Ghost Recon Online Message Board

Steam Early Access is for games that are unfinished and in beta. Or alpha. Or games that are finished but need a little bit of testing before the developers feel comfortable saying that. Or for games where the developers have run out of money and need the extra funding to keep going. Games that are broken outright, games that are updated regularly, games that might never be finished. Indie games. Mainstream games. Games by Ubisoft that first launched into beta in 2012. Games like Ghost Recon Online.

The free-to-play shooter has been in beta since launch and available only through uPlay thus far, but is joining Steam’s Early Access service this Spring. If you live in Canada, it’s already there, which makes Ubisoft the first major publisher to get involved with Early Access.(more…)

Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Online: Free-to-Play

Zoinks, gang! Guh-guh-guh-guh, guh-guh-guh-guh– highly trained military operatives! After a closed beta skulked its way through the Internet’s murkiest rushes, Ghost Recon Online‘s seen fit to finally flip the open beta switch. This means that anyone – man, beast, or Nosferatu - with a working Internet connection can play it now. And if you’re not one of those things? Well then, too bad.

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“You make the impossible a reality.” Usually, that’s the sort of job description I expect from theme park designers, Las Vegas magicians, or anyone fortunate enough to call themselves a “fungineer” in an official capacity. But, according to a new trailer, Ghost Recon Online‘s Specialist can now count himself among those hallowed ranks. Which is a bit odd, seeing as the rather unfriendly ghost seems extremely proficient at breaking other people’s toys. I mean, Blackout cases tech to sputter and die, and A.E.G.I.S. forces bullets to veer off-course, making even the head-poppingest of marksmen feel like lowly Storm Troopers. He is equal parts insult and injury: first he kills your self-esteem, then his shotgun finishes off the rest of you. Here’s hoping the next trailer introduces a magical theme park fungineer to offset all the sad. Until then, though, the Specialist is skulking around after the break.

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Get More: GameTrailers.com, Ghost Recon Online FTP - PAX East 12: Gameplay (Cam), PC Games, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360

More information about Ubisoft’s frontal attack on the free-to-play realms keeps pouring out. This Ghost Recon Online trailer shows off one of the character classes, revealing a bunch of the hi-tech super-gear that the assault class will have at his disposal. As the player gains experience, so the sophistication of his tools increases, too. The most hilarious of these is a microwave area of effect weapon, which allows you to cook nearby baddies on demand. Yes.(more…)

We know very little about Ghost Recon: Commander, so little in fact that I only just found out that it’s going to exist. I’d rather be a Commander than a Future Soldier or an Online so I was pleased about the prospect, but then I saw that it’s a Facebook/mobile game and my interest spiraled away like chocolate syrup down a motel shower drain. However, Chris Early of Ubisoft has told Pocketgamer.biz that playing Commander will unlock advantages in the other two upcoming Ghost Recon games, and vice versa. I suppose the idea is that spending a spare half hour on Facebook could earn you a gun rather than a dubiously rekindled acquaintance with a former sort-of-friend. Quotes and thoughts await below.

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Subliminal message warning: Ubisoft have just announced the closed beta of Ghost Recon Online kicks off next month. That month? March. See how I snuck it into the headline? You already knew before you got to the story. The first raft of Ghosts will be let into the secretive world of the closed beta on the fifth of next month. You can sign up here and pray you’re chosen. I’m quite looking forward to running around pretending to be a ghost. Bagsy Slimer! There’s a pair of videos to run alongside the announcement. I’m about to watch them both for the first time, so do join me.(more…)

Get More: GameTrailers.com, Ghost Recon Online - Class Overview Trailer, PC Games, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360

Is it Thanksgiving or Groundhog day? I could have sworn it was yesterday that news emerged of a Ubisoft title not being released on PC, with anguished claims about rampant piracy being blamed. Now it’s the turn of Ghost Recon: Future Soldier and although the quotes given to PC Gamer don’t actually accuse us all of ‘bitching’, they do paint an unpleasant view of the PC gaming landscape. We’re told that Ghost Recon Online is the PC’s alternative to Ghost Recon: Future Soldier.

‘Why’, you ask? Senior producer Sebastien Arnoult has the answers. Or at least, some answers. “When we started Ghost Recon Online we were thinking about Ghost Recon: Future Solider; having something ported in the classical way without any deep development, because we know that 95 per cent of our consumers will pirate the game.” Sigh.

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Ubisoft’s devs are keen to talk up the hardcore and “high-quality” credentials of their forthcoming free-to-play offering Ghost Recon Online in their new dev diary, which you can see below. They talk a bit about how it emerged from “hardcore” PC games, and argue that the most important aspect of bringing it to PC is making it feel responsive enough. It is apparently a third-person shooter that “plays a lot like a first-person shooter”. Hm! There’s a lot of game footage in there, and lots of commentary from the devs. Take a look.(more…)

Speaking to CVG, Ubisoft’s Theo Sanders said of Ghost Recon games on PC: “We knew it was a platform we wanted to come back to. However, until recently, the retail market for PC made it difficult to invest in a big, dedicated product.” He went on to explain the move to create Ghost Recon Online, which will be Ubisoft’s first proper crack at the free to play way of doing things, is down to exciting new “online business models”: “The emergence of online business models has brought back the opportunity to produce something dedicated to PC fans, rather than just ported multiplatform content.”

So that’s good. You can apply for the Ghost Recon Online beta over here.

Those who have been eagerly awaiting an exciting new entry in Ubisoft's Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon series of tactical shooters... well, here's something, at least. The publisher announced today that 2011 will mark the release of Ghost Recon Online, a free-to-download PC shooter in development at Ubisoft Singapore.

Which precise iteration of Ghost Recon this game might be rooted in is currently unknown, though based on the first-released screenshots (which you can find in gallery format at the bottom of this story), the game seems to work within the same kind of near-future warfare that recent Advanced Warfighter versions operated within. Or maybe I'm just being seduced by the futuristic neon blue of that one guy's helmet, and it just takes place in Afghanistan or something. Again, we don't really know yet.

What we do know is that the game will, like other "freemium" titles out there--yes, that's a thing--feature a microtransaction-oriented pay structure. Players will be able to download and play the game for free, and purchase a host of upgrades and premium items that will, at least theoretically, improve their in-game abilities and help customize the experience.

The title is scheduled to release in the second half of this year, with an online beta going live this summer. You can go to the Ghost Recon Online website to get additional details on the beta, or just sit here and kvetch in the comments about how this totally isn't Ghost Recon: Future Soldier, and how much it sucks that you have to wait until next year for that game to come out. Either is a completely acceptable strategy.