Good morning gamers (and other tasty humans). Bit of a bumper edition of the News Wrap today, so dig in.

Games

While the rest of the world gets Dead Island as the Games with Gold title until 15 February, South African Gold members can grab the newer Dead Island Riptide. Toy Soliders: Cold War will follow from 16 February.

Rockstar has discounted GTA V, GTA IV and GTA DLC on Xbox Live. GTA V is now £33.49/$40.19, while GTA IV is £8.99/$9.99. On the DLC front, GTA IV’s The Ballad of Gay Tony is currently discounted to £5.39/$7.99, while The Lost and Damned is available for £3.37/$4.99.

A bunch of community designed Gamerpics are now available for use on the Xbox One, or as wallpaper on your social media. The full gallery of images are available here.

World of Tanks has been dated for release on the Xbox 360. The free-to-play (for Gold members) title will be available from 12 February.

The lastest US PS Store update brings horror, pre-orders and more to the various PlayStation consoles. Full details on the PlayStation Blog.

According to a report in the latest issue of Game Informer, Metal Gear Solid: Ground Zeroes main story can be completed in two (yes, two) hours. There’s side mission and other things to do, but only two hours for the main campaign? Really? [via Kotaku] Meanwhile, additional details about the game have emerged by way of the Game Informer article, and they can be found here.

At least Eposide Two of the ‘Burial at Sea’ SLC for BioShock Infinite has a little more staying power. Ken Levine reckons it will last between five and six hours to complete.

Thief has “gone gold” and is on schedule for its scheduled release date of 25 February in the US and 28 February in the UK on PC, PS3, PS4, Xbox 360 and Xbox One. A new video was released yesterday.

So, the “Halo journey on Xbox One begins in 2014,” except no Microsoft spokesperson will actually say whether it’s Halo 2 Anniversary or even Halo 5. Suggestions are leaning towards Halo 2 Anniversary at the moment as Phil Spencer responded on Twitter: “Just can’t always answer as we need news at events. Halo 2 is a good game…” [More on Eurogamer]

Details of one of the factions in Titanfall have been released. The Frontier Militia is described as “a loosely governed mishmash of homesteaders, bandits, mercenaries, and pirates, all rising up as ‘citizen soldiers’ when the need arises”. [More on CVG]

The minimum PC requirements for Titanfall has been revealed. If your machine doesn’t boast at least 64-bit Windows 7, 8 or 8.1 with an AMD Athlon X2 2.8GHz or Intel Core 2 Duo 2.4GHz CPU, along with 4GB RAM and a 512MB VRAM, Radeon HD 4770 or GeForce 8800GT graphics card, maybe you should just play it on Xbox 360… You will also need an Origin account to play the game on PC.

Assassin’s Creed IV for the PS4 has received a 2.3GB single player update. The massive update will be followed by a multiplayer one on 11 February across PS3, PS4, Xbox 360 and Xbox One. [More on Polygon]

The beta for free-to-play Ace Combat Infinity on PS3 is now up and running. The beta ends on 11 February.

WWE 2K15 and NBA 2K15 have been confirmed for the Xbox One and PlayStation 4. [More on CVG]

BioWare has announced that Star Wars: The Old Republic will get two expansions in 2014. [More on the game’s website]

BioWare have announced a sequence of Dragon Age: Inquisition ‘Character Kits’ starting with Morrigan’s ball gown. Cosplayers and artists, go wild.

Industry

Satya Nadella has been named as the new CEO of Microsoft. [More on CVG]

IGN has a very interesting article up about the growth of Ubisoft Montreal and the games they’ve produced. Did you know Splinter Cell was originally pitched as a James Bond game? Well, there’s that and more in the article.

Rockstar‘s Leslie Benzies, Dan Houser, and Sam Houser are to be inducted into the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences Hall of Fame. [More on Eurogamer]

John Carmack says he left id Software for Oculus due to his former company not showing enough interest in bringing VR into id games. [More on USA Today]

Even with two new consoles in play, Just Cause creator and Avalanche Studios founder Christofer Sundberg says the AAA game development business is “not healthy”. In an interview with GameSpot he said: “Games have evolved, technology has evolved but as businesses we’re still stuck where we were 15 years ago. As budgets grow, risks increase.”

Borderlands 2 is 2K Games’ best selling title of all time. The game has sold 8.5 million over PC, PS3 and Xbox 360 since release.

Journey developer thatgamecompany may announce their new game this year. [More on CVG]

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