Beginning this SUNDAY at 10am PST, everyone who purchases the BFBC2 digital PC pre-order from Direct2Drive.com will be able to start pre-loading their game file! With your game already downloaded, you'll be ready to play right away on Tuesday when the game goes live at 10am PST.

UK pre-loading begins March 3rd at 00:01am GMT.

Discuss and group up here on our forums.

Well I have some good news and bad news.

First the good news.  Valve has rolled out a new Steam UI for beta testing. It is nice looking, with a major list of UI changes, including improved friends and games management, a spiffy new overlay, and an integrated news feed.  The amount of info on the news post above is staggering.

Now the bad news...  It is a CPU/Memory hog and is at fault for some interface/usage glitches.

But that is why they call it a beta, right?  You have to expect some minor inconvienences.

You can sign up and give it a test run yourself, but caveat emptor!

(Thanks to MrGuv and Trix)

Thanks to our Forum members Leaf7 and Trix for finding this!

E.A., Electronic Arts, the megalodon of Video Game Publishing has just released a semi-accurate list of what titles are going to be published in the next 2 fiscal years, 2010 and 2011.

* Q1 FY2011 - April 1 - June 30, 2010
o Skate 3 (Console)
o Need for Speed World (PC)

* Q2 FY2011 - July 1 - September 30, 2010
o Medal of Honor Title TBA (Console, Handheld, PC)

* Q3 FY 2011- October 1 - December 31, 2010
o Crysis 2 (Console, PC)
o Criterion's Need For Speed Title TBA (Console, Handheld, PC)

* Q4 FY 2011- January 1 - March 31, 2011
o Dead Space 2 (Console, Handheld)
o Dragon Age Title TBA (Console, Handheld, PC)
o Shooter from Epic TBA (Console, PC)
o New Sims Title TBA (PC)
o Spore Title TBA (Consoles, PC)

o "Something far-reaching from Mass Effect" - EA COO John Schappert

For more of the appove list, head over here, ShackNews Article.

As you can see, its a pretty extensive list. I ususally dont get caught up in pre-release excitement, well at least not this far out, but Campione 2000 is changing that feeling. So far it looks like Crysis 2 is going to be EA's largest market hit, seeing its going to be EA's Holiday flagship title AND it will probably have a special edition that has the original titles for the consoles. I'm surprised to see Epic making a title that isn't going to be a Holiday 2011 title, but I'm sure that will change. Other games that stick out are a new Spore and Mass Effect (assume) 3. The new Spore is intriguing, lets hope it fixes the "What the Hell!!!" confusing Universe part.

As always, head over to the crew at ShackNews for other great Gaming Articles.