DigitalBattle.com

Steam has 70% of PC download market, says Stardock

We always knew that Steam was a massive endeavor, continuously filling up the treasure chests in Valve’s basements. But we never really knew how big a chunk of the market it has, and now Stardock, one of its competitors, says that Steam has about a 70% of the digital distribution market share on the PC, which, as Kotaku points out, is about the same market share that Apple has in the digital music download sector.

This can only add to the criticism that Valve and Steam should be separated into different companies. But don’t count on that any time soon.

Sony looking into paid subscriptions for PS3 online area

Sony’s Kaz “Riiidge Racer” Hirai said during a presentation yesterday that Sony expects the PlayStation Network for the PS3 and PSP to generate $500 million in revenues this fiscal year, but, he also added another thing, a far more disturbing picture…

Hirai mentioned that Sony was looking into “premium subscriptions” for the online service, much like Xbox Live Gold on the Xbox 360. The PS3’s bit selling point has always been that it’s free to play online, and that may change soon. Hirai is quoted by CVG saying,

“Especially in the online area, we are studying the possibility of introducing a subscription model, offering premium content and services, in addition to the current free services.”

Great. Just as we thought the PS3 was catching up to the Xbox 360.

MW2 rockets GameStop Q3 profits

One of the biggest winners from the successful launch of Modern Warfare 2, besides Activision, is GameStop, which saw its Q3 profits hit $52 million, on $1.8 billion in revenue. GameStop said the profits were fueled by Modern Warfare 2, which was the biggest launch in the history of the company, and sold 2.5 million copies in its first 72 hours. The company projects the good times into the upcoming months, with the release of Assassin’s Creed 2 and New Super Mario Bros. Wii.

Borderlands soundtrack coming Dec. 8

If you’ve played Borderlands, and you really should, you’ve listened to the sweet tunes from the game, and you’ll soon have a chance to throw them on your iPod as well. Gearbox announced that the soundtrack will be released on iTunes on December 8, and includes composers such as Jesper Kyd, Sascha Dikiciyan, Cris Velasco and Raison Varner.

However, it won’t include the hit song “Ain’t No Rest For The Wicked“, which has been featured in the game and its promo material. Bummer.

Modern Warfare 2 brings in $550 million so far

It’s no secret that Modern Warfare 2 was going to move a lot of dough for Activision, but how much? Well, $550 million, that’s how much, according to the publisher. The game has now sold almost 10 million copies, and has generated over half a billion dollars in revenue in the first five days of its release. While you’re crunching over those number, you can check out our Modern Warfare 2 review.

Facebook now available on PS3

The latest PS3 firmware update, 3.10, finally adds Facebook support to the console, which includes automatic trophy and purchase updates, which will be posted to your Facebook status (if you want to share that kind of info). Facebook (and Twitter) has been available on the Xbox 360 for a while now, and Sony is looking to add full Twitter support to the PS3 very soon.

Nvidia launches GeForece GT 240

While we wait for Nvidia’s next gen chip, codenamed “Fermi”, the company has followed its old style of re-branding and re-releasing old chips. Well, not quite this time, as the new GT 240 chip is still the same technology, but is built on 40nm process and includes DirectX 10.1 support — at a time where the big deal is DirectX 11.

The new graphics card is mainstream oriented, and should offer decent performance and low power consumption, at a decent price. The chip is outfitted with 96 stream processors clocked at 1360MHz, while the graphics core runs at 550MHz, with idle power load at just 9W. It’ll retail later this week for $99.

60% of UK Xbox 360s have failed

It’s no secret that the Xbox 360 hardware hasn’t been the most stable out there, in fact, it’s quite crappy, with an estimated “official” failure rate between 30 and 40 percent. But it seems that the rate is even larger in the UK, where CNet recently did a poll which revealed that a whopping 60% of the consoles have failed at one point or another. While it’s not a scientific study, it’s still surprising, especially considering that GameInformer did a similar study in the US, where over 50% of the users reported console malfunctions.

Modern Warfare 2 Xbox 360 outsells PS3 by 2:1

This is sure gonna fuel the heated debate between the Xbox 360 and PS3 fanboys, although in the Xbox 360s favor: it has been revealed that Modern Warfare 2 is selling twice as many copies on the Xbox 360 than on the PlayStaion 3. It’s not that big of a surprise, really, since the 360 has a bigger install base and better online functionality — Modern Warfare 2 even contributed to setting a new record on Xbox Live with over 2 million members online at once.

Banned Xbox 360s flood Craigslist

Oh boy, who’d have expected this: after Microsoft banned and bricked a million Xbox 360s, which were modded to play pirated games, XBox 360 consoles are now appearing on Craigslist all over the US, with prices starting as low as $120. While it’s fairly cheap and you might play games offline, you can’t go online with your modded console from Craigslist, and what’ and Xbox 360 without Xbox Live anyway? Oh, and there’s no warranty on modded consoles. Just so you know.

Xbox Live hits 2 million concurent users online

While Xbox Live’s online membership exceeds 20 million (minus one million), but the real milestone was made earlier yesterday, when a whopping 2 million users were online at the same time, most of which were playing Modern Warfare 2 (what else would they play, seriously?). And this news comes after Microsoft banned over a million users from Xbox Live. There’s nothing like large numbers the game companies throw at us. We sure like it.

Xbox 360 sells 10 million units in Europe

Europe has usually always come in second to North America when it comes to game and console sales, despite having a larger population. Microsoft today announced that the Xbox 360 has sold 10 million consoles in Europe, Africa and The Middle East (although the latter two only account for a few hundred thousand units).

The console has sold 12 million units in North America and 1 million in Japan since its release back in 2005, with worldwide sales topping 30 million.

Facebook support coming to PS3

Mega-social network Facebook is already coming out on the Xbox 360 (alongside Twitter) later this month, and now Sony is getting a piece of that action as well, as Facebook has been confirmed for the PlayStation 3, after leaked shots showed some Facebook action on the console. Details haven’t been released yet, but we assume that it’ll at least support whatever the Xbox 360 supports in terms of functionality.

Microsoft banning 1 million Xbox Live users

Information Week suggests that Microsoft has banned over 5% of Xbox Live members because they use modded consoles. Since there are just over 20 million Live members, it means over 1 million accounts have been suspended because they use modded consoles, which makes them play pirated games.

Modern Warfare 2 sells 4.7 million on first day

Modern Warfare 2 is officially a “record breaking” game, selling no less than 4.7 million copies on day one, across all systems in North America and UK (rest of the world wasn’t tracked, meaning the number is definitely higher). The previous record was 3.6 million and was held by Grand Theft Auto 4. Stay tuned for our Modern Warfare 2 review later today.