Welcome again gamers to the New Gamer Nation Weekly News. If this is your first time sit right back and absorb the information that may or may not blow your minds clean out of your skulls. We cover news involving Activision; A rumor on the next Playstation, A better look at the Last Of Us enemies, news on Electronic Arts and more. So pause your game, it’s time for the New Gamer Nation News.

Robert Bowling Resigns From Activision

Creative Strategist of Call of Duty and Infinity Ward, Robert Bowling has resigned from Activision. The news came via Twitter, Monday afternoon. Infinity Ward responded “We wish Robert all the best. Thanks for everything. For continued MW updates & all things IW follow @infinityward.”

As far as what this means for the Call of Duty franchise is unknown, as is the future of Bowling. I will guess that it will be business as usual for Activision and the Call of Duty team.

Next Generation Playstation Rumors

For what it’s worth, “reliable sources” have leaked some details regarding the Sony’s next home console. According to Kotaku, the next system will either be called, or has the codename “Orbis”. Some of the specs of the next system could include an AMD x64 CPU, and an AMD Southern Islands GPU allowing for 4096×2160 resolution, which exceeds most high definition televisions, however should allow 3D games to be played in full 1080p. The system is also said to drop backward compatibility for Playstation 3 game. Also, as rumored with the next XBox, the next Sony console is rumored to have some kind of anti used game setting in place.

According to the source, new games for the system will be available either on a Blu-Ray disc or as a PSN download. If you buy the disc, it must be locked to a single PSN account, after which you can play the game, save the whole thing to your HDD, or peg it as “downloaded” in your account history and be free to download it at a later date. Should the game be traded in, the player buying the used copy will be limited as to what they can play on the disc.

The source also told Kotaku, “select developers” have been receiving development kits for the new console since the beginning of this year. Revised and improved versions of these kits were sent out around the time of the Game Developers Conference, while more finalized beta units will be shipped to developers towards the end of 2012. This should give those developers time to finish their games for the alleged “2013 holiday season” launch.

Source: Kotaku

The Last of Us Enemies Images Revealed

More details keep coming out for Naughty Dog’s next title, The Last of Us. Naughty Dog Co-President, Evan Wells uploaded a picture to his twitter account showing a bust of the “infected” humans in The Last of Us. This is not an in game image, but looks like an actual statue of how the infected humans look in the game, for the game artists to use. I just have one question about these infected humans. Without eyesight, ears, or nose, to sense healthy humans, how do these things find you? Maybe there’s something I’m missing but I’ll let Naughty Dog tell the story here.

To view the picture of the infected human click here.

EA Shuts Down Servers To 11 Games

Starting April 13, 2012 Electronic Arts will shut down the servers to 11 games, one of which was released January 11, of this year. The decision was made to shut down the servers quite simply because not enough people were playing these games online.

“The decisions to retire older EA games are never easy. The development teams and operational staff pour their hearts into these games almost as much as the customers playing them and it is hard to see one retired. But as games get replaced with newer titles, the number of players still enjoying the older games dwindles to a level — fewer than 1% of all peak online players across all EA titles — where it’s no longer feasible to continue the behind-the-scenes work involved with keeping these games up and running. We would rather our hard-working engineering and IT staff focus on keeping a positive experience for the other 99% of customers playing our more popular games. We hope you have gotten many hours of enjoyment out of the games and we appreciate your ongoing patronage.”

While it is a common practice to shut down servers for older games, Spare Parts is the most recent game on the list, as that was released in January. EA Sports MMA is also a standout because it was one of the first games to feature EA’s infamous online pass, and I remember the E3 presentation for the game. There was a ton of online heavy promotion for the game including camps, and online Pay Per View style events where players talked smack online before the fight, and StrikeForce commentators would call the action.

The list of games having their servers shut down April 13 are as follows:
BOOM BLOX Bash Party for Wii
Burnout™ Revenge for Xbox 360
EA Create for Mac, PC, PlayStation 3, Wii and Xbox 360
EA Sports Active 2.0 for PlayStation 3, Wii and Xbox 360
EA Sports Active NFL Training Camp for Wii
FIFA 10 for PlayStation Portable and Wii
The Godfather™ II for PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360
MMA for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360
Need for Speed™ ProStreet for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360
The Saboteur™ (loss of The Midnight Club access) for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360
Spare Parts for PlayStation 3 Xbox 360

Let us know what you think, does this set a precedent to put a time limit on servers to be shut down? Do you think other companies, such as Activision, might follow suit and shut down certain Call of Duty servers to get people to play the latest version of the game? Leave a comment and let us know what you think.

Source: Electronic Arts

That’s all we have for you this week gamers, let us know what you think of the stories in the comment section below. So until next week, game on gamers.

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About The Author

As a three time platinum trophy earner, Jose is always serving his master Gaming...FOREVER MAY HE (or she) REIGN!!! Writing for New Gamer Nation and might pop up just about anywhere. Oh yeah, follow him on Twitter @DSB_IV