CES 2014 kicks off this week and you can expect to see a plethora of Steam Box related news.

Up until now we have received a good amount of information pertaining to Box’s specs but very little has been known as to whom would be selling the machines.

iBuyPower will be showing off their machine fitted with a multi-core AMD Cpu, 500GB hard drive (we are not sure if this is SSD), WiFi, Bluetooth, and an AMD Radeon R9 270 graphics card.

The size if the unit is said to be around the same size as a PS4 and a tad smaller then an Xbox One.

A retailer in the UK has accidentally sent some customers a free PlayStation Vita. And is now resorting to some heavy methods in an attempt to get them back.

According to a report on Eurogamer, “a number” of people who had preordered Vita game Tearaway were instead sent a Tearaway PlayStation Vita bundle, which included the game and the hardware.

Upon realising its error, the retailer – Zavvi – asked for the bundles to be sent back. And that’s where things get messy.

British customer rights website What Consumer says “if you’ve been sent unsolicited goods, you are entitled to treat them as an unconditional gift and do with them as you choose.”

Understandably, some of those affected have done just that, leading Zavvi to send out further letters, including a “final notice” that reads:

This is our final notice to politely remind you that you did not order, or pay for, a PS Vita and if you fail to contact us by 5pm (UK time) on 10th December 2013 to arrange a convenient time for the PS Vita to be collected we reserve the right to enforce any and/or all legal remedies available to us.

Normally in these circumstances, the retailer would admit the mistake and simply take the hit. It’s rare a company would try and engage in a move like this; the PR backlash will probably make them wish they’d never bothered.

Original post by Eurogamer here

Blizzard have announced that their Warcraft-themed virtual trading card game,  Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft – currently in a closed, invite-only beta – will soon be available to all; as the game enters an open beta some time next month.

Battle.net players interesting in trying out the game before its official launch will be able to login, download and experience the game in its current early form starting December 2013.

Blizzard also today announced that the game is also planned to have iPhone and Android versions, allowing a similar game experience in smartphone or tablet form. A release is due in early 2014.

Where to start? That must be the big question facing DICE right now as they try and wrangle Battlefield 4 into a stable state. Players have been reporting disconnection errors, freezes, crashes and a smattering of bugs. DICE have tabled a list of fixes they’re working on on the Battlefield 4 forums, which includes a bug that stops server queues from working and various client instability problems.

Players have also been finding some odd errors, YouTubers TeamTooHeavy have posted a video that apparently shows the silencer on the QBU88 muting sound on a server. More worryingly, many players have been reporting netcode issues, which cause a discrepancy between the game logic that denotes where shots are going and when they hit, and what you’re actually seeing on-screen. If netcode’s laggy the game might tell you that you’ve just git a soldier seven times in the chest and been suddenly killed, while from your killer’s perspective he’s rounded the corner and shot you fair and square. Redditor Hickery123 has rounded up some pretty blatant video examples of this happening here.

DICE are patching speedily, thankfully, which marks a change from Battlefield 3 when every patch had to go through Microsoft and Sony bureaucracy. A lot of Battlefield 4’s multiplayer component operates server-side, so they no longer have to deploy updates and downloads to every player’s PC to deal with issues. Battlefield 3 also had some major problems on release, and ended up okay, but it’s a particularly frustrating situation when a big open beta event happened just weeks ago.

The connection issues seem to be affecting 64 player servers more frequently, so you might want to steer clear of those for a while. If the server runs into an error, all of the levelling progress you made during the match will be lost, but reportedly this will suck up XP boost time regardless, so it’s best to save those until the server issues are fixed.

Activision has officially confirmed ‘Extinction’ mode for Call of Duty: Ghosts following leaks which revealed the mode over the weekend.

The publisher has released an official trailer showing the new four-player co-op mode in action

According to the brief official blurb, Extinction is “an all-new 1-4 player cooperative game mode featuring a unique blend of fast-paced survival action, FPS base defence, scavenging and class levelling”.

The game’s official Facebook page calls it “co-op survival madness, with aliens”.

The video appears to show players using drill-like devices to destroy alien hives. Players work together to protect the drilling devices from incoming hordes of four-legged aliens.

Extinction mode was first outed when screenshots and teaser footage was leaked over the weekend.

The Call of Duty: Ghosts release date is set for November 5 on Xbox 360, PS3, Wii U and PC. It will also arrive alongside the PS4 and Xbox One on their respective launches in November.