Last week, a new trailer for Aliens: Colonial Marines attempted to split the difference between the heavy action gaming that appeals to mainstream gamers and the fanservice that fans of the Alien and Predator series’ expect. Since the game is a sequel to the movie Aliens, it was clear that the title would lean more toward James Cameron’s action movie rather than the original Alien‘s horror. However, even in Aliens the xenomorphs were nearly unstopable, and making the aliens weak enough to be first person shooter cannon-fodder robs could rob them of their significance.
Today, the game has officially launched, and reviewers have, sadly, reported that the game is a lackluster shooter dressed in Alien garb. The Metacritic average for the Xbox 360 version of the game is only a 50 – far below last week’s sci-fi horror release Dead Space 3.
Critics cited poor graphics, glitches, and poor enemy AI as elements that make the game’s single player campaign bland. The game’s class-based multiplayer modes, however, have been praised in more than one review.
The U.K.‘s Health Protection Agency (HPA) this week confirmed that a patient receiving intensive care treatment at a Manchester hospital has been diagnosed with a new type of coronavirus.
The patient, who had recently travelled to the Middle East and Pakistan, is the second confirmed U.K. resident to be diagnosed with the virus. Worldwide, 10 confirmed cases of the virus have been diagnosed. The new virus has been found in patients with acute respiratory illnesses who had coughing, shortness of breath, breathing difficulties, and a fever.
“The HPA is providing advice to healthcare workers to ensure the patient under investigation is being treated appropriately and that healthcare staff who are looking after the patient are protected,” said John Watson, head of the respiratory diseases department at the HPS. “Contacts of the case are also being followed up to check on their health.”
Coronaviruses generally infect the upper respiratory system and gastrointestinal tract. Though they have been linked to the common cold, they are also cause of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS).
The first case of the new coronavirus was diagnosed in the U.K. in September 2012. That patient died from a severe respiratory infection.
Since that time, the HPA has been working with the World Health Organization (WHO) and the European Centre for Disease prevention and Control (ECDC) to watch for illnesses caused by the new virus. Doctors in the U.K. have also been provided with updated guidance on the investigation and management of possible cases of the new coronavirus.
“Our assessment is that the risk associated with novel coronavirus to the general UK population remains extremely low and the risk to travelers to the Arabian Peninsula and surrounding countries remains very low,” said Watson. “No travel restrictions are in place but people who develop severe respiratory symptoms, such as shortness of breath, within ten days of returning from these countries should seek medical advice and mention which countries they have visited.”
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) today announced its 25 “core sports” for the 2020 Summer Olympic Games. Notably absent from the list was wrestling – a sport that has been part of the olympic games since the very first olympics in 1896.
That doesn’t mean that wrestling won’t be an event at the Olympics, however. The sport will now have to compete with other “shortlisted” sports for inclusion in the 2020 games. Baseball/softball, karate, roller sports (inline skating), sport climbing, squash, wakeboarding, and wushu are other shortlisted sports that will make presentations to the IOC executive board at a meeting in St. Petersburg in May. Following that meeting the executive board will choose which of the shortlisted sports to include in the 2020 games.
From an IOC statement:
In an effort to ensure the Olympic Games remain relevant to sports fans of all generations, the Olympic Programme Commission systematically reviews every sport following each edition of the Games.
The 25 core sports that will definitely be included in the 2020 games are athletics, rowing, badminton, basketball, boxing, canoeing, cycling, equestrian, fencing, football, gymnastics, weightlifting, handball, hockey, judo, swimming, modern pentathlon, taekwondo, tennis, table tennis, shooting, archery, triathlon, sailing and volleyball.
The location for the 2020 Summer Olympic Games will be chosen in September 2013 at the 125th IOC Session. The candidate cities are Istanbul, Tokyo, and Madrid.
Dish today announced that its “Hopper” DVR with Sling is now available for all customers in the U.S.
While other DVRs allow TV watchers to fast-forward through annoying ads, the Hopper “autohop” feature allows Dish customers to skip entire commercial breaks with the press of a button. This doesn’t sit well with content creators, and both Fox and CBS have filed lawsuits against Dish due to the technology. CBS went so far as to prevent its website CNET from declaring the Hopper best in show at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show (CES).
In a satiric bit of irony, Dish has also launched a TV commercial ad campaign that declares the death of TV commercials. In the first commercial, seen below, Dish says goodbye to both commercials and its “Boston Guys.”
“These lovable characters from Boston helped put the first generation of the ‘Hawpah’ on the map and made nearly three out of four consumers aware of the Hopper,” said James Moorhead, chief marketing officer at Dish. “This campaign takes the Boston family out of the house to show the world that only Hopper with Sling can provide a truly unique entertainment experience.”
Last year a small indie game called Slender: The Eight Pages terrified gamers and inspired countless YouTube play-through videos. Since then, the developers of Slender have been working to expand upon the game and give it the attention it deserves.
Today, Blue Isle Studios announced that Slender: The Arrival will be released on March 26. The game is now available for pre-order. The price for pre-orders is only $5 – half the price of what the finished retail game will cost – and all pre-orders come with instant access to the beta version of the game. The game’s developers have some Kickstarter-like pricing options available as well. A $15 version of the game also comes with a soundtrack, and a $25 version throws in downloadable paintings. The $60 “Producer’s Edition” includes a thank-you in the game’s credits.
The Arrival is similar to the first game, but includes more levels and content not seen in The Eight Pages. Players will complete objectives while doing their best not to look at the slender man lurking right behind them.
Last April, the Star Wars: The Old Republic MMO held its first live in-game event. The Rakghoul Plague event, as it was called, had players running around Tatooine and infecting each other with a deadly plague.
This year’s in-game event begins tomorrow, February 12 and lasts until February 26. Titled “Relics of the Gree,” the event will task players with uncovering the mystery of an advanced Gree ship that has appeared in orbit around the planet Ilum. Bioware has described the event as one that will be “recurring” throughout the rest of 2013.
The new teaser trailer for the content shows plenty of space slugs and a giant wampa for players to slay.
The European Space Agency (ESA) today revealed that a laser developed to measure carbon on Mars could soon be used to detect counterfeit food.
The device, called a laser isotope ratio-meter, was developed from bulkier laser techniques that needed samples to be collected and brought to them. The new device, developed by the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (RAL) in England, is small enough that it could be used in space to detect trace gasses in small samples.
“You take a laser, whose optical frequency or ‘color’ can be continuously adjusted, beam it at a gas sample, and detect the level passing through the gas,” said Damien Weidmann, Laser Spectroscopy Team Leader at RAL Space. “Each molecule, and each of its isotopic forms, has a unique fingerprint spectrum. If, on the other hand, you know what you are looking for, you can simply set the laser to the appropriate frequency.”
Through an ESA program, Weidmann and his colleagues have been able to demonstrate that the laser can quickly detect counterfeit food. Fake honey made using sugar, for example, would be detected by the laser by scanning the carbon dioxide released from burning only a few milligrams of the product. Likewise, counterfeit olive oil and chocolate could also be detected.
Though Weidmann said it was important for his project to attract interest from industry, sending the laser to Mars is his real goal.
“I wanted to develop this to help gather evidence as to whether or not there was life on Mars,” said Weidmann.
Weidmann stated that using the laser to measure carbon isotopic ratios in methane on Mars could help determine where the hydrocarbon came from.
“If it’s bacterial in origin, it would mean a form of life occurred on Mars.”
Sony today announced that PlayStation 3 owners in Europe will finally be getting the newly redesigned YouTube app. The redesign emphasizes subscriptions and search. From the PlayStation blog post:
You might have watched YouTube on PS3 before, but get ready for a completely new experience that’s designed for the big screen and PS3 controls. The new app brings you more content, like your subscribed channels, and more ways to find videos, with better search tools, more ways to watch YouTube by pairing your smartphone, and more language options.
The smartphone-as-a-remote feature only requires “a quick pairing process.” After that users will be able to browse video on their phone, then play it on a TV and control the video using the phone. The expanded YouTube app languages now include English, Swedish, Italian, German, Spanish, French, Dutch, and Russian.
The redesigned app on the PS3 can be found under “TV & Video Services” and “My Channels.” The new rolls out today for the U.K., France, Germany, Australia, New Zealand, Belgium, Czech Republic, Greece, Hungary, Israel, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Poland, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Russia, and India.
New satellite imagery has shown that the hole in the ozone layer over Antarctica is shrinking. In 2012, the hole was the smallest it has been in the past ten years.
The images were taken by the European Space Agency’s (ESA) MetOp satellite, which has a ozone sensor. The satellite monitors atmospheric ozone over the Antarctic.
Since the 1980s, the ozone layer over the Antarctic developed a hole – a decrease in ozone concentration of up to 70% – that stays from September to November. The depletion is noticeable in Antarctica because of high winds that cause a vortex of cold air, causing low temperatures. These conditions make it easier for chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) to deplete the ozone. The arctic does not see this effect because the northern hemisphere’s landmasses prevent circumpolar winds.
Since the mid-1990s CFC concentrations have been falling as a result of international agreements. The ESA states, however, that it could take until the mid-21st century for the ozone to recover to 1960s levels.
“Unusual” weather and atmospheric conditions can also greatly affect the behavior of the ozone. ESA scientists are using data from satellites and other sensors, along with atmospheric models to predict the future of the ozone. The ESA Climate Change Initiative is generating ozone climate data records that have predicted the ozone layer hole could close “in the next decades.”
In general, the gaming industry is fairly secretive. Developers rarely reveal much about their games until a few months before the launch day, other than the requisite teaser trailer.
With the rise of Kickstarter-funded game projects, however, that sort of black-box development could (and should) change. Developers who take money from fans upfront owe it to their investors to keep them informed of how the project is coming along, and to seek out input from them.
InXile Entertainment appears to be doing just that with its Kickstarted Wasteland 2 RPG. The developer this weekend released an early developer preview video for the title.
Wasteland 2 was kickstarted almost one year ago. InExile was asking for only $900,000 for the project, but received nearly $3 million.
The developer video includes a look at the customizable UI, combat, skills, and the dialogue system. There is also a blog post that provides an overall update on the game’s progress. As of right now, the developers are “just past the halfway mark.”
Mobile service provider Solavei this weekend announced it is the first U.S. provider to offer BlackBerry’s new BlackBerry Z10 smartphone.
Unfortunately, BlackBerry fans in the U.S. will have to pay-up significantly if they want to be early adopters. Solavei is offering the Z10 through its retail partner gsmnation for $999.
Solavei is a contract-free mobile virtual network operator on T-Mobile’s network. The service offers a $49 unlimited everything plan, but does not sell or subsidize mobile devices. The company is attempting to grow itself through word-of-mouth viral marketing, rather than traditional advertising.
“We believe in giving our members access to the latest phones and wireless capabilities,” said Ryan Wuerch, founder and CEO of Solavei. “Solavei not only gives its members the opportunity to pay less for unlimited mobile service, but even the opportunity to earn income by sharing Solavei with others.”
It sounds sketchy when put that way, but it’s basically a referral discount. And BlackBerry Z10 users are going to need plenty of those to offset the huge upfront cost of their smartphone.
Those who can’t afford, or don’t want to pay, the early adopter mark-up will have to wait around one month to grab the smartphone via a subsidized subscription plan. All major U.S. carriers have announced they will carry the BlackBerry Z10 or BlackBerry Q10 starting in March.
After months of careful planning and tests, Mars rover Curiosity has finally used its hammering drill to collect a bedrock sample on Mars. The event marks the first time any rover has drilled into a rock on the red planet.
Curiosity left a hole 0.63 inches (1.6 cm) wide and 2.5 inches (6.4 cm) deep in a flat, veiny rock named “John Klein.” As the rover drilled into the rock, rock powder traveled up flutes on the drill bit, which has holding chambers for the powder. The sample obtained by the rover should help researchers determine whether the rock was ever underwater.
“The most advanced planetary robot ever designed is now a fully operating analytical laboratory on Mars,” said John Grunsfeld, NASA associate administrator for the Science Mission Directorate. “This is the biggest milestone accomplishment for the Curiosity team since the sky-crane landing last August, another proud day for America.”
Over the next few days, the rock powder will be processed and tested to determine its mineral make-up and chemical composition.
“We’ll take the powder we acquired and swish it around to scrub the internal surfaces of the drill bit assembly,” said Scott McCloskey, drill systems engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). “Then we’ll use the arm to transfer the powder out of the drill into the scoop, which will be our first chance to see the acquired sample.”
The successful drilling marks another milestone for the rover itself. All of Curiosity’s instruments have now been tested on Mars, and the rover has been deemed fully operational.
“Building a tool to interact forcefully with unpredictable rocks on Mars required an ambitious development and testing program,” said Louise Jandura, chief engineer for Curiosity’s sample system at JPL. “To get to the point of making this hole in a rock on Mars, we made eight drills and bored more than 1,200 holes in 20 types of rock on Earth.”
Last month, EA and Maxis showed off the “European City Sets” that come with the $80 Digital Deluxe Edtion of the upcoming SimCity. That add-on comes with famous European landmarks (the Eiffel Tower, Big Ben, and Brandenburg Gate) that transform the surrounding landscape, including buildings, police vehicles, and public transportation.
Today, EA and Maxis are showing off the other, sillier add-on that comes with a pre-order of SimCity.
The “Heroes and Villains” set will allow players to have organized crime groups in their cities and provide the ability to upgrade police squads into superheroes. A “criminal mastermind” can be placed in a city using the “Dr. Vu’s Evil Lair” object, which will provide plenty of high-tech development for the city until autonomous flying battle tanks begin to destroy it.
The “Heroes and Villains” add-on is included in pre-orders for the Limited Edition (read: normal) digital and physical version of the game. For those who don’t pre-order a copy of SimCity, EA will almost certainly be selling the add-on in the in-game SimCity store.
The U.S. Postal Service (USPS) today announced its first quarter financial results and things are not looking good. In the first three months of the 2013 fiscal year USPS had a net loss of $1.3 billion. The first quarter includes holiday season shipping and mail, which generally makes it USPS’ most lucrative quarter.
The company cited shipping and package revenue growth and “increaced efficiency” as high points, but admitted that those revenues could not help offset continued declines in First-Class Mail volume and “costs that are beyond Postal Service management control.” USPS has been begging congress for Postal Service reform, but has not received it.
As a result of its dismal finances, USPS will begin “accelerated cost-cutting actions,” which include eliminating Saturday mail delivery. USPS believes cutting Saturday delivery would save it $2 billion each year.
“The encouraging results from our holiday mailing season cannot sustain us as we move deeper into the current fiscal year and face continuing financial challenges,” said Patrick Donahoe, U.S. postmaster general and CEO of USPS. “By moving forward with the accelerated cost-cutting actions directed by our Board of Governors, we will continue to become more efficient and come closer to achieving long-term financial stability. We urgently need Congress to do its part and pass legislation that allows us to better manage our costs and gives us the commercial flexibility needed to operate more like a business does. This will help ensure the future success of the Postal Service and the mailing industry it supports.”
Though the Postal Service is mandated to provide six-day mail delivery, the fiscal cliff impasse in congress had the side effect of delaying the yearly appropriations bill containing the mandate. If a new mandate is not passed by March 27, USPS will legally be able to cut Saturday mail delivery. The new delivery schedule would then begin the week of August 5.
Epic Games today announced that it is shutting down Impossible Studios. No reason was give other than “it wasn’t working out for Epic.”
Impossible was formed only six months ago, on August 9, 2012. The employees at the company were largely from Big Huge Games, a developer that itself was shut down in the wake of the 38 Studios failure. Impossible’s studio director, Sean Dunn, was the former studio general manager at Big Huge and was once a creative director with THQ. As recently as January 29 Dunn had tweeted about how “awesome it is to be part of the Epic Games family.”
Impossible had been working on Infinity Blade: Dungeons, a prequel to the popular Infinity Blade games for iOS. The project has now been put on hold.
At the time it was founded, Impossible had 36 employees at its Hunt Valley, Maryland office. Tim Sweeney, the founder of Epic, has stated that Impossible employees with be given three moths of severance pay. In addition, Epic is releasing its rights to the Impossible Studios name and logo so that the developers can make a go of things on their own.
Below is Sweeney’s statement, in full:
We’re closing Impossible Studios.
When former members of Big Huge Games approached Epic last year, we saw the opportunity to help a great group of people while putting them to work on a project that needed a team. It was a bold initiative and the Impossible folks made a gallant effort, but ultimately it wasn’t working out for Epic.
In addition to providing Impossible Studios employees with 3 months of severance pay, we’ll be giving the team the opportunity to form a new company with the Impossible Studios name and the awesome Impossibear logo.
This means that Infinity Blade: Dungeons is now on hold as we figure out the future of the project.
NASA announced this week that it will host the first-ever Google+ Hangout live from the International Space Station (ISS).
The Hangout will take place from 11 am to 12 pm EST on February 22. The event will allow NASA fans to interact with astronauts both on Earth and aboard the ISS. Astronauts Kevin Ford, Chris Hadfield, and Tom Marshburn will be on-hand to answer questions about life on the ISS.
Since only up to 10 people can “Hangout” at one time (though the event will be open for anyone to watch live), NASA is encouraging its social media fans to submit video questions before the Hangout. During the Hangout “several” of these video questions will be chosen to be aired and answered by the ISS station crew and other astronauts. The videos must be uploaded to YouTube with the tag #askAstro and must be 30 seconds or shorter. The deadline for submitting videos is February 12.
NASA will also take live questions from its social media feeds on Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ during the Hangout. The same hashtag, #askAstro, will be used to identify questions during the Hangout. The agency stated that “unique and original questions” are more likely to be answered.
Though this is the first NASA Hangout from the ISS, it won’t be the last. The agency has stated that it will continue to host Hangouts “with astronauts on the ground and in space, scientists, engineers, and managers on the agency’s missions and milestones.”
Industry analyst Canalys this week revealed its fourth quarter 2012 estimates for mobile phone shipments. Unsurprisingly, it estimates that the worldwide smartphone market grew 37% from the fourth quarter of 2011. Smartphones, according to Canalys made up almost half of the mobile phone shipments in the fourth quarter 2012.
Android handsets accounted for over one-third (34%) of mobile phone shipments during the quarter, while Apple‘s iPhones made up only 11% of the shipments. When looking at only smartphones, over two-thirds (69%) of the quarter’s shipments were Android handsets.
Samsung led shipments by growing 78% year-over-year, but Chinese companies such as Huawei, ZTE, and Lenovo saw triple-digit growth, while Sony fell out of the top five. In China, smartphone shipments comprised a full 73% of mobile phone shipments during the quarter.
“BlackBerry, Microsoft and Nokia, as well as other Android vendors, have strategies and devices in place to attack, but the task is daunting to say the least,” said Pete Cunningham, principal analyst at Canalys. “When we look at the whole of 2012, Nokia remained the number three smart phone vendor, shipping 35 million units, but Apple in second place shipped 101 million more handsets. First-placed Samsung shipped 74 million more than Apple – the gaps are colossal. But there is still a big opportunity as smart phone penetration increases around the world. Vendors left in the wake of the top vendors must at the very least improve their portfolios, time-to-market and marketing, as well as communicate their differentiators. Microsoft, BlackBerry and other new OS entrants, such as Mozilla, must make the OS switch as simple as possible and drive and localize their respective app and content ecosystems.”
Continuing the trend of Kickstarter game projects, Red Thread Games today began a Kickstarter project for Dreamfall Chapters: The Longest Journey. The game is a sequel to the adventure games The Longest Journey and Dreamfall: The Longest Journey.
The Kickstarter page states that Chapters would conclude the “Dreamer Cycle” story and the journey of protagonist Zoë Castillo. From the campaign description:
Revisiting familiar locations and characters, and introducing new sights and sounds, new faces, new game mechanics, new thrills and challenges, Dreamfall Chapters takes the player on an emotional, exciting and challenging journey — from a dystopian cyberpunk future, through the mysterious and dreamlike Storytime, to the magical landscapes of Arcadia.
We aim to recapture the heart and soul of The Longest Journey and to improve on the immersion and game mechanics of Dreamfall in order to bring you a fitting, satisfying and emotional conclusion to the Dreamer Cycle.
According to the Kickstarter page, Chapters will allow players to take on the role of three different characters and feature a “3D point-and-click interface.” It also promises an “interactive and living world that mixes a cyberpunk vision of the future with magical fantasy, along with a broken and decaying dreamworld.”
Red Thread Games is an independent game developer that has licensed The Longest Journey from Funcom. The developer states that it is producing and funding the new project independently.
One week from today an asteroid will swing within just 17,200 miles of Earth – closer than geosynchronous satellites that orbit the planet. While there is no chance of an impact event on February 15, there are other asteroids that could collide with the Earth sometime in the future.
To prepare for (and hopefully prevent) such a disaster, NASA has formed the Near-Earth Object (NEO) observations program, which finds and tracks potential celestial threats. The program estimates that there are over 1,300 “Potentially Hazardous Asteroids” (PHA) with a small chance of hitting the Earth someday.
Today, NASA outlined its next step in better understanding those objects to help researchers more accurately predict the probability of future impacts. In 2016 the agency will launch OSIRIS-REx (Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security, and Regolith Explorer), a spacecraft designed to visit a PHA and measure its properties.
The spacecraft will arrive in orbit around an asteroid named 1999 RQ36 in the year 2018. The object is 457 meters across and is also one of most threatening PHAs yet found.
“For such a large object, it has one of the highest known probabilities of impacting Earth, a 1 in 2,400 chance late in the 22nd century, according to calculations by Steve Chesley, an astronomer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory,” said Edward Beshore, deputy principal investigator for NASA’s OSIRIS-REx asteroid sample return mission and a researcher at the University of Arizona.
The most important measurement the probe will make is of the Yarkovsky effect, which occurs as a result of asteroids heating and cooling.
“When an asteroid makes a close pass to Earth, the gravitational pull from our planet changes the asteroid’s orbit,” said Beshore. “However, how this change will affect the evolution of the asteroid’s orbit is difficult for us to predict because there are also other small forces continuously acting on the asteroid to change its orbit. The most significant of these smaller forces is the Yarkovsky effect – a minute push on an asteroid that happens when it is warmed up by the sun and then later re-radiates this heat in a different direction as infrared radiation.”
The magnitude of the effect is difficult to determine from Earth, since asteroids have different sizes, shapes, and compositions. Beshore and his colleagues expect OSIRIS-REx to provide an estimate of the Yarkovsky force on RQ36 twice as precise as current ones. The measurements should help researchers better estimate the effect on other asteroids.
If new estimates find RQ36 to be an imminent danger to Earth, researchers will have to come up with a way to alter the object’s orbit.
“There are several mitigation strategies,” said Beshore. “We could explode a small nuclear device close above the surface on one side of the asteroid. This could be very effective – it would vaporize the surface layer, which would then fly off at very high speed, causing a rocket thrust that would shove everything over by a few centimeters per second. This might be plenty to deflect the asteroid. Other strategies include kinetic impactors, where you strike an asteroid very hard with a heavy projectile moving at high speed. In 2005, NASA’s Deep Impact mission hit comet Tempel 1 with a 370-kilogram (over 815-pound) copper slug at about five kilometers per second (over 11,000 miles per hour), not nearly enough to significantly alter the orbit of the five-kilometer-sized body, but a proof of the technology for this kind of mission. Another idea is to use a gravity tractor – station a spacecraft precisely enough near the asteroid which would gradually deflect it with only its gravitational pull.”
Love it or hate it, if you want to play Dead Space 3, Crysis 3, or SimCity on a PC or Mac, you are going to have to download EA’s Origin platform.
It’s been only one month since EA released the “Alpha” version of its Origin platform for the Mac, and today EA officially released the client for Macs. We’ll have to assume that means the weeks-long alpha and beta tests went well, or that no one downloaded the alpha and the publisher decided it was good enough for the few people who would actually use it. Either way, Mac gamers can now download EA games such as The Sims 3, Dragon Age II, and, um, The Sims 3 expansion packs. There are other games available, of course, but nothing that isn’t already available through the Mac App Store.
“Our vision with Origin is to connect your gaming universe online, and today we’re taking a major step in expanding our service to reach Mac-based gamers worldwide,” said Michael Blank, VP of production for Origin at EA. “In delivering great game content, connecting the Origin service across PC, Mac and iOS devices, and offering great value to gamers with dual-platform play on select EA titles, Origin is making it easier than ever before for gamers to connect and play anytime, anywhere.”
So, maybe Mac gamers won’t get to download Crysis 3, but they shouldn’t worry too much. SimCity will (probably) be released on Origin for Mac in the near future.