Considering that not everyone can afford to give hundreds of dollars on a tablet iPad, Amazon has released its own product at a price much lower than Apple’s.

Although not an iPad scales performance, performance that most users do not need anyway, tablet Kindle Fire, which costs only $ 199, has enjoyed great success, being sold from November 2011 until late last month in ten million units.

At least this is what the report made ​​by analysts at consulting firm Newzoo, the report also shows that the number of American users of Kindle Fire is 17,400,000, and of those using iPad 30,500,000. Of these 6.5 million use both products, the total number of Americans using tablets is 59 million, 36% are using them for games.

And in Britain there are enough Kindle Fire users, namely 3.7 million, but the number of those who prefer iPad is almost double, 7.5 million.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3′s publisher Activision Blizzard, Inc announced, Monday, that its most recent entry to first-person shooter game genre grossed $1 billion in sales just 16 days after its release on November 8, 2011.

The proud publisher put MW3 in line with highest grossing entertainment franchises in the planet like “Harry Potter,” “Star Wars” and the National Football League.

Activision also said in a statement that its high-budgeted game bested James’ Cameron movie “Avatar” which earned $1 billion in gross sales in 17 days after it premiered in 2009.

Meanwhile, giant online store Amazon.com also declared MW3 as the no. 1 game in 2011 even if there are three weeks remaining before the year ends.

Here is the top 10 best-selling games in Amazon.com sold as discs, not as digital downloads:

1. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 (Activision Blizzard)
2. Just Dance 3 (Ubisoft Entertainment)
3. Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (Bethesda Softworks)
4. Battlefield 3 (Electronic Arts)
5. Portal 2 (Electronic Arts)
6. Batman: Arkham City (Warner Bros. Interactive)
7. Just Dance 2 (Ubisoft)
8. Madden NFL 12 (Electronic Arts)
9. Gears of War 3 (Microsoft)
10. Call of Duty: Black Ops (Activision)

Heads up, poor gamers! Have you ever been frustrated that some great titles are sold at high prices? Today, 2 great games have been featured in Steam’s Today’s Deal and Midweek Madness sale events.

Today’s Deal features Crysis, along with the standalone expansion Crysis: Warhead, and a bundle that contains both games. Crysis is a very well respected first person shooter as a Singleplayer campaign, and its graphics have been the benchmark for long after release. The offer ends in less than 24 hours from now, so you should better hurry if you are interested.

The Midweek Madness offer concerns Portal 2, and features a bundle that contains Portal along with Portal 2. In the current offer, Portal 2 comes with the newly released DLC Peer Review free of charge.

The special discount items are the following:

Crysis 75% down, at $7.49 down from $29.99

Crysis: Warhead 75% down, at $7.49 down from $29.99

Crysis Complete Pack (contains Crysis and Crysis: Warhead) 75% down, at $14.99 down from $59.99

Portal 2 50% down, at $14.99 down from $29.99

Portal Bundle (contains Portal and Portal 2) 50% down, at $17.49 down from $34.98

Portal 2 is the sequel to the popular first person, dimensional puzzle game. The Singleplayer mode of Portal 2 introduces a cast of new characters, a plenty of new puzzle elements, and many more test chambers than the original Portal has offered. Portal 2 features environments rebuilt by GlaDOS from the ruined Aperture Science Labs. Portal 2 also features the new two-player co-op mode, which has an entirely standalone campaign with its own unique story, test chambers, and its 2 new player characters.

In Crysis, you play the role of an elite soldier sent in a nano suit with a small squad in a rescue mission. You have such super abilities as high speed, incredible strength and cloaking, which you can utilize to complete your mission. But the mission is interrupted as an alien race enters the battlefield, and you since then have no way to go but to fight for your survival. You will get to develop your suit and use alien technology. The game has a solid engine and has been the graphical benchmark in PC gaming for a few years.

Also, for whoever is interested, The Witcher 2:  Assassins of the Kings Digital Premium Edition is still on a 25% discount, and Sniper: Ghost Warrior: Gold Edition is still on a 40% discount.

The regular Weekend Deal event of Steam is being the scene of big discounts on 2 good games, Dungeon Siege III and Blood Bowl, in addition to a current discount on above 20 items from around the store.

Featured discounts

Blood Bowl Legendary Edition -80%; at 8$ down from 39.99$

Dungeon Siege III -50%; at 24.99$ down from 49.99$

The Witcher 2: Assassins of the King Digital Premium Edition at 29.99$ down from 39.99$

Sniper: Ghost Warrior Gold Edition -40%; at 17.99$ down from 29.99$

Post Apocalyptic Mayhem -50%; at 4.99$ down from 9.99$

Starscape -66%; at 3.40$ down from 9.99$

Brief game descriptions:

Dungeon Siege III is an action RPG developed by Obsidian Entertainment and published by Square Enix, playable in singleplayer, online and in co-op. Dungeon Siege III has a continuation of the franchise’ original setting, where the players have to fight for the kingdom of Ehb. About 150 years after the events of the original Dungeon Siege, The 10th legion that has protected the kingdom for over 400 years has been betrayed and pushed by Jeyne Kassaynder onto the brink of extinction. The player is responsible for helping rallying the survivors to fight back against the villain.

Blood Bowl is a violent combination of strategy and sports games, said by the developer to be inspired by the Warhammer universe. This Legendary Edition features 20 playable races including the 9 races of the original edition. Every race has its own specialties that yield it a unique play style. As you play, you train your team and upgrade its equipment. The range of gameplay styles isn’t limited to your creative tactics, but it expands to involve devastating magic, illegal weapons, and even bribing the referee. Blood Bowl: Legendary Edition features online play as well as a story mode that takes you through the history of the Blood Bowl sport.

The Witcher II: Assassins of the King is a third-person RPG, sequel to The Witcher, and based on the book series of the same name. The game’s story consists of a couple chapters, and has many different paths and storylines that lead to multiple endings. The player assumes the role of Geralt of Rivia, one of the few remaining witchers. Withcers are humans that have been genetically enhanced and trained to fight monsters from childhood. The Digital Premium Edition contains a plenty of new features, including a new tutorial system made specifically to suit new players, a new difficulty level, the new Arena mode along with a lot of technical enhancements.

Despite the big discount, Sniper: Ghost Warrior isn’t a very well receipted game. The story follows the overthrown of the democratic government of Isla Trueno, which is replaced by a hostile military command. The player works as a sniper sent with a highly trained special ops unit whose mission is to help the rebels. The development of the game focused on enhancing sniper gameplay mechanics, by adding different variables such as bullet trajectory and environmental effects such as wind, as well as the ability to hold your breath. The game received a metacritic average of 55 out of 100.

Post Apocalyptic Mayhem is a racing and combat game with kind of classic graphics (particularly special effects), meant with vehicle action. Every driver in the race or the battle must survive and utilize their special weapons by wiping out other racers/combatants. The game was receipted poorly with a 44/100 metacritic.

Starscape is a 2003 space shooter with a top-down arcade gameplay style, enhanced by customization capabilities. The player is responsible to help rebuilding the Aegis space research station, as the only remaining pilot after most of the crew went missing and the weapon systems were ruined. Your campaign will include mining resources, building and configuring your own set of fighters, and rebuilding the Aegis station. The game’s system requirements are too low due to the old release date, therefore it can work on almost any given computer, including netbooks. It needs only 100 MBs of space, a 300 MHz Pentium II or higher, and so humble are the other requirements.

The discount items include the new RailWorks Horseshoe Curve Expansion pack at half of its price along with a plenty of other games and indie titles with a 10-25% discount. Feel free to check the discounts in the Steam main page. You can go to the Steam store by pressing on the Steam logo in this article.

The Electronic Arts digital game storefront Origin was first launched in the Electronic Entertainment Expo in June. Since then, the service has captured special attention in the gaming community, as the result of the issues that led to the pull out of Dragon Age II and Crysis 2 from Steam, along with being the exclusive online retailer of Star Wars: The Old Republic and also a necessary application to run the download version of Battlefield 3.

So far, the number of registered Origin users has bypassed 4.2 million. The store currently offers more than 300 downloadable and retail games, and has done more than 1 million transactions.

However, EA Senior Vice President David DeMartini said that this is only the beginning. EA is planning on enriching the digital distribution application by features like cloud saves and streamlining the process of buying DLC. There are 4 planned pushes coming up for the store.  The first one is the open beta for Battlefield 3, as the game requires the Origin application. The 3 following events that are expected to significantly push the store begin with the release of Star Wars: The Old Republic, followed by The Sims, and finally the launch of Mass Effect 3 on March 2012.

“I would not be surprised if we experience another 100 percent growth over the course of the year in our users,” DeMartini said. “We’ve already processed more than 1 million transactions so far this year.”

The ongoing, increasing growth in the user quantity of Origin might be supported by publishers considered as rivals of EA. DeMartini emphasized on EA’s efforts in hosting games of other publishers, “In the very near future, we’re going to have some rather significant announcements with regards to some of the additional titles that will be available on Origin.”

DeMartini also backed up that by and emphasized that publisher partners would be treated by EA the way it seeks being treated by Valve. What kind of treatment, you ask? The reason of EA pulling some of its games from Steam was Steam’s restriction of contact between the publisher and the costumer, as it couldn’t happen unless through Steam. That included deliverable materials such as DLC (downloadable content).

DeMartini explains the philosophy in detail: “We really do believe in a fair and open marketplace. We strongly believe that customers should be able to buy product wherever they want to buy the product. If they want to buy the paid DLC from some place other than where they bought the original product, they should be able to do that as well. And if they want to buy microtransaction content from somewhere else, they should be able to do that.”

When DeMartini was asked if other publishers could make their way around Origin to sell DLC without using the service, “1,000% yes,” he answered without hesitation. “A fair and open marketplace. If we are so fortunate to sell someone’s great IP at a full-price sale and they’re smart enough to put a store in their game and make paid DLC easy for the customer, that was pretty smart thinking on their part and we have no issue with that.”

Origin, as a complete replacement for the EA Store, will be the only digital storefront to offer Star Wars: The Old Republic, as well as the only mean to play the digital download version of Battlefield 3. It now rises as a new major digital video game distributer.

We’ve got good news here for you, Steamers (by both means of the capital and small S)! RailWorks 3: Train Simulator 2012 Deluxe, the new version of the popular train simulator was just released on Steam. The simulator will remain on a 10% discount until 8AM PST (Pacific Standard Time) October 3rd, 2011. This ‘Deluxe’ (and currently the standard) edition includes the Horseshoe Curve Expansion Pack free of charge. All RailWorks 2 owners on Steam will automatically be upgraded to RailWorks 3: Train Simulator 2012 for free. Rail Simulator Developments are aiming to ensure “full backwards compatibility,” even though it’s currently not fully implemented. The owners of RailWorks 2 can also get the Horseshoe Curve Expansion Pack at 50% off before the same deadline of the discount (8AM PST October 3rd, 2011.) The Horseshoe Curve route of this bundled/discounted expansion is meant to show off the new features of Train Simulator 2012.

RailWorks 3 contains a new game engine with enhanced graphics and new weather effects. Since the new engine is not yet fully optimized to work with all RailWorks 2 content and add-ons, a compatibility mode was implemented in the simulator, making it run on the old engine instead. This mode can also be beneficial for those whose computers can’t take care of the newer engine, even though the developers are trying to make the hardware requirements as close to the original engine as possible. Rail Simulator Developments are still working on the new engine compatibility to ensure its flawless support to all game content, which hasn’t been completed yet.

Other than the new engine, a bunch of improvements and features have been implemented. 2 new trains are now available: a Super Express Concept and an F7 Warbonnet. Major improvements had been made on the Class 166, Class 47 and SD40-2. Draw distance has been increased so that the player can see distant mountains. New sky effects were added, with dynamic weather cycles. Weather effects can now affect your glass, making appearance on the windows. Shadows as well as water reflections were improved. Some of the new features are designed specifically to improve the editing and world-building, including improved asset lists, improvements on the scenario editor and scenery laying speed.

That’s all that we can currently summarize about the new release, see you on another blog.

Steam is inviting all real time strategy fans to join the epic war battle the Allies and the Axis Powers in World War II with a 80% discount on all Company of Heroes games. You can bring the battle to your own computer in the singleplayer campaign or take it online to challenge human intelligence players.

The Company of Heroes Complete Pack now brings the total cost of the game and all of the 2 expansion packs from 50 bucks down to a total of 10. Already own some items from the pack? That’s not a problem, you can individually buy the games you need at the same pack cost!

Discount items:

Company of Heroes at 80% off ($1.99 / £1.39)

Expansion packs:

Company of Heroes: Opposing Fronts at 80% off ($3.99 /  £1.99)

Company of Heroes: Tales of Valor at 80% off ($3.99 /  £1.99)

And finally there’s the complete pack:

Company of Heroes Complete Pack at 80% ($9.99 / £5.39 down from $49.97 / £27)

Don’t tell us this is the first time you know about this game, because that is a shame! Company of Heroes is one of the leading World War II realistic real time strategies out there. PC Gamer describes it as: “One of the best real time strategy games ever made.” In Company of Heroes, you get to lead Allied squads against the Germans, in a singleplayer campaign that starts from the D-Day Invasion of Normandy. The soldiers you lead have a decent AI, enabling them to interact with changing, fully destructible environments, to take cover, and to do whatever it takes to eliminate enemies efficiently. The game is of course playable online as well. More content follows in the expansions, which is considered nice to have. Even though the latter expansion, Tales of Valor, was described by PC Gamers as “the most disappointing part of the package” mainly because of its poor singleplayer campaign. But just stay aware of mixing between the original game and the expansion packs, Company of Heroes will remain a great recommendation!

So far, 2 famous EA titles have been pulled out from the Steam store, one of which was Crysis 2. Coincidently, it happened a month after the launch of Origin, the EA digital distribution platform (similar to Valve’s Steam). EA blames Steam’s post-release policies for the removal of Crysis 2.

“We always want to be sure we provide this content and service at the highest possible level of quality. To ensure this, any retailer can sell our games, but we take direct responsibility for providing patches, updates, additional content and other services to our players,” wrote David DeMartini, Electronic Arts’ senior vice president of global E-commerce. “Unfortunately, if we’re not allowed to manage this experience directly and establish a relationship with you, it disrupts our ability to provide the support you expect and deserve.” Those dramatic vague sentences are actually referring to something real; Steam’s Terms of Service Agreement prohibits delivery of DLC and patches through any clients other than Steam itself. EA apparently doesn’t like that, and we yet have to know why.

DeMartini stated that those arrangements were possible with GameStop, Amazon “and other online retailers,” but implied that they were unworkable “under extremely special circumstances,” implying that such circumstances were conditions set by Steam. DeMartini continued that, except under those circumstances “We offer our games to every major download service, including Amazon, Gamestop, and Steam.”

There go the explanations that EA followed the removal of Crysis 2 and Dragon Age 2 from Steam, but that’s not the end of the line. The ongoing conflict between EA and Valve has finally hit Battlefield’s fans on Steam, as Battlefield 3 is the next casualty of this war between the two companies and their digital distribution platforms. The two companies may or may not come to an agreement, but there are no signs of it so far.

In July, a list of all digital retailers of Battlefield 3 was released and Steam wasn’t among them. This has almost cleared things out since then, because there was no reason for Steam to not be present in the list. The first official announcement about the matter was then posted on the EA forums by developer “seeson”, telling that: “Battlefield 3 will not be available on Steam as the service restricts our ability to directly support players,” seeson has added: “No other download service has adopted these practices.” The same reasons behind the removal of Crysis 2 and Dragon Age 2.

But after all, there’s still a little hope. EA’s release,Alice: Madness Returns, wasn’t available for preorder on Steam, but it mysteriously appeared on the day of release all out of sudden! Add on that EA’s statements that followed the complaints: “We hope to work out an agreement where Steam can carry Battlefield 3; meanwhile, gamers can pick from the more than 100 digital retailers.” This means that if EA gets rid of the ‘restrictions’ that Steam forces, the fans might pretty well get the anticipated game back onto Steam. Let’s hope for the best!

Special sale events per publisher are common events in Steam. This weekend, all SEGA’s games are on a 50-90% discount in SEGA’s Publisher Weekend event. There are no exceptions!

Those are some recommended deals:

Alpha Protocol at 90% off.

Aliens vs. Predator™ series at 75% off.

Total War: SHOGUN 2 at 50% off.

Total War Mega Pack at 66% off.

Football Manager 2011 at 50% off.

The discount event also corresponds with the release of the SEGA Collector Pack, a ton of SEGA games bundled together, priced at 80$ with the current discount. Beside containing the titles/series mentioned above with a lot (and probably all) of their downloadable content, the Collector Pack also contains the retro SEGA Mega Drive collection and the small Dreamcast collection on Steam, for classic and retro fans of you.

If you are a fan of Total War or SEGA in general, or have special interest in any game out there, we recommend checking out the Publisher Weekend and SEGA Collector Pack pages right now!

You should better hurry up, all discount offers end on September 27th at 10AM Pacific Time.

For all indie fans out there, this is your lucky day on Steam! Our popular digital game store has a special Midweek Madness sale event; Steam has bundled us 10 of the most popular indie titles in the store in 2 packs, each released at the price of a single game! With the discount of 80%, every pack is set at 10 bucks. View offer page here.

Each one of the two bundles has a category; there’s the strategy bundle and the 2D bundle (everything goes).

The strategy bundle consists of tower defense real time strategy games. The gameplay as well as other aspects such as graphical quality fairly differ between games. The gameplay varies from more traditional tower defense such as in Defense Grid: The Awakening, through more action packed RTS with rich graphics such as Anomaly: Warzone Earth, to first-person strategy tower defense Sanctum! There’s also the fast paced 2D Revenge of the Titans, as well as Sol Survivor.

The 2D bundle focuses on platformers, but will also test your thinking and has a little combat. Are you smart enough to save all of the Goo Balls? You will find out when you play the World of Goo! You can also challenge  your speed of reflex with the fast platformer BIT.TRIP RUNNER. The pack contains a few more games to go between platforming and some combat.

Take your time checking the deals, indie games are meant for everyone!