YES! Battlefield 3's first [and hopefully not last] expansion pack, Back to Karkand, has a release date of December 14. It comes out seven days earlier on the Sony PlayStation 3, with a release date of December 7.

Sony's Asian PlayStation Store lists Battlefield 3 Back to Karkand for December 7, 2011, which is how the news broke of the December 14 date. I don't mind waiting 7 more days, because I'm just so damn excited.

For now, enjoy yesterday's gameplay footage from one of the maps on Back to Karkand, Gulf of Oman.

Just days ago, 2K Marin had a Canberra, Australia-based arm to help with development. This studio is now working with former sister studio Irrational Games on BioShock Infinite. Irrational Studios boss Ken Levine said when asked for a comment:

We had a number of open positions on BioShock Infinite. When we found out our former sister studio 2K Australia was becoming available, we thought they would perfectly fill those roles. If every decision was this easy...

Then we have a history lesson, in 2007, Irrational Games was bought by Take-Two, just before the release of BioShock. Just before this, the studio was split apart and renamed 2K Boston and 2K Australia. Since this time, 2K Boston has become Irrational Games, but 2K Australia was skipped. 2K Australia helped 2K Marin on BioShock 2, after which 2K Australia became 2K Marin, but based in Australia. After this, they helped with the XCOM reboot.

Skyrim has received a 1.2 patch for the PS3 version of the game, which fixes a whole heap of annoying issues and strange bugs. PC or Xbox 360 Skyrim gamer? You'll have to wait 48 hours for your patch.

The 1.2 notes are below:

Improved occasional performance issues resulting from long term play (PlayStation 3)

Microsoft's next-generation Kinect 2 is set to receive a hefty upgrade in specs, which will allow it to be so accurate, it could lip read. Yes, lip read. Kinect 2 will also offer improved motion sensing and voice recognition.

Eurogamer was told by a development source that Kinect 2 will be so powerful it will be enable games to lip read, detect when players are angry, and determine in which direction they are facing. Kinect 2 should also have the ability to track the pitch and volume of player voices and facial characteristics to measure different emotional states.

Current Kinect technology is held back by USB technology as it has to pass data through the ageing technology. Kinect launched in November 2010 with the depth sensor set to 30 frames per second and a 320x240 resolution limit. The USB interface is capable of roughly 35MB/sec but is artificially held back to use only 15/16MB/sec because multiple USB devices can be used at once on the Xbox 360.

This is not something you'd expect from the can't-do-anything-wrong Apple, but during a flight in Australia, an iPhone spontaneously began smoking and emitting a red glow. Passengers aboard Regional Express flight ZL319 were welcomed to their destination in Sydney, Australia by a somewhat frightening ordeal.

Regional Express said that a passenger's iPhone began "emitting a significant amount of dense smoke" shortly after the flight landed, and the smoke was accompanied by a red glow. The device was extinguished by a flight attendant with no passenger's or crew injured. The phone itself was an iPhone 4, and not the new iPhone 4S model.

It has been taken by the Australian Transport Safety Bureau as part of their investigation. The full press release is quoted below:

Psst. Come over here. Yeah, over here. I have a secret - I'm secretly addicted to Battlefield 3. I don't play it often, but a few hours here and there and I'm on level 20. I don't want to thrash into it, I've had a few things happen lately that takes my time away from it. But, today brings a new gameplay video of Battlefield 3's expansion pack - Back to Karkand.

The map displayed is Gulf of Oman and features combat vehicles that you'll be able to control in the game. Three of the vehicles are from Battlefield 2 and those vehicles are: STOVL fighter jet, desert buggy (woo!), and one of the APC's.

Back to Karkand Lead Designer Niklas Fegraeus says:

AMD have just announced the first retail availability of AMD-branded memory in North America, as they've partnered with Patriot Memory LLC and VisionTek Products, LLC. AMD Memory branded products will help customers with their DRAM selection when buying a new system.

It is all part of AMD's development of personal computer platforms, they've used the AMD OverDrive performance optimization tool to test and optimize DRAM in conjunction with the company's APUs, CPUs, GPUs and chipset platforms. Paul Jones, CEO of Patriot Memory says:

Patriot Memory will bring over two decades of experience and expertise into this ecosystem. Our proven ability to deliver the best technology at the most competitive prices will help pave the way to success for this memory line.

NVIDIA have just released the GeForce 290.36 drivers that are set to offer some improvements to a bunch of games, as well as adding support for some new BenQ 3D Vision-capable monitors.

First up we have some new SLI profiles for Crysis 2, Heroes and Generals, Inversion, Stronghold 3, and Syndicate. PhysX has been updated to 9.11.11.07 which includes the best PhysX experience for Batman: Arkham City. For a full rundown on what 290.36 offers, check it out below:

NVIDIA Ambient Occlusion:

AMD have obviously been very hard at work between gaming and working on new video cards, with the release of another driver in the form of Catalyst 11.11b performance driver.

This driver brings some Crossfire performance scaling to Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim as well as a bunch of improvements to other gamers such as Batman: Arkham City, RAGE, Assassin's Creed: Revelations, and Battlefield 3. A full list of improvements is below:

Elder Scrolls Skyrim:

Crytek GmbH have in the last few days announced that they closed a licensing deal for CryENGINE 3, its proprietary real-time development solution, with Crystal CG, a world-leading digital image service provider.

Crystal CG is dedicated to providing customized solutions that use 3D digital visualization technologies and have worked on a few widely-recognized projects such as the "Grand opening ceremony of Beijing 2008 Olympics" as well as the "London 2012 Olympics mascot promotional film" as well as a number of various visual communication projects.

Crystal CG have tapped the CryENGINE 3 for their upcoming projects, which they will use to further enhance their production values and achieve even better outcomes in a significantly shorter amount of time.