The GameShadow Blog

Activision Blizzard has announced it expects to release the next edition in the popular first person shooter series, Wolfenstein, this summer. An end of year date had been expected, but now it’s due to hit the PC, XBOX 360 and PS3 in the June to August period. The game’s being developed by Raven Software and is [...]

It looks that the Call of Duty: World at War map pack could be just round the corner. I saw this (above) when browsing through the Game Marketplace yesterday. Right now it’s quite confusing as the section it’s advertising doesn’t include any W@W stuff. How long is Microsoft intending on it being this way? And [...]

Update – Activision has now announced 100 redundancies at Radical, as a result of the cancellation of Scarface 2. The Crash Bandicoot and Prototype teams are assumed largely untouched. Biggest development upheaval in recent memory. Sierra, once the leading player in interactive entertainment, has gone through its most recent upheaval, and not come out unscathed. [...]

The Lich King Beta seems to be fully in the swing of things, with the client available for download from the Lich King website. Sadly, it’s still a limited affair, with participants randomly selected from those entering via the sign up page. It’s not too late to get involved, though, so hit the link to [...]

Infinity Ward – of Call of Duty fame – has announced on its blog that the company has completed talks with publisher / parent company Activision, and is set to embark on new projects. “[The negotiation] has laid the ground work and kick started our future project, as well as the possibility of a unique [...]

Senior Activision Producer Noah Heller speaking to Eurogamer has completely blasted genre competitor Brothers in Arms. “I watched the trailer and I’m was like ‘These guys aren’t even in the same league’. We don’t even think about them… We don’t want to look at someone who’s just making a crappy war game.” Now, I’m all [...]

So, the big news is that Diablo III’s definitely on the way, and is a good way into its dev cycle. The surprising news is that Blizzard released a lot of details of the weekend. You can grab a huge 20 min gameplay trailer right here, while there’s a flashier but less informative cinematic trailer [...]

“With Call of Duty: World at War, we’re re-defining what it means to play a WWII game,” says Treyarch boss Mark Lamia. “We’re excited to give players a host of new enemies that employ entirely new tactics, as well as new, groundbreaking tools – like co-op and the flamethrower – to succeed in the epic [...]

In a word, it’s CoD4 +1. Yes, CoD5 will take the common sequel route of dishing out a souped up version of the last game, complete with all the features you wanted the first time around, developed by a different team. The game will be developed by Treyarch – the team behind CoD3 – rather [...]

Shacknews is reporting the early details of the next in Activision’s Guitar Hero franchise: multiple instruments and song creation. Guitar Hero was a series originally developed by Harmonix which went on to revolutionise music and party gaming. When the developer fell out with publisher Activision, the team moved on to join forces with EA and [...]

Variety reports that Activision is to review all Sierra/Vivendi games due for release in 2009, with the future survival of all projects resting on the new owner’s appraisal of them. With EA moving into a hostile position regarding its proposed purchase of Take Two, news regarding 2007′s merger between Activision and Vivendi - thereby creating the world’s [...]

Industry analysts are suggesting the EA – Take Two takeover is likely to happen at some stage. When it does, EA/Take Two and Activision/Blizzard will be the two dominant publishers by a staggering distance. Do we need to be worried? Short answer ‘yes’, long answer ‘no’. There’s no denying that publisher acquisitions have, in the [...]

In an unexpected announcement over the weekend, Vivendi, the parent company of Blizzard, has bought a controlling stake in Activision. The combined business, to be called Activision Blizzard, will be the largest third-party publisher in the world, with revenues of $3.8 billion compared with EA’s $3.1 billion. The deal is quite complicated. In the first [...]