Xbox 360 owners will be enjoying a new $10 map pack for the superb Call of Duty 4 on April 3rd. PlayStation 3 owners? Not so much.

The four new maps won’t be available until the end of the month on April 24th. Nothing specific was mentioned as a reason for this delay on Fourzerotwo’s blog, a community manager for Infinity Ward. If you think that’s bad, just imagine being a PC user waiting for the maps. They’re getting them, well, no seems to know. They’re working out the “logistics” of that download.

Seriously, it’s PC content. It doesn’t need certification from another company. Shouldn’t that be the easiest of the three to get out into the public?

Fans eagerly waiting for Battlefield: Bad Company have some small relief coming their way. A beta is soon to come, at least if you own a 360. PS3 owners get the short end of the stick.

If you’re an IGN member or your pre-ordered your copy because for some reason you’ll think they’ll be in short supply, you’re entered. If you’re part of the latter group, you had to be one of the first 5,000 pre-orders. If you’re an IGN member, you already have a spot if you register at this link.

The test run will last for 30 days, from March 25th to April 25th. Two maps and a single mode of play will make up this beta period. That’s not a bad time span of play for $5. Even if you’re not interested in buying it, pre-ordering to get the key and then retuning the pre-order would always work, not that we condone that type of thing.

Those of us (okay, all of us) frothing at the mouth to see the classic Super Street Fighter II remade in HD will get their wish sooner than expected… partially.

When Commando 3 launches on the Live Arcade later this year, you can buy your way into a beta. Ken and Ryu will be the only selectable characters, and the full beta will last eight weeks. Oh, and PS3 owners lose out. This is a 360 exclusive. New screen shots for SSFII HD have surfaced on Kotaku as well.

If you have no idea what Commando 3 is, here’s a history lesson. No relation to the Ah-nold movie of the same name, Commando started life as a vertical scrolling shooter in 1985, distributed by Data East. It launched countless knock-offs like Ikari Warriors. The NES port came a year later.

The sequel is known as Mercs. It’s early ’90s awesomeness made for great arcade gaming before landing on the Genesis is a solid port. Mercs still holds up to this day as one of the better Rambo/one man army action titles.

With the weekend off due to the holiday weekend, players with equal time off looking to indulge in some deathmatch action on their PS3 with Rainbow Six Vegas 2 ran into a slight problem. Riddled with connection issues or unplayable lag, PS3 players found themselves outside of rooms and unable to get in.

UbiSoft was quick to respond on the official forums, but no fix was available at this time. Their advice was to help out by pointing out issues in this thread to get the fixin’ process moving.

16 player chaos. Racing. Earing in-game money during online play for single player. Lots of carnage.

Yes, GTA IV is looking like a fun time online. The only downer is the lack of co-op in the single player missions like Crackdown. Small touches as reported on by GameTap including varying volume levels of opponents voices depending on how far away they are. The multi-player maps are not confined or restricted. Rockstar is letting players race the entire map if they choose, with or without weapons.

Multi-player is unlocked within a matter of minutes, and after that, you can play all you want without having to unlock anything else. You can completely ignore the single player if you want. Options are extensive, and you can even set up handicap matches if you want, along with adjusting the number of fodder… err, people present on the streets. GameTap’s preview is on the Xbox 360 version, though the PS3 should offer all of the same options.

So, you have a buddy who lives in the UK. You live in the US. Both of you plunk down the proper currency to indulge in EA’s Army of Two. Both of you agree on a long night of co-op play, since the game is built upon the mechanic.

Sorry to say, that’s not going to work.

It turns out the PS3 version suffers from the same issue, but regardless, this is a first on the Xbox Live service. EA’s response was that this was implemented to reduce server loads.

If you remember a while back, it’s things like this that made the eventual deal to get EA on board with Xbox Live a shaky proposition. Previously, they shut down a staggering amount of servers for older titles, something that is not an issue with any other developer due to the set up of Xbox Live.

For a paid service, it’s unacceptable. With the PS3 being free, developers could do anything they want and no one could complain. Microsoft should be implementing better quality control in these situations, though knowing the online history between the two companies, there’s probably nothing they could do.

Microsoft has finally knocked some cheaters down a notch on Xbox Live.

Instead of an outright banning, they went a step further. If you were caught boosting your Gamerscore, you just lost all of those points you thought you had. Better yet, your account has forever been branded with a “cheater” tag so everyone you play with now knows you were too lazy to even play a video game without assistance.

You can still play all you want and legitimately gain points until the end of time. However, those points that were wiped clean? They’re gone. Even if you replay those games, they’re done. Kaput. Lost. Better yet, this cannot be appealed. Microsoft’s gavel is down, and there is no appeal process.

So, to all of those who are now branded, we give you a big Nelson Muntz “Ha Ha” to you. You can’t say you weren’t warned.

The wonders of a mod-based community never cease to amaze. Unreal Tournament 3 on the PS3 has gained a following with the open community, a rarity for any console shooter. This is a market typically for PC oriented gamers.

Thankfully, someone has used this available feature to create some killer character models. Master Chief? Check. Cloud Strife? Check. Marcus Fenix? Check. Not only are the models in the game, they’re basically indistinguishable from their actual counter parts on the competing hardware. In all actuality, Master Chief looks even better. Since the Gears of War characters rely on the same graphics engine, it’s not too surprising how accurate they are, but there’s still an immense level of skill involved there.

Prototype looks to be a fun, open world romp in a futuristic setting. As a single player experience, it looks to be coming together nicely. However, no longer does it look like the multi-player functionality will be… it won’t have any.

To meet the release date, the developer has dropped the co-op play from the title. There are hints that this could be a future download post-release. So, here starts the conspiracy theory: Are they cutting it to snag an extra $10 from people after they purchased the game and labeling it as DLC? A TeamXbox interview with producer Tim Bennison goes into depth about the deletion of the multi-player. He goes onto to claim it’s been a single player experience from the start, and this keeps the game in focus.

For the one person still unaware, Jack Thompson is a Miami lawyer who has fought for years to prevent the sale of various video games. Some he doesn’t want sold to minors, some he wanted pulled from shelves in their entirety. He has appeared on TV too many times to mention, claiming Counter Strike, Halo, and other popular shooters were the cause of various tragedies around the country (even when the evidence to suggest a link doesn’t exist). Due to his crude, crass, and never particularly polite nature, he ended up on trial with the Florida Bar Association looking to revoke his license.

What Gamepolitics has done is taken the transcripts from nine days of his testimony, taken out the parts of interest, and posted them online. The nine part series is incredibly interesting to read, and posters particularly love the part about the fax machine. It’s worth reading them all if you’re a gamer to see how far one man can go to destroy your pastime.

What started on DOS (and other computer platforms of the era) is no more. Madden is done on the PC. The gist in non PR terms? It didn’t sell and no one played it on the PC anyway. Peter Moore explains in PR terms:

… the PC presents some very serious business challenges to us in the sports category, particularly because so many of you all are playing your favorite sports games on the PS3, Xbox 360 and Wii.

The comments section of that post is loaded with hatred including those who seem to think their small boycott of the console version will make a difference (note to those people: it won’t do anything). It’s admittedly sad to see that on a significant anniversary date that the original platform is shafted, but it’s hard to imagine sales were strong compared to the console versions.

The PC isn’t viewed as a hotbed for sports gamers. It’s forte is largely strategy and shooters. Can anyone blame EA for making this decision in the end? Surely those people complaining know the development cost and sales numbers, right? Right? Unless someone is willing to find this one themselves, it’s over.

Beyond the online issues and stupid plastic wheel, maybe this edition of Mario Kart will actually be fair.

The technique was known as snaking. Basically, Mario Kart awarded players for driving like idiots, drifting back and forth repeatedly continually gaining boost. Not only was this completely unfun for those who didn’t get the technique down, it sapped much of the strategy that came from using objects properly and took away some of the simple purity of the game. Mario Kart 64 used it, as did Mario Kart DS.

No more however. The concept is gone, eliminated, finished, kaput. The world rejoices. The shift has now gone to how long a player can hold the slide, certainly more challenging and fair.