DICE, an Electronic Arts Inc. studio (NASDAQ:ERTS), today announced that Battlefield 1943™ will be exclusively available July 8th on Xbox LIVE™ Marketplace and July 9th on the PlayStation Network. Battlefield 1943 is an all-new download-only action game that brings DICE’s first-class vehicular warfare to gamers for just $15, or 1200 MS Points.

Battlefield 1943 is a critically-acclaimed First-Person Shooter (FPS) multiplayer game that puts players in the middle of a dogfight on land, sea or in the skies. The game introduces two thrilling new modes that can be played across four classic Battlefield tropical WWII maps: Wake Island, Guadalcanal, Iwo Jima and Coral Sea. These maps are inspired by the award winning Battlefield 1942™ game, but have been redesigned and reengineered using the DICE destructible Frostbite™ engine which takes down walls, blockades and cover spots, leaving players with almost nowhere to hide. The game delivers endless hours of social online gameplay – an extraordinary value at just $15.

The Coral Sea map which is included in the game will be unlocked as part of a worldwide community challenge, where players will work together to reach 43M kills on both Xbox LIVE and the PlayStation Network. To help gamers reach that goal, up to 24 players can play together online in countless matches. They will have the freedom to compete by land, air and sea as either the US Marines or the Imperial Japanese Navy. Whether they choose to play the role of a rifleman crawling through the trenches, a steel-fisted tank commander, or a dog fighting ace pilot, gamers will have the power to rule the Battlefield.

“Battlefield 1943 is going to change consumer expectations of what a downloadable game can be. By offering Frostbite’s next generation destruction technology with a full Vehicle Warfare FPS multiplayer experience at a mere 560MB, Battlefield 1943 sets a new standard,” said Gordon Van Dyke, Producer on Battlefield 1943. “Our goal is to blow people away with a fully accessible, retail-calibre game for veteran Battlefield fans and shooter fans alike to enjoy for only $15.”

Hello and welcome back to another update of Forgotten Hope. Today we have two new renders of anti-tank equipment; the British 6-pounder MkIV and the German Marder I SdKfz 138.

The original 6-pounder MkI was made by TheJackalx2k, AaronAsh and Rad and it was upgraded to the MkIV by Toddel.

The 6-pounder MkIV is not just a reskin from the MkI used in North Africa. This gun has an L/50 barrel (meaning the barrel length is 50 times greater than the barrel diameter (57mm), as opposed to the L/43 barrel on the MkI. The 6-pounder was kept in service with the British Army until some 20 years after the end of the war.

Next up we have the Marder I, SdKfz 138, which was made by Toddel.

The German army had captured more than 300 French Lorraine 37Ls in 1940 and, in May of 1942, it was decided to put these artillery tractors to use, by converting 170 of them to tank-destroyers. The new vehicle, called the Marder I, was armed with a 75mm PaK40/1. Although most Marder Is were used on the eastern front, some were also used in Normandy, most notably, by the 21st Panzer Division.

Michael Jackson's death continues to resonate throughout the world. While some game developers are declining to offer up some sort of tribute to the King of Pop, others are taking the initiative.

Battlefield Heroes, Electronic Arts' experimental browser-based shooter, is now allowing players to select from a pair of Michael Jackson-themed costumes. (seen below)

Earlier reports suggested the company was charging for players to download them, but that has since been denied. A spokesperson from EA confirmed to IGN saying "Battlefield Heroes is not charging for the Michael Jackson tribute outfits."

A new week, a new update. Today we would like to show you a few more things from our upcoming 0.2 release. But first, we would like to talk about some other things. As some of you might have noticed, we have updated our website alot recently.

One of the new things is, we have been fiddling around with twitter, and thought it was a good idea to give our fans some real-time updates about just everything that is going on behind the scenes. You can either find the latest two updates on the upper right corner of our website, or directly see all of them on our twitter page, which can be found at twitter.com/usimod. But now for the real news.

After the three new maps we showed off in the next update, we have made some changes to some of our older maps and would like to share them with you. This week we want to show you the first one of it, Ad Dawrah Oilfields. Our mapping guru, [EoD]Junglist, has put some love into this map and it turned out quite well. To serve the infantry lovers out there, we now have some small villages and more cover to hide from the big boy’s toys. But let the pictures speak for themselves.

Off to the next one. As promised earlier, we would now like to show you screenshots of our new brand new HUDs for the A10, the F16, J7, Su25 and the BRDM2. Nothing to add here, just take a look and tell us what you think.

After we have introduced the Britsh Faction we want to show you a special "baby" of the new troops on our battlefield. Today we present the L119A1 or C8SFW.

The C8SFW was introduced by Special Forces and british Ground Forces under the name L119A1. The C8SFW is a specially for Special Forces redesigned Version of the Diemaco C8. The major difference between the normal Version and the Special Forces Weapon is the longer barrel and the resulting precision.

Country of Origin: Canada
Weight: 2,68 kg (unloaded)
Length: 84 cm (stock extended), 76 cm (stock collapsed)
Barrel length: 37 cm
Caliber: 5.56x45mm NATO
Rate of fire: 750-950 Schuss / Min
Muzzlevelocity: 905 m/sec
Effective Range: 400 m

The model of the C8 is from the Dutch Faction of PR (PR: Dutch Armed Forces) and was altered by Mavy to the C8SFW. He also equipped it with an optional silencer. In OPK a reddot vision will be used. To give you a better impression of the weapon we have some renders prepared for you.