Here’s an interesting thought for a Friday afternoon: What if AMD had acquired the graphical developers Nvidia instead of ATI? According to a report from The Inquirer, that could have been the case. Ex-employees of Advanced Micro Devices claim that Nvidia was the company’s initial target.

AMD are said to have been in negotiations with Nvidia for a while, but failed to reach an agreement. A particular sticking point was just who would take leadership of the company after the transition. Nvidia CEO, Jen Hsun, was apparently keen to keep the role for himself, but AMD weren’t feeling it.

While the subsequent acquisition of ATI now appears to have been a somewhat successful one, entertaining the idea that it could have been Nvidia instead is certainly something that brings about a feeling of, “what if?”

[Source: The Inquirer]

The Ultimate Edition comes complete with the full game and the for DLC packs: Dead Money, Honest Hearts, Old World Blues and Lonesome Road. You’ll also get yourself some extra weapons, ammo packs and recipes with the Courier’s Stash and Gun Runners Arsenal add-on packs.

Fallout: New Vegas Ultimate Edition is available from your usual retailers. It’s currently going for £29.99 over on Steam.

I first got my hands on Counter-Strike: Global Offensive at last year’s Eurogamer Expo, and have been in the closed beta since it launched. But now’s your chance to get in on some classic multiplayer shooting, as Valve have now opened up a survey for those wishing to have a chance at getting a beta key.

Over the coming months we will make selections from the survey participants. Sometimes we might add experienced players, other times new players. Sometimes 1.6 players, sometimes CSS players, sometimes people who have played neither.

Head over here to read more and register your interest.

[Source: CS: GO Blog]

NCsoft have just opened up a website for those yearning at a chance to play their upcoming MMO Guild Wars 2, allowing for people to sign up for a chance at participating in the game’s beta. However, it’s only going to be open for 48 hours, so get on it, folks!

Head over here to register your interest, where you’ll be asked to submit a hardware specifications report via the DxDiag tool, you can then enter the rest of your details. Then it’s just a matter of crossing your fingers and hoping for the best.

The sign ups will close at 18:00 GMT on Friday, February 24th.

The latest news from Hi-Rez Studios, currently developing Tribes: Ascend, will be music to the ears of anybody who’s been hunting high and low for a beta key to date. From this Friday, February 24th, at 5pm GMT, the game will be entering the open beta phase — meaning anybody can head over to the website, sign-up, and play, with no need for an illusive string of digits.

“The Tribes: Ascend Closed Beta has exceeded our expectations”, says Todd Harris, Hi-Rez Studios Chief Operating Officer.  “Over 300,000 players participated in the closed beta and the game has improved greatly based on community feedback.  We are now excited to launch Open Beta this Friday.  We have expanded capacity in North America, Europe, and Australia and added new local servers to support growing communities in Brazil and Asia.”

Also coming to the game this week is a new patch which will bring new items, maps, fixes, and a whole new gametype, Arena Deathmatch.

Those wanting to get in on the beta can just head to TribesAscend.com from Friday at 5pm GMT.

Remedy did finally get Alan Wake to the platform it was originally intended for, and they even recouped all of their costs within the first 48 hours of going on sale. But, as with any new release, there are a few things to still be addressed by way of patches to get it running smoothly for everybody.

On which note, I have to commend Remedy on the way they’re going about it, being completely transparent in when they’ll be patching, and what they’ll be fixing and prioritising. To the extent where I’m feeling they’re simply going to win the PC crowd over even more than they have already.

A recent post over on the game’s forums reveals that a patch is planned for each of the next two weeks, with more to come at a later date. Also noted is that these lists could be added to, and that several bugs are still being checked out their end.

Here’s the full details from their post:

Patch 1 – This Week

• Fix problems of game not moving forward / triggering properly after videos. (Workaround: avoid pressing space or enter when those videos trigger, restarting the chapter helps)
• Nvidia tree flicker – if we manage to catch it. We are doing our best.
• Unofficial support for 640×480 and 800×600 resolution through command line
• Fix that blur occasionally gets re-enabled even if -noblur specified
• Add “rigidcamera” command line option for those who are sensitive to our current mouse/camera controls.
• Add possibility to bind mouse buttons 4 and 5
• Fix that the Developer Video Commentary volume is more sensible
• Fix that Localized cinematic audio volume is not too loud and adjustable
• Fix that going to menus during a cine skips the cinematic when you return to game
• Fix that controller ruble works even without weird workarounds of enabling it with keyboard
• Prevent binding controller keys and thus preventing weird problems
• Real Traditional Chinese translation for added PC strings. Apologies for the current Simplified Chinese in menus.
• Better CPU thread assignment for 3-Core AMD machines (smoother gameplay)

Patch 2 – Next Week

• Fix crashes when using alt-tab during loading
• Solve “File IO Failure” issue when unable to write to My Documents
• Somehow offer Latin-American Localizations through Steam
• Hopefully add a free camera for those who want to explore the world
• We’ll try to get SLI support in but can’t promise that yet…
• Continue sorting out other problems users have been having

A Future Patch
On our radar, but hasn’t been evaluated how much work these are, and we continue to prioritize based on feedback.

• Solve Cursor Key / Numpad assignment issues
• Remember camera side preference (tab key)
• Improve Stereoscopic 3D
• Longer grass draw distance option
• “Low Performance Mode” improvements

[Source: Alan Wake Forums]

EA and Funcom have just announced that their upcoming MMO, which is certainly looking to be a good one, will be delayed by a couple of months. After originally being set to release in April, the release has now been moved back to June 19th, allowing the studio to “add more polish”.

There’s also set to be some public beta tests before then, so although 750,000 are already in the current beta, even more of us will get the chance to check it our for ourselves before launch.

“Allowing for even more time to polish the game really shows just how much faith Funcom as a company has in ‘The Secret World’ and how committed we are to making it the best it can be,” says Creative Director and Senior Producer Ragnar Tørnquist. “The additional time will also allow us to carry out even more quality beta testing, and soon we will also be announcing several public beta events where hundreds of thousands of gamers will get to test the game prior to launch.”

If you want to know more on the game, or want to signup for the continuing beta tests, head over to TheSecretWorld.com.

It’s always good to see developers adding in extra ways to interact with their games via mobile apps and such, and World of Tanks is the latest to get the mobile treatment. Today, Wargaming.net have launched an iOS app for their tank-based MMO, with an Android version set to follow in the near future.

World of Tanks Assistant is a new application that provides instant access to the latest and most important information on World of Tanks. The Assistant gives access to detailed data on players’ combat statistics and their positions in the Global Rating, displays current progress, shows players’ in-game balance, provides the latest news from the official World of Tanks website, and allows to share triumphs with friends via email and social networks.

You can grab the app for free over on the App Store.

In a frighteningly similar matter to Razer’s recent “PC gaming is alive” fiasco, Roccat, another top PC gaming peripheral manufacturer have today launched a website entitled “Isn’t PC Gaming Dead?” It seems the company has a new product up its sleeve, and we’ll likely find out more about it at the upcoming CeBIT event.

Ren Korte, Roccat Founder and CEO, says: “We hope to get gamers thinking about where things are headed for PC gaming. Certain gaming peripheral companies constantly announce that they’ve come up with the ‘Next Big Thing’ that’s going to reinvent things. But does PC gaming really need revolution? Or, rather, is evolution the way forward? We, as always, have our own ideas. And very soon we’re going to show the world a new and exciting one.”

By heading over to the new site, you can submit your own message on where you think PC gaming is heading, and Roccat will be selecting some of them to be featured there.

Here’s a rather unique DLC offering to take a look at: Dungeon Defenders’ President’s Day Surprise. It’s free for limited time on Steam for those who own Dungeon Defenders, and it  offers a new “President’s Day: Battle Royale” mission. Playing through it can get you some rather political in-game pets, new weapons, and four new outfits that’ll mean you can get your own character looking like President Obama, Mitt Romney, Michelle Obama and George Washington.

Why you’d want to do that, though, I don’t really know. Must be an American thing…