wolfenstein posts

It's a known fact that games released in the US with any kind of Nazi symbols have to be edited out if they are to be released in Germany. Now it appears that some of those symbols may have slipped into the German version of Wolfenstein and now that game is being pulled from store shelves in that country.

Fan site Planet Wolfenstein, reporting the news from German language web sites, says that it's unknown at this time if publisher Activision Blizzard will try to re-edit and return the game to store shelves. Since the game hasn't been a sales success on this side of the Atlantic it's possible the company may cut its losses and not fool with returning the game to German stores.

[Via Blue's News]

A couple of weekend sales slipped through the cracks on Friday. Thankfully we are there to go through those cracks and expose them to the world. Shall we?

• GoGamer.com has put a number of current and older PC games on sale until 3 am ET on Tuesday. They include Need for Speed Shift for 30 percent off its normal price, Wolfenstein for 40 percent off its normal price and Heroes Over Europe for 40 percent off as well.
• GoG.com has put three of its strategy games (Celtic Kings: Rage of War, Original War and Haegemonia Gold Edition) on sale for 25 percent off their normal price until 11:50 pm ET on Monday.

Last month a developer from Raven Software pledged to pay for every copy of Wolfenstein sold if the first person shooter outsold Madden NFL 10. We figured that wasn't going to happen but we had no idea how badly the first person shooter would sell out of the gate.

Gamespot reports that according to the August 2009 sales figures from the NPD Group Wolfenstein managed to sell just over 17,000 copies of the PC version that month (it was released to stores on August 18). Combining the PC sales with the console versions and the game sold just 106,000 copies for the month. This was despite a solid marketing campaign by publisher Activision which included a tie-in to the release of the movie Inglourious Basterds. Activision laid off a number of Raven's team members shortly after Wolfenstein was released. The game is also the last in a long line of games that Activision published with id Software's input. id's next game Rage will be published by EA and their next Doom game will be published under its new owners at Zenimax Media.

This client allows users to set up a dedicated Wolfenstein multiplayer server without having to install the full game. The full Readme file notes are shown after the jump.

Download Wolfenstein Stand Alone Server Client (498 MB)
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Activision Blizzard may have had solid financial news to report recently but it seems even they are not immune to cutting back on expenses Shacknews first reported the news that Activision's in-house developer Raven Software has let of a number of its employees Today. Big Download contacted Raven Software for confirmaton and its studio head and co-founder Brian Raffel emailed us back stating, "Raven Software is slightly reducing its workforce to better reflect the studios upcoming slate." Shacknews reports that the number could be between 30 and 40 team members that are affected.

Raven has shipped two games for Activision this year; the April released movie based game X-Men Origins Wolverine and the just released FPS Wolfenstein. They are slated to release the original FPS Singularity sometime in the first quarter of 2010. Shacknews claims that today's layoffs affected the developer as a whole and that it did not affect just one team or department.

Formed just over a year ago, the 17 man team at UK-based Endrant Studios worked to create the multiplayer portion of Wolfenstein, the Activision published first person shooter that ships to stores today for the PC and other platforms. However, Gamesindustry.biz is now reporting that Endrant Studios has let go of a number of its team members on the same day the game is released.

A spokesperson for the developer would not confirm how many team members were let go, saying only that, "We have recently completed a development cycle and have regrettably been forced to make adjustments to staff and headcounts."

Wolfenstein launched today, once again letting players pit their skills and heavy firepower against an army of supernatural Nazis. At the same time, a patch is available, which updates the game to v1.1 and addresses a number of gameplay issues. Patches are available for the single player game and dedicated multiplayer server. A list of changes is shown after the jump.

Download Wolfenstein v1.1 Patch (32 MB)
Download Wolfenstein v1.1 Server Patch (30 MB)
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Two classic PC game franchises get new entries along with an all new RTS-FPS hybrid game:

Wolfenstein: id Software collaborates with their long time partner Raven Software for perhaps the final time in this latest entry in the game series that first launched the first person shooter genre. B.J. Blazkowicz is once again making things hard for the Nazi as they search for supernatural weapons to win World War II. The game's multiplayer features were handled by Endrant Studios.

On the show floor at QuakeCon 2009 various hardware exhibitors like Alienware, Intel and AMD were showing off Wolfenstein, the Raven Software developed next game in the long running shooter series begun by id Software. The full game comes out for the PC next week; however the version that was playable at QuakeCon wasn't the full game; it was a previously unannounced demo.

The demo, which gives gamers about 10 minutes of gameplay, allowed folks to play a small portion of the single player game as B.J. Blazkowicz and some AI controlled WWII resistance buddies take on the Nazis in a train station. You will get to sample the game's extra-dimensional "Veil" powers in the demo, especially when you have to face off against one of the more super powered Nazis with a particle cannon. Unfortunately we didn't get any info on when the Wolfenstein demo will be released publicly.

The full Wolfenstein game is playable at QuakeCon 2009, a week ahead of its release next week. At the presentation, the launch trailer made its big debut, getting fans revved up to take on supernatural Nazis once again. The game is scheduled to release on August 18th.

Download HD Wolfenstein Launch Trailer (124 MB)
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