Skyrim: Hearthfire Now Available on Steam

Bethesda has released Hearthfire, the second downloadable content pack for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, on PC. The content is on Steam now for $4.99 and is available in English, French, Italian, German and Spanish.

Hearthfire allows players to build a home, ranging from “a simple one-room cottage to a sprawling compound complete with an armory, alchemy laboratory, stable, garden, and more.” Players can also adopt children to build a family, and can use a carpenter’s workbench and drafting table “to transform quarried stone, clay, and sawn logs into structures and furnishings.”

Hearthfire originally hit Xbox 360 in September and follows the first downloadable content, Dawnguard, which came to PC in August. For now, the content remains unannounced for PlayStation 3, and Bethesda says it may never come to Sony’s console.

For more on Hearthfire, check out our impressions of the Xbox 360 version and see more in our Skyrim wiki guide.

Andrew Goldfarb is IGN’s associate news editor. Keep up with pictures of the latest food he’s been eating by following him on Twitter or IGN.

Source : ign[dot]com

Skyrim: Hearthfire DLC Available Now

Hearthfire, the second downloadable content pack for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, is available now on Xbox Live. The pack will cost 400 Microsoft Points ($5.00) and, like all Skyrim downloadable content, will start as an exclusive for Xbox 360 players.

As Bethesda announced last week, Hearthfire lets players purchase land and build a house from the ground up. According to Xbox Live’s Major Nelson, you’ll be able to go “from a simple one-room cottage to a sprawling compound complete with an armory, alchemy laboratory, stable, garden and more.” Players will also be able to use tools and a carpenter’s workbench to turn stone, clay or logs into furniture and can also adopt children.

We first heard the Hearthfire name back in May, when a trademark listing suggested that Bethesda had new content in the works. Hearthfire follows Dawnguard, which launched on June 26th and was later released on PC. Currently, Bethesda says that Skyrim’s downloadable content may never come to PlayStation 3.

For more on Skyrim, check out our Skyrim wiki guide and Skyrim iPad app, and keep checking back to IGN for our Hearthfire impressions later this week.

Andrew Goldfarb is IGN’s associate news editor. Keep up with pictures of the latest food he’s been eating by following him on Twitter or IGN.

Source : ign[dot]com

Skyrim DLC on PlayStation 3 May Never Happen

While gamers on Xbox 360 and PC are going to be able to experience all of the DLC Bethesda has planned for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, it appears PlayStation 3 gamers may indeed be left out in the cold. After noting that the DLC hadn’t necessarily even been announced for PlayStation 3 and admitting that Dawnguard’s performance on PS3 is unsatisfactory, Bethesda’s Global Community Lead posted on the Bethesda forums with some ominous news.

Here’s the post, in full:

“Earlier in the month, we provided an update on Dawnguard's status for PS3.

“It's been a few weeks, and we wanted to make sure everyone knows where we're at with Dawnguard. Skyrim is a massive and dynamic game that requires a lot of resources, and things get much more complex when you're talking about sizable content like Dawnguard. We have tried a number of things, but none of them solve the issue enough to make Dawnguard good for everyone. The PS3 is a powerful system, and we're working hard to deliver the content you guys want. Dawnguard is obviously not the only DLC we’ve been working on either, so the issues of adding content get even more complicated. This is not a problem we’re positive we can solve, but we are working together with Sony to try to bring you this content.

“We wish we had a more definitive answer right now. We understand the frustration when the same content is not available on all platforms. When we have an update, we will certainly let you know. We deeply appreciate all the time and support you have given us, and we’ll keep doing our best to return that.”

Bethesda’s seeming inability to get its game to work on PlayStation 3 means that, according to them, the content may never come out at all. “This is not a problem we’re positive we can solve,” they admit, “but we are working together with Sony to try to bring you this content.” And the fact that more and more additions to the game are making the problem even more complicated, as explained in the post, means that things are looking exceptionally dire.

We’ll keep our fingers crossed that Skyrim’s DLC does indeed make its way to Sony’s console, but in the meantime, it’s not looking too good.

Colin Moriarty is an IGN PlayStation editor. You can follow him on Twitter and IGN and learn just how sad the life of a New York Islanders and New York Jets fan can be.

Source : ign[dot]com

Bethesda “Not Yet Satisfied with Dawnguard’s Performance on the PS3”

The saga concerning The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim on PlayStation 3 continues unabated. The chatter has recently revolved around PS3 gamers not getting a patch other platforms already received, as well as a Bethesda executive noting that Dawnguard DLC wasn’t even announced for platforms other than Xbox 360. But then news broke that PS3 gamers may indeed receive the Dawnguard DLC after all.

Today, Bethesda has confirmed that Dawnguard is up and running on PlayStation 3, but there’s a catch: it’s not running well. Posting on its official blog, Bethesda notes that it’s “not yet satisfied with Dawnguard’s performance on the PS3. We would like for everyone to have a chance to play Dawnguard, but we aren’t going to release it for PS3 knowing that some people’s experience in Skyrim will be worse. We do everything we can to have our content available to all; from our free updates, to user mods, to paid DLC. We’re as disappointed as our fans when that isn’t the case, but we’ll continue to push for that reality.”

The post doesn’t technically confirm that Dawnguard will actually be released for PlayStation 3; in fact, the wording can be interpreted that it may never come out. However, we’ve reached out to Bethesda for official comment and clarification.

Dawnguard’s issues on PS3 follow a litany of problems the PS3 iteration of Skyrim has experienced since its launch last November, problems well chronicled here at IGN.

The DLC pack in question originally came to Xbox 360 last month, and was released today for PC.

Colin Moriarty is an IGN PlayStation editor. You can follow him on Twitter and IGN and learn just how sad the life of a New York Islanders and New York Jets fan can be.

Source : ign[dot]com