Command & Conquer 4: Tiberian Twilight, has received an official release date, and will be in stores on March 16 in North America and March 19 in Europe. While those are dates on the release, they’re also dates on when the C&C 4 team will get sacked, as EA plans to let go the entire team behind the game as soon as it wraps up.

While some games have double XP weekends to attract more players, Age of Conan is having none of that silly thing, it’s got a full double XP month, which lasts until the end of November. Publisher Funcom also announced new incentives to sign up for the game, for instance, subscribe for one month and get 7 extra days, or six months and get a level 40 helmet with a 10% XP modifier (that’s right, 10%! /sarcasm). Full press release here.

Information Week suggests that Microsoft has banned over 5% of Xbox Live members because they use modded consoles. Since there are just over 20 million Live members, it means over 1 million accounts have been suspended because they use modded consoles, which makes them play pirated games.

Modern Warfare 2 is officially a “record breaking” game, selling no less than 4.7 million copies on day one, across all systems in North America and UK (rest of the world wasn’t tracked, meaning the number is definitely higher). The previous record was 3.6 million and was held by Grand Theft Auto 4. Stay tuned for our Modern Warfare 2 review later today.

While many Guild Wars fans have been dreaming of a sequel next year, it appears they’ll have to dream on, into 2011, because NCsoft revealed that it has no plans of any major releases in 2010, having just released the highly anticipated MMO Aion a few months ago. However, lucky Koreans will have a chance to play the Guild Wars 2 beta sometime next year, probably late-2010.

Microsoft’s Zune HD has certainly given the iPod touch a run for its money, and is capable of some serious 3D rendering with a powerful Nvidia Tegra chip running it. However, there haven’t been many games to really test the hardware — or to sell a lot of units — but that should be changed now.

With the latest update, Zune HD adds Audiosurf: Tilt, PGR: Ferrari Edition, Lucky Lane Bowling, Vans Sk8: Pool Service, Piano and Checkers. These are all free game that will be available on the Zune Marketplace. While the games are free, players are forced to watch a short ad before the game starts, which is okay, considering they’re free games.

EA has confirmed that developer Criterion has a Need For Speed game ready for 2010, after working on the Burnout series for a long time, indicating that the series will now have yearly installments, much like their EA Sports series. EA also revealed that Need For Speed Shift has shipped over 2.5 million units, while actual sales numbers were not disclosed.

The recent announcement of job cuts at EA was accompanied by little more information on where the cuts would be made, as EA operates a lot of studios worldwide. Now a rumor suggests that the cuts will target studios Maxis and Pandemic, who worked on Mercenaries and The Saboteur.

The rumor also suggests, quite stunningly, that the entire team behind Command & Conquer 4 will get sacked after the game is complete. How’s that for “motivation”?

One of EA’s most lucrative franchises, the Madden franchise’s latest iteration, Madden 10 has shipped 3.7 million copies since its release in August, EA revealed. However, the game was off to a bad start, with sales being down 19% compared to Madden 09, but it did rebound in September and sales have increase thanks to the PS3 price drop. Madden 09 was the best selling Madden game of all time, and it’s going to be a tough job outselling it, especially during this economy.

Borderlands is enjoying great critical and commercial success at the moment, and the game has lined up its first DLC, called “The Zombie Island of Dr. Ned“, which will be available on November 24th for $10 on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. However, developer Gearbox didn’t mention a PC version of the DLC, which is a bit disappointing, to be honest, especially if it turns out that the DLC won’t be available on the PC at all.