OK, so we don't necessarily have a virus in our office, but it's much better! This morning we received a Call of Duty Black Ops poster based on the upcoming zombie mode, Call of the Dead. Although it's just a portion of the Escalation DLC to come,it serves as a quick reference to the celebrities appearing in the game. Also, the poster indicates Avenge Sevenfold and 45 Grave are supplying the music.

Today's highlights:

• Free Portal 2 DLC coming this summer.
• Ubisoft is teasing the next Assassin's Creed game.
• New details on Need for Speed: The Run.
• Avoid updating Fallout: New Vegas on 360 until later tonight.
• Show notes for episode 57 of The Oddcast
• The Top Shooters of 2011 That Aren't Call of Duty
• 31 Homebrew Games Worth Playing
• Call of the Dead infects 1UP.
• Weekend Deals

Cave Story 3D Delayed into August

Rift is $29.95 on Direct2Drive right now and dictator simulator Tropico 3 (and its expansion) are a hair more than $5. That's a good deal on a fine (albeit somewhat buggy) game until the sequel comes out later this year.

Read on for the full list of this week's deals.

Following numerous reports from fans of issues caused by the patch, including freezing and an inability to load save games or downloadable content, Bethesda has officially acknowledged the problems. "Regarding the Xbox 360 update, we've discovered a solution to the issue that's causing problems with game saves," a message on the Bethesda Blog stated. "We'll be hosting a replacement update on Xbox Live as soon as humanly possible. If you haven't grabbed the New Vegas update on 360 today, we recommend you decline the update until the new one is live. We'll be sure to let you know when it's up."

The new update rectifying these issues is scheduled to go up sometime later tonight. An exact time could not be narrowed down except to say "it'll probably be later in the night." Unfortunately this is only true of those playing the game in English; Bethesda says "the wait is going to be a little longer" for those playing the game in other languages.

Original Story: Sony stated on Wednesday it was working with a law enforcement agency to help its investigation into last week's PlayStation Network breach that resulted in 70+ million users' personal data being stolen. The Federal Bureau of Investigation's cyber crimes unit, based in San Diego, has confirmed it's involved as has the Department of Homeland Security. This development comes amidst reports of a list up for sale which contains up to 2.2 million credit card numbers acquired in the attack.

The breach has been posited a number of times by Sony as being "malicious" and a "criminal act." It's clearly not the only one who believes so, given the two government agencies' involvement. The FBI confirmed to Kotaku yesterday that it's been in contact with Sony and is looking into the matter. "The FBI is aware of the reports concerning the alleged intrusion into the Sony on line game server and we have been in contact with Sony concerning this matter," said FBI special agent Darrell Foxworth. "We are presently reviewing the available information in an effort to determine the facts and circumstances concerning this alleged criminal activity."

DLC #1 will include new test chambers and accompanying leaderboards, as well as a "challenge mode" for both single- and multiplayer. Valve didn't get any more specific than that. Unlikely as it might be, I'm holding out hope for the DLC to feature more of Stephen Merchant or J.K. Simmons, though additional GLaDOS voice work would be plenty fine, too.

The add-on's release is "targeted" for summer on PC, Xbox 360, and PlayStation 3. Surprisingly enough, it'll be free on all three not platforms -- not just PC.

Original Story: The name of the next game in the Assassin's Creed seems to have been leaked by an over-eager Facebook manager. Ubisoft indicated earlier this year that a new, non-3DS game was coming in 2011. Presumably referring to the same game, a message (which has since been removed) was posted on Facebook earlier today reading, "Assassins, the day you have been waiting for has arrived!!! Click the link below to help reveal an exclusive look at the upcoming Assassin's Creed game!"

A NeoGAF thread shows that the link pointed to a page asking for Facebook 'Likes.' Once enough likes have been accumulated, "an exclusive sneak peek at the coming game reveal" would be shared. A flash file from the page remained available on Ubisoft's website for some time before also being removed. The logo you see above for Assassin's Creed: Revelations was discovered as a part of the posting along with a mention of Altair, the protagonist of the original Assassin's Creed. The last two major releases starred Altair's descendant, Ezio Auditore.

Speculation based on yesterday's trailer indicated the game would be more story-heavy than last year's Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit which, like The Run, is a more arcade-style racing experience than last month's Shift 2.

"This is the year that Need for Speed goes to the next level," said EA's Jason DeLong in an announcement. "We think that Need for Speed The Run is going to surprise people with its intense, thrilling story and big action feel. But the game would be nothing without hot cars and crazy-fast chases. So that is what we're delivering -- explosive racing that will have players flirting with disaster at 200-miles an hour."

Today's highlights:

• Blame executives, not engineers, for the PSN breach.
• Need for Speed: The Run announced for November.
• Hulu Plus lands on Xbox 360 tomorrow with a free trial period.
• Xbox 360 had a record-setting Q3.
• Fruit Ninja headed to Kinect.
• Jurassic Park: The Game to be released on Xbox 360 in disc form.
• Watch Retronauts tomorrow LIVE.
• The Rise of Squaresoft Localization

Nintendo Won't Ditch Buttons with Wii Successor

It was Sony's lawsuit against George Hotz that prompted hacker group Anonymous to wage war on Sony earlier this month. Anonymous might very well not have anything to do with the theft of PSN users' personal information -- it denies any involvement -- but Sony's litigiousness may have been what prompted the infiltration by hackers. If you thought there was any chance Hotz was somehow involved, think again.

"To anyone who thinks I was involved in any way with this, I'm not crazy, and would prefer to not have the FBI knocking on my door," he wrote on his blog earlier today. "Running homebrew and exploring security on your devices is cool, hacking into someone elses server and stealing databases of user info is not cool. You make the hacking community look bad, even if it is aimed at d****es like Sony."

Hotz, who was partially responsible for uncovering the PlayStation 3's root key earlier this year, asked that people not blame the engineers responsible for PSN's security but the executives who decided to draw the attention of the hacking community. "Also, let's not fault the Sony engineers for this, the same way I do not fault the engineers who designed the BMG rootkit," Hotz said. "The fault lies with the executives who declared a war on hackers, laughed at the idea of people penetrating the fortress that once was Sony, whined incessantly about piracy, and kept hiring more lawyers when they really needed to hire good security experts. Alienating the hacker community is not a good idea."

Siliconera reports that Korea's equivalent of the ESRB, the Game Ratings Board, has rated a game called Fruit Ninja Kinect. Unless this is an instance of someone blatantly stealing the name, we should be seeing Halfbrick's fruit-slicing game on Xbox 360 at some point.

Given the nature of the game, it would make more sense as an Xbox Live Arcade title than a retail game. Halfbrick has previously released two digital games -- Raskulls and Echoes -- on the Xbox Live Marketplace.

Besides some brief glimpses of actual gameplay, the trailer focuses on an incident involving a woman and someone named Chuck who are stuck in a car that's flipped over in front of a moving train.

The video's description reads, "It's called The Run. An illicit, high-stakes race across the country. The only way to get your life back is to be the first from San Francisco to New York. No speed limits. No rules. No allies. All you have are your driving skills and sheer determination as you battle hundreds of the world's most notorious drivers on the country's most dangerous roads."

The company revealed in its earnings release (covering Q3 of fiscal year 11, which ended on March 31) that it sold 2.7 million Xbox 360 consoles during the first three months of 2011. That's a new Q3 record for the system and it's an increase of 79% over last year. That might be thanks in part to Kinect which sold almost as many units (2.4 million) as the 360 itself during the same period. (Update: Note that this is the number of devices shipped, not the number sold through to consumers.) Microsoft made sure to reiterate that the motion control device has been "recognized as the fastest selling consumer electronics device," a title bestowed upon it by the Guinness World Records earlier this year.

For the ongoing fourth quarter it believes revenue for the Entertainment & Devices Division (which the Xbox 360 falls under the umbrella of) will increase by roughly 25%. For fiscal year 12 it expects "momentum to continue" and says more will be shared at E3 in June, suggesting some sort of announcement could be on the way.

"We're definitely in the home stretch. We're crunching," Wilson told the New York Times. "This is when the magic happens." It's a vague statement and Wilson wouldn't commit to nailing down even so much as a year, let alone a date. Knowing development is in the home stretch, though, lends credence to the idea that it could still make it out by the end of 2011. Blizzard has said in the past it's avoiding the announcement of a release date so it's not forced to rush development and risk the game's quality.

Blizzard hasn't ruled out the possibility of a new game coming in 2011. It's not a certainty, either; the company has only said that it expects two games out in 2012 if nothing ends up releasing this year. Those two games would presumably be the next chapter in the StarCraft II trilogy and Diablo III, but after waiting 10-plus years for a new Diablo, it's best to not take anything for granted. A new World of Warcraft expansion isn't impossible for 2012 either given that Blizzard has indicated it would like to see expansions packs released more frequently.

The disc-based 360 version will include the "entire series." That means it'll likely be out later than the PC and Mac versions, both of which will presumably be released as episodic downloads in the same way as Telltale's previous games. It's unclear at this time if the PS3 version will be released on both disc and the PlayStation Store.

Telltale delayed the computer version of Jurassic Park on Tuesday to ensure PC gamers get the "best possible gaming experience." Telltale CEO Dan Connors said of the delay, "We'll be investing the extra time into making the game great and it will be released simultaneously on every platform this fall." The first episode of the PC version had been scheduled to come out this month.