Keep the pedal to the floor on those party chat complaints in Modern Warfare 2!  According to Infinity Ward's Robert Bowling, they hear you loud and clear on the complaints from the community.  Whether hearing is the same as acting, well that's yet to be seen, but for those of you annoyed by the lack of party chat options in certain multiplayer play lists on the Xbox 360 - scream to the heavens:  

"For the love of Soap MacTavish give us our party chat!"

The lack of party chat was done in part to prevent cheaters in different multiplayer game types.  Basically these punks would jump onto the opposing team calling out their teammates positions to their friends on the other team in party chat.  For most of us, we're unaffected by this decision because we're too busy playing Spec-Ops in co-op!

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Co-Op gamers should be familiar with Mr Albert Wesker as he was the main villain in Resident Evil 5.  After conquering him in the game you could unlock him as a playable character in Mercenaries mode, and for us, he was a favorite.

So there's good news for those of you looking forward to Lost Planet 2 and its four player co-op mode - Wesker is an exclusive pre-order bonus to Gamestop.  Well it's good news if you like Gamestop, and thankfully it's only a skin.  That's ok right?  Not exactly.

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Electronic Arts announced today that it is closing Pandemic Studios, developers of such co-op titles like Mercenaries 2 and Lord of the Rings: Conquest.  With the closure comes around 200 layoffs as well as Pandemic founders Josh Resnick, Andrew Goldman, and Greg Borrud leaving the company.  The studio's last game will be The Saboteur, releasing in December.

All of this is being done under a cost cutting and streamlining measure by Electronic Arts, one in which their workforce will be reduced by some 1500 employees by April, 2010.  Pandemic was acquired from VG Holdings group as part of the Bioware acquisition in 2008.

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When we found out that Halo 3: ODST's Firefight mode didn't support matchmaking, we were quite bummed to say the least.  If you haven't fired up Modern Warfare 2's  Spec-Ops cooperative mode yet on the 360 or PS3, we've got a bit of a downer for you - there's no matchmaking.

Bungie had an excuse for not including it, stating it was an engine limitation, an excuse we don't accept by the way.  Infinity Ward on the other hand hasn't stated why there's no matchmaking in this mode.  

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Sigh.  Sometimes I have to wonder what the heck is going on over at Infinity Ward and other developers that make a decision like this.  According to the Telegraph review of Modern Warfare 2, the game's only cooperative mode Special Ops, is only playable after completing the game's single player campaign.

Update:  Please see the update below, it looks like the Guardian review was wrong.  Co-Op is available without completing the single player game first.  "Spec Ops is a major portion of the game and is available from the start,"  Robert Bowling, Infinity Ward community manager told us, "It asks you if you want to play Spec Ops when you beat the game."  This is where it seems the confusion may have happened.

At least it sounds like Spec-Ops will be worth the wait.

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Cards like these won't work anymore.

In what's most likely an effort to help combat piracy, Microsoft is potentially hurting thousands of legitimate customers by disabling unauthorized third party memory cards and storage on the Xbox 360 following the upcoming dashboard update.

Xbox Live's Major Nelson warns that users better "back up profiles and saves" stored on these devices to "authorized" memory devices, because once the update hits it'll wipe your content.

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Let's face it, it's been a long time since we've known there wouldn't be campaign co-op in Modern Warfare 2.  We got a short quote about how it didn't fit into the single player campaign, and that was that.  We argued, and kicked dirt at the umpire, but really it didn't solve anything.  But now we get a little more detail behind the decision from Infinity Ward's Robert Bowling.

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Anyone who pays any attention to video game releases knows about exclusive pre-order deals for in-game content. Until a year ago, that content was a statue, a figure, a hat, or something we'd consider "swag" in the gaming world. That all changed when retailers and publishers started releasing codes for in-game content. It started off as a gold-colored Lancer for Gears of War 2, or a Warthog with flames on the sides for Halo Wars. While these were merely collectibles that changed in-game aesthetics, it has recently evolved to game-altering exclusives. I'm talking about exclusive characters or gameplay modes that could potentially change the experience of the game itself.

In one of the most brutal and honest interviews I've seen in a long time, Stardock CEO Brad Wardell lays out the state of PC gaming on the table.  You can tell the man has a chip on his shoulder, and he's not afraid to tell the world about digital distribution, Microsoft's shortcomings, and the fact that company's flat out lie about their sales.

With digital distribution becoming more popular, it seems that most have been clamoring that "retail is dead" - but that's simply not the case.  There's a reason we haven't seen numbers from Steam, Direct2Drive, Impulse and other digital platforms - they simply aren't as impressive.

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If you read our impressions of the Uncharted 2 beta a few weeks back, and were a bit jealous to get your hands on the Gold Rush co-op mode, I have good news.  Today is the day that everyone else, those that didn't preorder from Gamestop, gets to have access to the same demo.  

The demo goes live at 2PM EDT and contains two co-op modes and a handful of versus modes across four maps.  The full game is set to release on October 13th exclusively on the PlayStation 3.

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