The latest official Battlefield 3 video takes us back to Paris for an extended look at some chaotic combat and destruction across their highly awarded map; Operation Metro. Also on the BF3 front is Cowen & Company's first year sales forecast of 11 million units, putting pre-orders on par with Call of Duty: Black Ops. Infinity Ward's Robert Bowling even says he'll buy a copy.


- Battlefield 3 pre-orders 'comparable to CoD: Black Ops' - analyst
- Infinity Ward's Robert...

This is hardly news, but I couldn't resist throwing it on the front page to share with all of you. For those that have been living under a rock for the last week, Charlie Sheen is dry drunk and batshit insane - and it's wildly entertaining. A rather clever Black Ops mash-up has been put together, making use of many of Sheen's recent torpedoes of truth in the context of pwning newbs online. Most importantly; "winning!" Have a look, have a chuckle, and remember kids: drugs are bad...

Update: the patch is now live on Steam! Have a read of the official Steam news article for a full list of fixes.

The wait is almost over. Treyarch's pcdev on Twitter sends word that the "PC patch going live today (PST)." That update was made approximately ten minutes prior to writing this article, and means the release window is during the next eight hours. By the time most of you get home from work today, you might have a stutter-free Black Ops! Click here for a list of apparent fixes. ...

It's a couple days overdue, but JD_2020 has finally updated Treyarch's "in progress" fix list for the PC version of Call of Duty: Black Ops. And it's huge. On that list is "connect" and "reconnect" commands to the console, the fixing of "random freezes" and improvements to the problematic spawn system. Unfortunately, there is no word of bomb and footstep volume levels updated which has already been done on consoles, and no word on a radar exploit fix. Here's the full list......

Owners of Call of Duty: Black Ops have been waiting impatiently for over a week now for word on a patch to finally resolve the GPU hitching problem, as well as the vast array of others. JD_2020, Treyarch's community manager, writes "I wanted to reassure you we're still here and listening, and working on a patch." He wasn't willing to give an ETA, but did document patch time-lines, from information gathering to deployment, which can take up to a month. ...

Treyarch's community manager, JD_2020, has just updated us on what exactly was fixed in the latest patch, but more importantly what wasn't - but will be. As you're probably aware, CPU performance improvements were made, dropping usage and upping frame rates. However poor saps like me on an Nvidia GTX480 are still experiencing hitching and stuttering. If you're in my boat, Treyarch hasn't forgotten about us!...

All the way back at the start of November, we wrote about Activision's all-kinds-of-excellent "There's A Soldier In All Of us" live-action Call of Duty: Black Ops trailer. In it, we saw a bunch of names plastered on weapons, such as Jimmy Kimmel's "PROUD n00b" and Kobe Bryant's "MAMBA". We also spotted "SSG TRAN", and after some digging had come to the conclusion that it was a tribute to a Staff Sergeant Tran, killed in action during 2009. How wrong we were!

The SSG Tran actually featured in the trailer, Thom Tran, stopped by the forums to clear things up and gave us a quick run-down on his involvement. So while he was here, we thought we might as well flesh out the details of his involvement with Black Ops. Don't be surprised if it feels like you already know him very well - you've been shooting him for the last fortnight!

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Just under an hour ago, Treyarch sent a new PC patch live. While an official announcement of what it addresses has not been made, it was previously disclosed that it would address long shader compile times on Nvidia 4 series cards and other FPS optimizations, as well as CPU optimizations and a Zombie matchmaking fix. ...

Treyarch-run "pcdev" on Twitter was re-awoken today, to deliver a heap of very, very regular updates and replies to the PC Call of Duty: Black Ops community. The account with the proud bio of "kb+mouse or die" tweets that they're "Still super busy in the dev cave. Not stopping. Keep talking. We're listening. Patches incoming. Frag on." And while that statement is somewhat reassuring, we want cold hard facts. We want details. And pcdev delivers!...

Tired of seeing those red spikes in your Call of Duty: Black Ops lag-o-meter? We hear you. Five days after launch, Gameservers.com are still pursuing a resolution in hand with Treyarch, but still do not understand the source of the problem, nor have an accurate estimated time of arrival for a working fix. They have decided to keep us in the loop despite that, making another statement on the matter earlier today....

Now that a performance patch has been released, let's get stuck in!

See you all on the Gamers-Underground.com servers tonight from 9pm Sydney time onwards.

Don't forget to join Mumble: http://gamers-underground.com/conten...oice-chat.html

Modern Warfare 2 was the biggest day-one launch in entertainment history. Was. Call of Duty: Black Ops has made an astonishing $360 million in the US and UK alone during the first 24 hours of sale - $50 million more than MW2! Activision internal estimates suggest that's approximately 5.6 million copies, compared to 4.7 million....

Treyarch community manager, JD_2020, has posted on the Steam forums notifying us that Black Ops has just been graced with a client-side update, hopefully resolving the stuttering issues that have been such a hot topic over past days. The patch claims to fix the non-operational "friends" tab in the server browser, improve performance for dual and quad core computers, as improve the connectivity of the Black Ops Remote Console. ...

Update: users already playing on 'fixed' servers are claiming the network lag has been resolved, but the intermittent stutters and freezes remain. We'll continue to monitor feedback and report back as soon as we know more.

Getting any real information out of anyone regarding the Call of Duty: Black Ops lag issues plaguing players has been like squeezing blood out of stone. Twitter updates and blog posts from various representatives have been non-committal, vague or entirely ignorant to the problems many PC gamers are experiencing. Finally though, we have some real news. It's not much, but it's something....

We've had an official response from Gameservers.com regarding the performance issues that are effecting PC owners of Call of Duty: Black Ops. Service representative, Beau Young, has told us that "there is a known issue with major FPS lag on the servers, even with a low number of players. Treyarch is aware of this and we are in contact with them to find a resolution for it as soon as possible."...