the new drivers have some changes and additions for Nvidia's 3D Vision feature. The drivers now support seeing some PC games in 3D in a game window as opposed to just full screen support. More 3D Vision-supported games have been added including Medal of Honor, Need For Speed Hot Pursuit and DC Universe Online.

[Via Blue's News]

The latest weekly top 10 sales list on the Steam PC game service is highly affected by the service's currently holiday sales event (which shuts down at 1 pm Eastern time today). The list of games for last week shows Battlefield Bad Company 2 on top yet again after price cuts due to the holiday sales event.

The full top 10 list is as follows

1. Battlefield Bad Company 2 - DICE/EA
2. Crysis Maximum Edition - Crytek/WA
3. Grand Theft Auto IV Complete Edition - Rockstar North/Rockstar Games
4. Neverwinter Nights 2 Platinum - BioWare/Obsidian Entertainment/Atari
5. Left 4 Dead 2 - Valve
6. Call of Duty Black Ops - Treyarch/Activision
7. Need For Speed Hot Pursuit - Criterion Games/EA
8. Amnesia The Dark Descent - Frictional Games
9. Call of Duty Moden Warfare 2 - Infinity Ward/Activision
10. Battlefield Bad Company 2 Vietnam - DICE/EA

We are already into 2011 and Electronic Arts is holding the first big PC game download sale of the year (or at least the first one that isn't carried over from 2010). From now until the end of the day today you can save 44 percent off even recent games from the publisher.

That means you can get the PC port of Need For Speed Hot Pursuit for $27.97 or Medal of Honor Digital Deluxe Edition for $33.37. Or you can get Battlefield Bad Company 2 for a mere $11.17, which is less than the game's recently released expansion pack Battlefield Bad Company 2 Vietnam is currently selling for.

The PC players of the first person shooter Battlefield Bad Company 2 and its just released expansion pack Battlefield Bad Company 2 Vietnam have been busy since the call went out to unlock the fifth map in the expansion pack. Earlier this morning the PC players reached the 69 million team actions goal in the games and as a result unlocked the map, Operation Hastings.

The goal was reached in less than eight days as the race started to unlock Operation Hastings on December 22. At the moment the Xbox 360 and PS3 players of the game are still less than halfway to achieving the same goal as their PC counterparts.

Even though PC games have gotten a new surge in popularity lately, piracy of PC game software remains a huge concern. This week the web site Torrentfreak.com reports that the single most pirated PC game of the past year is developer Treyarch's first person shooter Call of Duty Black Ops. The site claims that even though the game was released in November, the site claims that it was downloade 4,270,000 times. The report claims the data comes "from several sources, including reports from all public BitTorrent trackers."

In second place was Battlefield Bad Company 2 which the report claims was downloaded 3,960,000 times in 2010. Mafia 2, Mass Effect 2 and StarCraft II make up the rest of the top five.

The Steam PC game download service is in the middle of its annual holiday sales event as as such Steam's weekly list of its top 10 best selling PC games is going to be affected. This past week's list shows Battlefield Bad Company 2 at the number one spot this week, boosted most likely by a one day sale that cut its price by 75 percent. For the first time in two months Call of Duty Black Ops is not in the top 10 sales list.

The full top 10 list is below:
1. Battlefield Bad Company 2 - DICE/EA
2. Dragon Age Origins Ultimate Edition - BioWare/EA
3. Battlefield Bad Company 2 Vietnam - DICE/EA
4. Super Meat Boy - Team Meat
5. Sid Meier's Civilization V - Firaxis Games/2K Games
6. Darksiders - Vigil Games/THQ
7. Mass Effect 2 - BioWare/EA
8. Borderlands Game of the Year - Gearbox Software/2K Games
9. The Witcher - CD Projekt Red/Atari
10. Mass Effect 2 Digital Deluxe Edition - BioWare/EA

Some countries call December 26 Boxing Day; others simply call it, "A day to rest up after eating all that Christmas dinner." Whatever you call it the Steam PC game download site has a new batch of price cuts that will last until 1 pm Eastern time on Monday. Today's deals are all repeats of one day price cuts from Steam in the past week.

Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light - $5.10
Wings of Prey - $5.99
Dead Rising 2 - $19.99
F.E.A.R. 1/2 - $9.99
Super Meat Boy - $3.75
Borderlands - Save 50 percent off original game and DLC
Assassin's Creed II - $14.99
The Witcher - $4.99
Mass Effect 1/2 - Save 50 percent off both games
Darksiders - $9.99
Battlefield Bad Company 2 - $6.80
Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 - $29.99