DICE have confirmed that the debut trailer for their upcoming Frostbite 2-powered Battlefield 4 will arrive on March 27, taking it a step further by unveiling a very short teaser clip to get those gaming juices flowing.

The announcement came from the official Battlefield Twitter account, which included a sneak peak at the trailer. It looks as though we should 'Prepare 4 Battle' and that we should expect some naval gameplay, too. Once the trailer breaks, we should hopefully hear more on the game in the coming months, which platforms it'll be released on - and when - and which platform was the development platform.

Remember last time, we were told it was the PC, but then switched to the consoles to get it out on time. Hopefully this time, DICE aren't messing around and have developed on the PC first and foremost, especially considering that next-gen consoles are powered by x86-based, PC architecture - like the PlayStation 4 from Sony.

As of March 30, EA's CEO, John Riccitiello, will be stepping down from the gaming publishers top position. EA is currently attempting to put out multiple fires over their SimCity fiasco, where just today we heard that the game sold over one million copies since its launch two weeks ago.

EA haven't exactly explained why Riccitiello is stepping down, but EA's press release has said that both the former CEO and newly-appointed Executive Chairman, Larry Probst, came to a mutual agreement that it was the right time for Riccitiello to step down. Riccitiello has been steering the EA ship since 2007, when he replaced Probst. EA will now hunt through both internal and external candidates to find themselves a new CEO.

Valve have quite the announcement today, telling the world that Team Fortress 2 will get a new mode this week - "VR Mode" for Oculus Rift, the superstar VR headset. This means that people who own the development kit of Oculus' VR headset can play Team Fortress in virtual reality.

Engadget have an interview with Joe Ludwig, one of the engineers in Valve working with Team Fortress 2's VR Mode. The interview can be seen here. The good news doesn't stop there! What good is a new mode if we don't have a new exclusive had in the game? The Oculus Rift development kit is now a wearable item within the game! Valve has been even more generous, donating Rift hats to the Oculus developer community - so if you backed the Kickstarter campaign at any level at all, or pre-ordered one of the Rift developer kits from Oculus' website before April 1, 2013, you'll receive a code to redeem your own TF2 Oculus dev kit hat.

Now the big question - how long until we see Rift support added to other games? In Engadget's interview with Joe Ludwig, he says that TF2's VR Mode is a big test, to see how the community accepts it. Obviously Oculus' Rift headset won't be available to the consumer market until later in the year, so hopefully we see some Steam Box support, and maybe some Half-Life 3 launch at E3 with Rift support? Or am I asking too much ther

YouTube is bankrolling an original series created by Reddit. The new series, Explain Like I'm Five, will be getting three episodes released today, one of which is embedded below. The series comes from the subreddit that features the same name.

For us, it's more about encouraging the Reddit community and bigger community of producers, filmmakers and animators out there to create content, video, web series, shows ... based on Reddit content.

It's an interesting idea that benefits both Reddit and YouTube. YouTube gets to host the content and serve ads and Reddit serves as the source of ideas. We aren't sure if this will prove to be an on-going thing or if Reddit is trying to start the ball rolling and allow others to step up. We'll be sure to report more when we know.

We've brought you lots of coverage of SimCity's somewhat flawed launch. Over the last couple of weeks, EA and Maxis have been working diligently to bring more servers online and patch current servers so that they can support more users. Apparently the efforts have paid off because EA has said this was SimCity's largest launch ever at 1.1 million units.

SimCity had a great weekend with sales strong across both North America and Europe, adding to overwhelming demand at launch that has us tracking well beyond expectations for the game. SimCity is one of the storied brands in gaming, and Maxis delivered a game re-envisioned and engineered for the online age.

Impressively, users have logged 15 million hours of gameplay across 5.7 million cities. Contained in those cities are 780 million buildings and enough roads and railroad tracks to traverse the globe over 40,000 times. I'm holding off for a bit longer before dropping my money on the game to make sure everything is patched and ready to play.

RapidShare will likely upset some of its customers with its latest move. As of March 20, the unlimited storage option will disappear, even for those who have pre-paid for unlimited storage for longer periods. In exchange, RapidShare is expanding its options provided to free users.

Current customers will now be able to pick from a 250GB plan for 10 euros per month and a 500GB plan for 20 euros per month. Unfortunately for some, RapidShare's Terms of Service allow them to change the contents of RapidPro services at anytime. RapidShare had the following to say:

According to our terms of use we are entitled to change the contents of RapidPro services. Customers who don't like the new terms can cancel with 30 days' notice and receive reimbursement proportional to the length of their remaining term.

If you're a RapidShare unlimited user with lots of data on the service, you might want to make sure you have it all backed up before you have to start paying. One user with 5 terabytes on RapidShare was offered a custom plan by the company. They wanted to charge 700 euros per month.

It looks like NVIDIA may be working on a second GK110-based consumer GPU to fill the gap between the marginally expensive GTX 680 and the ridiculously expensive GTX Titan released last month. With a $500 gap between the GTX 680 and GTX Titan, NVIDIA has a lot of wiggle room to squeeze another GPU in the lineup.

The video card is said to feature 13 of the 15 streaming multiprocessors that are built into the GK110 silicon. This means we would have 2,496 CUDA cores to do our gaming bidding. Combine that with 208 texture memory units, 40ROPs, a 320-bit memory interface, and 5GB of GDDR5 RAM and you end up with a fairly powerful card.

The rumored release date is somewhere between July and August of this year.

Google has climbed some of the highest peaks in the world to bring Street View images so that you don't even have to get out of your seat. While this won't satisfy some of the most adventurous Google Maps users, it will satisfy those of us who may not be physically capable of climbing these mountins.

While there's nothing quite like standing on the mountain, with Google Maps you can instantly transport yourself to the top of these peaks and enjoy the sights without all of the avalanches, rock slides, crevasses, and dangers from altitude and weather that mountaineers face.

You might be interested in checking out Mount Everest, Kilimanjaro,, and Aconcagua.

Key Lime Pie, the fifth installment in Android's book of life, is set to release this summer and we are now getting word of what devices will get upgrades to the new OS. So far Samsung is the first to give indication on which of its devices will get a Key Lime Pie flavored refresh.

According to credible sources, both the Galaxy S III and Galaxy Note II will be the first to get the upgrade as will several other Samsung devices released in the past year. The just released Galaxy S IV will also see an Android 5 reboot along with the upcoming Galaxy Note 8.0 and Note 10.1.

Unfortunately legacy hardware that was released longer than one year ago will most likely not see an official update, says the sources. While Google has for the most part kept quiet about Key Lime Pie, we do know that it exists and that it is massively integrated with social networking and features a new keyboard. It also is said to feature syncing that lets multiple Android device owners share data between their other Android devices.

The Australian Financial Review released a report this morning in which BlackBerry CEO Thorsten Heins slams Apple over "lack of innovation." With a market cap that is less than Apple's quarterly profits, Heins claims are making some industry insiders laugh.

"Apple did a fantastic job in bringing touch devices to market ... They did a fantastic job with the user interface, they are a design icon. There is a reason why they were so successful, and we actually have to admit this and respect that."

Heins went on to say that BlackBerry has surpassed Apple in innovation with the new BlackBerry 10 and that Apple has stood virtually still and has just rehashed the same old technology it released in 2007 with the first iPhone.

"History repeats itself again I guess ... the rate of innovation is so high in our industry that if you don't innovate at that speed you can be replaced pretty quickly. The user interface on the iPhone, with all due respect for what this invention was all about is now five years old... The point is that you can never stand still. It is true for us as well. Launching BB10 just put us on the starting grid of the wider mobile computing grand prix, and now we need to win it."

Last week we learned that Google Reader would be put out to pasture this coming July, and while Google continues to sever the heads of some of its apps, it seems to be planting seeds for new services to grow.

Earlier today website Android Police spotted some source code that alluded to a new service from Google called "Keep" that would let users easily take, store, and sync notes using one's Google Drive storage space. After some more digging, the sleuths discovered that the desktop version had already gone live at drive.google.com/keep.

The site has since been taken down, suggesting that Google had not meant for the public to see the new service yet. TheNextWeb was able to demo Keep for a few minutes before it was pulled offline and they described the interface as being "basic" and "made for mobile". They said that it did include a search feature, but integration with the rest of Google Drive was nonexistent.

So what does this mean? Well, Google is obviously working on a note taking application, and that it does plan on integrating it into the existing Google Drive product. Will it contend with Evernote? That is still left to be seen, but there is something appealing to having all my productivity apps built into a single easy to manage product like Google Drive.

Last week's launch stole the smartphone news show, but this week, everything is about Sony's next offerings. The company has announced two new Android based smartphones today in its Xperia line. In a series of videos, Sony shows off the best features of each phone.

The Xperia L is a lower end smartphone that is aimed at improving photo quality. Sony is touting the L as "the beat of Sony Camera Experience in a smartphone." It features a 1GHz dual-core Qualcomm MSM8230 processor, 1750mAh battery, an 8MP camera and 8GB of internal storage. The Xperia L will come in three colors - white, black and red.

The Xperia SP looks to be the new flagship phone from the company. Sony states that the XP was "precision crafted in every detail." and "the Xperia SP brings Sony brilliance to life, inside and out." The Xperia SP features a 4.6-inch 1280x720 "reality display" and is powered by the Mobile Bravia Engine which can sense the type of content on the screen, and adjust settings for the best image possible.

March has been a roller coaster ride for gaming companies, with major games like Sim City and Tomb Raider experiencing major issues on launch. Tomb Raider was all but playable on NVIDIA GPUs up until now. The GPU architecture giant has finally been able to release an official driver update that fixes most issues with the latest installment from Crystal Dynamics.

On the company's official blog, they stated:

GeForce gamers have come to expect an awesome Day 1 experience. But in the case of Tomb Raider, that didn't come to pass. We hadn't received the game in time to assure them of this - which was disappointing for them and for us.

 

But our software engineers, like our GPUs, are the best in the industry. And they've been working closely with Crystal Dynamics since the game's release to help improve the experience for GeForce gamers.

So, in conjunction with a game patch that Crystal Dynamics released earlier today, we recommend that GeForce users update to the just-posted GeForce 314.21 drivers (Source #2 below). They'll provide major gains in reliability and performance in the game - delivering an average of 45% and up to 60% performance improvements (as measured with GeForce GTX 680 at 1920-1080 and 2560-1600 resolutions).

Patent trolling seems to be the new get rich quick scheme for this decade. Every week we see news of a new lawsuit being filed, or hear word of a case being won or lost down in Tyler, Texas. This week we lead off with news of Cisco winning its battle against the notorious patent troll VirnetX.

VirnetX is a simple 14 man operation that seemingly has one goal: Hunt down possible patent infringements and sue the pants off of the other party. Earlier last year, the company filed suit against Cisco, saying that the networking giant was infringing on some of its VPN patents.

Most of the time VirnetX wins its cases, but today Cisco has dealt a crushing blow to the company when a judge ruled that Cisco was in the clear. Losing the case cost VirnetX a cool $27 million as well as seeing its stock plummet a whopping 40 percent just minutes after the verdict.

After less than a year of being on the market, we now know the end of life timeline for Windows Phone 8. Microsoft has just unveiled the support cycle date for its current mobile operating systems. Windows Phone 7.8 and 8 are both set to expire in 2014.

Microsoft has unveiled its plan to end support for Windows Phone 8 in July of 2014, and Windows Phone 7.8 will see its support end later that year in September. This puts both products on an 18 month life-cycle from the time they started appearing on devices.

Microsoft has made no promise of updates to the next version of Windows Phone for existing hardware either which has sparked some backlash towards the Redmond based company. While no official successor has been announced, a safe bet would be that a mobile version of Windows Blue will replace Windows Phone 8 and we could see an official release by this coming holiday season.

According to a Reuters report, Japanese electronics giant Panasonic could leave the plasma TV business, as part of downsizing their television operations over the next three years starting in the next fiscal year.

Panasonic have already begun selling assets to raise funds, even selling real estate to improve their financial position. Panasonic's TV business generated more than $10.5 billion in sales during the peak 2009/2010 period, but is estimated to earn less than half of that amount going into the 2015/2016 period according to the Nikkei newspaper, not citing any sources unfortunately. A Panasonic spokesperson has said:

We are considering a number of options regarding our TV business. But nothing has been decided yet.

Lenovo have just unveiled their latest ThinkPad, the T431s. Lenovo's ThinkPad T431s is a 14-inch Ultrabook, sporting a 1600x900 matte display backed up by 250 nits of brightness. Inside, we have Intel HD graphics, a 720p front-facing camera, 4GB of RAM (upgradeable to 12GB), a 47WHr sealed battery, an optional backlit keyboard, Bluetooth 4.0 and support for both Wi-Fi and WWAN connections.

Diving in deeper, we find Intel's Core i5-3337U processor clocked at 2.7GHz, with an upgrade to a Core i7 available. A full-sized Ethernet port is available, while VGA makes a weird appearance, too. A 3.5mm headphone/microphone combo jack is here, two USB 3.0 ports, a 4-in-1 SD card reader and a 320GB 5400RPM mechanical HDD resides inside for storage - with the option to upgrade to a super-fast SSD. It'll ship with your choice of Windows 7 or Windows 8.

No touchscreen is here yet, but Lenovo have said that future T431s models might feature touch panels. The trackpad has lose its physical buttons, with a custom-built alternative at play from Lenovo and Synaptics that reportedly took two years to work on. The T431s' trackpad supports some 20 different gestures. Lenovo's latest Ultrabook will start at $949 and will be in stores next month.

Can you believe we're already up to a fourth Saints Row game? Well, the developers behind Saints Row, Volition, have unveiled the trailer to Saints Row IV, showing off a bunch of content in the game. Check it out below:

There you have it, if you thought the previous Saints Row games were crazy, this is going to set the bar much higher. It looks like Saints Row had babies with a bunch of other games, like GTA and Crackdown, and that is definitely not a bad thing at all. Saints Row IV gets released on August 20, 2013 in the US, and three days later on August 23 for the rest of the world.

Crytek have authorized a new TimeSplitters game headed to PC, powered by the company's CryEngine 3. TimeSplitters Rewind is a fan-made game, including the help of members of the original TimeSplitters team from Free Radical Design.

TimeSplitters Rewind will include multiple modes and challenges taken from the original three TimeSplitters games, all polished in CryEngine 3. There will be online play for 8-16 players, as well as bots. CryEngine 3 doesn't support split-screen, so that's off the table for the moment. A demo of TimeSplitters Rewind is due for December.

Defense Distributed has received a federal firearms license, with company head Cody Wilson announcing this would allow his company to manufacture and sell the group's guns. The news comes from Defense Distributed's Facebook page, where they uploaded a photo of the license with a note saying "The work begins!"

Wilson has said that the Type 7 license he received will allow him the same rights as other manufacturers, where he adds: "I can sell some of the pieces that we've been making. I can do firearms transactions and transport." Wilson will be required to, of course, keep records on what his company makes and sells, but he doesn't have plans to sell anything until he receives a supplemental license to make a broader range of firearms.

Defense Distributed seem to be the sharpest tool in the shed when it comes to 3D-printed gun companies, successfully testing 3D-printed rifle lowers and high-capacity magazines.