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If a new report proves accurate, EA Sports’ NBA Live 13 will arrive this October through Xbox Live Arcade and PlayStation Network as a $20 download. The report comes from an interview IRBGamer held with an EA Sports representative this week at the GameStop managers’ conference in San Antonio, Texas.

The EA Sports employee reportedly acknowledged that it is “a bit risky” to not run the game as a boxed product, but that hasn’t kept the publisher from pursuing a digital release.

An EA Sports representative told GameSpot, “We don’t have a comment on the rumor or speculation. However, the NBA LIVE development team continues to work hard on the game and we will be sharing more details soon.”

A digital-only release of NBA Live 13 does not come as a total surprise. EA posted biggest-ever digital revenue of $1.2 billion during its latest financial period, with CEO John Riccitiello saying it will “break away from the pack” in the year ahead with new digital capabilities that he claims competitors cannot match.

EA Sports’ NBA Live franchise has been dormant since NBA Live 10. A 2011 version was planned as the first to release under the NBA Elite brand, but that game, and the Elite name, were scuttled.

Frank Gibeau, who heads up EA Labels, has admitted the publisher got off to a tough start with the current generation. In an interview with Bloomberg, the executive pinned the struggle down to technology, saying EA did not have a powerful enough engine to build games at the time. This problem, he claims, has been remedied for the upcoming generation of hardware, thanks to its proprietary Frostbite engine.

“Frankly, we made a couple of mistakes in how we built our technology that was going to build all these games,” Gibeau said. “Fortunately, we have a very different approach to technology now with an engine called Frostbite…that’s tailor-made for next-gen hardware. So we’re in really good shape from a technology standpoint, which is where we had our misstep last time.”

Gibeau went on to note that EA has a “much richer and broader” set of franchises that it plans to launch with the upcoming generation, another thing that was missing during the previous transition. Gibeau also revealed that EA has three to five new intellectual properties that will launch during the first 24 months of the next generation. None of these were revealed.

As for when next-generation consoles from Microsoft and Sony will arrive, Gibeau said these new platforms will debut in about a year’s time. This estimate falls in line with analysts’ belief that new consoles from these companies will arrive in 2013.

The writers behind the latest installment in the Gears of War franchise say they are excited about the story they have to tell. Tom Bissell, New Yorker contributor and author of Extra Lives: Why Video Games Matter, and Rob Auten, a Twentieth Century Fox consultant who worked on Avatar, spoke with Eurogamer about why they wanted to work on Gears of War: Judgment, and what they say makes it unique for the series.

“We really tried to make this a character-driven game,” Bissell said. “We actually tried to give [main characters Cole Train and Damon Baird] more moments to actually see them relate to each other as guys that really love each other and we worked really hard on making that connection something that’s actually real.”

Bissell and Auten said they were attracted to work on the cover-based shooter prequel because the games appealed to their latent teenage sci-fi fan sensibilities within the context of a dark, interesting world. Bissell said simple foes like the locust afford the game more time to develop its protagonists.

These moments are part and parcel with the game itself, the writers said.

“In this game the story is literally moving through the level. The story elements we’re adding and cutscenes are the testimony moments and talking to the judge,” Bissell said. “We’re getting all of our storytelling juice into the moments that the player’s actually playing.”

Gears of War: Judgment is being co-developed by Bulletstorm studio People Can Fly and Epic Games and is set for release on Xbox 360 on March 19, 2013. The game’s new free-for-all multiplayer mode will be unveiled at PAX Prime this week in Seattle.

North American eSports organisation Major League Gaming has announced Halo 4 as part of its Fall Championship lineup. The tournament will take place just days before the game is officially released, giving competitors the opportunity to play the game before it goes on sale.

Additional details, such as prize money, format, bracket size, and schedule, have yet to be confirmed. The MLG Fall Championship will be taking place in Dallas, Texas, on November 2-4 this year.

In an update on the official Xbox website, Microsoft has advised that, for an “optimal experience,” players should install the entire game to their console’s hard drive, which will require at least 8GB of free space.

Halo 4 is due out on November 6 for the Xbox 360. It is a direct sequel to 2007’s Halo 3 and has players taking on the role of supersoldier Master Chief. For more on the project, check out GameSpot’s latest preview.

Borderlands 2 will be the latest game to offer a downloadable content “season pass.” Kotaku has confirmed with developer Gearbox Software that four planned add-ons for the new shooter will be bundled together for $30, a discount over the cost of combined individual purchases.

It was not mentioned what the four DLC offerings for Borderlands 2 would consist of, but Gearbox said additional details will be shared at a later date. The developer is holding an “Inside Gearbox Software” panel at PAX Prime this Sunday, where studio head Randy Pitchford and others will discuss Borderlands 2, as well as Aliens: Colonial Marines, and its other franchises.

Borderlands 2 will join a host of other big-name games in offering a DLC season pass. These include Max Payne 3, Gears of War 3, Saints Row: The Third, L.A. Noire, and UFC Undisputed 3.

Borderlands 2–due out September 18–is the sequel to 2009’s well-received loot-based co-op shooter. A recent game guide writer’s playthrough of the title took 58 hours, with Gearbox calling the game a “hobby.” For more on the title, check out GameSpot’s latest preview.

Next-generation consoles from Microsoft and Sony remain unannounced and mysterious, but that hasn’t stopped Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford from addressing them. Speaking to Gamasutra in a new interview, the executive confirmed the studio has projects ongoing for future-generation platforms.

“We’ve got a few things going on right now that we haven’t talked about but that will appear later,” Pitchford said.

Elaborating further, Pitchford explained that he is enthusiastic for the next wave of consoles to arrive for a multitude of reasons.

“I’m always excited by movement forward,” he said.. “Some of that comes from iteration with our software, and some of it comes from iteration with hardware, and some of it comes from invention…each new step kind of gives us new tools and new capabilities that always makes the entertainment better, if we use it right.”

It has been suggested that the next wave of consoles will offer significantly increased power over current-generation platforms, with Remedy last week calling such advancements a “quantum leap.” Pitchford alluded to the increased power capabilities of future platforms, saying, “More power is always better. There’s always things we can do that we cannot do today that we can do with more power.”

Lastly, Pitchford said he is wary of “temporary gimmicks” in the next generation of platforms.

“Different people make different stabs. Some of these stabs folks make become standards,” he said. “I don’t like getting behind gimmicks. I tend to like the things that feel like they can become standards, or steps towards standards.”