PlayStation 3, Marketing

Capcom has defended the storage of planned DLC on Street Fighter X Tekken discs to the Better Business Bureau, arguing that there is "no distinction" between content stored on a disc or offered as a download. More >

A group of players unhappy with Activision and Infinity Ward's post launch support for Modern Warfare 3 are calling on the wider community to join them in not playing the game for a day in protest. Revealed in a YouTube video, the campaign urges players to refrain from playing Modern Warfare 3 online for 24 hours on April 20, and lays out a litany of problems with the game that its developer has thusfar declined to fix. More >

BioWare insists it is listening to complaints about Mass Effect 3's ending, but has asked fans to wait for more people to finish the game before the studio makes any comment. So dissatisfied are players with the trilogy's conclusion that a fan-organised campaign, dubbed Reclaim Mass Effect 3, has garnered support from thousands of users on Facebook, Twitter and the game's forums. The movement has even raised over $50,000 for gaming charity Child's Play. More >

Organisers of a petition pleading with BioWare to change the ending of Mass Effect 3 have raised over $30,000 for gaming charity Child's Play. The campaign, dubbed Retake Mass Effect 3, has almost 25,000 likes on Facebook and 3,000 followers on Twitter, with a poll on BioWare's forums attracting almost 10,000 votes. We won't go into the finer details of their complaints for fear of plot spoilers. More >

Self-styled "game director and alleged psychopath" David Jaffe has kicked off Twisted Metal's marketing campaign in typical style, inviting players to fire an automatic weapon from the comfort of their desks. "I'm here to tell you about the epic return of gaming's most sick, depraved franchise," he says. "It's Twisted Fucking Metal on PlayStation 3, and it's back, bitch." More >

Pete Hines, Bethesda's VP of PR and marketing, has asked for players to give the publisher time as it works on patching out problems with The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. Yesterday we reported that Bethesda had acknowledged texture scaling issues on the Xbox 360 version of the game. Since then, PS3 players have reported texture streaming problems and stuttering framerates, while those with the PC version are complaining of freezes of several seconds in length in outdoors sections. More >

As part of an extensive three-month marketing campaign to promote the upcoming Skylanders: Spyro's Adventure, Activision is partnering with the influential, and often reactionary, parenting website Mumsnet. More >

Edge publisher Future has teamed up with Sony Computer Entertainment UK to launch Access, a new on-console PS3 video show available to download for free every Wednesday from the PlayStation Store. More >

To promote its upcoming shooter, Sony has enlisted the services of Punchdrunk, an alternative theatre company, whose show "…and darkness descended" takes place in London next weekend. The audience form part of the titular resistance, tasked with getting a message to a group of US survivors who feature in the early scenes of the game itself. Punchdrunk's artistic director Felix Barrett said: "We are fascinated by the level of immersion that is inherent within videogame and the possible interface with the real world…we get a chance to apply PlayStation's game mechanics and transpose them to a live environment." The firmware update jokes write themselves. We'll have a man on the ground at Waterloo Station Arches next weekend, and assuming he's not disembowelled by grumpy Chimera his report will be in a future issue.

Naughty Dog has thanked players after more than one million Uncharted fans signed up to the multiplayer beta of Drake's Deception last week. "One day after the beta went fully public, we passed one million unique players in the Uncharted 3 multiplayer beta," writes Naughty Dog community strategist Arne Meyer on the PlayStation blog. "Not only that, but the player count is growing with each passing day! We couldn't be prouder of our community coming out in such numbers to play in the Uncharted 3 multiplayer beta." The beta will come to an end on Thursday (July 14). Last week, Sony announced that the UK release date for the game had been moved forward three days.

Sledgehammer Games VP and COO Michael Condrey has revealed, in a response to a player's question on the studio's blog, that Modern Warfare 3 will offer a Colour Blind Assist mode. "[The number of people with Colour Vision Deficiency varies] depending on which source you quote, but we estimate that nearly a million gamers are playing Call Of Duty every day with this issue," he writes. Modern Warfare 3 is due for release on November 8.

Opening as usual with a keynote address given by Id co-founder John Carmack, this year's QuakeCon will see the first public presentations of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and Prey 2. Rage, the Id shooter set for release in October, will be playable on the show floor, design director Matt Hooper will host a special presentation of the game. QuakeCon 2011 will run from August 4th to 7th at the Hilton Anatole Hotel in Dallas, Texas, and entry is free. To register, click the source link below.

SCEE's compensation for the PSN downtime to Home users has been some time coming: the free games offered as part of the Welcome Back programme were available almost four weeks ago. The virtual goods on offer to users of PS3's social virtual world are worth a combined £65, and include an anime-themed personal space and furniture set, as well as clothing, games and a party bundle containing smoke machines and balloons. All content is brand new, SCEE says, and is available to download from PlayStation Home until July 28.