News Snatch: 30 Days Free PS+ And Skyrim PS3 DLC

Please check your calenders, then check your coffee for any traces of psychotropic substances. Now very carefully check for a cat that walks past a door way followed by another identical cat. We have now made sure it is not April 1st, that you have not been drugged and you are not living in the Matrix.

Brace yourselves people..

Yes, almost exactly a year after its release, the PlayStation 3 version of Skyrim is close to getting DLC! It has not been released, it has not been announced but it is close to being announced! Woohoo!

The world has been rejoicing in the news, President Obama has sent his best wishes and smoke has been seen over the Vatican. In Britain HRH The Queen has announced Buck Palace will be renamed “Almost Maybe Getting DLC Palace” and Kerry Katona has implanted pairs of ‘Dragonborn’ horns on her breasts.

Stay tuned for further dramatic events in this unfolding story, Snatch has heard whispers that the first piece of PS3 DLC will be an exclusive Horse Armour Pack which will retail at the bargin price of £225.99.

Staying with animals, Blizzard are to help those who who are suffering after superstorm Sandy by selling a virtual kitteh. War Of Warcraft players will be able to adopt the fiery feline ‘Cider Kitty’ for $10 and all ten bucks will go to help those affected by the storm.

If you have yet to sign up for PlayStation Plus then Sony still has an offer you may be interested in. By clicking over to their Facebook page you can bag 30 days of Plus for free. This month’s treats include Ratchet & Clank: All For One, Crysis 2 and Cubixx HD and you will be able to grab a 20% discount on Dyad.

Apple have been granted the patent on a round edge rectangle. No, really, they have, from now on anyone creating a tablet or phone that is rectangular with curved corners can have their bottoms sued off for billions of dollars. Rumour has it Apple have also filed patents for the wheel, fire and accidentally biting your tongue whilst eating a crispy bacon baguette.

A new piece of art for that game has been released. Rather oddly, it’s not in the same style as the previous artwork but it is also not a screenshot, making it of even less value than the previous art. Utterly useless.

For a change, some good financial news as Activision have reported a net revenue of $841 million for Q3 2012, 57% of which was generated by digital content. Meanwhile Capcom have announced they will be adding 1,000 jobs to their internal development teams and cutting down the number of games they outsource.

The Windows 8 launch seems to have gone rather well, no major cock ups – well, almost. You pay for Xbox Live Gold and get bombarded with adverts and now you can buy yourself a swanky new Microsoft OS and get… even more adverts.  “Microsoft’s official applications have some basic advertising in them,” noted Owen Williams, Editor of Neowin.net. “You pay for the OS license (even in the Enterprise) and the ads still exist. You subscribe to Microsoft’s new Xbox Music service and the ads still stay. I’m worried about what comes next, ads while I send email? When I’m searching my files? There needs to be a way to turn this off.”

Back to Activision who have been doing happy dances and telling investors about their success. “We have a promising pipeline of great games based on proven franchises, as well as exciting new products like our collaboration with Bungie,” said Snatch fave, Bob Kotick. Most of the investor call was spent discussing how brilliant Skylanders is and how World Of Warcraft subscriptions have bounced back. However, there was no mention of Spiderman or Transformers, both games underperformed when released so we may never see the conclusion of High Moon’s epic robot tale.

The Pixeljunk team have been explaining why Pixeljunk 1-6 will be released on Steam rather than the PSN. “We want to rapidly iterate on the game following release, and Steam is probably the best platform around for this at the moment. Steam also has some interesting features we want to explore like the new Big Picture mode” said Rowan. The good news is that they “hope 1-6 does well enough on Steam for PC that we can bring it to PSN and as many other platforms as is technically possible!”

Mindless gimps continue to tap away at the Curiosity Cube in the hope of being first to reach the centre and discover the secret. You might be in for a shock though, “It’s not a big pile of cash, it’s not an expensive car and it’s not the next game from 22Cans. I think I’ve said it’s not Half-Life 3,” said Molyneux.

Whatever is inside the cube will “change your life”. If it’s not cash or a car, what else could it be? A house perhaps? That would be difficult as 22 Cans have no idea where the eventual winner will reside. That also rules out pretty much every sort of physical prize, there are so many rules and regulations regarding what can be given as a prize in a competition and they differ for every single country in the world.

A quick survey of the TSA office reveals Peter thinks it may be shares in 22 Cans and when I asked Blair what was in the centre of the cube he replied “Me”. We know the cube will contain a video, suggestions include the sequel to Two Girls One Cup or a Peter Molyneux sex video.

So what else can change your life? Having children? Is there an orphan at the centre of the cube? Perhaps it is Blair.

Discovering religion can also profoundly change your life, has Molyneux gone off his rocker big time and after many years of creating god games now thinks he is god? That must be it, the cube will contain the Ten Commandments of Molyneux.

We end with a video from Ubisoft that tells the story of Far Cry 3. Be warned it has drink, drugs, punching sharks and rude gestures, do not show this to grandma.