A selection of links, hand-picked by the Guardian games writers.

Speaking to investors this week, Activision CFO Dennis Durkin has admitted that Call of Duty: Ghosts sales are down compared to Black Ops II – which he says it's because of the console transition:

"As we have said for more than a year now, console transition years are volatile and hard to predict, and this year is proving no different," Durkin said in an investor call, as reported by Seeking Alpha. "Today, we announced that we had shipped into retail more than $1bn of Call of Duty: Ghosts globally on day one based on an average wholesale price. As expected, due to the console transition and digital distribution, this number is down versus last year."

But it's not just a handy excuse according to MCV. The news site has discovered that Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag has sold 60 per cent fewer units than ACIII and Battlefield 4 is 69 per cent down on sales from the previous title. It'll be interesting to see how far those are made up by the release of next-gen versions.

Sony has revealed a new video to show off its subscription service PlayStation Plus, which will be mandatory to play online on PS4:

From the article:

Sony has confirmed that PS4 early adopters who subscribe to PlayStation Plus will have access to two Instant Game Collection titles at launch; shooter Resogun and platform puzzler Contrast. The latter replaces DriveClub, which was previously planned to be a launch-day Instant Game Collection title before being delayed to March. PlayStation Plus subscriptions cost $49.99/£39.99 a year or $9.99/£5.49 per month. A single subscription is applied to all three platforms; PS4, PS3 and Vita.

Resogun looks amazing.

Microsoft Canada's Xbox director of marketing Craig Flannagan has been speaking to Gamesindustry.biz about the forthcoming machine. He's adamant it's in a good position for the console war and that it represents a long-term investment for gamers:

"Xbox One is going to start ahead, in terms of the experience we can deliver," Flannagan said. "And because we're built for the future, we're going to stay ahead. I think there is not a better experience you can buy this holiday, and there will not be a time this generation where there's a better experience you can buy than Xbox One...And it's probably going to be a pretty long generation. We're probably here for a while because we're built for the future. This is a console that will last you, conservatively a decade, if I had to put a bet down today."

Here is Double Fine's Tim Schafer talking about hat makes a good adventure game. He's so right here in his criticism of the otherwise loveable Uncharted series:

"It's okay to get stuck. It's acceptable to not know what to do for a short period of time." He recounted a story of playing Uncharted 2, saying, "there's this one temple you walk into, and I knew I had to get to the ceiling of it, and I was thinking, 'oh, I think I can see a ledge there, and there's a little crack there.' And I started to get that pleasant puzzle solving feeling. And right when I was about to figure it out, this text like 'push A against post to climb wall' came up, and I was like, 'I was just about to figure that out! That's so annoying.' Why couldn't I just think about that for a little while? Have some faith. I know I was just standing there not touching the controller, but I was really going to figure it out."

Steve Hogarty is just one of the funniest game writers around and here is his short essay on lessons learned about war from Battlefield 4. The stuff about opening doors is spot on. But I like this about female characters the best:

There are three decent female characters who appear in Battlefield 4's campaign, and at no point in the game do they have their uniforms blasted off by a grenade. There isn't a scene in the base where you walk in on one of them showering and they sassily snap, "what's the problem sargeant, never seen a pair of military-grade jugalugs before?" You don't ever follow one of these women up a ladder and have your character sarcastically comment on her arse. The bad guy never pins one of these women against a wall and kisses her on the neck or sniffs her hair before she knees him in the penis and balls. These are things that do not happen in Battlefield 4, which is a totally praiseworthy leap forwards for videogames writing and culture. Like, actually well done.

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