May 8th is finally upon us and Starhawk is now available in stores all over North America! The team has put a lot of work into this game and we hope you all enjoy it! To celebrate the release of Starhawk, here’s a look at our launch trailer…

But, as I mentioned in my last post, the release of Starhawk is really just the beginning of our ongoing support for our international community. And to support our online multiplayer community we have some really great announcements for you all today. First, we’re honored that Major League Gaming has taken a strong interest in Starhawk with its blend of shooter and strategy gameplay, and they’re kicking things off right with a tournament worth $20,000 in prizes so get over to http://www.majorleaguegaming.com/starhawk and sign-up! And if you missed it last night, be sure to check-out the live stream that we did for the MLG Starhawk exhibition with pro gamers Tsquared, Hastr0, and GoldenBoyFTW! We cover single-player, co-op, and of course hot multiplayer action. Witty commentary supplied by me, of course ;-).

Secondly, and this is the announcement that you guys probably were *NOT* expecting…there was a lot of discussion here at LightBox Interactive and Sony Santa Monica on how best to support the community and keep our player base all together as one cohesive group. We really didn’t like how in Warhawk when we released a new map pack, it forced these divisions on our players. And after we released three expansions, our player community was pretty fractured. With Starhawk that ends! We are incredibly excited to announce that all map packs for Starhawk will be free. Yeah, you read that right…FREE. Whenever we release a map pack you won’t have to pay a friggin’ dime! And we’ve already started the early stages of our next map pack for you guys. Check out these very early sketches from the new planet of Cypress! A lush, swampy world that’s home to an abandoned research facility that many years ago was responsible for researching the mysteries of Rift Energy.

Now certainly we’ll have some paid DLC content in the future as well as our free map packs, but we’re still playing around with what that will be. We’re going to be looking to see what the player feedback is on Starhawk in the coming weeks to help steer the DLC that we develop for you all. This is our commitment to all of you, the players. I hope you all get a chance to enjoy Starhawk – not only with today’s retail release but for the months and years to come!