BULLETCAST, July 18 – What you need to know now

By Patrick Garratt

Loads happened over the weekend and earlier this morning. Catch up right now.

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Read:

• Xbox CFO Dennis Durkin believes Microsoft Game Studios’ system is “superior” to Sony or Nintendo’s first-party performance “in terms of quality bars and units per title.”
• Modern Warfare 3′s story will “build up on the key themes” started in MW2, Infinity Ward has said. Word to the wise: watch for a lot more MW3 press later this week.
• Ubisoft announced Uplay Passport at the end of last week. This is the publisher’s version of EA’s Online Pass.
• Stace has taken a look at Call of Juarez: The Cartel ahead of its release later this week. It not looking great.
• The Uncharted 3 multiplayer beta has ended with 1.9 billion total kills.
• The Witcher 2’s getting a new, free quest as DLC in its next patch.
• Capcom’s supposedly going to announce Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 at Comic-Con this week.
• Activision has filed a complaint with the National Arbitration Forum against the holders of ModernWarfare3.com: the URL currently points to Battlefield 3’s website.
• South Australia Attorney-General John Rau is to drop the state’s current MA15+ ratings category for games in favour of R18+, regardless of national overhauls to the classifications system. This sounds good, but pretty much isn’t.
• EA has said “the App Store model is essentially in freefall,” in relation to micro-transactions in mobile games.
• Dead Rising 2: Off The Record will feature 30 percent more zombies, apparently.
• A lead programmer at Gameloft Auckland is the latest to complain about excessive working hours, saying he was recently putting in “100-120 hours a week”.
• Looks as though Batman: Arkham City’s going to get a $99 CE.
• Andy McNab’s writing a Battlefield novel.
• Here’s another 30 minutes of Resistance 3. There’ll be nothing left to see in the game at this rate.
• Making Star Wars Galaxies free-to-play “just isn’t financially viable,” Lucas has said. The MMO’s shutting later this year.
• Kojima doesn’t have the bandwidth to do a Snatcher sequel. Let it go, etc.
• Women who play online prefer games to sex, according to a new report. Who knew?