Players with a paid Call of Duty Elite membership on Playstation 3 will be able to snag two new Modern Warfare 3 maps, Liberation and Piazza, on February 28. Both maps launched for Xbox 360 Elite premium members on January 24, and we presume they will come to non-Elite and PC players eventually -- possibly another month after the PS3 version goes live.

Or possibly another two months, just to really rub it in, like the below screens for Liberation and Piazza will do.

Rage has officially launched on Mac with the Campaign Edition, which includes the complete single-player campaign, the Wasteland sewer missions and Anarchy Edition content for $40. Rage: Campaign Edition is available through the Mac App Store, publisher Aspyr's Game Agent, and other Mac retailers (excluding Steam, it seems).

Obviously Rage: Campaign Edition doesn't include multiplayer, but we assume that's why it's not called Rage.

"Specificity" is such a succulent word. Alan Wake for PC has an official launch date of February 16 on Steam, with other digital distribution outlets following. The standard offering will be available for $29.99, which will include the core game plus "The Signal" and "The Writer" DLC.

There's also a Limited Collector's Edition for $35. It includes the content found in the regular edition, adding the Alan Wake Files Book, developer commentary and extended soundtrack.

On XBLA, Alan Wake's American Nightmare begins on February 22. Rampaging donuts and cholesterol-injecting nurses not yet confirmed.

The press release announcing pre-order costumes for Lollipop Chainsaw jokes that "Juliet won't be in her birthday suit," instantly making us feel terribly self-conscious about what WB thinks our interest in the game is about.

Said pre-order costumes actually sound pretty amusing -- it's a shame they're all spread out across different retailers at launch. Amazon will allow you to dress Juliet in "Rockabilly" gear, Best Buy offers "Goth Girl" and "Foxy Funk," and GameStop includes an Evil Dead Ash costume. It's a cute visual reference and it's practical clothing!

Additionally, GameStop PowerUp Rewards members will get a costume of Jimmy Urine, lead singer of Mindless Self Indulgence, who also composed the boss music and acts in the game. Obscure punk rock tie-ins? Now you're getting closer to the reason for our interest.

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I keep reading reports that Mutant Mudds isn't terribly long, with some players getting through it in 4 hours or so. I consider that unprovable hearsay, because there's no way I'll ever finish it. It's really frustratingly/enjoyably hard in the Mega Man tradition.

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When Kaz Hirai takes over as CEO of Sony on April 1st, he's going to have to roll up the sleeves of his $10,000 suit and get in a good cry before figuring out the future of the struggling giant. The company announced a loss of ¥159 billion ($2.1B) for the third quarter ending December 31, 2011, with an expected loss of ¥220 billion ($2.9B) for the year. We imagine every meeting between Hirai and outgoing CEO Howard Stringer begins with a sarcastic "Thanks, buddy!"

The consumer products and services division, which includes TVs and PlayStation, had an operating loss of over a billion dollars with sales down 24 percent from the same period.

This is likely due more to the declining sales of Sony's TVs, video cameras and PCs, than it is of the PlayStation brand. PS3 sales are staying level with last year, with the company expecting to sell 14 million units or hardware and 148 million units of software. Vita sales were not specified at all, though PSP and PS2 sales were -- and the PSP data is declining, which means the Vita debut wasn't hidden in there.

There's going to be a lot of DLC for UFC Undisputed 3 -- strangely, not including shirts, despite no UFC fighter ever seeming to have one -- so it's fortuitous that THQ is offering a Season Pass to help you round it up for a little bit cheaper.

The Season Pass, a 1360 Microsoft Points or $16.99 purchase, will include the "Fight of the Night" and "International" Fighter Packs, the "Ultimate Upsets" and "Mixed Bag" Ultimate Fights Packs, playable Alistair Overeem, and the "all unlockables" key to get all the content normally unlocked through gameplay. And if you happen to pre-order from ShopTHQ, this season pass is free. Not a bad deal for a lot of UFC stuff (and THQ could use the money right now).

All this stuff will also be available separately. In addition, there's some DLC that isn't part of the Pass, including the $3 "Create-a-Fighter Boost," which gives you extra points for your custom fighter, and two sets of "Ultimate" fights that are already free at launch. Check after the break for details on each pack.

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For the nine months ending December 31, Capcom net sales down 29% year over year, to 50.27 billion yen ($660.6 million). Similarly, operating income for the period is down 47.2%, despite such collaborative cross-marketing efforts as "the launch of beverages based on popular characters, in order to leverage highly popular software to achieve increased visibility, expanded fan base and other synergistic effects."

It's not so much that Capcom did poorly this year -- last year featured the breakout successes of Monster Hunter Portable 3rd and Super Street Fighter IV, among others. The blockbusters this year aren't as numerous and not quite as blockbustery. According to Capcom, Monster Hunter Tri-G sold 1.2 million copies since its December release in Japan. Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 and Dead Rising 2: Off the Record moved 800,000 and 500,000 respectively. That's still a pretty good return on a set of games entirely based on existing games.

Trials Evolution is creeping one wheelie flip closer to launch with today's announcement of a "spring 2012" launch window. More exciting than an ambiguous window of four months? The latest trailer which reveals said launch, which showcases the game's surprisingly malleable track editor.

Beyond making crazy tracks to challenge your best friends (and worst enemies -- it is Trials, after all) through Xbox Live, players will be able to create crazy looking first-person shooters and Spy Hunter-esque top down fare. And while that's all plenty thrilling, we're most interested in having an unlimited supply of crazy racetracks to obsess over. Finally, a reason to never stop playing Trials!

Ticket to Ride Pocket has added a major update to the train baron simulator, allowing for asynchronous gameplay. Track-layers can now conduct up to four games at once using the new multiplayer mode. The game also now permits play across iPhones, iPod Touch and iPads in local mode across Bluetooth, WiFi and telegraph wire.

"This is the update Ticket to Ride players have been clamoring for since we released Ticket to Ride Pocket," said Days of Wonder founder and CEO Eric Hautemont.

The company also shared that sales of Ticket to Ride on iOS have reached 350,000, with over 27.6 million games played and a new one starting every four seconds. We were pretty impressed by the faithful translation of the board game when we played the $2 app over the holidays, which is also available in more expensive forms on iPad and XBLA.

EA's increased revenues with FIFA 12's FIFA Ultimate Team DLC, coupled with our continuing coverage of consumer complaints over the "FIFA hack," stood out as an awkward juxtaposition during yesterday's EA third quarter financial call.

"The innovation that makes this franchise so unique is FIFA Ultimate Team," President of EA Labels Frank Gibeau said yesterday on a call with investors. "In just three months, FIFA Ultimate Team generated $39 million in microtransactions. That's 69 percent more than it generated in the same period last year."

Gibeau went on to say that because Ultimate Team is a microtransaction-based system, the company is able to generate a sizable number of big-spender consumer behaviors and it becomes a business that scales much more aggressively than other traditional DLC models.

Chief Financial Officer Eric Brown added, "To put some rough numbers on this, if we compare the total digital revenue from FIFA 11 Ultimate Team to what we expect from FIFA 12 Ultimate Team in this fiscal year, we're looking to see a 25 percent increase franchise to franchise. The overall package goods units sold is not increasing by 25 percent year over year, so we are expanding by a decent margin the microtransaction revenue per user of FIFA."

We continue to receive complaints nearly every day of non-FIFA players having their accounts hacked to purchase Ultimate Team DLC. EA previously responded to this by saying that "a small number" of gamers continue to report being impacted by fraudulent activity related to FIFA Ultimate Team on Xbox Live.

Indie Game: The Movie is leaving the screens of Sundance for the wider world's consumption, and one of its first stops will be at SXSW as an official festival selection. Indie Game: The Movie has been chosen on its value as a film, not being shown as a "Documentary Feature Competition" or a "Documentary Spotlight," but as a "Festival Favorite."

Indie Game was previously part of SXSW's ScreenBurn Arcade series, and directors / everything else James Swirsky and Lisanne Pajot are scheduled to host a panel with Fez's Phil Fish.

SXSW runs from March 9-18 in Austin, Texas, with festival film badges starting at $550 (yes, those are the cheapest) before February 10. This may not be the "public" screening most of us are hoping for, but Indie Game: The Movie will post showings as they come up, such as the Santa Cruz screening it lists now.

New Skylanders toys are available at retail today, which roughly translates to new DLC for the video game. The "Empire of Ice" Adventure Pack includes a new ice-themed area, along with a new Water-element toy (and character), Slam Bam.

Additionally, new standalone figures are available of the undead dragon Cynder, who has a "difficult past," and Double Trouble, an inept wizard. What's that? You want to know more about Cynder? According to Activision, "Cynder is a dragon of the undead element. Dark powers flow through her due to her difficult past, but she's trying to make amends with the other Skylanders."

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Skyrim's monster of a patch, update 1.4, is available now on Steam following its beta test last week. Update 1.4 adds support for the Skyrim Workshop, which opens up modding to the wider (Brony and otherwise) community. For the full list of fixes, check out our details post.

If you participated in the beta, your account should be automatically updated.

EyeAsteroids, an Asteroids clone and frustratingly missed pun opportunity, is an arcade game from Tobii Technology that uses the company's proprietary eye-tracking solutions to recognize where you are looking on the screen, without the use of any other human interfaces. By bouncing invisible infrared lights off of the player's corneas and then monitoring the changes in the reflections generated, the arcade cabinate can extrapolate the eyes' position in 3D space and determine the angle of their gaze.

"In other words, the eye tracker works much like you would if you face another person and estimate at what they are looking just by observing their eyes," according to Tobii Technology's layman-friendly website. Fifty EyeAsteroid cabinets have been produced at $15,000 a pop, which is roughly the cost of one and a half Street Fighter 4 head-to-head vs. cabinets. If you happen to live in jolly ol' London Towne, an EyeAsteroid cab will be on display at the Trocadero until February 17.

Joining Mickey, Donald and Spider-Man in Disney's universe are such characters as insane detective Francis York Morgan, and a very nicely dressed Lucifel. The BBC reports that Disney has purchased a controlling stake in publisher UTV Ignition, following approval of Disney's previously announced plan by the cabinet of India (where Ignition is based).

In fact, India is what Disney has in mind with this move (rather than, say, building a giant worldwide El Shaddai gaming franchise). "Increasing our brand presence and reach in key international markets is a cornerstone of our growth strategy," Disney International chair Andy Bird said. "This acquisition expands our footprint significantly and allows us to more effectively build, monetise and brand multi-platform franchises, and deliver a rich library of content to the world's second largest population."

Neither Bird nor Disney have said anything specific about Ignition's gaming division, which recently published Quarrel and is known for games such as Deadly Premonition, Swarm and the internally developed El Shaddai.

EA will break with tradition when Syndicate launches later this month. EA Partners executive producer Jeff Gamon told Eurogamer that Starbreeze's reboot would ship without an online pass, in the hopes of lowering the barrier of entry for the game's multiplayer side.

"We want as little resistance or barriers to entry as possible," Gamon said. "The co-op is equal billing in this. We wanted everyone who owns a copy of the game to have access to the entire product." It's policy for EA to include an online pass in all of its games. Curiously, this policy does not always extend to EA Partners games like Crysis 2 and Portal 2, both of which shipped without online passes. Meanwhile, Bulletstorm required a pass for its online co-op mode.

"Under normal circumstances it would have had an online pass, but because it didn't have competitive multiplayer and because we wanted as many people as possible to be playing co-op, we got away with it," Gamon added. "Maybe another reason for not having the Online Pass is we were confident in the scope of the online game." Throughout the nine multiplayer maps, he says players can expect "a good six, seven hours" on a single playthrough. "That and the single-player campaign means hopefully we won't see much in the way of early second hand sales and rentals," Gamon concluded before absconding with Princess Zelda.

You'll also see that Rayman's a bit blue for some of this adventure. Don't be so sad, Ray! Any old-school Rayman is a welcome sight to our eyes.

PlayStation Plus users are getting Konami's 1991 classic, The Simpsons Arcade Game, for free, while XBLA users get it a few days early on February 3, according to Game Informer. The side-scrolling beat-em-up will set you back a cool 800 Microsoft Points ($9.99) and will also include new modes, the (rumored) Japanese version of the game, as well as four-player online co-op and bonus promotional material from the game's original release.

The last time we played this game, it was in the back of a Circle K next to the ICEE machine and a Street Fighter 2 cabinet. We'll be trying our best to recreate that experience by covering every surface of the office with a thin, sticky film. Mmmm, nostalgia.