Pre-Order Left 4 Dead on Steam

Grrr! Valve’s expensive Zombie Apocalypse is almost upon us. Left 4 Dead can now be pre-ordered via Steam. If you pre-order now, you get $5 off. The game is set to release in US/EU on November 18th/November 21st respectively.

Left 4 Dead is a new franchise from Valve, and has earned numerous awards as it marches to launch this holiday, including “Best of E3″ Awards from Game Infomer and Maximum PC magazines. Like the pre-purchase promotions happening at retail for the PC and Xbox 360 versions, those who pre-purchase via Steam will save 10% off the regular price. The pre-order promotions are part of a $10 million marketing campaign that includes television, outdoor, online and print advertising.

Valve Spends a Fortune on Left 4 Dead Advertising

Valve has reportedly spent $10million dollars on the advertising campaign for Left 4 Dead. The campaign incorporates TV, Internet, Print and Outdoor advertising, with roughly half of the money going to TV ad-spots.

“We looked at the media mixes that various games have used for the last three years and used that to help us make decisions about how to allocate the dollars,” Newell said.

This, after Valve got 60% more pre-orders than Orange Box for Left 4 Dead. Remember that Orange Box had 5 Games and Left 4 Dead is just 1 IP.

About half of the campaign’s dollars will go towards television advertising. Valve has secured 30-second “high impact, premium placement” spots during USC, Notre Dame, Monday Night and Thanksgiving football broadcasts.

Very impressive. Good luck Valve!

Left 4 Dead Hands-on Preview

The crazy brits at bit-tech.net got to play around with VALVe’s upcoming Zombie co-op title; Left 4 Dead. Here’s a snippet:

There’s a whole lot more depth to Left4Dead than we’ve let on yet though, like the fact that characters will automatically shout things at each other if the AI director deems that players need to communicate but can’t – it’s very handy to have the guy covering you automatically yell that he’s out of ammo when the two of you are trying your best to hold a front line.

Check out the full preview here.

Left 4 Dead Delayed

A press release from Akella, the european games publisher, has revealed that Valve’s upcoming zombie co-op shooter has been pushed back yet again. Left 4 Dead will now be getting released in Fall 2008.

Akella is thrilled to be able to bring this unique game to Russian speaking territories. We are very excited by all Valve’s games and pretty sure of huge success of this new cooperative shooter hit in Russia and CIS countries. ” said Vladimir Koudr, VP of Publishing at Akella, “Left 4 Dead is already highly expected throughout the world, and Russian FPS players are eager to play this game.”

The release is scheduled for Fall 2008 and planned to ship simultaneously all over the world.