The Week in Review: MMO troubles, first

After a week swaning around the south coast in the blistering heat I'm back, which means you don't have to read another poor imitation of the Week in Review from Dave 'The Camel' Scammell. I'm still digesting a truly horrific lunch from an all-you-can-eat Chinese buffet, so don't be too alarmed if I drift off into a deep fried chicken coma.

Anyhow, the week began with news that PEGI had finally began the sole ratings system for video games in the UK. What affect this will have on consumer awareness and understating of age ratings remains to be seen. Do expect to see gangs of furious 11-year olds storming GAME stores later this year when they are told they can't buy EA's Need for Speed: Most Wanted.

Monday also featured Martin's review of XBLA hopeful Deadlight, but sadly the experience proved rather underwhelming.

Martin's been ill for the latter half of the week, but before being struck down also managed to offer his verdict on Ors Must Die! 2 – he enjoyed it much more than Deadlight.

It wasn't just Martin coming down with something, as Olympic fever struck the nation and helped SEGA's official video game claim the UK chart No.1. Look out for an Olympic related video special next week.

EA announced that it has sold 1.3 million subscriptions to its Battlefield 3 Premium service, which sounded very impressive until Activision boasted 2.3 million paid subs for Call of Duty Elite. The two publishing powerhouses did, however, reveal that their big budget MMOs were under performing. BioWare's Star Wars: The Old Republic will be going free-to-play in November, whilst Blizzard's World of Warcraft saw its subscriber base shed one million paying players. WoW's continued decline may in some part be attributed to Diablo III cannibalising the PC market, with 10 million sales and counting.

Meanwhile Activision's Modern Warfare 3 content drops continue to come thick and fast, with this month's new content exclusively detailed here on VideoGamer – including tips on Special Delivery and Light em up Spec Ops maps.

Whilst EA has been busy rolling out details on the new Army of Two and the Wii U version of FIFA 13, VideoGamer.com heard from a reliable source that Konami is doing everything it can to get PES 2013 in stores before its arch rival.

Even after all that there was still room for Take-Two to not talk about GTA 5 during its financials – a move gold medal-winning analyst Michael Pachter believes means Rockstar will announce release plans no later than November. Elsewhere in Take-Two's financials there was confirmation that Max Payne 3 and Spec Ops: The Line failed to meet their sales targets, although the former did ship three million units worldwide.

And finally, don't forget to check out the latest episode of the VideoGamer.com Podcast which is almost certainly more worthwhile than reading this round-up.

I'll leave you with a few of the week's must-watch trailers.

Toodles.